The Cimarron Kid

With the completion of The Cimarron Kid Audie Murphy played three of the Old West's legendary outlaws, Billy The Kid in The Kid From Texas, Jesse James in Kansas Raiders, and Bill Doolin in this film. I'm not sure any other player earned that distinction.

Not that this is a true story of Doolin any more than those other two Universal western classics. Still Murphy makes an appealing and misunderstood hero who tries to go straight but the elements and his destiny work against him.

True enough his running buddies were the Dalton gang and in this film Doolin who was picked up by the railroad detectives after his release from prison when the Daltons held up the train he was riding. He was just a paying passenger, but the railroad cops thought he was in on it.

Standing out in the supporting cast is Hugh O'Brian who plays Murphy's rival for gang leadership. The fact that Murphy shoots better and has more upstairs than O'Brian fazes him not a wit. He's a mean and surly man miles from the upright Wyatt Earp he played on television.

Budd Boetticher directed Murphy in good polished style and this western delivers on both action and plot.

Parolee Audie Murphy violently resists a crooked district attorney's latest attempt to railroad him, based on his friendship to members of the notorious Dalton gang. Breaking parole, he ends up having to join the gang for real and becoming the new leader.

Though not quite as good or well-written as director Budd Boetticher's later series of Randolph Scott pictures, The Cimarron Kid is still a fairly entertaining, muscular pulp-western, with Boetticher's usual flair for excellent photography.

With his good looks, youthful appearance, and short stature (not to mention his hero status), I'm a little surprised at how many times Audie Murphy was given a chance to play an anti-hero (Night Passage, The Texican) or even a nasty villain (No Name On The Bullet). He's charming enough though, that the audience forgives the Cimarron Kid long before the law ever does.

Noah Beery Jr. gives an amiable, though far-too-short performance as the fun-loving Bob Dalton, while a young James Best and Yvette Dugay are pretty good too as a fellow member of the gang and his beautiful, though savvy love interest.

It's a pretty effective Audie Murphy's film that we talk about, one of his earliest western role, not his best however, nor the Budd Boetticher's stuff, who will be far better several years later for Columbia Pictures and Harry Joe Brown, helped more than enough by the likes of Randolph Scott and Burt Kennedy as screenwriter. THis is just a Universal Studios film, well done, I repeat, where Murphy could ba an ambivalent character, but not as much as in NO NAME ON THE BULLET of course, his best role ever for me. This one is action packed, very professionally made, so pleasant to watch. Supporting characters are also excellent.

I never saw an Audie Murphy film I didn't like & this one is no exception. It is a real action packed shoot-em-up, but it also has a better than average plot to hold your attention between the action sequences that were Audie's trademarks. I knew Audie quite well, we used to shoot together at the various "fast draw" contests in CA that were popular back in the '60's. I can tell you this, anything you saw Audie do on film, he could do for real. He was one of the fastest guns in the movies, & he could do it with real bullets, not just blanks or wax bullets! He became a fine horseman, even riding some of his own horses in his films. Watch for Flying John, his horse that he rode in "Night Passage". Audie was a much better actor than he was ever given credit for, or allowed to be in Universal's films.

May be of interest that Audie Murphy (and momentarily Noah Berry Jnr) rides James Stewart's horse Pie in this movie. Stewart rode him in many movies over 22 years. I believe Glen Ford ride him in one movie too, but he bucked Ford off.