Cattle Drive

Cattle Drive
Cattle Drive
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kurt Neumann
Written by	Lillie Hayward; Jack Natteford
Produced by	Aaron Rosenberg
Starring	Joel McCrea; Dean Stockwell; Chill Wills; Leon Ames; Bob Steele
Cinematography	Maury Gertsman
Edited by	Danny B. Landres
Color process	Technicolor
Production; company	Universal International Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	August 1, 1951;
Running time	77 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Cattle Drive is a 1951 American Western film directed by Kurt Neumann and starring Joel McCrea, Dean Stockwell and Chill Wills. Much of the film was shot in the Death Valley National Park, California and Paria, Utah.

Plot

Chester Graham Jr. (Dean Stockwell), the spoiled young son of a wealthy railroad owner, gets lost in the middle of nowhere when he wanders away from a train during a water stop. He is found by a cowboy (Joel McCrea) who is part of a cattle drive. Lucky to be alive, the boy has to tag along with the cowboys. He learns the value of hard work, self-discipline and comradeship while working with the men on the trail to Santa Fe.

Influences

The basic story—about a rich brat who gets lost in a dangerous place far from home, then learns character and values from the working men who rescue him—echoes that of 1937's Oscar-winning film Captains Courageous, adapted from a novel by Rudyard Kipling.^[1] The key difference, besides the fact that the leading man does not get killed in the end, is that "Cattle Drive" is set in a desert area and not at sea.

A variation of the same plot was also used in Season 5, Episode 5 of Rawhide, Incident of the Prodigal Son and in Season 3, Episode 7 of The Virginian, Big Image... Little Man.

Cast

Joel McCrea as Dan Matthews
Dean Stockwell as Chester Graham Jr.
Chill Wills as Dallas
Leon Ames as Chester Graham Sr.
Henry Brandon as Jim Currie
Howard Petrie as Cap
Bob Steele as Charlie "Careless" Morgan
Griff Barnett as Conductor O'Hara

Production

Parts of the film were shot in Paria, Utah, and Death Valley.^[2]

References

^ Hanfling, Barrie (2016). Westerns and the Trail of Tradition: A Year-by-Year History, 1929-1962. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-7864-4500-4. Retrieved March 19, 2020.
^ D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 9781423605874.

External links

Cattle Drive at IMDb
Cattle Drive at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Cattle Drive at the TCM Movie Database

This 1950s Western film–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This article related to an American film of the 1950s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] Hanfling, Barrie (2016). Westerns and the Trail of Tradition: A Year-by-Year History, 1929-1962. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-7864-4500-4. Retrieved March 19, 2020.

[2] D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 9781423605874.

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