Vaughn Monroe plays Matt Landry, a marshal on the trail of gunrunner Frank Girard (Victor Jory). Meanwhile, a wagon train is attacked by Indians, and the men sacrifice themselves so a woman (Joan Leslie as Mary Kimber) and two young children can escape. Among the men left behind — Mary’s husband Verne (Henry Morgan), Tombstone bound for a job as a telegrapher.
Landry picks up the wagon train survivors on his way back to Tombstone with his prisoner. Mary and the children move in with the good marshal, a widower who has two children of his own, making for a cozy family situation. Naturally, Matt Landry and Mary quickly grow to be close friends. Landry proposes marriage; Mary feels like that would betray the way her husband sacrificed his life to save hers during the Indian attack.
But when Landry tries to secretly smuggle Girard out of town in the back of a hearse for his trial in Prescott, his brothers are waiting to set him free. And soon after he’s free, the Girard brothers hold up a silver shipment and make off with $80,000 thanks to knowledge of the time and route it will be traveling.
Turns out they’re intercepting telegraph messages at their hideout in Galeyville with the help of Verne Kimber, who wasn’t killed in the Indian attack after all, but snuck off and hid out while the other men were being massacred. Now he sees working with the Girards as a way to make some easy money, travel to San Francisco, then send for his wife.
Review:
Interesting family Western and different enough to be entertaining. The shootout in the hearse is pretty imaginative, and the final showdown in the corral has a few more twists than normal. And Joan Leslie is allowed to do more acting than the female lead in most Westerns.
Henry Morgan actually has the most interesting role as a coward who’s always dreaming of making it big and has dragged his wife all over the country on get-rich-quick schemes. She’d prefer he settle down to a steady job; that’s why they’re bound for Tombstone.
As for Vaughn Monroe, he was a renowned singer and orchestra leader before he got into acting (a 1950 Western called “Singing Guns” marked his film debut). He’s best known today for his 1946 version of “Let It Snow,” which is played at the end of each of the first two Bruce Willis “Die Hard” films. He sings three songs over the course of this film, including “A Man’s Best Friend is His Horse.”
Directed by:
R.G. Springsteen
Cast:
Vaughn Monroe … Matt Landry
Joan Leslie … Mary Kimber
Edgar Buchanan … Jim Hadlock
Victor Jory … Frank Girard
Jean Parker … Della
Harry Morgan … Verne Kimber
Ian MacDonald … Steve Girard
Lee MacGregor … Jerry Girard
Diana Christian … Joan Landry
Nadine Ashdown … Jesse Billings
Robert Hyatt … Davey Billings
Charlita … Senorita
Francis Ford … Hanchette
Paul Hurst … Dalton
Runtime: 90 min.
Songs: All performed by Vaughn Monroe
“Hound Dog (Bay at the Moon)”
“The Man Don’t Live Who Can Die Alone”
“A Man’s Best Friend is His Horse”
Memorable lines:
Matt Landry: “Easy with those hands. There’s a bullet looking right down your throat.”
Frank Girard: “Bullet or a hanging — you make it hard for me to decide.”
Frank Girard, after Della catches him flirting with Charlita: “I was teasing her, just for laughs. Like you do with half the men in Tombstone.”
Jerry Girard, after the stage holdup: “How’s it feel to wake up rich?”
Frank Girard: “Better than waking up in prison.”
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