Cast a Long Shadow (1959)

Audie Murphy plays Matt Brown, a young cowboy more interested in getting drunk and gambling than doing anything meaningful with his life.

Then he discovers he’s inherited a large ranch from a man who would never admit to being his father.

He travels back to that ranch, intent on selling it to Chip Donohue, the ranch foreman.

Donohue doesn’t have enough money to buy the ranch himself, so he’s offered the other ranch hands a chance to purchase shares in the property. After all, they’re anxious to be working for themselves for a change.

But Matt changes his mind, in part because of everyone’s attitude toward him, in part because the trip home has reunited him with the woman he loves (Terry Moore as Janet Calvert).

What Matt doesn’t know until after refusing to sell the ranch is that there’s a loan payment coming due, and if they don’t get the herd to market within a few days, the ranch won’t be owned by anyone but the bank.

He starts barking out orders, alienating some of the people he needs most, including Donohue, who always assumed he’d inherit the ranch. And four of the men he orders off the ranch band together, determined to make sure he never completes his cattle drive to Sante Fe.

Review:

Audie Murphy was 35 when this film was made; Terry Moore was about 30, but they still manage to turn in convincing performances as young adults who fell in love, were separated and are brought back together again by chance.

In fact, Moore is more spirited and believable than most of the love interests in Murphy’s Westerns. The scene in which they argue over his decision to “cast a long shadow” is one of the film’s highlights. It’s just a shame Moore disappears from the film when the cattle drive begins, never to return.

Dehner, the veterans of so many Westerns, has one of his better role. Chip Donohue is a man torn between letting Matt Brown fail on his own, or helping him complete a cattle drive that will end Chip’s dream of owning the ranch he’s worked on for 30 years.

Oh, there’s also a twist in the tale involving Matt Brown’s parentage.

Directed by:
Thomas Carr

Cast:
Audie Murphy … Matt Brown
Terry Moore … Janet Calvert
John Dehner … Chip Donohue
James Best … Sam Mullen
Rita Lynn … Hortensia
Ann Doran … Ma Calvert
Denver Pyle … Preacher Harrison
Stacy Harris … Eph Brown
Robert Foulk … Hugh Rigdon
Wright King … Noah Pringle
Joe Patridge … Ken Calvert
Mason Alan Dinehart … Dick Calvert

Runtime: 82 min.

Memorable lines:

Sam Mullen to Janet Calvert: “I sure like that yellow dress. Why you could even get hay on it and no one would ever know.”

Matt Brown to Janet Calvert, at Keenan’s former home: “You’d die laughing if you knew why I came up here. I thought I could pull old man Keenan out of his grave and find out the truth (about his parentage).”

Chip Donohue, after shooting mugs of whiskey from two of his ranch hands: “If I see one more hand touch one more jug, there may not be a jug. There may not be a hand.”

Janet Calvert: “You talk about how you’ve grown and what a great big shadow you’re going to cast. Matt, you’re getting smaller.”
Matt Brown: “Because I fired a drunk?”
Janet: “I’m not going with you to Sante Fe.”
Matt Brown: “Why not?”
Janet: “I agreed to marry the Matt Brown who took my hand and walked me to the grove. Maybe he was small and frightened, but I knew him and I loved him. I don’t know what’s happened to him now.”
Matt: “Now you listen to …”
Janet: “I’m not running off to Sante Fe to marry a stranger.”
Matt: “You’re talking crazy.”
Janet: “Look, I’m not going, Matt. That’s final. Let’s wait. Let’s wait to see what a great big man you get to be. Because at the rate you’re going, in a month’s time you’d be ashamed to be married to a little nobody like me.”