Sierra

Sierra is an unpretentious little western that paired Mr.&Mrs. Audie Murphy at the time, Audie and his leading lady Wanda Hendrix. Audie is cast in the first of many roles as a callow western youth who was raised by his father Dean Jagger who is a fugitive from the law.

Way back when Jagger was charged with the murder of Sara Allgood's husband and fled to the high Sierra country where he raised his son and now both make a living catching young wild mustangs of which there are plentiful in the Sierra foothills.

Hendrix is a rarity for the time, a female attorney who might gain acceptance back east, but in the rough and testosterone driven west is finding it hard to get clients. Audie and Dean might be the way to break into the man's world of the court, but both them are fighting their own sexist nature and don't take her advice.

There's a nice part in Sierra for Richard Robert who would die two years later in an automobile crash cutting short a promising career as a film villain. Tony Curtis has a small role as the son of another fugitive whose family teams up with Murphy and Jagger.

In his memoirs Tony Curtis says that soon afterward the tempestuous two year marriage of Murphy and Hendrix broke up. He tried to date Hendrix but Murphy was a jealous man with a bad case of post traumatic stress courtesy of the late World War and all the action where Audie Murphy became our most decorated soldier. Curtis describes himself as young and stupid and thinking not with his brain. He made it a point to avoid Audie for years afterward.

Best of all is Burl Ives, a hermit who lives close to Murphy and Jagger and who has some nice ballads to sing in Sierra.

Sierra is a nice western, made better with Burl Ives and his singing.

An Audie Murphy Western from 1950. A woman (Wanda Hendrix) gets lost in the mountains & found by Murphy who escorts her back to his cabin blindfolded which he shares w/his father (Dean Jagger). It turns out Jagger was accused of murder years before & rather than face an unjust punishment, he hightailed into the hills w/Murphy where they ply their trade as bronco busters as they scoop up mustangs from the wild. During a taming session, Jagger gets hurt prompting Murphy & Hendrix (who was bitten by a snake) to go into town (using an alias so he can keep his identity safe) for medical help. Returning to the cabin, Murphy comes across some rustlers w/his wares who give him a beat-down setting up a final confrontation where Murphy (now running w/other accused desperadoes which include Tony Curtis) & the villains vie for a large passel of mustangs. Running a scant 90 minutes (typical of Murphy fare), this film suffers from a surfeit of back story & incident which is given short shrift but as a time filler it gets the job done. Burl Ives (most people will know him as the narrator of the perennial Christmas classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer) plays Murphy's town contact & gets ample opportunity to get his song on.

Handsomely photographed on location under blue Technicolor skies by Russell Metty shortly before he brought high contrast gloss to his work with Douglas Sirk. The presence of Burl Ives sauntering in and out of the action (occasionally resembling Sancho Panza straddling a mule) singing and strumming a guitar marks this out as a piece of Americana rather than a conventional Audie Murphy western. Centre stage are baby-faced newlyweds Murphy and Wanda Hendrix (both of whom died young), while sixth-billed 'Anthony' Curtis gets a few lines but no close-ups.

Until they take in a fugitive girl, a father and son hide out in the mountains to elude a bogus murder charge.

Pretty good Murphy western, one of his earliest. When you think about it, his transition from Texas sharecropper to WW II hero to Hollywood actor is remarkable. True, it was hard for him to loosen up on screen, still he delivered his lines well enough, while nobody could do a hard-eyed stare better.

Here Murphy does well enough, carrying most of the movie. The role of a hard eyed loner (Ring Hassard) appears tailor made for him. At the same time, diminutive, girlish Hendrix (Riley) manages her courtroom lawyer sequence in pretty convincing fashion. Ironic to think the two were married at the time, but in the process of getting divorced. So there's something poignant about their riding into the sunset at movie's end.

Universal popped for a pretty big budget, unlike many of Murphy's later westerns. The red rock Kanab (Utah) locations are really eye-catching. Then too, those wild horse herds are anything but skimpy. And nobody could strum a guitar more soothingly than the rotund Burl Ives. Together they add a lot of color and mood to the dramatics. At the same time, there's not much gunplay, yet quite a bit of suspense to the rather complex story.

All in all, it's a picturesque, entertaining Murphy western.

I'm always fascinated by a movie star's early work and even more so with Audie Murphy because this was just 5 years after his heroics in WWII. It's amazing to think how much transition this young man went through in only a handful of years. Murphy is a natural fit for Westerns with his quiet manner and brooding looks. Sierra is not often shown on television, but if you have the chance to catch it, you won't be disappointed. I'd say watch for Burl Ives alone, because his voice was timeless. Such beautiful simple little Western melodies are peppered throughout the film. What's also unique about Sierra is that Murphy is costarred by his then-wife Wanda Hendrix. Their marriage didn't last long, but their chemistry is very obvious. And keep your eyes peeled for a young Anthony "Tony" Curtis as a Coulter gang member.