Yes! For almost an hour we hear how Wayne is on his way to kill Clift, and then the moment happens where they meet face-to-face and we expect a knockdown, drag-out fight, but before the fight really begins, a woman (a character that we barely know) comes in and stops it, acting hysterical like Scarlett O'Hara on speed. LOL! What a terrible ending to what had been a great movie.
(BTW, I want to apologize for my tone in post #171. I wasn't speaking to you, but to the writer that you quoted :)
I like the Louis L'Amour women who don't become hysterical. Just watched Conagher (made for TV movie) with Sam Elliott and his real wife Katherine Ross as the lead woman. Also good is the Louis L'Amour (made of TV movie) The Quick and the Dead with Sam Elliott and Kate Capshaw.
The Violent Men with Glenn Ford was ruined even more by having the otherwise interesting and competent female love interest suddenly fall apart and deliver an hysterical anti-gun and and anti-violence diatribe at the end.
And Barbara Stanwyck's demand for equal star time for her conniving Big Valley character in that movie was a distraction at best.
Yes, the nervous chatterbox the writer made that female character in Red River was a detriment to the film. A more creative way for the two men to come to terms on their own would have been better.
I blame the writers for a lot of the awful female roles of those times.
I liked reading Robert Heinlein sci fi back then because he always had strong and interesting and deadly female characters who were also womanly.