THE PROUD ONES contains a wisdom nugget that certain lazy/crazy Chief Executives ought to remember, had they a lick of sense: “You can always hire fools and drunkards to do something, but when trouble comes, men are hard to find… real men, I mean.  Leaving the present for the 1956 matinee feature in which that was advised— calm sheriff Robert Ryan to volatile deputy Jeffrey Hunter—we see it was intended for ‘keepin’ the peace’, sometime back in the Old West, somewhere in Kansas. As a breathless blurb in the preview relates “Their Guns Made The West A Place To Live In…”  At least before there were 450,000,000 of them…

When a crew of cattle drovers arrive in his town, paid off from their long moomoo-push from Texas and aiming to whoop it up with gin, gambling and gals, veteran Marshal ‘Cass Silver’ (Ryan, 47) aims that the the g-forces don’t include gunplay. His lady friend ‘Sally’ (Virginia Mayo, 35) runs a dance hall/playpen but she and Cass get an unwanted visit and competition from old foe ‘Honest John Barrett’ (Robert Middleton, in faux-friendly confident crook mode). One of the cowpokes is extra testy: young ‘Thad Anderson’ (Hunter) blames Cass for the death of his pa, whom Cass had to shoot in self-defense. Thad doesn’t believe that was so, so his anger is one issue. Barrett and his surly helpers are the obvious second. Then, just for the plot twist hell of it, a grazing head wound (you should see the other fella) leaves Cass with a recurring vision problem. Not a good thing when you might have to aim Colt’s Law at some yahoo.

“When you draw on a man don’t talk to him. Shoot him.”

Though the script (Edmund H. North and Joseph Petracca peeling into the novel by Verne Athanas) is a bit overloaded, the pro cast handle it well, and it’s proficiently directed by journeyman Robert D. Webb (Beneath The 12-Mile Reef, Seven Cities Of Gold) who uses the $1,400,000 budget smartly; while the duds and sets are too clean and tidy, he makes sure there’s always some movement or ornament to occupy the CinemaScope framing. Instead of aping other westerns of the era with a title tune-turned-reappearing ballad, composer Lionel Newman came up with a comfortable whistling number, sort of a “rollin’along” precursor to the Ennio Morricone treats that would turn up in the next decade. It even charted fairly well.

Ryan’s easy authority (notice the cool manly walk) is in play and he was wise enough to finesse the panic scenes when Cass’s eyesight goes haywire and make sure it doesn’t seem fakey-hokey. Mayo is all right, but she has little to do; her character is barely there after the first third. Demoted by 20th in favor of slick schmoozer Robert Wagner, Hunter, 29, is yeoman in a throwaway part; he was much better that year in The Searchers. The supporting cast is stacked: Walter Brennan, Arthur O’Connell, Rodolfo Acosta, George Matthews, Edward Platt, Whit Bissell, Fay Roope, Paul E. Burns (town drunk), Richard Deacon, William Fawcett.

94 minutes that will be acceptable for genre fans. The public donated $4,000,000, placing it 87th in the roundup from 1956, a year that herded no less than sixty-seven westerns. Most were claptrap B’s, but with The Searchers far and away at the top, we’ll allow this one in with other good ones: Bandido, Jubal, The Indian Fighter, The Last Hunt and Seven Men From Now.