BY LEE PFEIFFER
"Night Passage", a top-notch 1957
western showcasing James Stewart and a terrific supporting cast. The
film was to be yet another collaboration between Stewart and director
Anthony Mann but things fell apart when Audie Murphy was cast as
Stewart's brother. Mann objected, saying he found their physical
differences too unbelievable for that concept and felt the film would be
undermined by the casting. Mann dropped out and television director
James Neilson took over the troubled production. The hard feelings between Stewart and Mann ended their long friendship as well as their professional collaborations. Neilson was able to
exploit the wonders of Technirama, a short-lived widescreen process that
was competing with CinemaScope in an attempt to lure increasingly
prosperous Americans away from their new television sets and get them
back into movie theaters. The screenplay was by the estimable Borden
Chase. adapting a story from The Saturday Evening Post, as he had done
for Howard Hawks' 1948 masterwork "Red River".
In "Night Passage", James Stewart plays Grant McLaine, a middle-aged
drifter and cowpoke who had once been hired by the railroad to thwart a
string of robberies committed by the Utica Kid (Audey Murphy), who is
later revealed to be McLaine's kid brother. Seems that the railroad boss
Ben Kimball (J.C. Flippen) became steamed when McLaine allowed the
Utica Kid to escape on one occasion, though he did not know the two men
were brothers. Kimball was convinced that McLaine and the Kid were in
cahoots and fired McLaine. Now a new series of payroll robberies is
occurring on the transport train with dismaying regularity. Kimball
rehires McLaine, though he still harbors suspicions about him being in
collusion with the Utica Kid and his gang. In fact, the Kid is indeed
with a new gang, but this time it's run by Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea), a
cold blooded thief and killer who is plotting another robbery of a
payroll shipment. McLaine ensures he is aboard the train, but he has
secreted the payroll money on himself. When the gang boards the train
after devising a way to waylay the security guards, they find no money
in the safe- so they take Kimball's wife Verna (Elaine Stewart) hostage
until they are paid the $10,000 in payroll funds. Meanwhile, McLaine
finds himself caring for a precious pre-teen orphan boy, Joey Adams
(Brandon DeWilde), who helped him hide the payroll money when the crooks
boarded the train. The rest of the film follows McLaine as he tracks
the gang to their hideout and has a rather tense reunion with his
brother, who ignores his pleas to quit his career in crime. The entire
affair ends with an exciting shootout at an abandoned mine camp that
pits the two brothers on opposite sides.