Sun 26 Jan 2025
A Western Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: DENVER & RIO GRANDE (1952).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[9] Comments
DENVER & RIO GRANDE. Paramount Pictures, 1952. Edmond O’Brien, Sterling Hayden, Dean Jagger, Kasey Rogers (as Laura Elliott), Lyle Bettger, J. Carrol Naish, Zasu Pitts. Screenwriter: Frank Gruber. Director: Byron Haskin.
Although admittedly a minor film within the grand scheme of things, Denver & Rio Grande nevertheless punches well above its weight and remains a solidly entertaining thrill ride. Filmed on location in Colorado with some spectacular natural scenery, the movie stars prolific actor Edmond O’Brien as Jim Vesser, a construction foreman on the Denver & Rio Grande railroad.
Vesser is tasked not only with building a brand new railroad in the wilderness, but also with protecting the enterprise from its primary rival, Cañon City & San Juan Railroad. Leading that unscrupulous outfit is the criminally-inclined McCabe (Sterling Hayden) and his henchman Johnny Buff (a wide grinning Lyle Bettger). Complicating matters is a love-hate relationship that O’Brien develops with his railroad’s secretary, Linda Prescott (Laura Elliott).
Written by pulp writer Frank Gruber and directed by Byron Haskin, Denver & Rio Grande carefully balances grit with some romance and (in my estimation, unnecessary) light comedy. At its core, it’s a fast-paced action movie set against a perilous part of the American landscape. While one might not necessarily think of O’Brien as a leading man for westerns, he in fact did appear in numerous movies in that genre. That includes Warpath (1951) and Silver City (1951), both also directed by Haskin. I haven’t seen either of those two, but would be curious to see if they exist on physical media.
Rounding out the cast are two supporting actors I always appreciate: Dean Jagger, who portrays the bearded railroad boss and J. Carrol Naish, who portrays the project’s seemingly ethnic lead engineer. Overall, a decidedly fun, if occasionally uneven, movie that doesn’t require too much mental effort.
Final note: there’s a breathtaking train crash toward the end of the movie that you won’t want to miss! Good stuff.
January 26th, 2025 at 9:49 pm
O’Brien didn’t strike a particularly heroic figure but still managed to be a fine lead in many films though he felt more at home in contemporary films despite being recognized as one of the better American Shakespearian actors (Olivier, James Mason, and Richard Burton, all praised him).
This one has speed, grit, and a big finale, which is all you can ask for in a Western of this period and incidentally is a good example of Frank Gruber’s famous 11-point pulp writing formula in action (1. Get the hero in trouble as close to the first scene as possible and keep making it worse until the end of the story).
Hayden was always well cast as a villain and few actors did the smiling psychopath better than Bettger.
Poor Naish, he played every ethnic role in the book including Japanese and Chinese, but never what he was, Irish.
January 27th, 2025 at 3:03 pm
Closest Naish came to an Irish role I believe was Little Phil Sheridan (Irish American son of Irish immigrants) in RIO GRANDE. I expect he could have done the sure-n-begorrah Irish stereotype as entertainingly as he did every other ethnic type. Some unlikely actors headlined Westerns in the ’50s — Fred MacMurray, Robert Young, David Wayne, James Cagney.
January 27th, 2025 at 3:37 pm
MacMurray headlined a Western in the mid-thirties and Robert Young worked well with Randolph Scott in Western Union, in 1941. The other two are like freaks in the genre.
January 28th, 2025 at 9:22 am
On the flip side, Hayden played the hero in another railroad-oriented Western, the very enjoyable Kansas Pacific (1953), co-starring Barton MacLane.
Recently savored an old favorite, Bogart’s Sahara (1943), in which Naish had one of his most prominent ethnic roles, earning an Oscar nomination as the Italian prisoner.
Speaking of Bogart, he and Cagney epitomized Barry’s “freaks in the genre” as antagonists in The Oklahoma Kid (1939), which gets an ironic shout-out in, of all places, The Third Man (1949).
January 28th, 2025 at 9:24 am
I suspect DENVER exists pretty much just for the final train crash, and the rest of the movie was built around that.
January 28th, 2025 at 10:17 am
And a very fine train crash it was, too.
January 28th, 2025 at 9:59 pm
Sterling Hayden was sure one guy I’d never want incensed at me
January 31st, 2025 at 9:29 pm
Cagney did at least two pretty good Westerns in the Fifties however urban his basic character may have seemed. MacMurray had a huge hit with 1936 TEXAS RANGERS with Jack Oakie and Lloyd Nolan released in conjunction with the Texas Centennial and Walter Prescott Webb’s Pulitzer Prize winning massive history of that police force and at least one follow-up in the same vein (bad men gone good).
Probably the strangest Western casting of the Fifties was Rod Steiger, though the movie is pretty good. British actor Kenneth More headlined at least one Western with Jayne Mansfield, and Stewart Granger starred in one Western and two North Western’s before headlining some Karl May Winnetou Westerns in West Germany and playing the ranch owner on THE VIRGINIAN.
June 13th, 2025 at 7:44 pm
[…] Byron Haskin, whose much better Denver & Rio Grande (1952), also starring O’Brien, I reviewed here on this blog a while ago. In Silver City, O’Brien portrays Larkin Moffatt, a mining assayer who […]