Dark Side of Rodeo Life!!!

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Along with "With a Song in My Heart", "The Lusty Men" really pushed Susan Hayward toward international stardom. Her role as Louise mirrored her own real life attitude to love and marriage. She tried to stick to her marriage both in the movie and in real life and it could have been Susan saying about her own circumstances "Men!! - I'd like to fry them all in deep fat"!!! Even though the movie garnered excellent reviews and rated a movie review page in the prestigious "Look" magazine it wasn't as big a hit as her other releases.

Rodeos are Jeff McLeod's (Robert Mitchum) reason for living and when he is gored by a Brahma bull he is emotionally and physically spent. He desperately wants to rebuild his life and returns to his childhood home. Remembering some "buried treasure" he had hidden under the floorboards as a kid, he retrieves it only to find an old rodeo program and a couple of coins. Wes and Louise Merritt (Arthur Kennedy and Susan Hayward) are keen to buy Jeff's home and Wes, who recognises him as a former Rodeo star, gets him a job as a ranch hand. Wes has won a few events himself and feels that with Jeff as his manager they would be a great team. Louise is unimpressed with Jeff's cool and lacksadasical attitude, she wants Wes in one piece and to save his money for a house deposit.

Wes, with childhood memories of a father who was never his own boss, quits his job for a life on the rodeo circuit and what he thinks is easy money. What with busted legs and faces scarred from Brahma bull hooves, Wes is getting a taste of grim reality - and it's only their first day!!! The film creates an exciting atmosphere with wild horses, bucking broncos and leisure time spent carousing in the bars where a day's prize money could be lost in drinking and gambling. Louise sees Wes being sucked into the itinerant way of life and Jeff, after being taunted by Wes for sponging on his earnings, signs up the next day for all events, even though he is far from being in good shape. He hits trouble when his foot gets caught in a stirrup and his death sets up a pretty contrived ending where Wes, realising Jeff had only his best interests at heart, gives up the circuit for a little home in Texas.

Susan gives an unusually restrained performance as Louise (except for one hilarious cat fight) in this movie that shows not only the downside but the excitement that drives cowboys to give their all in the ring. It goes without saying that both Kennedy and Mitchum give superlative performances but a couple of the women step up as well - Maria Hart and Lorna Thayer, actresses I have never heard of. Actual shots of rodeos were filmed in Tuscon, Arizona and Pendleton, Oregon with some of America's most famed rodeo stars including the appearance of Cy Taillon - "The World's Greatest Rodeo Announcer". In fact I can heartily recommend Cyra McFadden's wonderful memoir about life on the rodeo circuit as well as what it was like to be the unofficial mascot as well as Cy Taillon's daughter - "Rain or Shine".

score 10/10

kidboots 16 October 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2504001/