Sie ritten nach Westen

I saw this one at the theater as a kid and was somewhat disappointed, probably too much story and not enough action to suit my taste at the time. However by today's standards, this one treats the Native American much more respectfully than other movies of it's time, most notably the God-awful "Arrowhead"(1953). The story moves along well and there really is enough action to go around and Francis shows that he had some real star quality, had he lived. Not a bad one.

THEY RODE WEST is an idealistic Western in which an arny doctor manages to get US troops to come to peace with joint Kiow and Comanche forces.

In the process, poor Robert Francis (playing Dr. Sewer) has to suffer the vexation of being called an Indian lover, a woodhawk, and a renegade - but still he remains faithful to the Hippocratic oath and he continues to treat whites and Indians as plain human beings and nothing but.

Francis performs credibily and is clearly the good man here, surrounded by others who appear to have sinister and racist motivations, like Captain Blake (played by Phillip Carey), who actually shoots an Indian in the back and never gets punished for it, even though he nearly started a war by doing so.

The two women in this film, Donna Reed and May Wynn, are important to the story in that they can see the good in the doctor and help him advance the cause of peace. Donna Reed gets a strangely small part after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar the previous year.

All told, it is an enjoyable and highly moralistic Western.

Plenty of credibility holes.

Robert Francis plays Army doctor Allan Seward who is posted to the remote outpost Fort McCullogh where his callowness and inexperience r incurs the enmity of the hard bitten Captain Blake (Phil Carey) .Blake is virulently anti-Indian and when Seward insists on treating Indians who have fallen victim to malaria Blake makes no bones about his antagonism ,feelings shared by the other troopers .He is arrested and faces a court martial while outside war is brewing over the determination of the Indians to leave their reservation and head for higher and healthier ground in the hill country.

Francis died tragically young and his strong performance shows what a loss he was to the movies .Carey is forceful and there are good turns from Donna Reed as the base Commnader's spoiled and coquettish daughter .Phil Karlson directs strongly and the movie is always entertaining if not quite top drawer One for western devotees in our midst

Had he lived to make more than the four films he did Robert Francis might have done a lot of the roles Tab Hunter did. In his memoirs Hunter said that he did so many military based film that he could have qualified for veteran's benefits. The two looked like they could have been brothers and all four of Francis's films had a military background.

They Rode West is a cavalry western and Francis is a young doctor assigned to an army post out west where both the Kiowas and Comanches are pretty hostile. The Kiowas are coming down with malaria living near a swamp as are the military, but the Kiowas have been put there by the government.

Like William Holden in The Horse Soldiers, Francis sees himself as a doctor first and a soldier second. He helps the Indian sick and then commits the unpardonable sin in the military by disobeying orders and telling the tribe they have to move to higher ground.

Nevertheless his sincere concern for the health of the Indians later stands the cavalry in good stead.

Along with Francis are Donna Reed as the niece of the commanding officer, May Wynn as a white Indian maid captive and Philip Carey as his rival who has a more traditional frontier view of the Indians.

Francis acquitted himself well in his first film, sad indeed his career was so short.

When I found this on YouTube, I discovered that it was chopped up into various highlight segments that altogether ran only about maybe 50 min., more or less. Still, I highly enjoyed what I saw with Robert Francis as the new Calvary doctor sticking with his oath of caring for all human beings including the American Indians forced into the reservation near him. That gets him in plenty of hot water with superior Philip Carey who already doesn't trust doctors since the previous ones were drunk or just plain unreliable. May Wynn, Francis' co-star from The Caine Mutiny, is a white woman who was raised on the reservation after her parents were killed. And Donna Reed is the initial flirt who eventually gets on Francis' side when the others call him an Indian lover (the actual name they called him was "woodhawk".) Quite compelling what I saw so I decided to review this here in case I don't have the chance to watch the whole thing. Still, if I do, I'll come back here and either add some comments or rewrite the whole thing...