Timberjack

Sometimes sluggish western that slowly gathers momentum but somehow manages to relegate leading man Sterling Hayden to a supporting role while doing so. The cast is good, with the reliable David Brian ably performing bad guy duties and Adolphe Menjou as an alcoholic Shakespeare-quoting lawyer. Also boasts some beautiful rugged countryside.

The gear engine and operation of the log train make this movie a must see and have. It provides an examples of life and operations methods of a small logging operation and the underhanded means used to gain control of the RR and timber. The train operations couple the story line and characters. It is also interesting to see that even the hired thugs have some ethics.

Lesser Hoagy Carmichael is better than the top drawer effort of a lot of composers. And Hoagy and the songs he does with and without Vera Hruba Ralston is the best thing about Timberjack. Which as you probably gathered is a story about logging.

Sterling Hayden comes home after the murder of his father and finds that dad's rival David Brian is ruling the roost there and eliminating competition. Originally Hayden was going to sell, but he and his father's foreman Chill Wills decide to stay and fight.

Timber isn't all that Hayden and Brian are scrapping about, they've also got saloon entertainer Vera on their minds and on their libidos. Vera is as wooden as ever, but she's something to look at in a low cut dress.

But the real treat is Hoagy Carmichael, playing the piano and accompanying Ralston and himself. Several songs were written for this film and Carmichael is always a treat.

There is also an adroit performance by Adolphe Menjou as Ralston's father, an attorney with a drinking problem. He's never bad in anything he does even if the film isn't top drawer.

Timberjack also features some good location cinematography, especially in the forest scenes and the logging scenes. Fans of Sterling Hayden and Hoagy Carmichael should like this, most especially the latter.

One of the most solid Republic Picture's western, and not the most known. Except JOHNNY GUITAR and the John Ford's films of course. The presence of the likes of Sterling Hayden and David Brian as the villain help obviously a lot, unlike the bland Vera Ralston's character. It is colourful, action packed, very predictable, but one of my Joseph Kane's favourite of the fifties. This prolific western maker, "home" director for Republic Studios, did his best in the fifties, though in the late forties he also gave us good stuff. Splendid natural settings and the Trucolor process can easily match this western to the best of Paramount or Universal companies features. And as usual in Republic Westerns, you have also a musical, singing scene; it's the "home" tradition for this studio, but here it is far more bearable than the awful Roy Royer's or Gene Autry's period of the forties....

Vera Ralston in the Dietrich role gets to sing three songs, while Hoagy Carmichael has only one. But this Republic 'A' feature in Trucolor surrounds Mrs Yates with majestic treescapes, vintage locomotives and Sterling Hayden as her leading man flanked by a classy supporting cast; so you get your money's worth.