All male tough guy Hollywood stars wound up in the saddle sooner or later – even Humphrey Bogart was in Virginia City and James Cagney made the Oklahoma Kid. This was Alan Ladd’s genre debut and Paramount did him proud – like Warners did with Errol Flynn in Dodge City (another actor who became a star in one genre but became a popular Western performer), they laid on the deluxe treatment: strong story, beautiful colour photography, top-notch support cast.
Ladd looks very comfortable in the saddle and is perfectly cast as the title character, a railroad detective (railroads often provided the villains in Westerns but here’s something a bit different). He also gets to go on something of an emotional journey – his best mate (Robert Preston) is married to Smith’s former girlfriend (the ever-bland Brenda Marshall). In addition to Preston, who is always good at playing characters with ambiguous morality, the cast includes William Demarest and Donald Crisp (excellent). Just watching the finale for this movie, where Ladd stands off against Preston, it struck me that many famous Alan Ladd films involved him having a strong relationship with another man, which often manifested itself as a love triangle: The Glass Key, Shane.
NB There’s an albino killer called “whitey” – not the first time such a character would be given such a name.
NB There’s an albino killer called “whitey” – not the first time such a character would be given such a name.
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