ma-cortes Cowpoke good guy , known as the Virginian, Joel McCrea , and his best colleague called Steve , Sonny Tuffs , both fall for Molly, Barbara Britton , the Eastern Schoolmarm who is come to their Wyoming town . Steve wants to make some quick money and joins up Trampas , Brian Donlevy , and his cattle rustling band .After that , the Virginian leads a posse against the cattle rustlers . Things go wrong when The Virginian must take a hard decission .Good Western based on the 1902 classic novel by Owen Lister about a ranch-hand defeating the local bad guys . The main issue of the movie is an interesting premise , as The Virginian is forced to choose between frienship and the code of the west and Molly wonders if she can accept the country's harsh ways . It has fine interpretation from a top-drawer cast , such as Joel McCrea , Brian Donlevy , Barbara Britton . Joel McCrea gives a decent acting as the tough cowboy who is betrayed by his best friend , deciding between bring him to justice and alienating the pretty schoolteacher he is in love with . Donlevy is perfectly cast as the outlaw leader Trampas . And a very good support cast such as : Sonny Tuffs , Fay Bainter, Tom Tully , Bill Edwards , Paul Guilfoyle , Mark Lawrence , among others . The motion picture was well directed by Stuart Gilmore who was one of the best Hollywood editors . Although he also made a few fulms such as Captive man, Half-breed , Target and Hot lead.There are several adaptation about this novel : First silent retelling The Virginian 1914 by Cecil B DeMille with Dustin Farnum , Jack Johnston . Classic early talkie 1929 by Victor Fleming with Gary Cooper , Walter Huston , Mary Brian , Richard Arlen . 1962 popular TV series mostly directed by Earl Bellamy with James Drury , Doug McClure , Lee J Cobb , John McIntire , Stewart Granger . TV rendition with Bill Pullman , John Savage , Harris Yulin , Colm Feore , Diane Lane . 2014 by Thomas McKowsky with Trace Adkins , Steve Bacic, Victoria Pratt

weezeralfalfa This is the second film I have viewed where Joel McCrea played the hero and Brian Donlevy played the chief villain. The first was Cecil de Mille's epic "Union Pacific", 7 years earlier. The present film was the second talkie version of the classic 1902 novel by Owen Wister, generally regarded as the first modern western novel, and a hugely popular book with both sexes for years to come. Unfortunately, I haven't read the novel nor seen the '29 pioneer talkie version, starring Gary Cooper. Unlike this former film, the present film was shot in Technicolor. I understand that, unlike this film, the book continued after the marriage with a visit to Molly's home in VT, where the culture shock that she experienced in relocating to frontier WY is reversed somewhat for The Virginian.The book appealed to women as well as men, because it pictured a middle-class townie young woman being able to eventually adapt to surviving on the western frontier, marrying a western hero, originally from the east, worthy of her love. Of course, women readers at the turn of the century were likely to be mostly from comfortable middle class families, rather than being poor immigrant women, often used to farm work, who presumably comprised the great majority of actual women who migrated westward in the late 19th century.Owen Wister was a life long resident of Philadelphia and a Harvard-trained lawyer. However, his real passion was fictional writing and occasional summer trips to the West. He was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt and Fredrick Remington: high profile easterners who also had a passion for the western life at that time. His heroine is clearly modeled on women of his class, and his hero is modeled on men like TR and himself, whom he considered natural aristocrats, whatever their actual station in life. Thus, they were quite atypical westerners, but people that most of his readers could identify with.Although not obvious from the screenplay, his story was actually based largely on events of the Johnson County War, which was a conflict between the large and small WY cattle ranchers, precipitated by the major cattle die off from the drought and severe winter of '85-6. The Virginian is associated with one of the big ranchers: Judge Henry, and Trampa(Donlevy) is probably modeled on Nate Champion; leader of the small ranchers, who were rightly or wrongly labeled as rustlers by the big ranchers. In the book, the Virginian eventually becomes a big rancher and important political voice in WY politics, as Wister's imagined ideal destiny if he were to remain in the West. Both Molly and The Virginian say they moved west to escape the boredom of their natal environments. However, as Remington discovered when he tried western ranching, the life of the western cowboy was no varied picnic. My own ancestors moved out to Kansas about this time, but decided the East was more to their liking.In spite of the assets of this film, I will say that I found de Mille's "Union Pacific" more interesting. Actually, the main plot has some similarities. In both films, there is a character who is a friend of the hero and a rival for the affections of the leading lady, but who joins the chief villain's group for a spell. In "Union Pacific", this character eventually sees the error of his ways and saves the hero's life from Donlevy's villain. In the present film, this man(Steve) is not given a chance to redeem himself, being hung as a cattle thief, with the Virginian's reluctant approval. Steve puts up no resistance against this vigilante action, with a nonchalant fatalistic attitude toward death.As usual, Brian Donlevy makes a charismatic and believable oily leader of the bad guys. Joel McCrea wasn't the most charismatic leading man. I would have much preferred Randy Scott, who had a natural aristocratic bearing and was a bred southerner, befitting The Virginian. Gary Cooper would have been fine too in revisiting his prior role. Fay Banter was excellent as Molly's new mother, in effect. She gets to articulate the necessity of "The Code of the West" clearly to Molly after Steve's hanging. At first, Molly doesn't accept this , as it relates to Steve, and nearly leaves for VT, but for the stage driver who convinces her she doesn't really want to leave, in her heart. Barbara Britton, as Molly, is characterized as perhaps having more difficulty adjusting to western culture than Wister intended. His Molly was no frail flower.Where did Wister come up with the unusual name Trampa for his villain, dressed all in black and riding a black horse? Trampa means trap, in French. Trampa set traps. Perhaps Wister hoped it would also connote a tramp: a low class shiftless man. Near the end, Trampa, having failed to fatally wound the Virginian as a sniper, tells him he must leave this area by sundown or else, even though the Virginian is planning to marry Molly soon. There follows a "High Noon"-like scene, where the Virginian is saved from a Trampa ambush by a quirk and wins the shootout. Destiny was on his side.

calvinnme ... and the comparison is made more interesting because this film is almost a word for word remake of the 1929 version starring Gary Cooper. Most remakes of early sound films had to make huge changes in the plot just to please the production code. Just take a look at the mess that the 1941 version of the "The Trial of Mary Dugan" is versus the 1929 version, which had its plot completely changed due to production code issues. Here, there is no such issue. Joel McCrea, always overly humble when discussing his own acting ability, said that he'd get a script and after reading it, often know that the studio wanted Cooper and couldn't get him, and he was their second choice. I doubt that, but here we get to judge the two actors in the same role as "The Virginian" 17 years apart. The two films are practically the same even down to the visual and audio cues - Trampas dressed in all black, the bird call that is synonymous with affable but ultimately tragically lazy Steve, etc. The one thing they didn't do that would have looked just plain silly by 1946 standards is dress McCrea in all white as the good guy, which they did with Cooper as the hero in 1929. I think I prefer Mary Brian as Molly in the 1929 version versus Barbara Britton in this version. Mary Brian played Molly as a strong smart woman, but a woman of New England, unfamiliar and puzzled by the ways of the west. Here Ms. Britton plays Molly as a bit of a befuddled weakling, easily evoked to tears. No befuddled weakling would travel across the continent to teach school in a wilderness. If you've never seen the 1929 version, you'll probably like this one. If you like Joel McCrea I'm almost sure you'll like it, but if you've seen the early sound version the ghost of that early sound marvel is likely to raise its specter more than a couple of times as you watch it.

bkoganbing This story, originally written by novelist Owen Wister is the granddaddy of the western genre. Western novels before that were usually about real life characters, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp for example: that put them in these two dimensional heroic settings. Those things were nicknamed "Penny dreadfuls" and that they were.Wister, who spent some time in the west, and was a good friend of cowboy president Theodore Roosevelt, developed his characters out of the people he met in the west. The strong silent hero, the demure schoolmarm, the cold hearted villain, all these appear in The Virginian and they're stock characters in westerns. But these are the original prototypes for thousands to follow. Owen Wister set the standard for folks like Zane Grey, Luke Short, Louis L'Amour,etc. to follow.Joel McCrea was a fine actor, a combination of the best features of Gary Cooper(who did the role in an earlier version), Jimmy Stewart and a younger John Wayne. Nobody has done a better job in playing this character including Cooper. Brian Donlevy is the villainous Trampas and he never disappoints. Sonny Tufts probably has the best role in his career as Steve, The Virginian's friend who turns to rustling with Trampas. Barbara Britton is properly demure as the schoolmarm.This novel, the play that Wister wrote based on it and all the versions to follow had the Presidential imprimatur. Teddy Roosevelt loved this book and recommended it to the youth of America. I remember a similar White House imprimatur for a western coming in my teen years. Back around 1965 the folks had CBS decided Gunsmoke had run its course and they were ready to pull the plug on the show. Well, up stepped Lady Bird Johnson to the plate and she declared that Gunsmoke was her favorite television show. That did it, the show ran almost another decade.The crux of the story centers around the relationship with The Virginian and Steve. After warning him once, The Virginian catches Steve with stolen cattle and since there's no organized law in the territory, proceeds to hang him forthwith. The story then revolves on how The Virginian and others around him view the distasteful, but necessary duty he had to do.I've often wondered how Theodore Roosevelt felt about that part of the plot and what he might have said to his good friend Wister. There is a famous story from his days in the Dakota Territory about how Roosevelt set out to trail some rustlers and caught up with them. There was no law within miles of where they were. But Roosevelt took them back to where there was a federal marshal and turned them over to the surprise of many including the marshal.No doubt The Virginian was a great example of the manly virtues of the strenuous life that Roosevelt passionately advocated. But I often wonder what he and Wister might have talked about concerning this aspect of the story.Remember folks if you see this and complain about clichés, remember the clichés started here.