San Antonio

San Antonio (1945)

Warner's Adventure of the Century!

Rancher Clay Hardin arrives in San Antonio to search for and capture Roy Stuart, notorious leader of a gang of cattle rustlers. The vicious outlaw is indeed in the Texan town, intent on winning the affections of a beautiful chanteuse named Jeanne Starr. When the lovely lady meets and falls in love with the charismatic Hardin, the stakes for both men become higher.

Date of release
1945-12-29
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (21)
Runtime
1h 49m
Genres
Western
Director
David Butler

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

San Antonio is a 1945 American Western film starring Errol Flynn and Alexis Smith. The film was written by W. R. Burnett and Alan Le May and directed in Technicolor by David Butler as well as uncredited Robert Florey and Raoul Walsh.

Production

W. R. Burnett, one of the writers, said Warner Bros had the idea of getting Max Brand to write an Errol Flynn Western. Burnett says "They gave him (Brand) carte blanche, which they never did, because of his enormous reputation. He used to come in every day with a briefcase and go out every night with a briefcase. We found out later he brought in two quarts of gin every day and drank them up-took the empties out."

Burnett says a few months later he got a call from Jim Geller, head of Warners story department, saying they had a shooting date, Flynn, and a color commitment, but Brand had come up with "a very original idea for us. A Western in which there's no action." Geller told Burnett to come up with a story with producer Robert Buckner.

(According to a later article on Brand, the author contributed to the scripts of the Flynn films Uncertain Glory, The Adventures of Don Juan, and Montana before becoming a war correspondent and being killed in May 1944.)

Burnett says he wrote the script in three weeks then rewrote it. He says he pitched Marlene Dietrich for Flynn's co star; Jack Warner was enthusiastic but did not want to pay Dietrich's fee, especially when he had so many other actors under contract.

In March 1944, Warners announced they would make the film from a script by Burnett with Raoul Walsh to direct. It was the third in a series of Westerns Flynn made named after a city, following Dodge City and Virginia City.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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