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Undescribable Perfection

To me, this movie is perfection.

Best movie ever!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Complicated Technicolor western, mostly filmed in the scenic foothills of Glacier National Park. Blackfoot 'Indians', both real and manufactured, are prominent in the story. The Blackfoot reservation adjacent to the Park was a convenient source of 'Indian' extras. As was common at the time, the main 'Indian' roles went to Hollywood actors who spoke Hollywood 'Indian' pigeon English: very stilted, for the most part. Reagan seems out of place as a famed gunslinger.The complicated formulistic plot includes rivalries among both the Europeans and Blackfoot, both men and women, with some alliances of convenience included. Tom McCord(Gene Evans) is the thoroughly evil, backstabbing, cattle baron of this 'Buffalo Valley' region of apparently west central Montana. 'Pop'Jones and his matronly daughter Sierra Nevada(Barbara Stanwyck, age 46)headed a leisurely 7 month cattle drive from Texas to this well-watered grazing land, with only a preliminary claim on it, unaware of how criminal their well-established neighbor was. McCord is determined to scare off or dispose of these new land claimants, as he has previous ones. He utilizes the European -hating war chief Natchakoa to engineer a nocturnal stampede of their cattle, while dispatching their minimal cowhands. Initially, it is thought that all the Jones outfit died in this incident. But Sierra and her foreman Nat(Chubby Johnson) survived and were taken by friendly Blackfoot leader Colorados to a Blackfoot village to recuperate.Meanwhile, army undercover agent Farrell (Ron Reagan) signs as a hired gun for McCord and is given the assignment of dispatching the stampede survivors. He pretends to agree, but is captured by Blackfoot, who now realize that it's bad for them to be involved in the planned murders. Meanwhile, McCord has filed a claim to the land Sierra assumed would be hers, as well as a claim on her cattle brand, thinking her dead. When he discovers his error, he sends Farrell to offer to buy her cattle, on the condition she return to Texas. At one point, she agrees, but then discovers that McCord was behind the stampede. Farrell discovers that McCord has been the source of the illegal rifles being supplied the Blackfoot, which is his main purpose here. Farrel gradually shifts his allegiance from McCord to Sierra, who has lost her companion Nat to a Natchakoa arrow.The old Blackfoot chief Powhani dies. Rivals to replace him, Colorados and Natchakoa have a hand to hand duel, which Colorados wins, but declines to dispatch Natchakoa, to his later regret. We are now ready for the final confrontation between the 'good' and 'bad' elements. Blackfoot princess Starfire, jealous of Colorados' friendship with Sierra, leads her and Farrell into an ambush by Natchakoa's forces, but is accidentally killed herself. McCord's and Colorados' bunches now show up for a complicated 4 team shootout, and all the baddies are killed. Sierra and Farrell hint at a possible future together.According to the stone property marker, this story took place in 1888, very close to the end of the open range period on the Western Plains. However, we have the anachronism of Colonel Carrington: Farrell's boss. This is a historically relevant name, as Colonel Carrington headed the effort to control Sioux raids on immigrants going to southwest Montana along the Bozeman Trail in the mid-1860s. But, he left this region after only a rather brief stay, and never made it past WY. Interestingly, the first significant drive of Texas Longhorns from Texas to Montana occurred during this same period, as dramatized in the '55 Clark Gable-starring "The Tall Men".Barbara was not the first, nor most impressive, Hollywood Montana 'cattle queen'. For example, a much younger, more glamorous- looking Alexis Smith posed as an established 'cattle queen' a few years earlier in the Technicolor "Montana", with a more charismatic adversary/love interest in Errol Flynn.The plot of this film appears to owe much to the historic story of 'Cattle Kate', which includes an established southwestern WY cattle baron named Boswell: a character very similar to that of McCord in this story. Unfortunately, newcomer 'Cattle Kate' didn't fare as well as Sierra, being framed as a cattle rustler herself, resulting in her execution.Strange that the great cattle die off in the 1886-7 Montana winter wasn't mentioned. Many herds were decimated and ranchers ruined by the extreme cold and lack of winter feed. This is just prior to when this story supposedly takes place.The whites-friendly Blackfoot leader Colorados supposedly had studied at a college. Most likely, this was actually the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA, established just a few years earlier. Neighboring Sioux were among the prominent early students.

Title: Cattle Queen of Montana opened in theaters on November 18, 1954 and it was 88 minutes long. Cattle Queen of Montana is an American Western film starring Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan. The supporting cast includes Jack Elam, Chubby Johnson, and Morris Ankrum, and Allan Dwan directed the movie.Summary: Filmed on location at Montana's Glacier National Park, Cattle Queen of Montana makes excellent use of the diverse talents of Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan. Stanwyck is cast as Sierra Nevada Jones... read more, who hopes to stake her claim in the cattle business despite opposition from hostile land barons. Government agent Farrell helps her along, even though he's officially on hand to find out who's been inciting the local Indian tribes into attacking the whites. Lance Fuller delivers a well-balanced performance as Colorados, a college-educated Indian chief who hopes to bring peace to the land. Long a fixture of TV's Late Shows, Cattle Queen of Montana was briefly reissued theatrically when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi My thoughts: Based on the scenery and the cattle I give this movie 7 weasel stars.

An unusual alliance is operating in the film Cattle Queen of Montana. Cattle baron Gene Evans and dissident Blackfoot chieftain Anthony Caruso have an arrangement of convenience. Evans provides whiskey and arms and in return Caruso makes sure the braves under his command raid and kill any settlers who come into the Montana valley that Evans wants to keep all to himself.Of course they pick on the wrong party when they attack Barbara Stanwyck's party. She and father Morris Ankrum have staked a claim on a piece of the valley. Her father is killed, but Stanwyck survives and his taken to the camp of Lance Fuller, Caruso's rival in the Blackfeet nation.So we have some unusual white/Indian alliances forming here and lurking through it all is a mysterious stranger played by Ronald Reagan who is not quite what he seems to be at all.It's a good, but routine western, helped considerably by good location photography and crisp direction by Allan Dwan. Stanwyck looks very much like she's in preparation for her role as Victoria Barkley in The Big Valley. And Ronald Reagan who while he doesn't do mysterious real well, does look right at home on the range.

What saves this film from being an average western, lost among so many others is the impressive scenery, beautiful strong colors, with a predominance of green because of the trees, the efficient direction of Allan Dwan, but most of all Barbara Stanwyck playing the main character, a part that would usually go to a man. Barbara was great in this type of role, she had already done it in "The Furies" and would do it again in "Forty Guns" and "The Maverick Queen". The story is plain routine, Colorados is the good Blackfoot, Natchakoa the bad one,and they are going to fight for power when the Chief (that looks more Irish than Blackfoot)dies. Ronald Reagan is the good guy acting like he is bad and Barbara the woman who comes from Texas with a lot of cattle and loses it all in a stampede.