Abilene Town (UA 1946, Randolph Scott, Edgar Buchanan)

Published

5 years ago

December 21, 2018

Pioneer town Abilene, Kansas, is the setting in which tensions between long-settled cattle ranchers and new homesteaders play out. Abilene sits at the tail of a livestock path that stretches all the way to Texas. Its inhabitants include a dipsomaniac sheriff, a true-hearted dance-hall girl, a sweet shopkeeper, a dangerously alluring barmaid, and a two-fisted town marshal. The community-at-large is split in half between those who want this place to stay a rowdy frontier town and those who yearn to change it into a tranquil place where they can raise a family. Based on the novel “Trail Town” by Ernest Haycox.

The dancehall routine was choreographed by Sammy Lee, an Oscar-nominated former Ziegfeld Follies director who was credited with creating overhead camerawork in dance numbers a year before Busby Berkeley did so.

production details
USA | United Artists | 90 minutes | 1946

Director: Edwin L. Marin
Producer: Jules Levey
Cinematography: Archie Stout
Editors: Richard Heermance, Otho Lovering
Script: Harold Shumate

cast
Randolph Scott as Marshall Dan Mitchell
Edgar Buchanan as Sheriff Bravo Trimble
Ann Dvorak as Rita
Rhonda Fleming as Sherry Balder
Lloyd Bridges as Henry Deiser
Helen Boyce as Big Annie
Howard Freeman as Ed Balder
Richard Hale as Charlie Fair
Jack Lambert as Jet Younger
Dick Curtis as ‘Cap’ Ryker
Earl Schenck as George Hazelhurst
Eddy Waller as Hannaberry
Hank Patterson as Doug Neil