"The Big Land" (1957)

Please don't get this movie confused with The Big Country (1958).  That one is a sprawling epic set in Texas with a large cast.  The Big Land (1957) is half as long, focuses on just a few people, and is set in Kansas.  Well, mostly.  It does involve Texas for a little while, too.

The first time I saw The Big Land was shortly after I fell for Alan Ladd, sometime in 2016.  I found it on my dad's movie shelves while I was visiting my folks and watched it over the course of a couple nights.  I didn't actually like it much at the time, to be honest.  But then, I started to realize bits of it would pop into my mind once in a while.  It just stuck with me in the way that a lot of movies don't.  So, I picked up a copy of my own a couple years later, and now I'm finally getting around to reviewing it.

Money in post-Civil-War Texas is scarce, but beef is plentiful.  Chad Morgan (Alan Ladd) and a few fellow Texas ranchers (including frequent feature in Ladd films George J. Lewis) drive their herds up to the Missouri stockyards, hoping to get a better price for their beef there than they would back in Texas.  Like so many others in real life, these ranchers gambled that the weight their beef lost on the trail, and the time and effort it took to drive them there, would be more than offset by the higher prices at the beef-hungry northern markets.

Unfortunately for Morgan and his pals, they run into a nasty guy named Brog (Anthony Caruso) who hates former Confederates like Morgan and his friends, and who loves to make big money by bullying and cheating and generally pilfering his weaselly black guts out.  

It's funny -- the more often I see Anthony Caruso, the fonder I grow of him, even though he plays bad guys so often.  Maybe it's because I've seen him in quite a few things by now?  He was good friends with Alan Ladd from the time they were both involved with the Pasadena Playhouse, before they broke into the movies, so Alan made sure to get him roles in his movies whenever he could.  Also, he plays the baddie in one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, "A Piece of the Action," and how can I not be fond of him for that?

Anyway, Brog is really awful and I'm not fond of him at all.  Blech.  He pays Morgan a pitiful fraction of what his beef is worth.  Some of the other ranchers refuse to accept his offer and say they'll just drive their steers elsewhere.  They blame Morgan for the failure of their plan and abandon him then and there.

Morgan's Southern accent and Confederate officer's cloak earn him a general shunning from the hotels and boarding houses.  Finally, he's permitted to sleep in the livery stable.  There, he makes friends with Joe Jagger (Edmond O'Brien), a boozehound who doesn't mind sharing the hayloft with a Reb as long as he thinks he might get a drink out of it.

Next thing you know, Morgan is saving Jagger's life when a bunch of toughs try to string him up for searching through their belongings for alcohol.  The two new pals make a run for it and leave the toughs behind.  Over the next few days, Morgan nurses Jagger through the DTs while they leave Missouri and wander around Kansas.

Then Morgan has a bright idea.  Why not build town in Kansas where Texas cattle are welcomed and will get fair prices?  It just so happens that Jagger is actually an architect and has always wanted to design a town.  They convince a bunch of people to back their idea, convince the railroad to build a spur out to their planned town, and then Morgan heads to Texas to talk a bunch of cattlemen into driving their herds up there while Morgan builds the town and keeps the railroad interested.

Oh, and Jagger has a sister named Helen (Virginia Mayo) who's practically engaged to a railroader, but who just can't keep her eyes off Morgan whenever he's around.  

The two things I like best about this movie are the friendship between Morgan and Jagger and the subdued love story for Morgan and Helen.  I love buddy stories, especially ones where two buddies kind of save each other from themselves.  Morgan helps Jagger stay sober, and Jagger helps Morgan avoid sinking into depression and despair.

As for Morgan and Helen, they are both these kind of sensible, grounded, down-to-earth people who don't fall about in swoons or make speeches about love.  They simply like each other and are attracted to each other and gradually fall in love.  It's really nice to see Virginia Mayo playing a nice girl, especially since she played a total rat opposite Ladd in The Iron Mistress (1952).

Is this an awesome western?  No, it's just a good one.  Though I wish there was a better print available -- this one changes color about every twenty seconds.  Too bad the Warner Brothers Archive Collection couldn't have cleaned it up a little more.  You can see evidence of that in my screencaps here, how it'll be all golden-brown sometimes, kind of pinkish other times, and then very normal still other times.  Sigh.

Is it family friendly?  Well, there's the battle with alcohol, and there's some western violence, including a shootout.  There's an attempted lynching, and there's a big stampede where some kids and other bystanders are in grave peril -- that might scare small viewers.  No cussing, no smut.