Tuesday, Feb 2025
Director: Irving Pichel
Screenwriters: Robert Buckner
Released: 1951 B & W

santa fe 51 film posterIt is not clear where Randolph Scott fits in the Western tradition. He's a guy famous for doing some horse tricks -- leaping onto them from behind, etc. Scott is sort of in the heroic, fancy-pants Western tradition of Roy Rogers without the singing and with a little more edge. He is a handsome, strapping fellow always ready for a brawl or gunfight.

I'm not sure if the movie was trying to be near-slapstick or not, but some of the fight scenes were definitely comedic. In one 'fight', Scott wails a guy into a wheelbarrow and rolls him out of camp. The fellow comes back for more w/ the same result!!! The story is about the building of the Santa Fe Railroad. It is a Post-Civil War setting w/ Scott and his brothers looking to get out of the war-torn South and find work. Two different RR lines are competing to get to the Kansas/Colorado line first for federal dollars. Again, one saloon fight features more levity than danger. The movie does have a fine FIDDLING CONTEST...

Interesting, and almost Camp.

--Jed

Cast:

  • Randolph Scott.... Britt Canfield
  • Janis Carter.... Judith Chandler
  • Jerome Courtland.... Terry Canfield
  • Peter M. Thompson.... Tom Canfield
  • John Archer.... Clint Canfield
  • Warner Anderson... Dave Baxter
  • Roy Roberts.... Cole Sanders
  • Billy House.... Luke Plummer, RR Engineer
  • Olin Howlin....Dan Dugan, RR Fireman
  • Allene Roberts... Ella Sue Canfield
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