Watch Return of the Frontiersman For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

Let's be realistic.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

ROTF is a very acceptable Western for 1950 - though I'm not sure to which particular Frontiersman the title refers. Well filmed, good scenery and some interesting actors - not least the veteran Tim Holt, the up-and-coming Rory Calhoun and, in an uncredited role as the lecherous cowhand, future beefcake star Richard Egan.One has to be a little forgiving with the evolving plot and McRae's dénouement, but the film moves along nicely enough.But it did jar that within hours of having a bullet removed from his shoulder McRae was able to use his arm for shooting, riding, fighting and lifting Julie London - a miracle recovery second only to James Stewart's in "The Man from Laramie" after he was shot with revolver pressed against his palm!

Until recently I had no idea that this movie existed having grown up watching Gordon MacRae in musicals, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that he turned in a fairly convincing acting job as the tough young son of the local sheriff played by veteran Jack Holt, who gets framed for a crime he didn't commit. Rory Calhoun plays his friend, another early performance from the western star of countless cowboy pictures of the fifties. Singer Julie London is the beautiful love interest to brighten up MacRae's troubled time in the movie. Julie London doesn't sing in this but there is a small scene where Gordon MacRae strums and sings a short piece but it doesn't encroach on the drama or look out of place, so credit to Warner Bros for not spoiling the action. Rory Calhoun pretty much played the same part throughout the hundred or more film and TV westerns that he made but we'll never know how good an actor Gordon MacRae could have been as he abandoned movies (or they abandoned him) to concentrate on his his greater gift of singing.

Return Of The Frontiersman casts Gordon MacRae as the brawling son of sheriff Jack Holt who has to arrest Gordon after a saloon brawl with a local tough. Holt gives his son 10 days to think it over. But when after his sentence is done and the man who MacRae brawled with winds up dead and a rider later seen committing crimes on a pinto horse like MacRae rides, he's got himself quite a jackpot. Holt doesn't like it, but he's an honest sheriff of the frontier.To not keep Gordon MacRae from using his singing voice would have been a crime itself so Jack Warner allowed a cowboy ballad for Gordon to sing while in the calaboose. He also gives Julie London to him as a leading lady. She gets kind of drafted into helping him the same way Madeline Carroll was drafted to helping Robert Donat in The 39 Steps. Alas though Julie London sings not a note.Return Of The Frontiersman was the kind of film that Warner Brothers wasn't known for making, a B picture western which they hadn't done too much of since Dick Foran was their singing cowboy in the late Thirties. MacRae sits the saddle well as he would later in Oklahoma.Nice and fast moving is Return Of The Frontiersman although anyone should be able to figure out just who put MacRae in the jackpot.

Excellent western! Gordon MacRae plays the son of the sheriff ( Jack Holt) who gets imprisoned for a murder which he didn't commit. While in jail, his friend ( Rory Calhoun) gives him a gun so that he can escape--which he does. He enlists the help of Julie London as he tries to clear his name & find the real killer. Holt was a big star in the 20's- he starred in a lot of westerns & was always able to find work thru the 50's. MacRae & Calhoun were especially good--it's easy to see how they both became big stars. MacRae of course, went on to star in several musicals. Calhoun stuck mainly to westerns & he was great in them. London didn't have a lot to do, but she did it well.