The Crowded Prairie

The horse opera has changed since the good old days (Buck Jones, Tom Mix) when a cowboy preferred his horse to a girl. Today's westerns are different. As a result of the success of Shane and High Noon, Hollywood last week was busy with no less than 22 variations on the same theme. Some of them: P: Hondo (Warner Bros.) is a Shane-type hero played by John Wayne. Says Producer Robert Fellows: "There is a reminder of Shane in this picture, but it is . . . just a coincidence. However, we purposely did alter the horse-opera formula a little. It is dangerous to monkey with westerns . . . Every time someone has taken too great liberties . . . they have fallen flat on their face." P: The Command (Warner Bros.) features Guy Madison as a U.S. Army medical officer who takes command of a cavalry regiment in an emergency. Says Producer David Weisbart: "It's a kind of an offbeat thing. The doctor's approach in most of the picture is fairly intellectual rather than physical. Of course, at the end he turns out to be brave." P: River of No Return (20th Century-Fox) is a CinemaScopepic starring Marilyn Monroe, who 1) wears "Tailored Levis," 2) fights off Indians on a raft with an oar, 3) sings two songs, 4) battles a wildcat barehanded and wins. P: King of the Khyber Rifles (20th Century-Fox), also in CinemaScope, stars Tyrone Power in India, has been called an "eastern western." P: Garden of Evil (20th Century-Fox), with Gary Cooper in CinemaScope, is "a western in Mexico." P: Red Garters (Paramount) is a tongue-in-cheek musical western using abstract settings. The villain wears black and rides a black horse; the hero and his horse are both in white. P: Johnny Guitar (Republic) stars Joan Crawford as a sort of female Shane who shoots it out with Two-Gun Mercedes McCambridge. A lesser character, Scott Brady, plays "The Dancing Kid," a varmint who goes into a dance step just before he blazes away. P: The Black Knight (Columbia) a "medieval western," offers deadpan Alan Ladd as a knight on the town. P: Saskatchewan (Alan Ladd) and The Far Country (James Stewart) take place in Canada and Alaska, are called "northern westerns" by Universal-International. P: War Clouds (United Artists) is notable for a sequence in which the whiteman hero (Rory Calhoun), armed with bow & arrow, fights it out with a gun-toting Indian.

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