In this one, the Indians get slaughtered as usual but it's the infantry that rescues the cavalry. There's a novelty for you.
I think I saw this when it was first released, but I only remember two scenes. In one, Guy Madison, as an Army doctor accompanying a cavalry troop must take command and he has to strip off his Captain's epaulets with the black medical background, and sew on new ones with the gold background of the cavalry. It was a learning experience. In the 1870s the US Army used a black background for medical officers and a gold background for cavalry. Later, we learned that a bluish-gray background signifies infantry. I didn't know that. Neither did anyone else in the Mayfair Theater. A kid in Newark would be hard put to recognize a horse if he saw one.
None of us learned much from the second scene. The pretty young Joan Weldon -- a real-life opera singer from San Francisco -- has been exposed to a disease and must be vaccinated, so Guy Madison has her unbutton her blouse and pull it down far enough to bare one arm and a tantalizing expanse of pectoralis major. Exciting, sure, but nothing new there.
Madison and Weldon fall in love all of a sudden. You can tell because every once in a while they interrupt their serious conversation to kiss before drawing apart and going about their business. That's the fault of the director, David Butler, a studio hack who rarely brought much to the party.
Basically, Madison, having been forced into a leadership position by circumstances, is despised as a mere Doc by his two dozen troopers. It gets worse when they run into a wagon train that is menaced by Indians. There are many infantry accompanying the wagons and they despise the cavalry and are despised in return. Furthermore, one wagon load of immigrants from New York may have brought smallpox with them. The infantry's regimental surgeon, filthy and obdurate, dismisses the prodromal symptoms as "the grip" but the superior Doctor Guy Madison suspects it may be worse than that. At the same time, he can't reveal that he's a doctor because then all the soldiers would lose faith in his ability to lead.
It's what's known as a "latent status" movie. The hero has some set of extraordinary skills that conditions prevent him from revealing. Usually he's a doctor ("The Fugitive") but sometimes a gun slinger ("The Fastest Gun In the West"). Guy Madison isn't just a secret medico. He's a crack horseman, a genius at cavalry tactics, and excels at fisticuffs. He has a ski-slope nose that ends in a point and I'm told he is handsome. He was in the Coast Guard. Handsomeness is a requirement for service in the Coast Guard. I was in the Coast Guard.
In this instance, Doctor Madison hastily reads a book on cavalry tactics and then twists them around in such a way as to effect a greater slaughter of attacking Indians and save most of the wagon train and soldiers. "In medicine, we learn that sometimes you have to improvise." One improvisation involves blowing a dozen Indians' heads off with a cannon load of grape shot. The story is by the militaristic James Warner Bellah, who had little sympathy for Indians or anybody else.
Bellah knew the historical setting though. I learned a little about cavalry tactics too. I forgot to mention that at the beginning because I was frankly obsessed with Joan Weldon's left deltoid. And let's not just dismiss the importance of cavalry tactics. In the American Civil War, the North stank. The Confederates bundled their cavalry into independent fighting forces instead of distributing them piecemeal as infantry reconnaissance and support. It was a hard-learned lesson and the professor was J. E. B. Stuart. Then we managed to forget all about it when tanks were introduced in World War I and used strictly as infantry support. It took Guderian and Rommel and the Blitzkrieg to teach us the same thing all over again.
Where was I? Yes, that's right -- Joan Weldon's trapezius. I'll bet she had a great voice too.
I think I saw this when it was first released, but I only remember two scenes. In one, Guy Madison, as an Army doctor accompanying a cavalry troop must take command and he has to strip off his Captain's epaulets with the black medical background, and sew on new ones with the gold background of the cavalry. It was a learning experience. In the 1870s the US Army used a black background for medical officers and a gold background for cavalry. Later, we learned that a bluish-gray background signifies infantry. I didn't know that. Neither did anyone else in the Mayfair Theater. A kid in Newark would be hard put to recognize a horse if he saw one.
None of us learned much from the second scene. The pretty young Joan Weldon -- a real-life opera singer from San Francisco -- has been exposed to a disease and must be vaccinated, so Guy Madison has her unbutton her blouse and pull it down far enough to bare one arm and a tantalizing expanse of pectoralis major. Exciting, sure, but nothing new there.
Madison and Weldon fall in love all of a sudden. You can tell because every once in a while they interrupt their serious conversation to kiss before drawing apart and going about their business. That's the fault of the director, David Butler, a studio hack who rarely brought much to the party.
Basically, Madison, having been forced into a leadership position by circumstances, is despised as a mere Doc by his two dozen troopers. It gets worse when they run into a wagon train that is menaced by Indians. There are many infantry accompanying the wagons and they despise the cavalry and are despised in return. Furthermore, one wagon load of immigrants from New York may have brought smallpox with them. The infantry's regimental surgeon, filthy and obdurate, dismisses the prodromal symptoms as "the grip" but the superior Doctor Guy Madison suspects it may be worse than that. At the same time, he can't reveal that he's a doctor because then all the soldiers would lose faith in his ability to lead.
It's what's known as a "latent status" movie. The hero has some set of extraordinary skills that conditions prevent him from revealing. Usually he's a doctor ("The Fugitive") but sometimes a gun slinger ("The Fastest Gun In the West"). Guy Madison isn't just a secret medico. He's a crack horseman, a genius at cavalry tactics, and excels at fisticuffs. He has a ski-slope nose that ends in a point and I'm told he is handsome. He was in the Coast Guard. Handsomeness is a requirement for service in the Coast Guard. I was in the Coast Guard.
In this instance, Doctor Madison hastily reads a book on cavalry tactics and then twists them around in such a way as to effect a greater slaughter of attacking Indians and save most of the wagon train and soldiers. "In medicine, we learn that sometimes you have to improvise." One improvisation involves blowing a dozen Indians' heads off with a cannon load of grape shot. The story is by the militaristic James Warner Bellah, who had little sympathy for Indians or anybody else.
Bellah knew the historical setting though. I learned a little about cavalry tactics too. I forgot to mention that at the beginning because I was frankly obsessed with Joan Weldon's left deltoid. And let's not just dismiss the importance of cavalry tactics. In the American Civil War, the North stank. The Confederates bundled their cavalry into independent fighting forces instead of distributing them piecemeal as infantry reconnaissance and support. It was a hard-learned lesson and the professor was J. E. B. Stuart. Then we managed to forget all about it when tanks were introduced in World War I and used strictly as infantry support. It took Guderian and Rommel and the Blitzkrieg to teach us the same thing all over again.
Where was I? Yes, that's right -- Joan Weldon's trapezius. I'll bet she had a great voice too.