Western Union

This 1941 frontier Western, loosely based on the titular 1939 novel by Zane Grey, is built around the effort to string telegraph wire from Omaha to Salt Lake City. Robert Young gets top billing as Richard Blake, an East Coast tenderfoot who signs on as an engineer. Randolph Scott costars as Vance Shaw, an outlaw trying to go straight, who gets a job as a scout after saving the life of a Western Union surveyor (Dean Jagger). Both Blake and Shaw end up being respectful rivals for the affections of the surveyor's sister (Virginia Gilmore), while their traveling work camp is under siege from a gang of robbers led by Shaw's brother (Barton MacLane). The Civil War is raging back East and Shaw's Southerner brother is "serving the cause" by robbing the camp, although his real interest lies in pocketing a profit. Shaw is caught between protecting the telegraph company and protecting his sibling. Austrian-born director Fritz Lang gives the action here a hard edge, from a spectacular forest fire with burning trees falling and flaming wagons, to Shaw escaping leather binds by holding his hands over a campfire. Modern audiences will wince at the portrayal of Native American tribes as either naive and superstitious or pathetic drunks looking for booze (Western Union is as regressive as any Western of its day), but Lang serves up solid drama and gives the film spectacular Technicolor grandeur. The superb supporting cast includes John Carradine as the company doctor, along with characters actors Slim Summerville (as the nervous cook) and Chill Wills. A classic American Western, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)