Dan Mitchell (Randolph Scott) is the town marshal of Abilene, KS, in the turbulent years after the Civil War and the start of the big cattle drives out of Texas. The town is growing faster than a lot of citizens are prepared to deal with it, especially as homesteaders start moving in, fighting for space with the cattlemen. Dan has kept the peace, such as it is, by keeping the saloons, gambling, and guns on one side of Main Street and the shop-owners, farmers, women, and children on the other. He's also been walking a tightrope in his own life, conducting a sometimes turbulent romance with Rita (Ann Dvorak), a saloon singer and co-owner, while also not discouraging the attentions of Sherry Balder (Rhonda Fleming), the "nice girl" daughter of one of the town's leading businessmen, who would love to marry Dan if only he would settle down. A new wave of homesteaders is arriving, and the cattlemen, cowboys, and saloon owners want them driven out and the town kept wide open, fearing the homesteaders' religious beliefs and the arrival of families, which means schools, building, and encroaching "respectability." Trouble breaks out and people are killed, with Dan caught in the middle. Using his guile and a good deal of bravery, and the unwitting help from the cowardly county sheriff (Edgar Buchanan), Dan manages to get the shop owners onto the side of the homesteaders, and plays a dangerous game of divide-and-conquer with the saloon-keepers and cowboys.

Since the conversion to law and order of practically every lawless hamlet in the Old West now is in Hollywood's archives, it was but a matter of time before Abilene's lusty story was considered cinematically. And, in "Abilene Town," which came to the Globe on Saturday, Jules Levey, the producer, has fixed his camera sights on that Kansas crossroads and has come up with a Western that may or may not be history but that certainly should satisfy lovers of that genre. True, it is basically horse opera in which the music isn't stinted, but it is turned out with flavor and pace, and the shooting and fighting are unrestrained.

Ernest Haycox, as noted a chronicler of the Old West as any (i.e., "Stagecoach"), is responsible for the yarn, which in the main treats of the homesteaders' struggles to settle the prairie at Abilene and the dying attempts of the cattlemen to keep the trail and range free at that terminal. In the course of this saga Edwin L. Marin, the director, apparently a man averse to nuance, has seen to it that the action is loud and plentiful.

Gary Tooze

September 8th, 2016