Return of the Frontiersman (1950)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

One of my all time favorites.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

ROTF is a very acceptable Western for 1950 - though I'm not sure to which particular Frontiersman the title refers. Well filmed, good scenery and some interesting actors - not least the veteran Tim Holt, the up-and-coming Rory Calhoun and, in an uncredited role as the lecherous cowhand, future beefcake star Richard Egan.One has to be a little forgiving with the evolving plot and McRae's dénouement, but the film moves along nicely enough.But it did jar that within hours of having a bullet removed from his shoulder McRae was able to use his arm for shooting, riding, fighting and lifting Julie London - a miracle recovery second only to James Stewart's in "The Man from Laramie" after he was shot with revolver pressed against his palm!

Until recently I had no idea that this movie existed having grown up watching Gordon MacRae in musicals, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that he turned in a fairly convincing acting job as the tough young son of the local sheriff played by veteran Jack Holt, who gets framed for a crime he didn't commit. Rory Calhoun plays his friend, another early performance from the western star of countless cowboy pictures of the fifties. Singer Julie London is the beautiful love interest to brighten up MacRae's troubled time in the movie. Julie London doesn't sing in this but there is a small scene where Gordon MacRae strums and sings a short piece but it doesn't encroach on the drama or look out of place, so credit to Warner Bros for not spoiling the action. Rory Calhoun pretty much played the same part throughout the hundred or more film and TV westerns that he made but we'll never know how good an actor Gordon MacRae could have been as he abandoned movies (or they abandoned him) to concentrate on his his greater gift of singing.

Return of the Frontiersman is directed by Richard Bare and written by Edna Anhalt. It stars Gordon MacRae, Julie London, Rory Calhoun and Jack Holt. A Technicolor production with cinematography by Peverell Marley and music by David Buttolph.Sheriff's son Logan Barrett (Gordon MacRae) gets falsely accused of killing a man he had recently had a bar fight with. On the lam, things go from bad to worse when a man fitting his description is seen leading a bunch of robbers in Laramie County. Tracked by his own father and a posse, Logan must find the real culprits or his days are numbered.A good and solid 1950s Oater that contains all the traits that filled out many a "B" production during the decade. The colour is gorgeous and the music suitably brisk, and director Bare shifts it along at a decent pace. The story is one of "the wronged man", so there's a mystery to be solved, while the requisite fist-fights, posse pursuits, shoot-out and love interest strands fill out the run time. We even get MacRae warbling a tune whilst holed up in the jail. The revelation of the villain will come as no surprise, and the cast are not asked to stretch themselves. While Julie London's character arc is poorly written. But these are small complaints really, because when it hits its straps (the big shoot-out and waterfall fist-fight at the finale) it entertains royally. 7/10

Return Of The Frontiersman casts Gordon MacRae as the brawling son of sheriff Jack Holt who has to arrest Gordon after a saloon brawl with a local tough. Holt gives his son 10 days to think it over. But when after his sentence is done and the man who MacRae brawled with winds up dead and a rider later seen committing crimes on a pinto horse like MacRae rides, he's got himself quite a jackpot. Holt doesn't like it, but he's an honest sheriff of the frontier.To not keep Gordon MacRae from using his singing voice would have been a crime itself so Jack Warner allowed a cowboy ballad for Gordon to sing while in the calaboose. He also gives Julie London to him as a leading lady. She gets kind of drafted into helping him the same way Madeline Carroll was drafted to helping Robert Donat in The 39 Steps. Alas though Julie London sings not a note.Return Of The Frontiersman was the kind of film that Warner Brothers wasn't known for making, a B picture western which they hadn't done too much of since Dick Foran was their singing cowboy in the late Thirties. MacRae sits the saddle well as he would later in Oklahoma.Nice and fast moving is Return Of The Frontiersman although anyone should be able to figure out just who put MacRae in the jackpot.