TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

weezeralfalfa A 1951 MGM color western, lapsed into public domain. Several copies available at YouTube: all with frequent washed out colors and slightly fuzzy image. Nonetheless, they are good enough for the determined viewer. Also available in "The Great American Western" DVD pack.The screenplay focuses on an unwed mother(Sally Forrest as Lily),and the question of who is the father. Lily won't tell and neither will the father, who doesn't want to suffer retribution at the hands of her 2 big brothers Hub(John Ireland) and Dick(Hugh O'Brien), or his wife or father. Although neighbor Hewie, a young ranch hand, has long had a crush on Lily, suspicion falls on Owen(Burt Lancaster): one of two brothers who run a neighboring ranch for their ailing father(Arch). Owen's guilt is assumed by some after he visits Lily, staying at a neighbor's house, and leaves her $500. Later, it's discovered that Owen's brother Lee(Robert Walker) withdrew $500. from their account, making his wife, Jen(Joanne Dru) assume that he is the likely father. She tells Owen she wants to leave, but Owen talks her into staying, although she locks Lee out of the bedroom. Owen has also figured out that Lee is the father but, like Jen, won't tell anyone. Lily's brothers still believe Owen is the father, and stick him up when he again visits Lily. Owen has a fist fight with one, until Lily appears with a rifle to end it, and send her brothers to jail for a week. I should explain that Owen was adopted as an orphan, while Lee is Arch's(father) natural son. Amazingly, the narrator in the introduction gets this backwards! Owen appears to be a little older and definitely taller and bigger. He's the foreman, and certainly more responsible than Lee. One wonders why Jen married Lee rather than Owen. Owen suggests to Lee that if he values his life, he best leave for other parts before Lily's brothers get out of jail. Lee sends mixed messages as to whether he is leaving. He asks for and receives a half ownership share of the father's ranch. Yet, he sells 3000 head of cattle, supposedly to get him started in parts unknown. Arch says that Owen will inherent the other half interest in the ranch when he(Arch)dies. Lee arranges for Lily's brothers to join the cattle herding, arranging with them to ambush Owen when Lee leads him to the place. Well, you can more or less guess what actually happens. Unfortunately, there is no hint whether Owen and Jen are likely to marry, or whether Owen or Hewie will likely marry Lily. Lily seems a pretty independent person, but my guess is she will eventually marry Hewie, as someone who will not try to be too dominating over her.

LeonLouisRicci Burt Lancaster Saddles Up for the First Time and Seems Home on the Range in This Underrated Western. It's Got Everything a Thinker's Western Could Have. A Detailed "Adult" Script When the "Adult" Western was Just Being Born and Would Flourish with Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher.This One Feels Different. With a Voice Over Narration Uncommon in the Genre, it Lays Out Details About Cattle Ranching and Roundups that are Interesting and Add Flavor to the Proceedings. The Baby Out of Wedlock Story (that is the vengeance of the title) Must have had the Production Code Squirming, is Unique for the Time and Almost Unheard of in Westerns.It's Got a Good Cast, a Prolific Director, an MGM Budget, Color, Wide Open Spaces, Gritty Violence, and a Crackling Mature Mixture of Morality and Money Grubbing. Robert Walker is as Slimy as They Come as the Spoiled and Evil Son, and John Ireland and Hugh O'Brian as Dim-Witted Thugs Using Family Ties to Justify Their Lust for Violence. As In Most Westerns the Females are Peripheral to the Story Even Though They are Central to the Motivations of the Hard Living Men. Overall, this is an Offbeat Film that Seems to have Elevated Itself Spontaneously as the Unusual Elements Rose to the Forefront and Made This a Unique Entry in the Usually Stodgy Western Formula.

sol **SPOILERS** Coming back from a 1,000 mile cattle drive Owen Daybright, Burt Lanaster, and his step brother Lee Strobie, Robert Walker, are socked to find out the the local and unmarried saloon waitress Lily Fasken, Sally Forrest,has given birth to a baby boy. The big thing about all this is that Lily's brother Dick, Hugh O'Brian, has showed up at the Strobie house when Lily is now being cared for by Lee's wife Jen, Joanne Dru, to find out who his sister baby's daddy is and make him pay either by arranging a shotgun wedding for him or using the shotgun, if he refuses, to blast him to kingdom come!Because Owen is so concerned for Lily and her infant son that he goes so far as giving her $500.00 to take care of things that Dick interprets that act of kindness as an admittance of guilt in him being the person who knocked her up! Seeing that he's no match for the much bigger stronger as faster, on the draw, Owen Dick calls for help in getting his big brother Hub, John Ireland, to come over and help him out in taking on Owen. What the two violent and airhead Fasken brothers totally overlook is the obvious! It wasn't the honest and gentlemanly Owen who put their sister Lily in the "family way" but Owen's sneaky and lying step-brother Lee!The noble and straight shooting Owen ends up taking a number of beating from the Fasken boys, as well as giving them back as good as he takes, throughout the entire film even though he knows that it was Lee who's their sisters baby's father that he's accused of being. Lee in return for Owen's generosity, in keeping the truth about his relationship with Lily secret, ends up setting up Owen to be gunned down by the Fasken brothers as well as trying to swindle the Strobie Ranch right from under his dad's Arch Strobie, Ray Collins, nose! What a rat fink and low-life piece of horse manure he turned out to be!**SPOILER ALERT*** All this malicious shenanigans on Lee's part backfires on him with his bumbling partners in crime, in trying to murder Owen, the Fasken Brothers screwing up as usual his master-plan in getting themselves killed by Owen and the sheriff's posse who came to his rescue. As for Lee he meets his end, and his maker, at the end of his brother's .42 revolver when he challenged Owen to draw on him thinking that he, in practicing day and night for years, would easily outdraw him. Owen in the end did what was right like he did throughout the entire film by telling, out of hearing range from the movie audience, the dead Lee's wife Jen, who in fact had no use for him when he was alive, the truth about her unfaithful husbands infidelity! Which I suspect she knew about all along!

dbdumonteil A wealthy ranch man has a son ;his wife died a long time ago and the boy ,now married to Jen ,gets Lily pregnant.And he's got an ominous plan about his father's valuable properties.Bad boy indeed.Fortunately ,there's another "son" Owen (Daybright,what a surname!),or a boy the old man treats like a son.Robert Walker plays the villain as he did in Hitchcock's thriller "strangers on a train" while Burt Lancaster is the nice guy,who can even take the blame for what his pal did.The bad boy/ anxious father subject was much better applied on Anthony Mann's "Man from Laramie" in 1955,but Burt Lancaster makes this ho -hum western watchable.Pointless voice over.