Streets of Laredo

Streets of Laredo is directed by Leslie Fenton and adapted to screenplay by Charles Marquis Warren from a Louis Stevens and Elizabeth Hill story. It stars William Holden, Macdonald Carey, William Bendix and Mona Freeman. Music is by Victor Young and cinematography by Ray Rennahan.

For fans of traditional Westerns this is as solid as a Brick Adobe Structure. A remake of The Texas Rangers (1936) of sorts, plot finds Holden, Bendix and Carey as three bad boys who get divided by circumstance, love and conscious. Two of them wind up in the Texas Rangers - the famed frontier law enforcement battalion - the other stays on the wrong side of the law. All roads lead to the day of reckoning...

The production is the usual mixed bag of superlative location photography (Simi Valley/Gallup) and crude back projection so often seen in the 40s and 50s Oater releases, with Rennahan's Technicolor photography a treat for the eyes. Performances are assured because the three principal guy actors are given characterisations that suits them - Holden tough emotional anti-hero - Bendix a lovable and dopey toughie - Carey sly bad boy. Freeman is lovely but it's a dressage character, while Alfonso Bedoya is on hand for some stereotypical bandido villainy.

At 90 minutes in length it feels a bit padded out until the two guys actually join the Rangers, so some patience is required during the first half. However, there is plenty of Western movie action within the story, some turns in plotting to grab the heart strings and a pleasing array of costumes and musical accompaniments to keep the senses perky. All told, it's just a thoroughly enjoyable Oater regardless of if you have happened to have seen the original version. 7/10

Three happy-go-lucky Western outlaws, fresh from robbing a stage, stumble on a particularly nasty land grab and break it up, and win the heart of the young girl living on the ranch. Circumstances intervene and two of the outlaws become Texas Rangers and the other becomes a notorious outlaw. Complications ensue, when our new rangers are called upon to arrest the notorious outlaw.

This is a perfectly decent Western, though the plot is extremely generic. The first half-hour or so, showing our three charming outlaws and our young heroine is thoroughly bland -- interesting only that McDonald Carey is really the lead in this portion of the movie, and he is a charming one at that. William Holden plays his role as "youthful sidekick" and Willam Bendix (!!) has the Gabby Hayes part.

As the movie goes along, something fairly unusual in a genre film happens. The characters grow and change. Holden becomes the stalwart hero torn between friendship and duty. William Bendix is forced to choose which of his two friends he will support. McDonald Carey goes from charming outlaw to charming black-hearted villain. All the actors pull it off well. The heroine -- who goes from feisty youngster to babe in cowboy boots, doesn't do so well This ain't John Ford. But it is a pleasant surprise once the plot get going.

Despite slack direction from Leslie Fenton, this is a better-than-average Technicolor Western. At the time Holden was not yet a headline performer, while Carey never reached that pinnacle. Here, both contribute nicely, especially Carey whose bad-good guy with a toothy grin is just slippery enough to be convincing. The chemistry between him and Holden comes across effectively. Too bad that director Fenton doesn't do more to bring out the dramatic aspects of the friendship, though the final scene is both well-staged and appropriate. For me, the movie's highlight is the absolutely gorgeous Technicolor framing of the outdoor scenes. Somebody sure knew how to frame those scenes in an impressive way that adds greatly to the film's unusually riveting eye-appeal.

The story itself is a good one. The screenplay develops Holden and Bendix's transition from outlaws to Rangers in believable fashion. What is suggested is that some outlaws can be reformed by respect and an honorable code of conduct, which strikes me as a worthwhile piece of insight and good moral to the story. On the downside, Mona Freeman as the high-spirited lass comes across as too callow and stagey for the much more mature Holden and Carey to butt heads over. Then too, Alfonso Bedoya's unlikely role looks like an effort at cashing in on his Treasure of the Sierra Madre success. In passing-- note that the classic trail song "Streets of Laredo" is not the one sung in the movie. It's a disappointing something else, probably composed for the film. I wonder if the producers had trouble getting rights to use the real song. Too bad. Anyway, the movie plays better than Leonard Maltin's rather dismal professional review, especially for those who like long views, big clouds, and a sense of open horizons.

I first watched this 1949 Western unremarkably ditected by Leslie Fenton in the mid-1970s. I was then around 17, and I did not like it, finding among other things that Mona Freeman looked too young for the part, that mediocre color cinematography did not make the most of mountains and other landscapes, that the dialogue seemed trite and stale, among other minuses.

McDonald Carey delivers a suave, villainous, deceptive performance that steals the show. He abandons his stagecoach-robbing partners, William Bendix and Holden, to seek better pay with cattle rustler and criminal kingpin Alfonso Bedoya (whose role is surprisingly short, considering his unforgettable part in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE one year earlier).

Watching STREETS OF LAREDO a second time nearly 50 years later, this time I enjoyed it more, though I still see it as a rehash of ideas in Westerns at the time, the dialogue stale in parts, Holden underused. But this time Freeman seems to grow up into an adult woman during the movie.

Good pace, some humor - especially by dimwitted Bendix - make it worth watching at least once 7/10.

Of course it is a flawless western, but so predictable, despite this excellent cast, directing, performances.... For once, I appreciated a lot Macdonald Carey in a role where he doesn't appear as bland, wooden, as usual in other features. Here, his character is thicker than we could expect, whilst William Holden, on the other hand, brings no surprise at all. But, as I have always said, villains - or at least ambivalent or ambiguous characters- are far far more interesting than hte good ones, the white knights in their shining armors....fABULOUS Victor Young's score belongs to the qualIty of this movie directed by British actor Leslie Fenton, who also gave us WHISPERING SMITH.