Early Audie Murphy Western is a very likeable movie with the star well cast - he's a shy, isolated kid who lives up in the mountains with paw (Dean Jagger) because paw is wanted for murder. They break horses and his not so good with women so when Wanda Hendrix pops up he gets in a fluster. Paw gets sick so Audie has to go into town and he comes across some baddies.
The set up is actually better than execution, which has a very unconvincing denouement and slumps around the two-third mark - a problem I'm finding in a few of these Audie Murphy films. But Audie is very relaxed - he forms a cute couple with Hendrix (who plays a lawyer!), two little people falling in love. Audie wasn't always convincing as an on screen lover but he is here.
He also benefits from the presence of two veterans in support, Dean Jagger and Burl Ives (as a family friend). Ives sings a few songs, which is sweet, and the movie has a family feel, for all it's shoot outs and horses - Audie and Jagger have a bond, he has family throughout the valley who help him, his allies are an outlaw family (including the not-very-convincing cowboy Tony Curtis). There's some pleasing location work in the mountains - lots of nice green.
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