Cowboy (1958)

Glenn Ford is cattleman Tom Reese, who blows into Chicago with his herd and his trailhands, takes over the best rooms in the best hotel in town, works out a deal to sell his cattle for a small fortune, then proceeds to lose all he’s earned in a game of cards.

Enter hotel clerk Frank Harris (Jack Lemmon), who offers him a stake to stay in the card game, on one condition. Harris dreams of life as a cattleman; he wants to go along when Reese leaves on his next cattle drive.

Reese agrees, though by the next morning he has second thoughts. He’s never liked the idea of a partner. Now he has one, a greenhorn who knows nothing of life in the saddle. But Harris refuses to take back his money.

Oh, and Harris has ulterior motives for wanting to travel to Mexico to pick up Reese’s next herd. He’s fallen for a young Mexican girl named Maria Vidal (Ann Kashfi), an aristocrat considered too sophisticated for a hotel clerk. But perhaps not for a cattle baron. Reese intends to purchase cattle from her father.

At first, Harris is stunned by the hardships of the trail, and about the lack of emotion shown by Reese when one trailhand dies of a snake bite. But then Harris’ heart is broken when he arrives in Mexico and discovers Maria has been married off to a rich Mexican. When Reese is wounded during an encounter with Indians, Harris takes over the trail drive, pushing the men just as hard as or harder than Reese ever did.

Review:

Well-done character study as Lemmon’s character learns that life on the trail isn’t nearly as romantic as he thought it would be and comes to the conclusion that Ford’s trail boss puts more value on a $20 steer than a man’s life.

The scene in which a cowhand (Strother Martin in an uncredited role) is bitten by a snake while two other cowpokes toss it around, trying to scare Harris, is particularly well done. So is an early scene in which Reese fires away at flies in his hotel room while talking to hotel clerk Harris about life on the trail.

Reese eventually becomes something of a father figure to the young trailhand, realizing that he’s partly responsible for the bitterness Harris displays in his dealings with the other men and his devotion to protecting their investment.

The trail crew also includes Dick York of future “Bewitched” fame and Brian Donlevy as an aging fast gun who joins the drive because he’s so tired of that reputation. The film would mark Lemmon’s only Western. Oh, and Frank Harris was a real person who wrote a book about his experience as a cowboy on which this movie is loosely based.

Directed by:
Delmar Daves

Cast:
Glenn Ford … Tom Reese
Jack Lemmon … Frank Harris
Anna Kashfi … Maria Vidal
Brian Donlevy … Doc Bender
Dick York … Charlie
Victor Mendoza … Paco Mendoza
Richard Jaeckel … Paul Curtis
King Donovan … Joe Capper
Vaughn Taylor … Mr. Fowler
Donald Randolph … Senor Vidal
James Westerfield … Mike Adams
Eugene Iglesias … Don Manuel Arriega
Frank DeCova … Alcaide

Runtime: 92 min.

Memorable lines:

Senior Vidal to Frank Harris, about romancing his daughter: “And don’t think love can find a way. I know all the ways.”

Tom Reese: “No sensible man loves a horse. He tolerates the filthy animal because ridings better than walkin’.”

Wagon driver: “Beats me how women can go for you cowboys.”
Cowboy: “Women like the smell of a horse on a man. Makes ’em giggle.”
Wagon driver: “Well, the smell of a horse on me never did me no good. Just makes ’em get up and move away.”
Cowboy: “Maybe you’ve been associating with the wrong horses.”

Tom Reese: “Man old enough to get into trouble is old enough to get himself out of trouble.”

Frank Harris: “We rounded up most of the herd … that is, all we could find.”
Tom Reese: “How many head did we lose?”
Harris: “Just over 200.”
Reese: “That’s a lot of cows.”
Harris: “Yeah, it is. It’s too bad. Too bad for you.”
Reese: “What?”
Harris: “We found all my cows. It seems it was yours that ran off and got lost.”

Tom Reese to Frank Harris: “You haven’t gotten tough. You’ve just gotten miserable.”