Tall Man Riding

Some of the same plot elements in the far more expensive James Stewart western, The Far Country which came out the year before are to be found in this fine Randolph Scott B western Tall Man Riding. Like Stewart in his film, Randolph Scott is a tough and touchy guy you don’t push too hard and like Stewart he has two leading ladies and you’re not quite sure which one he’ll end up with in the end.
Tall Man Riding is a range war western and Scott’s the loner who’s ridden back into town and into the middle of said war. On the one side is John Baragrey the owner of the local saloon and a man pushing homesteaders in on the local Ponderosa owner and Scott finds him repugnant on general principles. On the other side the local Ponderosa owner is Robert Barrat who was making his farewell big screen appearance. Scott was courting Dorothy Malone, Barrat’s daughter and Barrat thought him not worthy. He ran Scott out of town after administering a public whipping to him. Malone’s now married to William Ching.
The only friend Scott does make is saloon girl Peggie Castle who is the personal squeeze of Baragrey. She’d like to trade up if she can and finds Randy quite to her liking. She even saves him from a bushwhacking.
Tall Man Riding has enough hard riding and gunplay to suit western fans and it is also a harbinger of the westerns soon to be populating the small screen with more adult themes. There are two other roles of note in Tall Man Riding, John Dehner plays a sleazy lawyer and Paul Richards plays a gunfighter on the payroll of Baragrey.
In my description you will also notice some plot similarities to Destry Rides Again and the climax involves a land rush which while not as spectacular as the one in both versions of Cimarron is still exciting enough and done well enough with the small budget this B film had.
Tall Man Riding is a really good Randolph Scott western, one of the better ones he did in the Fifties.

Solid Randolph Scott western

Scott plays Larry Madden, a man who left the town of Little River after being whipped by local landowner Tucker Ordway… now he wants revenge! He isn’t the only one who wants to destroy Ordway; Cibo Pearlo, owner of the town’s saloon wants him dead too. One might think that Madden and Pearlo would join forces but they dislike each other as much as they dislike Ordway! Madden wants to kill Ordway in a fair fight but as Ordway has a reputation as the fastest gun around he has a second plan so that even if he is dead he’ll get his revenge… he sent a lawyer to Washington to ascertain the legality of Ordway’s land claim and has discovered it is not legal. As with most westerns there are romantic possibilities; here the question is will Madden end up with Cibo’s girl Rivo or Ordway’s daughter Corinna, who he was involved with before.
This B-western is packed with action including several shootouts, brawls, the ambushing of a stagecoach and a spectacular scene where people rushed to claim Ordway’s land. These scenes were all impressively filmed and looked believable despite nobody bleeding when shot! Scott did a fine job in the lead role and supporting actresses Dorothy Malone and Peggy Castle were suitably spirited as Corinna and Rivo. Being a story about revenge I thought I’d know how it would end early on but due to an interesting twist that cliché was avoided.
Randolph Scott may have been getting on a bit when he made many of his westerns but he still had it in him to look believable as a tough guy; in fact here it works to his advantage as he is out for revenge for something that happened five years previously… something that wouldn’t have been believable if he’d been in his early twenties! It does however mean he is a bit too old to be involved with the films two romantic possibilities as he is old enough to be their fathers.
Overall this is a great little film; if you are a fan of the western genre it is well worth watching; I’m surprised it isn’t better known.