Themes: Haunted By the Past, Prospectors and Land Rights
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden, Ben Piazza, George C. Scott
Release Year: 1959
Country: US
Run Time: 108 minutes
Plot
Gary Cooper plays a frontier doctor with a checkered past who works in a rowdy Montana mining camp. Cooper falls in love with Maria Schell, a young Swiss girl whom he has treated for shock after she was the victim of a holdup. He finances Schell's grubstake, which makes her rich. When Schell's unscrupulous partner Karl Malden tries to have his way with the girl, Cooper kills Malden. Sentenced to an immediate hanging, Cooper is saved when Schell offers to give the town her valuable mine. A surprise hit in 1959, The Hanging Tree was based on an award-winning novel by Dorothy M. Johnson. The film not only yielded a hit theme song by Mack David and Jerry Livingston, but also served as the film debut of George C. Scott, who plays Cooper's doctor predecessor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The Hanging Tree is one of three outstanding Westerns adapted from the stories of Dorothy Johnson. As in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and A Man Called Horse, Johnson is more interested in reexamining the clichés of the West than in telling a conventional story. Not fully appreciated by critics at the time of its release, Hanging Tree features excellent, sure-handed direction from Delmer Daves, solid performances from stars Gary Cooper and Maria Schell, and a strong screenplay by Wendell Mayes and Halsted Welles. A surprise success at the box office, its brisk ticket sales benefited from the hit title song by Mack David and Jerry Livingston, a success story mirroring that of Cooper's 1952 Western High Noon. Though the plot has the structure of a traditional Western, the character interplay and psychological motivations are uncommon for a 1950s studio production. ~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide
Daniel B. Cathcart - Art Director, Marjorie Best - Costume Designer, Orry-Kelly - Costume Designer, Orry Kelly - Costume Designer, Russell Llewellyn - First Assistant Director, Delmer Daves - Director, Owen Marks - Editor, Jerry Livingston - Composer (Music Score), Max Steiner - Composer (Music Score), Mack David - Songwriter, Jerry Livingston - Songwriter, Gordon Bau - Makeup, Ted D. McCord - Cinematographer, Martin Jurow - Producer, Richard Shepherd - Producer, Frank M. Miller - Set Designer, Stan Jones - Sound/Sound Designer, Wendell Mayes - Screenwriter, Halsted Welles - Screenwriter, Dorothy M. Johnson - Short Story Author
