Great Day in the Morning (1956) Reviews

• A big, lusty, brawling film of the Colorado Gold Rush

  wc19962004-12-01

  "Great Day in the Morning" is a western from RKO in 1956. It takes place just before the Civil War and deals with Union and Confederate factions both trying to get some gold in Colorado in order to finance the war. Based on the novel by Robert Hardy Andrews, the film is quite faithful to the book. Robert Stack plays a southern gunslinger with cynical overtones. Virginia Mayo, a Technicolor knock-out, meets Stack on her way west and has a love/hate relationship with him. Ruth Roman is a hostess with cleavage in Raymond Burr's saloon and she falls like a ton of bricks for Stack. Burr plays a heavy and gives Roman a bad time. A highpoint of the film is a critical card game between Stack and Burr with Roman dealing the cards. Of course Mayo and Roman are fighting like crazy over Stack.

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• unconditional love or a love that works both ways?

  tmwest2010-06-05

  Jacques Tourneur had the talent for westerns to be like Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher, but somehow something was missing in the script or the budget. This film starts very well showing the conflicts between people in Denver when the Civil War is just about to start. In a kind of incredible card game Owen Pentecost (Robert Stack) wins the saloon from Jumbo Means (Raymond Burr), He also gets involved with the men from the South, who want to take gold to the future Confederate army. But mostly, this is a romantic western, and here it excels with two of the most beautiful actresses of the fifties, Virginia Mayo and Ruth Roman. Virginia is Ann, a kind of cold beauty, who loves Owen, but at the same time hates him for his tough and selfish way of being. Ruth Roman is Boston, who is madly in love with Owen. Roman steals the film from Virginia, but whoever saw Mayo in Colorado Territory or Across the great Divide knows how great she can be. The high point of the film is when both women have an argument about the way they love Owen, Boston with unconditional love, and Ann with a love that has to work both ways.

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• Superior western by Tourneur

  funkyfry2001-05-09

  This western starring the inimitable Robert Stack is quite good, overcoming a somewhat weak and syrupy script, which nonetheless contains some classic lines (my favorite is: When I first stepped out into the world, a drunkard took one look at me and shouted: 'the elephant is loose!' since then, an elephant has been my good luck charm. What's the secret to your remarkable charm? ANSWER: A complete indifference to Elephants.") Not Jacques Tourneur's best film, but his direction is good and the technicolor outdoor fight sequences (especially the dramatic opening sequence, similar to that in Johnny Guitar) are beautiful.

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• Another Shipment Of Southern Gold

  bkoganbing2009-11-30

  In the last days of RKO and Republic Pictures with the B western having gone on to television, the westerns that those two small studios were putting out were not for the kiddie Saturday afternoon trade. Great Day In The Morning is a western with a few adult themes thrown in, Robert Stack is most definitely not bashful around the women, he won't be satisfied kissing his horse. The plot Great Day In The Morning takes place at the beginning of the Civil War. The film has plot elements of three classic westerns, Hondo, Virginia City, and The Far Country. Robert Stack's character of Owen Pentecost is a whole lot like James Stewart in The Far Country. Stack is a southerner, but he's not doing anything for the newborn Confederacy without being well paid. As for the women, Stack has two to choose from, pioneer lass Virginia Mayo and saloon girl Ruth Roman. In fact Ruth Roman is playing pretty much the same part she did in The Far Country. Like in Hondo, Stack is forced into a gunfight with a recalcitrant miner and later on winds up taking the miner's son David MacDonald under his wing. And of course like Virginia City it's all about that Southern gold only here the southerners are the good guys. Not all the northerners are bad like regular army colonel Carleton Young and Captain Alex Nicol, but the two chief villains are Roman's partner Raymond Burr and hotheaded former army sergeant Leo Gordon. Burr is an especially hateful character, he's got two things he hates Stack for, politics and the fact Stack's beating Burr's time with Roman. Burr was always a big heavy man, I met him during the early Eighties in New York, but in his early days he kept his weight down to some degree, if you've seen the original Perry Mason series you well remember that. But here to play the part of a character named Jumbo and he's as big here as I remember seeing him in person and in the later Perry Mason films. In fact Raymond Burr's performance is the most memorable one in Great Day In The Morning. There's enough action for the traditional western fan, but there's a lot of sex in Great Day In The Morning as well. Jacques Tourneur keeps the film going at a good clip. Both traditional western fans and those who favored the adult western soon to be popping up on television will like Great Day In The Morning.

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• The last western directed by Jacques Tourneur

  IlyaMauter2003-05-15

  Great Day in the Morning was the last western directed by Jacques Tourneur. It's based on a novel by Robert Hardy Andrews and features Robert Stack and Virginia Mayo in key roles. The action of the film takes place right before the beginning of the American Civil War. Directly from the start of the film we're introduced to the main character of Owen Pentecost (Robert Stack) who is trying to defend himself when attacked by the Indians. Things start to get pretty bad, but group of people appears headed by Sarg. Zeff Masterson (Leo Gordon) and saves his life. But when Masterson discovers that the man he's just saved is a Confederate, he resents himself for doing so and only is stopped from finishing Owen by his colleague Stephen Kirby (Alex Nicol). Soon they arrive to Denver, Colorado, where everything indicates that the war is ready to break out any moment. But Owen Pentecost more concerned about himself and about the real purpose of his coming to Denver, which is a load of gold that was dig by the confederate miners and is ready to be transported to the south to help the Confederate cause. The delay might ruin everything, and this is what Owen counts on, planning to take advantage of the situation for his own benefit. This is where Boston (Ruth Roman) enters the scene. She is beautiful woman who falls in love with him and having her own opinion about what Owen's future should be makes him a town's saloon owner and herself his associate. Meanwhile the time passes by and the Civil War breaks out with Confederates attacking Fort Sumter and urgent transportation of gold to the south becomes a matter of vital importance. That is where Stephen Kirby reveals his true identity as a Captain of a Union Army and gathers a group of volunteers intending to stop moving out the gold. Great Day in the Morning can be hardly called a classic, but nonetheless is quite a good western worth to take a look at. 7/10

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