El Paso

El Paso (1949)

There was one law in El Paso ... you learned to kill quick ... if you wanted to live long!

Ex-confederate officer Clay Fletcher jumps at the chance to reunite with his once lady-friend, Susan Jeffers, when his father, Judge Fletcher, sends him on an errand to El Paso, Texas to get the signature of Susan's father, Judge Jeffers, on a legal document. Once there he finds the judge has become a drunk and a laughing stock, doing the bidding of local magnate Bert Donner and his running dog, Sheriff La Farge. Just as Clay starts straightening out the town's problems, events occur which force him to abandon the legal system and instead adopt the murderous tactics of a vigilante.

Date of release
1949-03-22
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (17)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Western
Director
Lewis R. Foster

Casting

Interesting facts

El Paso is a 1949 American Western film directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring John Payne, Gail Russell and Sterling Hayden.

Production

The film was based on a story by J. Robert Bren and Gladys Atwater. In July 1947 it was purchased by Pine-Thomas Productions who had just made another Western named after a town in the Southwest, Albuquerque (1948). The story was going to depict the real-life Judge Colt. William Holden was originally mentioned as the possible lead.

The film was the first million-dollar-budgeted movie from Pine-Thomas Productions, who had specialised in low budget action films. They had recently increased their budgets because they felt the movies were more profitable that way.

"We've got people working in this one who two years ago wouldn't have been caught dead in a Pine-Thomas picture," said producer Will Thomas. He added, "in the old days, all we had to do was get a guy blown up in an oil well explosion and go from there, but now, when we want to kill someone, we've got to have a good reason."

Filming started October 1948. Some exterior shots were filmed in El Paso, Texas. Other scenes were shot in Gallup, Arizona, Nevada, and at ranches in the San Fernando Valley.

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

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