A Distant Trumpet

The last film from veteran director Raoul Walsh, who was deemed too old to be insured at the time this was made - Jack Warner himself (the last surviving Warner brother) posted the bond for his old associate. The result is impressive: a handsome, intelligent cavalry western, superbly scored by Max Steiner who memorably worked with Walsh on They Died with Their Boots On and ravishingly photographed in Panavisioned Technicolor by western old-hand William Clothier. Walsh makes partial reparation to the hordes of Indians slaughtered in previous westerns by using subtitles in an attempt to preserve their dignity, nearly 30 years before Kevin Costner did likewise in Dances with Wolves. The complex military themes, lifted from Paul Horgan's novel, are well handled, too. What lets down this fine movie, though, is the casting. Newlyweds Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette are just too resolutely 1960s in hairstyle and attitude to convince a viewer that they belong in Walsh's Old West.