Jeff Arnold’s West

The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans

Cripple Creek (Columbia, 1952)

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Small and Nazarro ride again
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Cripple Creek was another of the Westerns starring George Montgomery that Edward Small produced and Ray Nazarro directed for Columbia in 1952 – like Indian Uprising, which we reviewed a couple of days ago. It had, I fear, a similar blend of clunky script and plodding acting and direction; the writer was Richard Schayer, as he was on Indian Uprising. He was in little danger of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, but hey, so am I.

 

Still, it’s in Technicolor and there is some nice location shooting here and there (most of the action takes place in town and therefore on a sound stage) and some rather pretty painted backdrops when location shooting began to stretch the budget too far.

 

As the title suggests, we are in Colorado in 1893. It’s a skullduggery plot with crooks and their henchmen and three secret service men, led by George, bent on unmasking the villains who are stealing wagonloads of gold ore and crushing it in a secret smelter in a ghost town. The actors spend much of the time explaining the plot to each other and it all reminded me of an overblown Lone Ranger episode. In fact Montgomery has more than a little of Clayton Moore in his delivery. He was only missing the mask. Or, come to think about it, with the three government agents it could have been one of those Three Mesquiteers flicks of the 30s. Maybe a bit more advanced than that.

 

So yes, the whole thing is unlikely to the point of preposterousness. But I don’t care. It’s still a lot of fun. I like these pictures!
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Nothing staged or posed, I assure you
 
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The actors ‘ride’ those fake horses and there’s speeded-up film in the fistfights. There’s a lot of sneaking about and hiding and discovering the bandits’ lair and so on. It’s very much a boys’ Western from that point of view. The secret smelter is particularly silly.

 

The excellent John Dehner is in it, as livery owner Emil Cabeau (which they all pronounce kerBO) though wasted in too minor a part. The rest of the cast are a bit on the B side. It needed a slimier/charming boss crook, Dan Duryea maybe, or Lyle Bettger. But we got William Bishop as the besuited dastardly villain. Mr Bishop wasn’t bad. He’d led in a couple of Westerns in 1948, Black Eagle and Adventures in Silverado, and had had quite a good part in The Walking Hills with Randolph Scott in ’49. He’d do several more Nazarro-directed Westerns in the following years, some as lead.

 

Don Porter was Bishop’s henchman and managed a hint of semi-sadistic menace but it really needed a proper heavy like Robert J Wilke or Leo Gordon. Still, not all Westerns can run to bad-guy royalty like that.
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Ray Nazarro (with Adele Roberts)
 
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The love interest is Karin Booth but in an unlikely plot twist she turns out in the last reel to be in league with the villains. Spoiler alert. Oops, too late. She was Montgomery’s leading lady two or three times.

 

In fact unlikely plot twists are this movie’s stock in trade.

 

George’s partner agents are Jerome Courtland (bland) and Richard Egan (better). Mr Egan started in Westerns in 1950. I remember him most as a sergeant in The Battle at Apache Pass, as Elvis’s big brother in Love Me Tender and as Jehu in These Thousand Hills.

 

Tragically, Edward Small had abandoned his amusing logo, a towering sky with a gigantic godlike SMALL. It always made me smile.
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Edward Small and his other logo
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It all ends with a saloon brawl and a comic undertaker. I rather enjoyed it, I must say.

 

6 Responses

  1. I love this Montgomery,Katzman,Nazarro,Castle & Small kick that Jeff is
    on at the moment.I too miss the "Small" logo.
    Phil Karlson raises the game of these little epics considerably
    in THE TEXAS RANGERS which also has one of my all-time fave lines:
    William Bishop's Sam Bass: "hot tub is a fine thing-I take one ever
    month, if I need it or not"
    "ever" is NOT a miss-print I might add.

    1. That 'tub' line has been used a few times in Westerns. I must review that movie. I have written about the Texas Rangers (http://jeffarnoldblog.blogspot.fr/2014/10/the-texas-rangers.html) and have reviewed the Paramount 1936 movie (http://jeffarnoldblog.blogspot.fr/2016/02/the-texas-rangers-paramount-1936.html)and its 1949 remake (http://jeffarnoldblog.blogspot.fr/2013/03/streets-of-laredo-paramount-1949.html)and I have posted on Sam Bass (http://jeffarnoldblog.blogspot.fr/2014/10/sam-bass-in-fact-and-fiction.html) but I haven't yet done the Karlson/Small 1951 one.
      Happy Christmas!
      Jeff

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