Watch Calamity Jane and Sam Bass For Free

the audience applauded

Good movie but grossly overrated

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Yvonne de Carlo has to share Howard Duff's(Sam Bass) romantic interest with Dorothy Hart(Kathy Egan) in this Technicolor 'B' western, directed by the talented 'B' picture specialist George Sherman. Obviously, Dorothy was characterized as 'the good girl', while Yvonne, as Calamity Jane, was characterized as 'the bad girl'. Both fell in love with the handsome, but dirt poor, Bass almost immediately. Calamity more dominates the 2nd half, while Kathy is more influential in the first half. Director Sherman ordered some great close-ups of Yvonne's face, especially toward the end. For a more fun western costarring Yvonne, I recommend "Frontier Gal". Both these films are currently available at YouTube. I disagree with the paragraph under 'Trivia' at this site, which claims that there is little historically accurate information about Bass in this film. The inclusion of the 2 women is the greatest fictional component. As mentioned in the film, Bass was raised on an Indiana farm, and gradually made his way south and west, finally to Denton, TX. He did work for Sheriff Will Egan on his ranch, saved his money and bought an excellent race horse, named 'the Denton Mare'. He won some races with her and was skilled in other bets on horses. Later, he did get into robbing stages, trains, and banks. The dramatized train robbery at Big Spring Station closely duplicates the details of what actually happened, including the wood boxes holding a fortune in gold coins. His fatal attempt at robbing the Round Rock bank is also dramatized.Howard Keel, as Bass, doesn't present the sort of charisma a John Wayne or Gary Cooper would, but he does an adequate job. Yvonne makes a striking, if quite unreal, facsimile of Calamity.

Here's a perfect example of film makers pulling two historical names out of the past, putting them together and then throwing them up against the wall to see what sticks. This story could just as easily have been told without the names of Calamity Jane and Sam Bass in the title, but then I guess it might not have been a draw at the cinema. Oh well, it could have been worse.It turns out that the film had some pretty good star power going for it, at least in retrospect. Howard Duff and Lloyd Bridges both had respectable careers in film and TV, and the inclusion of Yvonne De Carlo as one of the title characters was an interesting casting decision. To me she'll always be Lily Munster, but she had a pretty diverse career as well. The surprise for me in this picture was Willard Parker in the role of Sheriff Will Egan. It made me wonder why I've never seen him in another movie Western before, as he was one of my TV favorites as a kid watching "Tales of the Texas Rangers". He partnered with the always hungry Harry Lauter as Ranger Clay Morgan.Even though the Calamity Jane/Sam Bass team up is pure fiction, the story itself is fairly credible in the way it follows a hard luck cowpoke trying to make his way honorably, but sidelined by circumstances that create a turn for the worse. The business about the Denton Mare suddenly brought back to life was a stretch though; everyone at the race who saw him go down knew he was dead, and one of the bystanders even offered to bury it.What I thought was clever was the way the story ended, requiring the viewer to try and figure out which woman Sam Bass was talking about when he revealed his feverish dream about owning his own ranch and sharing it with a 'different' girl, the only one he really loved. That could have been either Calamity or Kathy Egan (Dorothy Hart), so in a way, he was able to let them both down easy. Personally, I lean toward Miss Egan, but otherwise it's a close toss up.There actually was one element the film makers got right historically. The real Sam Bass did die a day after being shot by a Texas Ranger near Round Rock, Texas. He was buried there, with the remains of the original gravestone marker on display at the Public Library in downtown Round Rock on Sam Bass Road.

Sometimes you feel a film counts more for its nostalgic values than for its merits. And this western is worth seeing just for that, and also for its great Technicolor. From the days of my youth when I read comics I learned that Sam Bass was quite a mean guy. Here he is a hero , but a doomed hero because no outlaw could get away from Hollywood's moral code. Anyway you root for him as you feel he is getting every time into more trouble specially because of his taste for horse races. I am not a a fan of Yvonne de Carlo, she was the star in two awful westerns "Frontier Gal" and "Salome, where she danced", but here she manages to let Howard Duff as Sam Bass be the main character even though Calamity Jane comes first in the title. Lloyd Bridges is Sam's friend, Joel Collins. George Sherman, besides directing wrote the film's story.

Even though there is no record that Calamity Jane and Sam Bass even met and furthermore that by Calamity's own record the only man she ever loved was Wild Bill Hickok, Universal nevertheless made this film Calamity Jane And Sam Bass. Billing should have been in reverse this was really Sam Bass's story.Sam Bass as played by Howard Duff arrives in Denton, Texas completely busted, but he's got a way with the ladies and he attracts the attention of the famous Calamity Jane and the sheriff Willard Parker's sister. The sheriff's sister is Dorothy Hart. He also has a great love and good eye for horses. That and the two women are both the key his success and his downfall.It's fascinating how some of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses, Jean Arthur, Doris Day, and in this film Yvonne DeCarlo are cast as Calamity Jane. In real life, Mary Jane Canary as Calamity Jane was born had a face that could stop a grandfather clock for a couple of generations. She must have had something going to get all the men she did including Wild Bill Hickok. Duff and DeCarlo aren't the most romantic pair going still the western is an interesting one with some well executed action scenes. I think western fans will like it still.