Warpath | |
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Directed by | Byron Haskin |
Screenplay by | Frank Gruber |
Story by | Frank Gruber [1] |
Produced by | Nat Holt |
Starring | Edmond O'Brien Dean Jagger Forrest Tucker Harry Carey Jr. |
Cinematography | Ray Rennahan |
Edited by | Philip Martin |
Music by | Paul Sawtell |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | Nat Holt Productions |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.25 million (US rentals) [2] |
Warpath is a 1951 American Western film directed by Byron Haskin and starring Edmond O'Brien, Polly Bergen, Dean Jagger, Forrest Tucker and Harry Carey Jr. The film was released as a Fawcett Comics Film #9, in Technicolor, in August 1951.
John Vickers (Edmund O'Brien), a former United States Army / Union Army officer in the American Civil War has spent eight years hunting for the three men who murdered the woman he loved. He finds one of them, Woodson, and kills him in a gunfight, but not before learning from him that the other two men have joined the United States Army cavalry, and unbeknownst to him, in the ill-fated 7th Cavalry Regiment.
En route to the upper western Dakota Territory (now North Dakota), where Vickers plans to reenlist in the Army as a buck private recruit, then join the men under the command of General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876), (James Millican), at Fort Abraham Lincoln, to continue his search in the ranks of the Army cavalry, he sees a sergeant named O'Hara (Forrest Tucker) physically manhandling an attractive young woman. Molly Quade (Polly Bergen), is grateful for his intervention, but Sgt. O'Hara gets even later when Vickers coincidentally ends up serving under him at the fort, giving him the most unpleasant menial dirty duties and assignments.
Molly has come to the fort to help her father Sam Quade (Dean Jagger), run a general store. He is opposed to her attraction to this new recruit Vickers. While out on an assigned mission, a troop of soldiers led by Captain Gregson (Harry Carey Jr.), are badly outnumbered by a band of Lakota Sioux warriors until being rescued by General Custer and his troops. Vickers is recognized by General Custer as a former Union Army officer from his Civil War days a decade before and is promoted to first sergeant.
O'Hara realizes that Vickers suspects him to be one of the killers of his fiancée. An ambush attempt fails, so the Sergeant deserts the Army and flees. A military wagon train is formed to evacuate civilians from the fort while Custer prepares to do battle with the Sioux natives near the Little Bighorn River further west in the southeastern portion of the adjacent Montana Territory at what turns out to be the later tragedy of the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876, but along the way, Molly, her father and now Sgt. Vickers and several others are taken captive. They see that ex-Sgt. O'Hara is a prisoner too, and when he learns Custer's troops of men will be hopelessly outnumbered and trapped on two sides of separate bands of thousands of warriors and probably slaughtered, despite his earlier crimes and desertion, he tries to go warn the general and sacrifices his own life running through a gauntlet line in the village, distracting the Sioux until the others led by Vickers can escape.
After Molly and her father Sam with Vickers grab some unguarded horses behind their tent and rideM off , then a distance further off, hide from the Indians until daylight. Molly becomes aware that her father, turns out to be the third killer that Sgt. Vickers has been seeking for years. Before she can persuade Vickers not to kill him, Sam Quade rides off in the darkness by himself to try to warn Custer, which will certainly lead to his own death.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment is a United States Army cavalry regiment formed in 1866. Its official nickname is "Garryowen", after the Irish air "Garryowen" that was adopted as its march tune. The regiment participated in some of the largest battles of the American Indian Wars, including its famous defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where its commander Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was killed. The regiment also committed the Wounded Knee Massacre, where more than 250 men, women and children of the Lakota were killed.
Forrest Meredith Tucker was an American actor in both movies and television who appeared in nearly a hundred films. Tucker worked as a vaudeville straight man at the age of fifteen. A mentor provided funds and contacts for a trip to California, where party hostess Cobina Wright persuaded guest Wesley Ruggles to give Tucker a screen test because of Tucker's photogenic good looks, thick wavy hair and height of six feet, five inches.
William Winer Cooke was a military officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War and the Black Hills War. He was the adjutant for George Armstrong Custer and was killed during the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Bloody Knife was an American Indian who served as a scout and guide for the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment. He was the favorite scout of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and has been called "perhaps the most famous Native American scout to serve the U.S. Army."
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Winfield Scott Edgerly was an officer in the United States Army in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Born in New Hampshire in 1846, he attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1870. He served on the frontier through the Indian Wars, including the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee Massacre; in the Spanish–American War; in the Philippine Insurrection; and (briefly) in World War I. He served in several command positions. He was an observer of the Kaiser Maneuvers in Germany in 1907. He was retired as a brigadier general for disability in 1909, was recalled briefly in 1917 and died in 1927. Edgerly is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
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