Happy New Year, all!
Perhaps in keeping with the tradition of gift-giving during the Yuletide (but probably a coincidence), the 2025 holiday season featured a gift for those who love Westerns in general and those of Joel McCrea in particular: Kit Parker Films released a blu-ray of McCrea’s 1955 picture Stranger on Horseback on December 16, 2025.
Strong words, referring to an item which one must purchase as a ‘gift’. The movie was already released on DVD and Jeff Arnold has already published a post about it. WHY should one consider a blu-ray release to be a gift?
Because, e-pards, this particular blu-ray is not just an upgrade in format. This version of Stranger is a restoration. A restoration of a film which, at one point, was considered lost. A film which, due to a number of circumstances, was in need of restoration.
Stranger on Horseback, you see, has a decidedly tangled history.
The film was made by Leonard Goldstein Productions as part of a distribution deal with United Artists. Leonard Goldstein had previously made piles of money for Universal with movies in the Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule series; in the noble genre, he produced Saddle Tramp with McCrea, Tomahawk, and other oaters. After a stint with 20th Century-Fox, he launched a production company with his brother Robert. Stranger was one of its initial productions.
Well before Stranger premiered, however, the producer suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away at the untimely age of 51. Robert Goldstein had to restructure the production company and scramble to salvage the United Artists deal.
In spite of these travails, the movie was duly released. It was a moderate success, with domestic and foreign earnings of over 1.2 million against its $400,000 budget.
Robert Goldstein moved from independent producer to a series of increasingly bigger jobs within the film industry. Concurrently, and for the remainder of the 20th century, the picture languished: no theatre re-releases or revivals, few television showings. Although filmed in color (more about that below), the color negative went missing. The only (known) surviving negative is in 16 mm black-and-white.
For many years, the film was considered lost.
In the early 2000’s, a 35 mm print in the original Ansco Color was discovered in the possession of the BFI, British Film Institute. It is the only known surviving print in color and the wider format (a hearty Huzzah! to the BFI). But, as described by Toby Roan, proprietor of the blog 50 Westerns from the 50’s, that print is “battered”. Its color varies.
The film was included in a Film at Lincoln Center retrospective for director Jacques Tourneur and a note on the film’s webpage provides insight into the film’s condition:
After the BFI print was located, Kit Parker Films released a DVD in 2008 remastered from it. The company has the slogan ‘Orphan Films… Adopted’; true to its slogan, Stranger on Horseback was once again available. But, like its source print, its picture quality was variable: some scenes were smeary or had faded color. Still, given the intent of the filmmakers, a version with faded color was better than no color at all.
Color Competitors
Stranger was filmed in Ansco Color, one of several color processes which competed with the vaunted Technicolor three-strip process.
When its three strips were handled, aligned, and printed properly, Technicolor’s results were lushly beautiful. But the film stock was expensive and the required cameras were heavy.
Cinecolor was another competitor, but it was a two-strip process without a full color range: it reproduced shades of blue, green, orange, and brown, a palette which suited Westerns. Mostly. Coroner Creek is an example of Cinecolor used well, although the limited spectrum does lead to some unusual effects: women’s lips have an odd orange hue and blood (which Coroner features in startling quantity for 1948) is a brackish brown.
Please note that the Trucolor process was proprietary to Republic Pictures so it is excluded from this survey. Its results were similar to those of Cinecolor, although with more pastel tones in this viewer’s experience.
Unlike Cinecolor, Ansco Color did reproduce a full range of color. Some sources indicate the color was more natural; others indicate the color tended towards pastels. And, as occurred with Stranger, the color could fade over time (although in fairness. so could Eastmancolor and other processes, like Metrocolor and WarnerColor, which processed Eastman stock in studio-owned labs).
Overall, its images were softer than other processes, notably in wide and long shots.
For those interested, MGM also used Ansco Color in productions made around the same time as Stranger, including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and, in the noble genre, Escape from Fort Bravo. The Warner Archive blu-ray of Escape shows Ansco to good effect.
McCrea and Tourneur
Joel McCrea worked with a long list of fine directors over his long career, some of them more than once. He made three films with Gregory LaCava (Bed of Roses, Private Worlds, Primrose Path), three with William Wellman (Reaching for the Sun, The Great Man’s Lady, Buffalo Bill), and, most famously, three with Preston Sturges including two classics (Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story) and a studio-butchered curiosity (The Great Moment).
After his late-40’s transition to (mostly) making Westerns, the actor occasionally performed in multiple movies with the same director.
Unfortunately, McCrea’s Western CV does not have a series of signature, classic collaborations with one director as did Scott with Boetticher, Stewart with Mann, or Wayne with Ford.
With Charles Marquis Warren, he made Trooper Hook and Cattle Empire and with Joseph M Newman, Fort Massacre and The Gunfight at Dodge City. All were average or better examples of mid-budget Westerns, not classics (although I would argue that Trooper and Fort are very good: Trooper due to McCrea’s chemistry with Barbara Stanwyck and Fort due to a good cast and the lead actor taking on a role well outside of his heroic comfort zone and performing it well.)
The closest he came was his work with Jacques Tourneur, who was a fellow student when McCrea attended Hollywood High and with whom the actor made three films: Stars in My Crown, Stranger on Horseback, and Wichita.
Tourneur and his films are discussed in a plethora of books, articles, monographs, and web pages. The director collaborated with McCrea as much as he did with producer Val Lewton, although the Lewton pictures are certainly more impactful. The restoration of Horseback provides an opportunity to briefly survey the joint filmographies of Jacques Tourneur and Joel McCrea.
Stars
Stars in My Crown was released in 1950. One can argue (and many have) that Stars is not a Western. I am terribly uninterested in this particular argument. True, the film’s events occur in a small town in the southern United States. But, the timing of the events (the aftermath of the Civil War) and theme (one person standing against many) are what matter, rather than the state or territory in which the events occur.
What also matters: Stars in My Crown is the consummate match of lead actor to material, the material was sensitively directed by Tourneur, and the picture makes as strong a statement against racism as any Hollywood movie to that time. Its scene with McCrea confronting the Ku Klux Klan is as fine a demonstration of the actor’s strengths as any on film.
Both McCrea and Tourneur named the picture as a favorite.
Still, not everyone is entranced by the film’s charms. As is their right, of course. Our own Jeff Arnold used “treacle” and “mawkishly sentimental” in describing it.
Stranger
McCrea’s contract for Stranger allowed him the choice of a director and he chose Jacques Tourneur.
Note the whip
For the first two-thirds of its running time, it is a ‘town’ Western, with McCrea’s judge investigating a murder and establishing his “tough hombre” bona fides, then squaring off against a rancher (John McIntire) who controls the town, the rancher’s horsewhip-wielding niece (Miroslava), and the rancher’s son (Kevin McCarthy) who either murdered a man or shot him in self-defense.
For the final third, it is a ‘journey’ Western with McCrea leading a group across Sedona to stand the son for trial in another town.
In total, the film runs a lean 66 minutes. No padded scenes. No extraneous dialogue.
Tourneur was, of course, known for his films at RKO that used black and white, light and shadows to great effect. The director also had definite ideas about the use of color, both in the dressing of his actors and the sets. In the Film at Lincoln Center summary of Stranger, his compositions are described as “painterly”; I appreciate that description greatly (and wish that I had thought of it), as the combination of color and image softness give some scenes an impressionistic quality.
For the journey portion of the film, initial scenes are filmed day-for-night; these are the least successful in the film for quality of image and color.
Tourneur, in fact, had viewed dailies in black-and-white; according to author Chris Fujiwara, the director did not care for the Ansco Color results.
The picture’s performers of course warrant mention.
I feel that Jeff’s assessment of Czech-Mexican actress Miroslava skews towards unkindness. While not great, she is also not terrible as the entitled niece, who apparently picked up her Eastern European accent at the “fancy schools” mentioned mid-picture.
She sadly committed suicide before the film’s release, reportedly over romantic entanglements.
Nancy Gates is reliably good as the conflicted witness (the actress would work with McCrea again in Gunfight at Dodge City).
My favorite character in the picture, however, is that of John Carradine. The prolific actor plays an unctuous, seemingly corrupt district attorney, and plays him with gusto, including a broad Southern accent.
In multiple scenes, McCrea chomps on apples. Carradine chomps on cigars… and scenery.
He steals most scenes except when upstaged by the marshal’s big tabby cat. His performance is hugely entertaining (although the cat is enjoyable, too).
McIntire’s rancher is broadly acted as well, although the performances of Carradine and McIntire seem broader when contrasted with McCrea’s underplaying.
Some commentators have opined that the film’s ending is abrupt. Both the final confrontation and the journey’s end feel organic enough to me. Vive la différence!
Jeff refers to Stranger as a “pure gem”. I agree with him.
Wichita
After completing Stranger, McCrea signed with producer Walter Mirisch. Mirisch was heavily involved with Allied Artists moving beyond its Monogram roots to larger pictures. McCrea’s first film with Mirisch, Wichita, was one of those larger pictures: filmed in Technicolor and CinemaScope and budgeted at ∼ $500,000. Tourneur was again signed to direct.
McCrea plays Wyatt Earp. Like so many pictures using famous Westerners as characters, the story is hogwash from a historian’s perspective – but entertaining from a viewer’s perspective. The resulting movie is a solid, straight-down-the line Western. Per Jeff, “it is a good picture”.
Who plays the man in black? Why, that noted actor Sam Peckinpah
Even more so than in Stranger, Tourneur’s eye for color is evident in Wichita. And the director’s compositions make good use of the wide screen format.
As a bigger production, Wichita features more action than its predecessor. The cast is larger and includes many familiar faces, including the always welcome Edgar Buchanan. But bigger does not necessarily mean better! Of the two McCrea/Tourneur films that are unquestionably Westerns, this writer currently prefers Stranger. But all three collaborations are satisfying.
Once again, none of the above is to make a case for one or more of these pictures as an all-time classic. Rather, these are three good, solid, enjoyable mid-budget films made by an actor and director who seemingly liked and understood each other. If you haven’t watched them lately, or ever, they are worth the invested time – particularly now that Stranger on Horseback can be viewed after a 2K scan and restoration.
The Restoration
I had previously screened the non-restored color version of Stranger. I have not seen a black-and-white print of the film so cannot comment on THAT version.
The restored film has a more defined, detailed image. I particularly notice it in backgrounds, some of which were smeared daubs of color before, but the picture quality is enhanced overall.
This is not to suggest, however, that the picture is razor sharp. It is not, which is the reason for the above comment about the film having an ‘impressionistic’ quality, a hint of Claude Monet rather than Charles M. Russell.
I am no expert, but believe that quality stems from a combination of the original Ansco film stock and the condition of the source.
This is also not to suggest that the film is difficult to watch. It is perfectly watchable. And more.
These comments are merely to set expectations: film restorations depend upon many factors, including the state of film elements and the availability of resources, and results can vary depending upon those factors.
A viewer watching the blu-ray of Stranger on Horseback will see the best version since its original theatrical release in 1955. This outcome is much preferable to not being able to view the film at all… which was a possibility at one point.
Even better for non-US Westernistas, the film is coded for regions A, B, and C.
Extras on the disc include the film’s script and a typically informative commentary by Toby Roan.
Thanks to Kit Parker Films for financing this restoration, which I expect was a stretch for a smaller company. It deserves the support of those who love the noble genre.
Paraphrasing the (particularly apropos) old saying, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Housekeeping note: Our final Sam Peckinpah post, covering the epochal Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, will publish by February 20, 2026 – the last day of the Peckinpah centenary year.
Sources:
Allan Smithee: Stranger on Horseback
Chris Fujiwara: The Past Becomes Past
Film at Lincoln Center Overview
Kit Parker Films: “Problem” Films… with Happy Endings
3 Responses
Sometimes the story of the film making can be as interesting as the film itself, even more…
I watched one of the black and white versions of Stranger on Horseback after reading Jeff’s review and was, frankly, underwhelmed. Which was a surprise considering the review and my usual affection for McCrea and his typical performances. Presentation can definitely have an effect on one’s viewing experience. So when building my library of Westerns I skipped SoH but now I’ll need to do a rewatch and most likely buy one of the restored copies. Thanks for the heads up ePards!
As Jeff said it very well in his Jacques Tourneur recap:
“Stranger on Horseback is not great landmark of the genre but it just shows that if you put a classy director and cinematographer together with a fine actor and some good writing you can end up with a terrific little Western that sticks in the memory.”
https://jeffarnoldswest.com/2021/02/the-westerns-of-jacques-tourneur/