Audie Murphy occasionally played real people - Billy the Kid, Bill Doolin, Jesse James, himself. Here he's John Clum, an Indian agent good at persuading Indians go on to the reservation. It's not surprising to see him do this in the context of his career because Audie Murphy films were often sympathetic to Indians - even when they massacred white people (e.g. Column South) they usually had good motivation to do so (usually because of the treachery of a white). However this is one of the rare times when he played an out-an-out pacifist - as a result this was not a hit at the box office.
It was one of a series of interesting movies Murphy made for Universal in the wake of the tremendous hit that was To Hell and Back - over a few years he tried his hand at service comedy, boxing biopic, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemmingway. It didn't last and he went back to straight-up Westerns. It's a shame - it's also a shame this movie isn't better. I wanted it to be, it's got a nice humanitarian message, Anne Brancroft as an Indian girl who falls for Murphy. But it is dull. There's not enough action or tension, and too much of Murphy walking around going "hey put down that gun", and overlong domestic shenanigans with Pat Crowley, Murphy's wife, being worried about Bancroft. Doing the right thing by the Indians doesn't have to make for boring story telling - look at Broken Arrow - but that's what's happened here. It does have pleasing production value and support cast.
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