What starts out as a trip back to Laredo for US Marshal Mel Ferrer turns into something else when it's his prisoner shot out of the saddle and not him. With his dying breath Lane Bradford tells Ferrer there's a man claiming to be John Wilkes Booth at the nearby ranch where Ferrer finds the empty horses (to use Michael Curtiz's colorful phrase) of the two men who bushwhacked him.
Here Henry Brandon holds court with his wife Kathleen Case and a guest Alex Davion who has the limp and the claim and resemblance to be John Wilkes Booth, object of the most intense manhunt in history.
That certainly was an urban legend of the time, that Booth somehow escaped that Maryland burning barn. Brandon styles himself the resurrect-or of the south in the south shall rise again. He's got some fanciful plans. But so does 'Booth' who escapes with the money Brandon has raised for the cause and the marshal to guide him to Mexico.
Ferrer and Davion have quite the duel and both can play mind games. One thing though, Davion is as much a cad as John Wilkes Booth was reputed to be.
The ending is a pip.
Here Henry Brandon holds court with his wife Kathleen Case and a guest Alex Davion who has the limp and the claim and resemblance to be John Wilkes Booth, object of the most intense manhunt in history.
That certainly was an urban legend of the time, that Booth somehow escaped that Maryland burning barn. Brandon styles himself the resurrect-or of the south in the south shall rise again. He's got some fanciful plans. But so does 'Booth' who escapes with the money Brandon has raised for the cause and the marshal to guide him to Mexico.
Ferrer and Davion have quite the duel and both can play mind games. One thing though, Davion is as much a cad as John Wilkes Booth was reputed to be.
The ending is a pip.
