zardoz-13 Barbara Stanwyck doesn't take adversity laying down in director Allan Dwan's "Cattle Queen of Montana" as the eponymous, pistol-packing, lead-slinging, red-headed Sierra Nevada Jones. This adventurous horse opera features future U.S. President Ronald Reagan playing second fiddle to Stanwyck as a hired gun on her side in an Indian war. This is the kind of western that has good Indians and bad Indians. "Magnificent Obsession" scenarist Robert Blees and "Hell's Angels" scribe Howard Estabrook let Barbara kill her quota of guys, while Reagan gets to blast his six-gun out of her fist in one scene. The Glacier National Valley scenery makes the perfect backdrop to this larger-than-life oater. Basically, "Cattle Queen of Montana" is a revenge western with the heroine searching for the men who ambushed her dad. The villain is ambitious, but he seems a little short-handed when it comes to having dependable help. Stanwyck, her father 'Pop' Jones (Morris Ankrum), and their foreman move a herd of over a thousand cattle into the territory to lay stake to a ranch in the middle of the wilderness. Renegade Native Americans bushwhack Jones and her family. Jones' father bites the dust and their friend Nat is laid up while our heroine tries to absorb what has happened. She is surprised when good Indians arrive to help them. The Indians are Blackfeet, and two of them are vying to lead the tribe after their ailing father migrates to the Happy Hunting Ground in the sky. Colorados (Lance Fuller) is an educated Indian who asks questions before he fires his weapon. His volatile brother Natchakoa (Anthony Caruso) is an uneducated, liquor-swilling brave who shoots first and asks questions afterward. Colorados allows Sierra and Nat to recuperate in his village. The villain is greedy cattleman named Tom McCord (Gene Evans) who wants Natchakoa to scare off the settlers so he can buy their land up cheaply. Neither Natchakoa nor McCord are prepared to tangle with Sierra. She has no problem packing a pistol and putting lead into people. A wandering gunman, Farrell (Ronald Reagan), rides into the country, too, and takes a job as one of McCord's minions.

discount1957 Perhaps the most uncomplicated of America's classic directors, Dwan made a series of films in the fifties for producer Bogeaus that allowed him a degree of flexibility he'd been unused to since the silent days. Cattle Queen of Montana, the tale of Stanwyck's struggles to hold on to the property of her murdered father, is beautifully lit by cinematographer Alton, the great unsung Hollywood cameraman. It evokes a world of easeful innocence far removed from the cynicism and violence that was the norm in the Western of the fifties. Reagan is the mysterious gunman who comes to Stanwyck's rescue. Stanwyck, who did all her own stunts, so impressed the Blackfeet Indians hired as extras that they made her a blood sister, and gave her the Indian name of Princess Many Victories.Phil Hardy

Spikeopath Out of RKO Radio Pictures comes Cattle Queen of Montana, directed by Allan Dwan and written by Robert Blees, Howard Estabrook (screenplay) & Thomas Blackburn (story). It stars Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Reagan, Gene Adams, Lance Fuller, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam & Yvette Duguay. The music is scored by Louis Forbes and it's a Technicolor production with John Alton on photography. Locations used for the film are Glacier National Park, Montana & Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, California. Stanwyck plays Sierra Nevada Jones, a tough cowgirl who along with her father, drive the family herd up from Texas to Montana. Planning to build a ranch to set themselves up, tragedy strikes when they are attacked by some renegade Blackfoot Indians. However, all is not as it seems, just what has shifty Tom McCord (Evans) got to do with things? Why is gunslinger Farrell (Reagan) working for McCord? And can war between the Blackfoot and the white man be averted?Standard formulaic stuff that is only really of interest for the photography of Alton. Cowboys and Indians, good and bad on each side, go head to head in a cliché riddled movie bogged down by a pretty turgid script. Not even the normally classy Stanwyck can lift herself to a performance capable of saving the piece. There's some credit due for making the lead protagonist a strong willed woman, and even tho it's a bit late in the cycle of topic, depicting the Indians as not all savages-as the white man encroaches onto their land-is a bonus. But with American character actors Fuller & Caruso playing the in fighting leaders of the Blackfoot tribe, it just comes across as corny and wholly unbelievable, while Dwan was indeed a more than capable director, here the action lacks zip and the film gasps for some dramatic air as the narrative goes around in circles.The story off screen is more entertaining than the film itself, where Reagan was constantly at odds with producer Benedict Bogeaus. The future President of the United States of America took one look at the script and voiced concerns, suggesting many changes, all of which were ignored. Royalty status was afforded Stanwyck while Reagan got next to no help from the producer, this perhaps goes someway to explaining his limp performance. Tho, again, the script calls for him to be part of one of the most lukewarm and pointless romances in 1950s Oaters, he got no help either way on this picture. Still, there's Alton's photography of the Glacier National Park to hold the attention, even if the "new" scrubbed up print of the film is far from doing it justice.That its claim to fame is being the film playing at the theater in Hill Valley in the film Back to the Future, says volumes, this is poor all told, and not even worthy of recommending to those after a time filling Cowboys & Indians no brainer. 3/10

dbdumonteil A story about this movie goes like this:THe production hired some Indians for a few measly dollars a day.But in the meantime,oil was found on their territory and they became millionaires But they had to honor their contract:so they came to the set in limos.Some viewers have complained about a certain racism.I do not think it is so;there are villains among the Indian tribe and among the Whites.For Stanwyck,the film looks like a blueprint for her "Forty guns" (Fuller,1957),although it's less violent and less inventive.But Dwan makes us feel his love for nature