The Rare Breed

I mentioned a few months back getting a box set of James Stewart westerns. Over the weeked I watched The Rare Breed off that set.

James Stewart plays Sam Burnett, who works as a cowboy leading cattle drives for racners. He's in St. Louis, where he's going to be attending a cattle auction. At that auction is Martha Price (Maureen O'Hara), togehter with her daughter Hilary (Juliet Mills). The made the journey from England along with their husband and a Hereford steer as they intend to introduce the Hereford to the land of the Longhorn. But the husband died on the boat, and now it's up to the two women to get the bull to Texas.

Burnett eventually winds up accompanying the two woman as the three of them take the bull to its final destination, but the journey is not going to be without some difficulty. The women overheard Sam having a conversation that led them to believe he's not going to take the bull to its intended destination, a Scottish-American rancher named Bowen (Brian Keith). The overland journey once they get off the train is also not going to be easy.

Things get further complicated when they actually get to the destination. Bowen's son Jamie (Don Galloway) has been on the journey to bring the new steer to his father, and he and Hilary wind up falling in love, which leads to the expectation that the widow Martha is going to marry Jamie's father. But she and Burnett have kind of taken a shine to each other. The other problem is actually getting that prize Hereford bull to breed with the Longhorn cows....

I had some problems with The Rare Breed, which came down mostly to the fact that it didn't seem ot know exactly what kind of material it wanted to be. The core of the subject (bringing a new type of cattle to breed) makes it sound like it should all be played for comic effect, but large portions of the movie seem overly dramatic and low on the comedy. The production values also looked to me as though the movie was more studio-bound than it should have been. Still, the movie is amiable enough that fans of westerns will probably enjoy it as a change of pace. At worst, it's just an inoffensive movie that doesn't quite do what it set out to do.