Seeing "Sitting Bull" somewhat by accident on a "retro" TV channel, I sat through the whole thing, partly in dumbfounded amazement at another Hollywood butchering of history, partly in awe of a superlative cast trying really hard with such a poor script.
During the movie, I was also struck by the lush score. Naturally, the TV network didn't have the decency to show all the credits, but to my ear it sounded like the outstanding work of Raoul Kraushaar -- and praise all the gods of technology for IMDb, I was right.
In my opinion, he is a terribly under-rated composer. Even the cheapest Allied Artists movies attain the ranks of quality when he wrote the score.
J. Carroll Naish as the title character is another under-rated actor. That is, he does not seem to be known among viewers although apparently he was never out of work. He almost always played some accented character, some Latin or European or, as in this case, "Indian" character. And he was almost always extremely believable.
The rest of the cast, from the excellent Dale Robertson to the excellent John Hamilton, were almost uniformly perfect.
During the movie, I was also struck by the lush score. Naturally, the TV network didn't have the decency to show all the credits, but to my ear it sounded like the outstanding work of Raoul Kraushaar -- and praise all the gods of technology for IMDb, I was right.
In my opinion, he is a terribly under-rated composer. Even the cheapest Allied Artists movies attain the ranks of quality when he wrote the score.
J. Carroll Naish as the title character is another under-rated actor. That is, he does not seem to be known among viewers although apparently he was never out of work. He almost always played some accented character, some Latin or European or, as in this case, "Indian" character. And he was almost always extremely believable.
The rest of the cast, from the excellent Dale Robertson to the excellent John Hamilton, were almost uniformly perfect.