The Big Country (Film)

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The Big Country is a 1958 American epic Western film directed by William Wyler, starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, and Burl Ives. The supporting cast features Charles Bickford and Chuck Connors. Filmed in Technicolor and Technirama, the picture was based on the serialized magazine novel Ambush at Blanco Canyon by Donald Hamilton and was co-produced by Wyler and Peck. The opening title sequence was created by Saul Bass.

Burl Ives won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his performance, as well as the Golden Globe Award. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for the musical score, composed by Jerome Moross. The film is one of the few in which Heston plays a major supporting role rather than the lead.

The Big Country Theme Covers

• The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

• Al Caiola and Leroy Holmes & His Orchestra

• Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles

• Geoff Love & His Orchestra

• Film Symphony Orchestra

• Stanley Black

• Ron Goodwin and His Orchestra

Plot

Former sea captain James McKay travels to the American West to join his fiancée Patricia at the enormous ranch owned by her father, Henry Terrill, referred to by all as “The Major”. After a meeting with Patricia’s friend, schoolteacher Julie Maragon, McKay and Patricia are accosted by a group of drunks led by Buck Hannassey, the son of the Major’s ardent and implacable enemy Rufus Hannassey. In spite of the harassment and mockery, McKay surprises Patricia by making light of the incident and stating that he’s experienced worse and the boys meant no harm.

The next morning, McKay declines an invitation from the Major’s foreman Steve Leech to ride an indomitable bronco stallion named “Old Thunder”. McKay then brings a pair of dueling pistols once owned by his father to the Major as a gift. When the Major learns of Buck’s pestering of his daughter and future son-in-law, he gathers his men and goes to raid the Hannassey ranch despite McKay’s attempts to defuse the situation. The Major’s group finds neither Rufus nor Buck, so they settle for terrorizing the Hannassey women and children, shooting holes in the Hannassey water reservoir. They find Buck’s posse in town and proceed to beat and humiliate them. Meanwhile, McKay privately tames and rides Old Thunder after many unsuccessful attempts, and swears his only witness, the ranch hand Ramon, to secrecy.

A gala is held on the Terrill ranch in honor of Patricia’s upcoming wedding. At the height of the festivities, an armed Rufus crashes the party and accuses the Major of the hypocrisy of pretending to be a gentleman when his actions speak otherwise. The next day, McKay secretly goes to Maragon’s abandoned ranch, known as the “Big Muddy”. The Big Muddy’s territory is the location of the town’s only nearby river, and as such it is a vital source of water for both the Terrill and Hannassey cattle during times of drought. McKay persuades Maragon to sell the ranch to him in the hopes of both securing a gift for Patricia and ending the conflict by continuing Maragon’s policy of unrestricted access to the river.

McKay shows up at the camp of the search party led by Leech sent out to find the presumed lost McKay.

Upon returning to Ladder Ranch, Leech calls McKay a liar when McKay explains he was never lost or in danger, but McKay again refuses to be goaded into a fight, which disappoints Patricia enough to make the pair reconsider their engagement. Before dawn and without an audience, McKay challenges Leech to a prolonged outdoor fistfight, which ends in a draw. In the morning, Maragon tells Patricia of McKay’s purchase of the Big Muddy for her, which initially convinces her to attempt to make amends with McKay. However, when she learns of McKay’s plan to allow the Hannasseys equal access to the water, she leaves for good.

Wanting to lure the Major into an ambush in the canyon leading to his homestead, Rufus takes Maragon hostage. Although McKay personally promises Rufus equal access to the water, he finds himself in a clash with Buck, which is ultimately settled with a shootout using the old dueling pistols. Buck fires before the signal, but misses, his bullet grazing McKay’s forehead and leaving him open to be shot by McKay. Buck’s subsequent display of cowardice convinces McKay to spare Buck. The frustrated Buck snatches another gun from a nearby cowboy, forcing Rufus to kill his own son. Rufus then goes to the canyon for a final confrontation with the Major and challenges him to a one-on-one showdown. Armed with rifles, the two old men advance and kill one another. With that, the hostilities end, and McKay, along with Julie and Ramon, rides off to start a new life together.

Cast

• Gregory Peck as James McKay

• Jean Simmons as Julie Maragon
• Carroll Baker as Patricia Terrill
• Charlton Heston as Steve Leech

• Burl Ives as Rufus Hannassey
• Charles Bickford as Maj. Henry Terrill
• Alfonso Bedoya as Ramón Gutierrez
• Chuck Connors as Buck Hannassey
• Chuck Hayward as Rafe Hannassey
• Buff Brady as Dude Hannassey
• Jim Burk as Blackie / Cracker Hannassey
• Dorothy Adams as Hannassey Woman
• Chuck Roberson as Terrill Cowboy

Production

Robert Wyler and Jessamyn West wrote the first screenplay for the film based on the Donald Hamilton story that had been serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. Leon Uris wrote a second screenplay and Robert Wilder wrote another, with the final script by James R. Webb and Sy Bartlett. After arbitration, Webb, Bartlett and Wilder received screenplay credit and Wyler and West received adaptation credit. Uris was not given credit as his script deviated too much from the original story.

Director William Wyler was known for shooting an exorbitant number of takes on his films, usually without explaining to the actors what to do differently except “[make it] better”, and this one was no exception. Many of the actors, including Jean Simmons and Carroll Baker, were so traumatized by his directing style that they refused to speak about the experience for years. Simmons later said they constantly received rewrites for the script, making acting extremely difficult. Gregory Peck and Wyler, who were good friends, fought constantly on the set and had a falling out for three years, although they later reconciled. Wyler and Charles Bickford also clashed, as they had done 30 years previously on the production of his 1929 film Hell’s Heroes. Burl Ives, however, claimed to have enjoyed making the film.

Before principal photography was complete, Wyler left for Rome to start work on Ben-Hur, delegating creation of the final scenes involving McKay and Julie to his assistant Robert Swink, whose resulting scenes pleased Wyler so much that he wrote Swink a letter stating: “I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I am with the new ending… The shots you made are complete perfection.”

Locations

The Blanco Canyon scenes were filmed in California’s Red Rock Canyon State Park in the Mojave Desert. The ranch and field scenes with greenery were filmed in the Sierra Nevada foothills near the town of Farmington in central California. Today the working cattle ranch named Snow Ranch is used regularly by NAR and Tripoli High Power and Estes Rocket flyers of all ages.

Reception

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote in a negative review, “for all this film’s mighty pretensions, it does not get far beneath the skin of its conventional Western situation and its stock Western characters. It skims across standard complications and ends on a platitude. Peace is a pious precept, but fightin’ is more excitin’. That’s what it proves.” Variety called the film “one of the best photography jobs of the year”, with a “serviceable, adult” storyline “which should find favor with audiences of all tastes.” Harrison’s Reports declared it “a first-rate super-Western, beautifully photographed in the Technirama anamorphic process and Technicolor. It is a long picture, perhaps too long for what the story has to offer, but there is never a dull moment from start to finish and it holds one’s interest tightly throughout.” Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called it “super stuff. Franz Planer’s photography of Texas is downright awe-inspiring, the characters are solid, the story line firm, the playing first-rate, the music more than dashing in this nearly three-hour tale which should delight everybody.”

John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote, “Of those involved in this massive enterprise, Mr. Bickford and Mr. Ives are the most commendable as they whoop and snort about the sagebrush. But even they are hardly credible types, and as for the rest of the cast, they can be set down as a rather wooden lot.” Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times called the film “too self consciously ‘epical’ to be called great, but at its best, which is frequently, it’s better than good.” The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the picture’s attempts to convey a message were for the most part “superficial and pedestrian,” and found that “the pivotal character of McKay, played on a monotonously self-righteous note by Gregory Peck, never comes alive. It is mainly due to the power of the climactic canyon battle, and Burl Ives’ interesting playing as Rufus, that this remains a not unsympathetic film, decorated pleasantly by Jean Simmons and with spirit by Carroll Baker.”

The film was a big hit, being the second-most popular movie in Britain in 1959. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower liked the movie so much, he screened it on four successive evenings in the White House during his second administration.

Playmobil designed an entire cowboy line based on the architecture of the film.

In a poll of 500 films held by Empire, it was voted 187th-greatest movie of all time.

Accolades

Ives won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, as well as a Golden Globe Award. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for the musical score by Jerome Moross.

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved The Big Country in 2006.

Comic book

A comic-book adaptation of the novel and tie-in to the movie was first released in 1957.

The Big Country (comics)

The Big Country is a comic book adaptation and movie tie-in of the western novel The Big Country by Donald Hamilton.

Publication history

Written by long-time Western comics writer Paul S. Newman, and drawn by Bob Correa, The Big Country was initially serialized in The Saturday Evening Post as “Ambush at Blanco Canyon” on February 2, 9, 16 and 23, 1957.

The story was collected for the first time in 1958, by Dell, as a Dell First Edition B115 paperback, and was reissued many times. In Aug. of 1958, the story was published by Dell Comics, as issue #946 of Dell’s long-running showcase anthology Four Color Comics.

The Big Country was published in hardcover in the UK in 1958 by Allan Wingate.

Plot summary

Maryland sea captain James McKay goes west to Texas, to claim his bride, and steps into a violent feud over land. The movie version stars Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker and Burl Ives.

Watch the movie

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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