drjgardner Lots of actors can't do westerns (e.g., Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn) and Tyrone Power shows us he can't do it either. What is surprising is that Henry Hathaway does such a poor job as the director, in a film that is neither fast paced, revealing, or interesting. Hathaway was one of the most prodigious makers of westerns, from the early 30s right up until my favorite Hathaway "Sons of Katie Elder" (1965). But he made a lot of bombs too, and this is clearly one of them.Of course you can't go too wrong with Susan Hayward along for the ride, and we get a chance to see Jack Elam at a time when his left eye seemed to be working.There are just too many good westerns from this period for you to spend your time on this one. Think John Ford's "Fort Apache" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", Glenn Ford in "The Man from Colorado", Howard Hawks' "Red River", John Huston's "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", Gregory Peck in "The Gunfighter", etc. etc.

JohnHowardReid Hugh Marlowe and Jack Elam make a marvelous pair of villains and they have some splendid confrontations here. The scene in which Marlowe knocks a glass out of Elam's mouth is a classic. Hathaway's driving direction makes the most of the suspenseful script. Location filming is a terrific asset. Violence rivets the attention. The cast rates as first-class, though Miss Hayward's odd hair style is a distraction and we hate the soggy, typical Hollywood revelation about the child. Fortunately, it's not particularly important. I also loved the music score and the off-screen narration.Many years ago, the director of a stage play fell ill just before rehearsals were due to commence. The producer asked me to fill in as director. Fortunately, the actors had already been selected, so the first thing to do was to hand every one of them a copy of the play. They all rushed away and I settled down with the stage designer to discuss moving the Third Act from the dinner table to a large drawing room which would incur no expensive or distracting extras like food and drinks. We'd hardly got started on this discussion before the actors started to trickle back, one by one or two by two. Within an hour, the whole lot of them surrounded me. When I asked them how they had enjoyed the play, it soon became obvious that not a single one of them had actually read the play from start to finish. All they'd looked at were their own roles! Amazing, but true! So that, I figure, is how Ty Power – who was then Fox's top-ranking star – became involved in Rawhide. Ty has a sizable part, yes, but it's a rather colorless role. Just about everything he does or says is overshadowed by other members of the cast. In fact it often appears that the sole function of Ty's character is to feed lines to – and provide "business" for – the other players, particularly Jack Elam, Hugh Marlowe and Susan Hayward. In fact, even actors with much smaller roles such as Edgar Buchanan benefit from Ty's feed. And it's little Judy Ann Dunn who figures as the "star" of the climax rather than Ty or any other player. As one reviewer commented, Ty played a bumbling greenhorn from first to last. No wonder the movie was not popular with the masses! I feel sad that it failed at the box office. For me, it rates as one of Henry Hathaway's best films. And it certainly provided Jack Elam with the number one showcase of his entire Hollywood career! If it wasn't for the fact that Ty is a natural to supply all the other characters with a superb listening board, and that his actions and dialogue provide them with such engrossing opportunities, he could actually be written out of the movie without doing it any damage whatsoever. Available on an excellent Fox DVD.

Robert J. Maxwell If this weren't a Western it would be a film noir. Four escaped gangsters of diverse character take over an isolated stage stop and hold Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward hostage while they wait to hold up the next gold-bearing stagecoach. The gangsters include Hugh Marlowe, Zimmerman, a man of good breeding who went bad; Jack Elam, a slob whose mind is less on gold than on Susan Hayward's blouse; Dean Jagger as a scruffy but good-natured horse thief; and poor George Tobias, reduced from prominent supporting parts during the war years to a humble goon of uncertain nationality ("Gratz") whose lines are limited almost exclusively to, "Ya, Zim." It's a hostage movie along the lines of "Dog Day Afternoon", "The Negotiator", or "Split Second." Instead of a stagecoach stop it could be a bank or a post office waiting for the million-dollar payroll shipment to arrive. Much of it is shot at night. Shadows play across the walls. The air reeks of hazard.But there are two magnetic characters among the dust and sagebrush: Jack Elam and the little girl.Elam is unforgettable, no matter what tripe he's in. You'll probably recognize him if you've seen many movies from the 50s. He's skinny, ugly, and looks as if his first bath was his last. His jaw, the angle of his ascending ramus, is so full of right angles that it seems his face was designed by an engineer with a T-square, probably drunk at the time. There are little gaps between each tooth, suggesting a simian ancestry. His grin is both horrible and horrifying.The other character is a little girl, a toddler, with a cute face. But children are always a nuisance and this one is no exception. She's nothing but trouble, waddling about on stumpy, widespread legs where she shouldn't be, scaring the mules, crying at the wrong time so as to alert the miscreants, exposing herself to gun fire when she should be ducking for cover. There is only one way to keep toddlers in check, and that's to beat them senseless when they cry. It certainly worked with my son. He hasn't spoken to me in twenty years. Not even a post card. And I understand he's doing quite well with his mime act.But enough about this noir Western. It's tense, as almost all hostage movies are. The directors and performers turn in seasoned performances, except for that nettlesome little kid. I sort of get a kick out of it when it's on.

FightingWesterner Rawhide is a moderately suspenseful hostage drama with polished direction, great location filming, and a fine cast.Tyrone Power is a likable if somewhat bland hero.On the other hand, Susan Hayward's character was kind of annoying in the beginning but softens a bit as the film progresses. I wish the writers would have made her a strong independent woman without making the character look like a brat.Hugh Marlowe is an excellent actor but I didn't find him a very convincing villain, even an an outlaw banker! Then again, it's probably my own fault in that I can't look at him without thinking of him as the hero in Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers. One scene where he delivered was when he was pretending to be a lawman, talking to the newspaper reporter and he had to fight back his anger at the men who were gossiping about his treacherous personal life.A young and lanky Jack Elam steals the show as a dangerous (and lecherous) member of Marlowe's gang. He's great in this!Overall, this is a decent studio western with an entertaining twist filled climax.Also, I'd advise viewers who haven't watched this to please skip the trailer as it gives away the ending of the picture!