Out west with Patricia Neal

One of the movies I DVRed during Patricia Neal's turn as Star of the Month on TCM was the western Raton Pass, being interested in the idea of Neal having done a western. Recently I sat down to watch it.

The first theme is one which shows up in a whole lot of westerns: the cattle baron who owns a lot of land versus the homesteaders who are closing in on that land. In Raton Pass, the ranchers are portrayed by Basil Ruysdael as dad Pierre Challon and Dennis Morgan as his son Marc. They own land on both sides of Raton Pass, and on some of the less productive land in the middle, there's the homesteaders, led by Pozner (Louis Jean Heydt). Pozner and his friends don't like the Challons, and for good reason since they think the Challons are taking all the grazing land and the water.

Into all of this walks lovely Ann (Patricia Neal). Ann falls in love with Marc, and the two have a whirlwind romance that leads to marriage. Marc's late beloved mother, God rest her soul, apparently had an agreement with Dad that when Marc got married, the whole ranch would legally be deeded over to Marc and his wife. But the love isn't to last.

The ranch is in some need of money, and when railroad man Prentice (Scott Forbes) comes into the picture needing a right of way for the new rail line, Marc sees the chance at money. But Ann is even smarter and more ambitious than Marc, and decides she'll make the bargain with Prentice. Of course, her bargain involves co-owning the ranch with Prentice, not with Marc.

Marc gets the brilliant idea that he can sell, and then go in with the homesteaders to block off Raton Pass, meaning that all the cattle on what's now Ann and Prentice's ranch can't get back to the other side, forcing them to sell cheaply and reducing the value of the ranch which Marc can then get back. Of course, the homesteaders aren't necessarily going to be interested in this, considering they don't care for the Challons.

Ann, for her part, has a trick up her sleeve too. She hires gunman Cy Van Cleave (Steve Cochran) as her new ranch foreman. He has no qualms about resorting to violence to get what's best for, well, seemingly the ranch, but more importantly him. He convinces the sheriff that Marc is rustling cattle by blocking off Raton pass, and kidnaps Pozner into testifying to this. It all leads to the climactic shootout.

Raton Pass is another of those movies that's not really doing anything particularly new, but is entertaining enough. It's mildly odd seeing Patricia Neal in a western, but even more jarring for me was the presence of Dennis Morgan, who I thought was not particularly well cast. He does his best here, and even though he's not great, he certainly doesn't sink the movie.

If you want to see a good example of a studio system western, you could do a lot worse than to watch Raton Pass. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.