Man of the West (1958)

★ 6.6 1h 40m IMDb

Heading east to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his frontier town home, Link Jones is stranded with singer Billie Ellis and gambler Sam Beasley when their train is held up. For shelter, Jones leads them to his nearby former home, where he was brought up an outlaw. Finding the gang still living in the shack, Jones pretends to be ready to return to a life crime.

Man of the West

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Cast

Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper as Link Jones Died 1961 · Helena, Montana, USA Gary Cooper (May 7, 1901 - May 13, 1961) was an American film actor known for his natural, authentic, and understated acting style and screen performances. His career spanned thirty-six years, from 1...
Julie London
Julie London as Billie Ellis Died 2000 · Santa Rosa, California, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Julie London (September 26, 1926 – October 18, 2000) was an American singer and actress. She was best known for her smoky, sensual voice. London was at her singi...
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb as Dock Tobin Died 1976 · New York City, New York, USA Lee J. Cobb (December 8, 1911 — February 11, 1976) was an American actor. He was best known for his performances in On the Waterfront (1954), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, 12 Angry...
Arthur O'Connell
Arthur O'Connell as Sam Beasley Died 1981 · New York City, New York, USA Arthur O'Connell (March 29, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an American stage and film actor. He appeared in films (starting with a small role in Citizen Kane) in 1941 and television programs (mostly guest a...
Jack Lord
Jack Lord as Coaley Died 1998 · Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA John Joseph Patrick Ryan (December 30, 1920 – January 21, 1998), best known by his stage name Jack Lord, was an American television, film, and Broadway actor. He was known for his starring role as Ste...
John Dehner
John Dehner as Claude Tobin Died 1992 · Richmond [now Staten Island], New York City, New York, USA From Wikipedia John Dehner (November 23, 1915 - February 4, 1992) was an American actor in radio, television, and films. Between 1941 and 1988, he appeared in over 260 films and television programs....

Audience Reviews

John Chard 8/10 May 29, 2017
Another Intelligent Western from Anthony Mann.

Link Jones is on his way to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher, having left his wife and children behind, Link appears to be the epitome of the simple honest man. However, the train he is on is robbed by outlaws, thus meaning that Link's past and his dubious family ties are all careering towards a day of reckoning.

This was Anthony Mann's second to last foray into the Western genre, and perhaps his most clinical as regards a structured tale of men as complicated as they are conflicted? I always find with Mann's Westerns that a sense of doom hangs heavy, there are very few directors in Western cinema history who have this knack of filling the viewer with such a pervading feeling of unease. Here we have Gary Cooper as Link, on the surface an amiable man, but the sequence of events see him thrust back into a life he thought had long since gone. The term that a leopard never changes its spots sits rather well, but here we find Mann fleshing out his lead character with an acknowledgement that a former life has passed, with Cooper perfectly transcending this well scripted arc.

The striking thing about it though, is that Mann's characters are not the quintessential good versus bad characters, these are just men with their own individual hang ups, they all are fallible human beings, which is something that surely we all can identity with. The acting across the board here is top notch, Cooper is excellent, replacing Mann's stock Western muse, James Stewart, he cements his earthy and identifiable worth wholesale. Lee J. Cobb actually is the glue that holds the film together, his portrayal of Dock Tobin perfectly plays alongside Cooper's emotive showing of Link Jones's confliction. Negatively though, we are asked to believe that Gary Cooper is Lee J. Cobb's nephew, with a difference of just ten years between the two men that has to be a casting error one feels.

Still, the film comes highly recommended, the intelligence and dark atmosphere of the piece marks it out for worthwhile emotional investment, whilst Cooper's two main fights (both different) are seriously great cinema. 8.5/10
CinemaSerf 6/10 Dec 04, 2024
This is a much grittier western than I am used to from Anthony Mann; giving Gary Cooper much more to get his teeth into than the usual, simple, gun-slinging fayre. He plays a reformed outlaw who is caught up in a train ambush. "Link" escapes with two other passengers and makes his way to an old homestead - only to find it occupied by the men who attacked the train; and that they are his former gang. His uncle "Dock" - Lee J. Cobb - is determined to lead him back down the path of violence. The psychological nature of this gives it a little more depth - sadly, though, neither Cobb, Cooper nor Julie London as "Billie" really gel together or engage convincingly, the dialogue is a bit stodgy and the ending, though quite violent, is poorly predictable. The photography is suitably grand and it's quite excitingly scored, but this is still not the best.

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