Cattle Empire

This 1958, Joel McCrea, color, Western (directed by Charles Marquis Warren) starts out not with the far-off image of a lone rider in an open range, like many, many Westerns, but rather a shot of a townsfolk mob standing around looking at something on the ground. What could it be? Two dogs copulating? A soiled takeout bag from McDonalds—litter from the future? No, it's a guy with a rope around him, just before being dragged behind a horse. A lot of people are mad at this guy. Someone is blind, someone's kid was killed. Someone's store was burned. One guy lost his hand! Is this Satan, you think? No, it's John Cord (McCrea), a guy who, no matter how much anyone expresses their hatred for him, just moves on. “What's next?” He's hired by the guy he blinded! (second Western in a row I saw with a blind guy) to run a cattle drive—because he's the best at running a cattle drive. This, then, becomes a cattle drive movie. I can imagine a cattle drive being like the worst job you ever had, but in movies it's depicted as an attractive, exciting way to live—a moving community with good eatin', a perfect test of one's resolve and character, and the perfect way to get to the bottom of a mystery. I won't give it away, but I have to mention, there is one cowboy with red hair and matching scraggly beard, and here's another way Westerns aren't realistic or fair—redheads are always bad people. As an aside—at one point there seems to be a lot of controversy about whether the cattle drive goes via “Horsethief Creek” or “Dismal River”—one of which is likely dry. It occurred to me that both places sound like they could be indie bands, and probably are.