The Naked Spur (1953)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: Colorado
• Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

The Naked Spur is a 1953 American Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, and Millard Mitchell. Written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, the film is about a bounty hunter who tries to bring a murderer to justice, and is forced to accept the help of two strangers who are less than trustworthy.

Production

The Naked Spur was the third of five Western collaborations between James Stewart and Anthony Mann and the third of eight overall collaborations. The two previous Westerns were Winchester '73 (1950) and Bend of the River (1952). Stewart was given the lead role of Howard Kemp, an embittered rancher turned bounty hunter. The film is notable for having only five speaking parts.

Robert Ryan, known for his roles as ruthless villains and hard-boiled cops, was cast as Ben Vandergroat, a wild killer with a $5,000 "dead or alive" bounty on his head for the murder of a Kansas marshal. Ryan would work with Mann again in Men in War (1957) and God's Little Acre (1958). Janet Leigh was cast as Lina Patch, Vandergroat's companion who eventually falls in love with Kemp.

Millard Mitchell, who played Jesse Tate, a grizzled old prospector, died at fifty years of age from lung cancer shortly after this picture. This was his next-to-last movie, followed by Here Come the Girls (released October 1953), starring Bob Hope.

The film was filmed in Lone Pine, California, and on location in the San Juan Mountains and Durango in Colorado. In an interview conducted in 1967, Mann described it as "magnificent countryside and everything lent itself to improvisation. I never understood why almost all westerns are shot in desert landscapes! John Ford, for example, adores Monument Valley, but I know Monument Valley very well and it’s not the whole West.

According to writer and historian Frederic B. Wildfang during filming, Stewart dedicated a monument in town, marking the area as the "Hollywood of the Rockies". Production started in late May and ended in June 1952.

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