Canyon Passage (1946)

Description

From Jacques Tourneur, the legendary director of Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Flame and the Arrow, comes this visually stunning actioner that combines all the elements of the classic western: gunfights, barroom brawls, gambling, gold prospecting, Indian attacks, romance and the great outdoors. Among the pioneers of the untamed Oregon Territory of the 1850s are pack-mule express owner Logan Stuart (Dana Andrews, The Ox-Bow Incident), light-fingered banker/gambler George Camrose (Brian Donlevy, The Great McGinty), Camrose’s fiancée Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward, Rawhide), a villainous outlaw named Honey Bragg (Ward Bond, Singing Guns) and gunfighter Johnny Steele (Lloyd Bridges, Wichita), the friend of a man Camrose has killed. Hoagy Carmichael (To Have and Have Not) with mule and mandolin meanders through the action, singing four of his hit songs, including “Ole Buttermilk Sky.” These vibrant characters collide in Tourneur’s rich Technicolor panorama of frontier life.