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Posted on 08/17/2025 9:33:07 AM PDT by Twotone
Like so many westerns after Tex Ritter had a hit with the theme for High Noon, The Lonely Man (1957) starts with a cowboy tune sung by no less than Tennessee Ernie Ford. "The world looks empty to a lonely man," Ford sings, "as he rides an endless trail." It's a "hopeless" world "as he drifts from place to place." The credits roll over the silhouette of this lonely man on horseback, a tiny figure in a vast wasteland captured in Paramount's VistaVision.
American westerns in the '50s were probably the pinnacle of the genre, at least if you go by the best of the decade – a subjective list, for sure, but one that will contain High Noon, The Searchers, Shane, Rio Bravo, 3:10 to Yuma and Winchester '73, and can be expanded to include anomalies like Giant, Johnny Guitar and Bad Day at Black Rock. If you stop squinting so hard the list could expand to Budd Boetticher's Ranown Cycle and The Furies, among dozens of b-westerns, fan favorites and obscurities.
The Lonely Man likely wouldn't make the list, mostly because it's a real obscurity despite its star-studded cast, and probably because its director, Henry Levin, managed to avoid being called an auteur and had a career that would challenge programmers at TCM looking to fill up a coherent weekend. That's a shame, and it makes you wonder just how many other hidden gems are hiding in the used DVD bins.
The lonely man is Jacob Wade (Jack Palance), an outlaw and gunman of considerable infamy across the territory.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
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Tex Ritter sung “Do Not Forsake Me,” but it was composed by Dmitri Tiomkin, who came up with the idea of a title song for “High Noon,” and idea that was copied in numerous movies since. Incidentally, the opening where the song is performed shows Lee Van Cleef; IIRC he could have had the title role except he didn’t want to get his nose fixed, so he ended up as a secondary actor in the movie.
The movie to have a song embedded in it that was written for the movie (unlike, say, “As Time Goes By” for “Casablanca”) was “Unchained,” a 1955 prog flop whose only claim to fame is the song, originally performed in the movie by opera singer Todd Duncan. The song had some traction, but didn’t catch on until the Righteous Brothers recorded a cover ten years later, and “Unchained Melody” has been a pop hit ever since.
“it was composed by Dmitri Tiomkin”
Thanks for that clarification, Dimitri Tiomkin also wrote the theme for “The High and the Mighty,” a masterpiece as rar as I’m concerned.
I’m watching it right now, but not sure I will finish it.
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