L'ultimo fuorilegge

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.

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.

The Cimarron Kid is directed by Budd Boetticher and written by Louis Stevens and Kay Lenard. It stars Audie Murphy, Beverly Tyler, James Best, Yvette Dugay, John Hudson, Leif Erickson, Noah Beery Junior and Hugh O'Brian. Music is by Joseph Gershenson and cinematography by Charles P. Boyle.

Murphy stars as Bill Doolin, AKA: The Cimarron Kid, who leaves prison intending to go straight. However, when the Dalton Gang rob the train he is a passenger on, one of them recognises him and vocally brings it to the attention of the rest of the passengers. Incorrectly earmarked as one of the gang, Doolin finds himself on the run from the law and forced to hide out with the Dalton's. Bitter and angry at the false way he has been perceived, Doolin becomes an active part of the gang, but there is love in the air with Carrie Roberts (Tyler) offering hope of a new, on the right side of the law, life.

Boetticher is a name dear to the hearts of Western fans, he would go forward from here to make the Ranown Westerns with Randolph Scott, thus leaving a considerable mark in the psychological Western pantheon. Invariably his other forays into the genre struggle to hold a torch to those later efforts, but although they lack the insightfulness and quality of narrative of those pictures made with Scott, the likes of this and The Man from the Alamo are minor gems well worth discovering.

The story on premise terms doesn't offer anything new, where the core beat of the picture is about a man who has been dealt some bad life cards and can't escape his criminal past. Yet the story is unfolded in such away that hope is dangled in front of The Kid and we are never sure how it will pan out for him? In fact the finale has a couple of kickers that ensure it's well worth the viewing experience. There's the usual roll call of gang character's, including the loose cannon (O'Brian), but that familiarity of genre convention is off set by the addition of Yvette Dugay's Rose of Cimarron. She's a crafty and athletic part of the set up, a well written part and Dugay performs it well whilst joining Tyler in the gorgeous Technicolor darlings stakes.

This is also a picture high on action and filled with lovely outdoor photography. Locations used are the historical parks at Columbia State and Railtown 1897, both are photographed expertly by Boyle, with Boetticher deftly utilising them to aid the story. Best of the action comes with a shoot out and escape after the Coffeyville bank raids (resplendent with burning hay wagon), while the quite excellent and extended shoot out centred around Railtown's turntable is one of the finest action constructions on Boetticher's CV. Cast are strong, led superbly by a thoughtful Murphy performance of substance, and prolific Western scorer Gershenson adds the required bombast and tenderness when required.

Its B movie worth sometimes shows, such as handcuffs that mysteriously disappear from the escaping Doolin, but taken as a whole this is a little cracker of an Oater and highly recommended to Western fans. 8/10

This emerges as a pretty good example of the typical Audie Murphy Western vehicle – though of lesser quality to the only one I had previously watched, NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959) and, being Budd Boetticher's first Western, clearly a minor effort in his canon. Many films of this era treated (in a heavily romanticized manner) the exploits of famous outlaws of the Old West: Murphy appears as Bill Doolin and, at one point, he is told by the leader of The Dalton Gang that "They'll be writing ballads about us" and, sure enough, their exploits were later immortalized in music by the Country Rock band Eagles in "Doolin-Dalton", a song off of their second album "Desperado" (1973). Typically, Murphy is seen forced into a life of crime by circumstances or, more precisely, the persecution of a law-enforcement officer (while another, played by Leif Erickson, is more sympathetic to his plight). As ever, the gang is an eclectic assortment of characters: affable Noah Beery Jr. is their leader, Hugh O'Brian the red-headed hot-tempered challenger, James Best the ladies' man, Frank Silvera the half-breed, etc.; interestingly, we get a couple of romances going on (Murphy with the daughter of a man who shelters them and Best with a fiery Mexican girl) and the female characters are surprisingly strong for this type of film. Reassembling themselves in the wake of a bank hold-up gone awry (the film's best action sequence, climaxing in Beery's memorable come-uppance with the spilling coins a graphic substitution for blood), the gang is subsequently betrayed by the 'inside man' in a train robbery they try to pull off. Murphy is eventually persuaded to give himself up, with Erickson promising him a fair trial this time around. Shot in pleasant Technicolor, the generically-titled THE CIMARRON KID serves up compact, pacy and unpretentious entertainment – perfect viewing after a hard day's work.

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.