Gregory Peck's "The Gunfighter" is one of my all time favorite Westerns, and along with "To Kill a Mockingbird", I've come to accept Peck as one of my favorite classic film actors. "Yellow Sky" isn't in the same league as those pictures, but it's still not a bad little Western flick boasting a top notch cast, although most of the players weren't very well established yet back in 1948. Richard Widmark is another favorite of mine, and I kind of hoped he'd have been a bit more maniacal here, seeing as how he seemed to have been cast as a Doc Holliday type. The Dude was a gambler like Holliday, and as the story progressed he broke ranks with gang leader Stretch Dawson (Peck) in an effort to chisel a ghost town's sole occupants out of their hidden cache of gold.
As a tale of greed and men falling out with each other over money and a woman the story is a fairly credible one, but the more I think about events that occurred in the picture, there were a fair number of head scratchers here. For one, where did all of Peck's wardrobe changes come from? He wore at least three different shirts in the story and they all looked pretty well pressed for traipsing across the desert. I guess he needed them to impress gun-totin' tomboy Anne Baxter, and you have to admit, they made an attractive looking pair once Dawson combed over that part of his scalp that 'Mike' grazed with a bullet. You think that was a lucky shot or a fine example of skillful marksmanship?
Now stay with me on this one, but did it make sense that Harry Morgan's character was named Half Pint? Walrus (Charles Kemper) looked like a walrus and Lengthy, even though a dumb name, looked like it fit future Lawman John Russell. I'm willing to bet that someone called actor Robert Arthur 'Bull Run' by mistake, and rather than do another take, figured it would be easier to keep Arthur as Bull Run and use Half Pint for Morgan. Just a theory, but what do you think?
So anyway, Peck's character goes from a bad, bad guy over the course of the story to a good bad guy, kind of like Jimmy Ringo in "The Gunfighter", although in that one he was trying to walk away from a reputation as a feared gunslinger. There again, I have a problem with story continuity and character relationships when after the gunfight with the rest of his gang that turned on him, Half Pint and Walrus become Dawson's pals again once Lengthy and the Dude make their way to Boot Hill.
But you know what the biggest question mark of the story for me was? You remember how down and out the gang was after crossing the salt flat; it was even mentioned by someone that the desert went on for seventy miles. Well after all the trouble at Yellow Sky, Dawson makes his way back to the bank that was robbed to open the story, repays the bank manager what was stolen, and then makes it back to Yellow Sky looking fresh as a daisy. How did he do that?
As a tale of greed and men falling out with each other over money and a woman the story is a fairly credible one, but the more I think about events that occurred in the picture, there were a fair number of head scratchers here. For one, where did all of Peck's wardrobe changes come from? He wore at least three different shirts in the story and they all looked pretty well pressed for traipsing across the desert. I guess he needed them to impress gun-totin' tomboy Anne Baxter, and you have to admit, they made an attractive looking pair once Dawson combed over that part of his scalp that 'Mike' grazed with a bullet. You think that was a lucky shot or a fine example of skillful marksmanship?
Now stay with me on this one, but did it make sense that Harry Morgan's character was named Half Pint? Walrus (Charles Kemper) looked like a walrus and Lengthy, even though a dumb name, looked like it fit future Lawman John Russell. I'm willing to bet that someone called actor Robert Arthur 'Bull Run' by mistake, and rather than do another take, figured it would be easier to keep Arthur as Bull Run and use Half Pint for Morgan. Just a theory, but what do you think?
So anyway, Peck's character goes from a bad, bad guy over the course of the story to a good bad guy, kind of like Jimmy Ringo in "The Gunfighter", although in that one he was trying to walk away from a reputation as a feared gunslinger. There again, I have a problem with story continuity and character relationships when after the gunfight with the rest of his gang that turned on him, Half Pint and Walrus become Dawson's pals again once Lengthy and the Dude make their way to Boot Hill.
But you know what the biggest question mark of the story for me was? You remember how down and out the gang was after crossing the salt flat; it was even mentioned by someone that the desert went on for seventy miles. Well after all the trouble at Yellow Sky, Dawson makes his way back to the bank that was robbed to open the story, repays the bank manager what was stolen, and then makes it back to Yellow Sky looking fresh as a daisy. How did he do that?