Saddle the Wind

United States

1958

84 Min

Color

2.35:1

English

Currently 3.2/5 Stars.
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DIR Robert Parrish, John Sturges

SCR Rod Serling, Thomas Thompson, Daniel Fuchs

CAST Robert Taylor, Julie London, John Cassavetes, Donald Crisp, Charles McGraw, Royal Dano, Richard Erdman, Douglas Spencer, Ray Teal, Stanley Adams, Jay Adler, William Challee, Nacho Galindo

PROD DES Malcolm Brown, William A. Horning

Robert Taylor stars in this Rod Serling-penned tale of two brothers with different ideas about gunplay. Taylor is Steve Sinclair, a retired gunslinger looking to establish a quiet life on a small cattle ranch. His younger brother, Tony (indie legend John Cassavetes), grew up watching Steve duel with other outlaws, and he can’t understand why anyone would give up the lifestyle. He has a taste for pistol action, one that turns into bloodlust after he makes his first kill (Charles McGraw). As much as Steve tries to keep Tony out of trouble, he can’t stop the kid from charging forward, and Tony nearly starts a land war when a poor farmer (Royal Dano) tries to claim grazing land as his own. It comes down to brother vs. brother and a surprising ending. —Dvdtalk

Director

Robert Parrish

Robert R. Parrish (born 4 January 1916, Columbus, Georgia – 4 December 1995, Southampton, New York) was an American actor, film editor, film director, and writer. He received an Academy Award for Film Editing for the 1947 film, Body and Soul.

Parrish was the son of factory cashier Gordon R. Parrish and Laura R. Parrish. In the mid-1920s, the family moved from Georgia to Los Angeles and Parrish and his sisters Beverly and Helen began obtaining work as actors soon thereafter. Parrish made his film debut in the 1927 Our Gang short Olympic Games. (Their mother, Laura R. Parrish, was an actress as well and appeared in a few films of the 1940s.) He appeared in the anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Charles Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), and in several films for John Ford.

Ford then enlisted him as an assistant editor in 1936 on Mary of Scotland, and as a sound editor on Young Mr Lincoln (1939). Parrish worked as an assistant editor and sound editor on… read more

Robert R. Parrish (born 4 January 1916, Columbus, Georgia – 4 December 1995, Southampton, New York) was an American actor, film editor, film director, and writer. He received an Academy Award for Film Editing for the 1947 film, Body and Soul.

Parrish was the son of factory cashier Gordon R. Parrish and Laura R. Parrish. In the mid-1920s, the family moved from Georgia to Los Angeles and Parrish and his sisters Beverly and Helen began obtaining work as actors soon thereafter. Parrish made his film debut in the 1927 Our Gang short Olympic Games. (Their mother, Laura R. Parrish, was an actress as well and appeared in a few films of the 1940s.) He appeared in the anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Charles Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), and in several films for John Ford.

Ford then enlisted him as an assistant editor in 1936 on Mary of Scotland, and as a sound editor on Young Mr Lincoln (1939). Parrish worked as an assistant editor and sound editor on other Ford movies as Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Parrish and Ford were in the United States Navy during the Second World War, and worked on documentary and training films including The Battle of Midway (1942).

In 1947 he won an Oscar for his debut as a feature film editor on Robert Rossen’s high tempo boxing drama Body and Soul; the award was shared with Francis Lyon. Parrish was later nominated for another Rossen film – the political drama All the King’s Men (1949); he shared the nomination with Al Clark.

Parrish went on to contribute his technical talents to a host of highly regarded films and made a promising directorial debut in 1951 with the gripping revenge melodrama, Cry Danger. His subsequent output met with varying success. The Purple Plain (1954) was nominated for “Best British film” at the 8th British Academy Film Awards. One of the most notorious of his films was the James Bond Parody Casino Royale (1967), in which he was one of the film’s five directors. His last film, on which he shared co-director credit with Bertrand Tavernier, was Mississippi Blues (1983).

Parrish wrote two memoirs, Growing Up in Hollywood (1976) and its sequel Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1988). Of the first, Kevin Brownlow wrote, “His stories about these pictures were marvellous in themselves, and he often came at them sideways, so not only the punchline but the situation took you by surprise. We all entreated him to write them down and in 1976 he did so, producing one of the most enchanting – and hilarious – books about the picture business ever written. It was called Growing Up in Hollywood and it ought to be reprinted in this centenary year.” Summing up Parrish’s career, Allen Grant Richards wrote, “Other than his excellent editing work and early directing, Parrish may be most remembered as storyteller from his two books of Hollywood memoirs.” —Wikipedia

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John Sturges

One of Hollywood’s top action directors of the late 1950s and 1960s, John Sturges, for a time, was a name associated almost exclusively with large-scale action-adventure films. A one-time assistant in RKO’s blueprint department, Sturges spent most of his early career in the studio’s art department and editing room (an especially productive department, where directors Robert Wise and Mark Robson also got their starts), before joining David O. Selznick as a production assistant and later as an editor. He became a director in the U.S. Army Air Force, making documentary and training films, including Thunderbolt, in collaboration with veteran director William Wyler. He returned to Hollywood as a director and, for a time, made successful if fairly undistinguished films (mostly action or suspense) until 1954, when he took on Bad Day at Black Rock. Sturges, who had shown a knack for working with the increasingly difficult Spencer Tracy (in The People Against O’Hara), coaxed a great performance… read more

One of Hollywood’s top action directors of the late 1950s and 1960s, John Sturges, for a time, was a name associated almost exclusively with large-scale action-adventure films. A one-time assistant in RKO’s blueprint department, Sturges spent most of his early career in the studio’s art department and editing room (an especially productive department, where directors Robert Wise and Mark Robson also got their starts), before joining David O. Selznick as a production assistant and later as an editor. He became a director in the U.S. Army Air Force, making documentary and training films, including Thunderbolt, in collaboration with veteran director William Wyler. He returned to Hollywood as a director and, for a time, made successful if fairly undistinguished films (mostly action or suspense) until 1954, when he took on Bad Day at Black Rock. Sturges, who had shown a knack for working with the increasingly difficult Spencer Tracy (in The People Against O’Hara), coaxed a great performance out of the legendary star (and some of the best work ever by Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Anne Francis, among others) and transformed the film from a routine suspense vehicle into a powerful thriller, dealing with the then increasingly topical subject of racism and violence. Sturges received his only Academy Award nomination for Bad Day At Black Rock, and his career was made, as he became sought out by Hollywood’s top producers. Gunfight At the O.K. Corral (1957), which he directed for producer Hal Wallis, was another hit. He was also responsible for The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and The Last Train From Gun Hill (1959), starring Spencer Tracy and Kirk Douglas. Sturges then became his own producer, beginning with The Magnificent Seven (1960), a large-scale Western action vehicle adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954). It turned most of its featured players (including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn) into stars and was popular enough to generate four sequels as well as a major hit musical theme by Elmer Bernstein. The Great Escape (1963), a fact-based all-star World War II thriller, was the high water mark of Sturges’ career. It became an enormous theatrical hit and a subsequent favorite on home video and laserdisc (where there are two rival editions out — one featuring Sturges’s own recollections about the movie). His next movie, The Satan Bug (1965), based on a popular best-seller, seemed to be a deliberate attempt to get away from big, all-star vehicles. It failed and quickly ended up on television, while The Hallelujah Trail (1965) proved an awkward, unpopular Western satire despite its big-name cast. His subsequent movies, including Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Joe Kidd (1972), were popular but never on the scale of Sturges’s early 1960s work. And his Hour of the Gun (1967), a more personal, deeply psychological reinterpretation of events surrounding the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, was a failure at the box office. Marooned (1969), which he inherited as a project from Frank Capra, was initially a failure, until the story of an Apollo spacecraft trapped in orbit suddenly took on new relevancy in the wake of the Apollo 13 explosion; it became a hit soon after. The Eagle Has Landed (1976), a return to Great Escape-style action and scale dealing with an attempt by the Germans to kidnap Winston Churchill during World War II, was successful, but also marked his retirement. In 1991, Sturges came out of retirement to participate in the making of a special laserdisc edition of The Great Escape for Voyager Company. Although not highly regarded as a stylist, Sturges had a way of working with actors and designing scenes that elicited strong emotional response from audiences — especially men — that made his pictures extremely compelling. He probably rated Academy Award consideration for The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Curiously, he seemed to understand the special appeal that his films had for male audiences seeking escapist entertainment, and several of his films, including The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra, don’t feature a single female cast member. However, he never descended into cheap entertainment in catering to his audience. And one actress, Anne Francis, did some of her best work in two of his movies, Bad Day at Black Rock and The Satan Bug. —allmovie guide

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