The Big Sky (1952)

The story of one of the first fur-trading expeditions up the Missouri River into what is now Montana, opening up the Great Northwest.

Kirk Douglas is Jim Deakins and Dewey Martin is Boone Caudill, new friends who decide to make the trip West with Zeb Calloway (Arthur Honnicutt) as their guide and “Frenchy” Jourdonnais as the man orchestrating the journey.

Whites aren’t typically welcome in Blackfoot country, but Zeb and “Frenchy” have rescued the pretty daughter of an Indian chief (Elizabeth Threatt as Teal Eye) and figure returning her home will buy them the good will needed to complete their trip.

Of course, there are still other Indian tribes to deal with, like the Crow. And there’s the fur trading company that doesn’t like anyone venturing into the territory unless they get a cut of the proceeds.

The company dispatches Streak (Jim Davis) and a handful of men to set Frenchy’s boat on fire and sabotage the trip. If that doesn’t work, they won’t hesitate to resort to more dastardly options, including kidnapping Teal Eye.

Review:

Better than Clark Gable’s “Across the Wide Missouri,” released a year earlier, but that’s not saying much. It’s your standard fur-trapper yarn, with some excellent footage of the men making the arduous journey by boat — and being attacked on that boat — helping enliven the proceedings.

Of course, both Deakins and Boone fall for the pretty Indian girl everyone’s been warned to stay away from. Teal Eye loves Deakins as a brother and heads out into the dangerous forest to rescue him when he’s wounded. But it’s Boone she falls for, even though she knifes him at one point over a Blackfoot scalp he carries around. The big question is whether Boone will settle down with her in Blackfoot country or return to white civilization.

Arthur Honnicutt’s character is every bit as much front and center as the parts played by Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin; he narrates the story and is more entertaining too. Character actor Hank Borden plays their faithful Indian friend named Poordevil, who turns out to be much more competent than he seems.

This marks the only time director Howard Hawks and Douglas worked together. It also marked the only film appearance for model Elizabeth Threatt, whose mother was a Cherokee Indian.

Directed by:
Howard Hawks

Cast:
Kirk Douglas … Jim Deakins
Dewey Martin … Boone Caudill
Elizabeth Threatt … Teal Eye
Arthur Honnicutt … Zeb Calloway
Buddy Baer … Romaine
Steve Geray … “Frenchy” Jourdonnais
Henri Letondal … La Badie
Hank Worden … Poordevil
Jim Davis … Streak

Runtime: 122 min.

Memorable lines:

Zeb Calloway, about the Blackfeet: “The only thing they’re ‘feared of is the white man’s sickness.”
Boone Caudill: “What’s that?”
Zeb: “The grabs. White man don’t see nothing pretty less they want to grab it. The more they grab, the more they want to grab. It’s like a fever. And they can’t get cured. The only thing they can do is keep grabbing til everything belongs to white men and then start grabbing from each other.”

Boone, after tangling with Teal Eye: “She’s worst than a spit-cat.”
Zeb Calloway: “Lucky for you she didn’t have knife. She’d have stuck it clean in your gizzard.”

Jim Deakins: “Sure is big country. Only thing bigger is the sky. Looks like God made it and forgot to put people in it.”
Boone Caudill, smacking a bug on his arm: “Didn’t forget to put skeeters in it.”

Zeb Calloway, as he prepares to sew up the wounded Boone Caudill: “I remember once there being a trapper named Parker. He run smack into a big grizzly bear. The bear sure made a mess out of Parker before we killed it. Ripped one of his ears clear off. But this child just happened to have a needle and some of this deer sinew, just like we got here. Yeah, while his ear was still hot, I picked it up and sewed it back on his head. And it growed most as good as ever … I said growed most as good as ever. Not hardly. It seems I sewed Parker’s ear on backwards. Yeah, he hated me until the day he died, on account of every time he heared a rattlesnake, he’d turn the wrong direction and step smack into it.”