Night Passage

Night Passage (1957)

This was the night when the naked fury of the McLaines flamed out with consuming vengeance across a terrorized land!

Grant MacLaine, a former railroad troubleshooter, lost his job after letting his outlaw, the Utica Kid, escape. After spending five years wandering the west and earning his living playing the accordion, he is given a second chance by his former boss.

Date of release
1957-07-24
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (87)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Western
Director
James Neilson

Casting

Interesting facts

Night Passage is a 1957 American Western film directed by James Neilson and starring James Stewart and Audie Murphy.

Production background

The film is reminiscent of the popular western collaborations between Stewart and director Anthony Mann, who had directed Stewart eight times in the last six years. This is partly because the project was slated to be their sixth collaboration in the genre (ninth overall). Mann backed out of the project before production due to other obligations and a disagreement over the casting of Audie Murphy and was replaced by James Neilson.

Mann and Stewart did not work together again. Aaron Rosenberg, who produced several of the Stewart-Mann collaborations as well as Night Passage, said that Stewart and Mann fell out after a disagreement over the film's quality, which according to Mann was "trash". Mann felt that Stewart was only making the film so he could play his accordion. This enraged Stewart so much that the two did not speak again.

Dimitri Tiomkin scored the film and co-wrote the songs "Follow the River" and "You Can't Get Far Without a Railroad" with Ned Washington, which Stewart performed himself. The film also offered Stewart the rare opportunity to play the accordion, an instrument he had played since childhood. However, his accordion playing was rerecorded by a professional during post-production.

The railroad scenes were filmed at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Durango, Colorado, using Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad K-28 Class steam locomotive #476 which still operates in excursion service there today. Considerable footage from the railroad scenes was recycled into the 1966 Audie Murphy film Gunpoint.

Co-star Dianne Foster witnessed Audie Murphy's legendary temper when filming a scene in which his horse would not co-operate and several takes were needed. Murphy was riding his own horse, a quarter-horse named Flying John. Murphy became so angry with the animal that he punched it in the face. The film is one of the few in which Murphy played a villain.

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

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