Celebrate western superstar Randolph Scott with a spectacular Technicolor A-western from 1941, WESTERN UNION. Randy’s an outlaw on the run who stops to help Western Union Railroad Engineer Dean Jagger. That act of kindness pays off when Scott decides to go straight and is hired by Jagger to be part of the team installing poles and cable to carry messages on the new Western Union service.
Joining the team is headstrong Harvard man Robert Young, who gets top billing. Both make plays for Jagger’s sister, Virginia Gilmore, but Scott’s former life, and gang of renegades lead by Barton MacLane, make it difficult.
This film is loaded with action and looks gorgeous, filmed in and around Zion and Kanab, Utah. The cast is filled with solid performances. In addition to those actors mentioned above, there’s Chill Wills, more subdued than usual, John Carradine, Slim Summerville, George Chandler, Iron Eyes Cody, Tom London and Kermit Maynard. Stunts were done by Yakima Canutt, John Epper and Frank McGrath, among others.
It’s been said that WESTERN UNION was a favorite of its director, Fritz Lang. Most known for crime dramas like M, MAN HUNT and THE BIG HEAT, Lang was just coming off the success of his first western the year before, THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES starring Henry Fonda and John Carradine.
This movie was produced by Randolph Scott’s future business partner, Harry Joe Brown. From the late 1940s on, Scott and Brown made one classic western after another, culminating in their batch of films in the 1950s directed by Budd Boetticher and written by Burt Kennedy.
Zane Grey's WESTERN UNION is a wonderful mix of traditional western heroics from a long-ago era of classic filmmaking. It’s always a joy to watch a Randolph Scott western. Here he is in one of his biggest.
And don’t miss the interview with Claude Jarman, Jr. on A WORD ON WESTERNS talking about working with Randolph Scott, Donna Reed and Lee Marvin in HANGMAN’S KNOT.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/OMEXtVIrWNU
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