Whispering Smith

Whispering Smith (1948)

A new Ladd thrills the Old West !

Smith is an iron-willed railroad detective. When his friend Murray is fired from the railroad and begins helping Rebstock wreck trains, Smith must go after him. He also seems to have an interest in Murray's wife (and vice versa).

Date of release
1948-12-09
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (24)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Western
Director
Leslie Fenton

Casting

Interesting facts

Whispering Smith is a 1948 American Western film directed by Leslie Fenton and starring Alan Ladd as a railroad detective assigned to stop a gang of train robbers. The supporting cast includes Robert Preston, Brenda Marshall and Donald Crisp.

Production

The film was announced in early 1947 as a vehicle for Alan Ladd. It was Ladd's first Western and his first movie in color.

The script made a number of changes to the original novel including changing the double love story to one.

Brenda Marshall was given her first screen role in four years. Filming began on 14 April 1947.

The role of Whispering Smith was partly based on Joe Lefors, and partly on Tim Keliher, both of them frontier lawmen who spent part of their careers as railroad detectives. The part of Murray Sinclair, Smith's friend who turns to crime, was supposedly inspired by Butch Cassidy.

The filmmakers built a Western town on five acres (2.02 ha) of the backlot at a cost of $70,000, equal to $1,009,314 today. It included 2,000 feet (609.6 m) of railroad track, on which authentic 1870 locomotives owned by Paramount were operated. The trains were converted from their original wood-burning fuel system to oil by their original owner, the Virginia & Truckee Railroad of Carson City, Nevada.

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

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