LUST FOR GOLD placed 85th at the boxoffice in 1949, a gross of $4,200,000 hardly a big hit, yet this forgotten western did more business at the time than two dozen better-known (and just better) pictures. The fact-based story is of interest and the cast has viable leads and is loaded with familiar faces in support, but the handling is often as bungled as the events in the plot.

In modern-day Phoenix (circa the mid 1940’s, when there were about 65,000 people there) a man named Barry Storm (William Prince) notifies the local lawmen that he was aware of a recent murder of a prospector in the nearby Superstition Mountains. The victim was after the ‘Lost Dutchman’ mine purportedly found a hundred years earlier; Storm is on hand because his grandfather had once staked a claim to it. The framing device set down, a flashback takes over and the story moves to 1880, with German immigrant prospector Jacob Walz (Glenn Ford) murdering men who had re-found the mine; he then kills his own partner. Walz’s newly found/stolen wealth enthralls/ticks off the nearby burg of Phoenix, and among those intrigued is bakery owner ‘Julia Thomas’ (Ida Lupino), fed up with her weak husband (Gig Young) and a life stuck baking cakes and cookies. She sets out to seduce Walz. Double-crosses are part of the gold lust, though. So are guns.

He’s skunk enough to trick a little girl into pulling the trigger.

Able vet George Marshall (Destry Rides Again) quit directing after four days, arguing with the producer S. Sylvan Simon, who went ahead and took on both jobs. Simon’s directorial resume was mostly in comedies; this overheated drama shows why. The script done by Ted Sherdeman (Retreat Hell!, Away All Boats, Hell To Eternity) and Richard English (A Thousand And One Nights) was based (or debased) off the 1945 book “Thunder God’s Gold”, one of several the real Barry Storm (1910-1971) wrote about the legends around the mine & mountains and the real Walz (1810-1891). Storm later sued Columbia Pictures over the script’s portrayal of him (for one thing identifying him as Walz’s grandson). *

Though Ford and Lupino work hard, this isn’t one of the movies that their fans take to with much enthusiasm. Maybe they had fun with it, since they both get to play irredeemably rotten people. The simplistic writing has them turn repeated somersaults of emotion with barely a pause between sentences. Young’s overplaying as the cuckold is feverish, but they’re all outdone by Prince’s breathless narration in the opening and closing segments. Secondary victims and/or ratfinks include Edgar Buchanan, Will Geer and Paul Ford.

Some location footage in those fabled Arizonan greed traps is mixed with obvious studio sets. Fairly rugged action (including an okay earthquake-landslide) contests with silly bits where characters pick up and toss aside rocks that (were they not made of Styrofoam) would weigh hundreds of pounds—Q: when does a rock become a boulder?

While parsing chuckles over the melodrama, film buffs can spot among the townsfolk such reliable ‘types’ as Trevor Bardette, Jay Silverheels, Antonio Moreno, Arthur Hunnicutt, John Doucette, Billy Gray, Percy Helton, Hayden Rorke, Tom Tyler and Will Wright. Decently photographed by Archie Stout. 90 minutes.

* When Storm sued the studio, along with plagiarism he also cited “insidious Communist conspiracy.” There have been/are several ‘Lost Dutchman’ mines (Arizona, Colorado, California), with more than sixty variations on stories and characters. Dozens of murders and accidental deaths are tied to the nugget mania. Will that stop people for poking around? “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Gold figure—this show did better in theaters than—hold your overloaded burro—The Walking Hills, The Hasty Heart, Home Of The Brave, Christopher Columbus, Caught, Under Capricorn, The Red Pony, The File On Thelma Jordon, The Set-Up, D.O.A., We Were Strangers, Madame Bovary, Kind Hearts And Coronets and Intruder In The Dust. 

A: a rock becomes a boulder when the diameter is over ten inches.