Stanwyck hoping to find The Big Valley. Reagan thinking how he could put us all in one.

CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA is not the daringly subversive, long-suppressed 1954 closet cousin to Brokeback Mountain, so woke-packed shepherds of revision religion will have to shovel sheep scat in a randier circle. However, tenderfoot fanciers of camp from any blanket in the tent will find plenty to alternately crow or cringe over in this wheezer, which takes one great actress, an ex-President of these Disunited States and a hardy crew of genre reliables into a well-fertilized range of cliches, ripe enough to grow tomatoes bigger than the rotten ones currently hell-bent on running The Big Sky State into the ground. A long-winded sentence, we know, but a movie this A-for-Awful calls for going the extra roll of barbed wire. Oh, yeah, the plot…

Ronald Reagan—“dangerous friend…deadly foe!” Sometimes there IS truth-in-advertising. Irony will comfort you on the way to the camps.

…the plot: having driven his herd of moo-critters from Texas to Montana (wide open unless you spoilsport count the um, “other people” that had lived there for quite a while), ‘Pop Jones’ (Morris Ankrum) gets popped by the local bad guys: crafty white rancher ‘Tom McCord’ (Gene Evans) in cahoots with ‘Natchakoa’ (Anthony Caruso), a spiteful Blackfoot. The departed Pops spirited daughter, ‘Sierra Nevada Jones’ (Barbara Stanwyck, 47) aims to make sure the drive from Texas was worth it (ask yourself that when driving across Texas) and she finds an unexpected assist from ‘Colorados’ (Lance Fuller) a “good”, school-taught Blackfoot, ‘ Starfire’ (Yvette Duguay), a sweet Blackfoot maiden (sweet as in ‘doomed’) and big-time from ‘Farell’ (Ronald Reagan, 43), a sass-dispensing gun-packin’ fella who only needs one name. He first spots Sierra bathing au naturel (how else?) in a mountain river and decides right about then that’s she’s worth killing a good number of supporting players and extras over. Makes sense. As one of the ad posters had it “SHE STRIPS OFF HER PETTICOATS…and straps on her guns.”  

Call me irresponsible, but why do I think Blackfeet warriors of the 1880s would maybe in better shape?

Slackly directed by the normally proficient Allan Dwan (Suez, Heidi, Sands Of Iwo Jima), the ripe-as-Boebert script was the manlywork of Robert Blees (all hail High School Confidential, Screaming Mimi and Frogs: this gentleman should have a screenwriting curriculum named after him) and Howard Estabrook (some laudable credits—A Bill Of Divorcement, David Copperfield, The Human Comedy, an Oscar for 1931’s Cimarron). John Alton’s color camerawork on the Montana locations helps, but the beyond-trite dialogue (complete with era standard “Injun speak”), ludicrous situations and clumsily-staged action undercuts the cast at every turn. Stanwyck’s always worth watching, but this is the weakest of her ten westerns. Reagan and Evans are okay; poor Caruso, Fuller and Duguay, stuck with the worst lines and the obvious ‘ethnic’ makeup, flounder. Not the best motion picture experience with which to start an alcohol abstinence program. It tanked at the box office, the gross of $1,900,000 grazing bottom land at 124th place. What did they expect with that title?

Vets along for the 88-minute ride to YesterNeverYear: Chubby Johnson, Jack Elam, Myron Healey, Rodd Redwing, Hugh Sanders, Burt Mustin, Byron Foulger, and good old Glenn Strange (hundreds of credits from 1930 to 1973).

Babs plugging Gene Evans. Ronnie shooting holes in Social programs that Commie FDR saddled us with. Gipper, the job’s dang near done…

* Fearless and fun, Barbara Stanwyck was adored by co-stars, directors and crew. She went West in no-guff-taken form from back in 1935 as Annie Oakley and on into Union Pacific, The Great Man’s Lady, California, The Furies (a fave), The Violent Men, The Maverick Queen, Trooper Hook, Forty Guns and 112 episodes of The Big Valley (1965-69). The Blackfeet (working as extras on Cattle Queen Of Montana nicked her with ‘Princess Many Victories’ and made her blood-sister. That ice-cold swim in a Glacier Natl. Park stream deserves applause, even if the rest of the movie is straight from Doofusville.

Reagan. “Well“, that’s up to which side of the divide you fall on (or been crushed by) as to how much you can either relax with ‘The Great Communicator’ or barf over that he was so-dubbed. He was a competent actor, at any rate, even in silliness like this. Those Who Rule made sure RR (R) would be picked to turn a sunny smile and Hollywood-tested delivery into one long sales pitch, a spiel that’s warped America into a place where people now look back on his Reign of Error with something almost skirting nostalgia. Almost.

Born Audrey Pearlman, rather provocative Yvette Duguay, 21, acting since she was six months old (baby powder ads), Broadway debut at age seven, movie debut at nine, had a “look” deemed exotic so she was usually cast as Mexican, Native American (‘Minnehaha’ in 1952’s Hiawatha), Greek or Italian.  A quick perusal of her credits and her character’s names gives an idea—Rosita, Amara, Rosetta, Carlotta, Emica, Talana, Francesca, Monacita. Gee, no Constance, Debbie or Susan in there. Since she’s the demure native maiden in this oater, it follows in standard storybook & screen tradition that Starfire doesn’t make it to the happy ending.

Audrey Pearlman aka Yvette Duguay aka ‘Starfire’ gazing at her script-ordered homicide while Lance Fuller realizes none of his gigs will make him a star so if he’s going to make a move on Audrey–er…Yvette, he better start now