Watch Rawhide For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

What makes it different from others?

Brilliant and touching

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Considering the two big stars, Power and Hayward, along with big-budget TCF producing, I was expecting a large-scale western. But it's not. Instead, the action is limited to a stagecoach way station out in the middle of nowhere. But what the movie lacks in scale, it makes up for with close-in dramatic tension. Tom (Power) better figure out a way to foil the gang of cutthroats before the gold-bearing stage comes through or he and Vinnie (Hayward) and probably her little girl are toast.Gang leader Zimmerman (Marlowe) seems like a reasonable enough bad guy who just wants the gold and then skedaddle. The trouble is he's got wild man Tech (Elam) to contend with, and Tech wants Vinnie, no matter the problems this creates for her protector Tom or for the gang. To say that Elam steals the show would be an understatement. He's one scary bad guy, leering and mugging it up like ten-miles of really bad road. No one has looked like him before or since. In fact, he so overshadows gang leader Marlowe that the final showdown is between him and Power instead of Power and Marlowe. But then Marlowe never was much of a screen presence. Anyway, despite the big names, the movie remains an Elam showcase since the rest of the cast pretty much low-keys it. I'm just wondering how director Hathaway got little toddler Callie (Dunn) to respond to cues since she can barely walk. Still, she's got a tense, demanding little role, and if Oscars were given to toddlers, she would deserve a Lifetime Award. All in all, the western is both different and underrated, I expect, because it lacks sweeping action. Nonetheless, the lack of sweep is more than made up for in dramatic tension. Besides, the film includes one overriding curiosity—it features what may be Hollywood's handsomest man against what may be its ugliest. Now there's a real face-off.

More suggestive of such dark western films of the late 1940s as Pursued, than romantic brawlers by Hathaway like North To Alaska etc, this film is taut and suspenseful, well-acted and shot - just as one might expect from one of the great Hollywood studio professionals. In hindsight, it is obvious that the origins of Rawhide can be found in the director's earlier career, when he was involved with the noir cycle. After helming such classics as Kiss Of Death, and Call Northside 777, only a few short years before, it was natural for Hathaway to bring something of the same sensibility to an oater.Rawhide is scripted by Dudley Nichols who worked for John Ford among others, over a prestigious writing career. The story is a relatively simple one: a junior way station employee Tom Owens (Tyrone Power), and a woman Vinnie Holt (Susan Hayward), with her sister's child, are held captive by a small band of prison-escapees who are waiting to rob a gold shipment. Playing husband and wife to maximise their survival chances, Owens and Holt have to find a way to escape the vigilant and murderous ringleader Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe) as well as warn the approaching stage. Further down the cast list there is also a splendidly evil part for Jack Elam as the deadly and lascivious Tevis, with eyes on Holt.Interestingly, the main action of the film is book-ended by a jaunty narrator, putting events into an historical context. This is a tale taken from the annals of the 'Jackass Mail', we are assured, a famous postal service which defied sceptics of the time to triumphantly link San Francisco and Saint Louis. But then the story shifts abruptly, to just a few people in the middle of nowhere, one of whom (Owens) has even yet to learn the business properly.After this step change, as trumpeted, 'Jackass Mail' appears just so much romantic hyperbole. It's the events at the way station which come to dramatise actual truths about convincing characters, even if they are often at a loss to control events. The irony is that, due to Nichols' skills as a dramatist and fine performances, we end up likely viewing the alleged history behind events as so much Hollywood window dressing, while the predations of the Zimmerman gang seem by far the more vivid and realistic. The 'real history' of sorts is displaced.As already mentioned, Hathaway's movie recalls the director's assignments earlier in his career. But Rawhide was also a modern, and for its time, relatively adult western attempting rounded characterisation. In a dramatic scheme familiar to the genre, character concerns regularly develop indoors while critical physical action is reserved for the open air. It's a film in which room-space in general, and doors in particular, play an important part. Players are confined within rooms, are repeatedly framed through, or walk back and forth, even die, in doorways; they spark off among themselves in a side room or the communal living area, while outside they rarely stray far.Once the Zimmerman gang arrive claustrophobia increases - a feeling helped by a sense that each room is really three-dimensional, closed in with a ceiling (reinforced by one noteworthy Citizen Kane-ish shot near the beginning). Doors and walls are uniformly sturdy, due to a fine location choice, in part of a real building. This way station offers an increasingly prison-like atmosphere - coming to a head as Owens and Holt ultimately attempt to tunnel out through the wall. In some senses, of course, the station is a penitentiary for everyone: whether for the Zimmerman gang, who have merely transferred their former penal relationships into a different setting or Vinnie Holt, wrongly condemned as an unmarried mother travelling with child to escape society's sanction, or Owens - whose restrictions means he cannot easily warn the approaching gold stage.The most interesting character in Rawhide is that of Vinnie Holt - stranded, with child, through company regulation. In a genre where women-kind are too often divided into contrasting or opposing stereotypes, of nice girl/ whore, bar girl/ respectable wife, and so on, Holt is more rounded, less dependent on the approval of others in general, and men in particular. A woman who is at first wrongly assumed to be of dubious virtue, lusted after by Tevis, and distrusted by Zimmerman, she is jealously protective of her sister's child, to the extent of being less bothered by other issues. Even before her true history is known, she gains the audience's respect through this single-minded independence, respect eventually matched by that of her temporary 'husband' Owens. Eventually she and he end up as a team for the mutual benefit of both, not coming together through easy romantic attachment. One feels it is a stronger bond and, given the nature of frontier life, a more likely one. Hayward's rare appearance in a western can be judged a success.The bond which grows between Owens and Holt, based on mutual respect, is in contrast to that connecting the Zimmerman gang. United by a dubious common background, the need to escape, greed, and respect enforced by fear, it is a union which is doomed to sunder. Zimmerman himself is allegedly unable to trust women (and in fact has been sentenced for killing one) after a tortured personal history. As Tevis says to him: "I ain't been cured of women... ain't had your medicine yet, Jim" - recognising that Zimmerman is unlikely to ever form a proper relationship with the wider world and implying that female-kind is some sort of sickness. Tevis himself has a brutal, leering fixation on the fairer sex, another direct contrast to Owens' basic decency and moral strength. Out of Zimmerman's confederates, only Yancy (Dean Jagger) has any strong humanity. It is a trait which, appositely enough; means he will survive.

Although "Rawhide" is a routine western that bears no relation to the later TV series with Clint Eastwood, the film boasts a terrific cast, good production values, and an entertaining storyline by Dudley Nichols. Filmed on location in glorious black and white, this early 1950's oater involves a group of escaped outlaws who hijack a stagecoach way station and take the two employees and a female passenger, who is between coaches, hostage. The plot moves towards a predictable conclusion with some unexpected excitement and suspense along the way. Henry Hathaway, who went on to film better-known westerns in his later years, keeps the action on course, and Milton Krasner's cinematography uses the Lone Pine, California, locations to great effect. If that were all, "Rawhide" would likely have been lost among dozens of other equally well made westerns produced to fill theater matinées before television completely killed regular movie attendance.However, the first-rate cast raises "Rawhide" to another level. Tyrone Power stars, and, although not a cowboy type, his good looks and earnest performance carry the heroic character, Tom Owens. Susan Hayward, however, is the film's standout. As Vinnie Holt, the passenger who is forced to stay at the station against her will, Hayward is a strong determined woman, who could be described as a feminist, if such tags existed in the Old West. Hayward never played shrinking violets, and her Vinnie is an equal to Power in courage and heroics, and she bests the other men in the cast. If only the film had been in color, her flaming red hair would have ignited the screen like her personality burns through the plot. Hayward takes on the male characters with gusto, and the supporting cast includes such stalwart tough guys as Jack Elam, Hugh Marlowe, Jeff Corey, Dean Jagger, Edgar Buchanan, and George Tobias. Elam is particularly menacing in an evil portrayal that pits him against Hayward in some physical encounters. But even a villain as skilled as Elam is no match for Hayward. "Rawhide" is no lost classic, just an entertaining programmer that was made with consummate skill and care. The film's lasting value lies in its sterling cast of pros, particularly in Susan Hayward at her best.

i thought this was a pretty good western.it contains most of the elements western contain,stagecoaches,robbers,and gunfights.and,there is the beautiful woman(Susan Hayward)and the man(Tyrone power)she is unwittingly thrown together with in a fight to survive.there is not a lot of action,in this particular western,but that's OK.the dramatic parts are well done,and the acting is very good.Power and Hayward acquit themselves quite well do quite well here,but Hugh Marlowe is really good as the chief Villain.Dean Jagger,Jack Elam and George Tobias also play villains with Jack Elam very strong here.there is some great chemistry/tension between Power and Hayward.as most western go this one follows the formula,so it's fairly easy to predict how thing will go.i will say,though,that the ending went a bit different than i had expected.overall,an enjoyable 86 minutes or so