Although I know that James Stewart played a murderer in one of the Thin Man movies of the 1930s, he went off to World War II and returned from it the slightly tongue-tied Mr. Everyman Nice Guy of "This Wonderful Life" and the sweet (if delusional) star in "Harvey." During the 1950s, directors Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Mann saw a steelier James Stewart and cast him in a series of roles as obsessive characters, culminating in Scotty in Hitchcock's masterpiece "Vertigo." Howard Kemp, the part Stewart played in "The Naked Spur," his third Mann western, may be the most violence-prone of Stewart's roles. In other Mann films he tried to stay out of trouble and was provoked to violence. Throughout most of "The Naked Spur" Stewart's character's (Howard Kemp) relentlessness and greed verge on psychosis, making Robert Ryan (who was himself a master of psychotic characters) seem a charming and almost altruistic in comparison.

Under the opening credits, a man is riding away from the camera into the mountain scenery. The music is pitched at the edge of frenzy and once the credits are over, the man on the horse, who is Stewart, gets the jump on a prospector, Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell). After disarming Tate, he pays him to show the way to a possible trail of the wanted man Howard Kemp is stalking. At the point where the prey tries to defend himself setting rockslides, Kemp and Tate gain an unwanted third partner, Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker), who has just been dishonorably discharged from the army and is being sought by a band of Blackfeet.

After a climb and a fight, the wanted man, Ben Vandergroat (played with an unsettling constant grin by Robert Ryan) is captured, along with a woman (Janet Leigh) who accompanied Vandergroat in his flight from Abilene after he shot a lawman in the back. Kemp tries to pay off Tate and send Anderson on his way, but the latter two are determined to share the $5000 reward for Vandergroat (dead or alive). Anderson manages to involve his unhappy partners in a shootout with the Indians, lots of falling rock and raging torrents, and viewers learn why Howard Kemp is so determined to get the reward.

A romance blooms between Stewart and Leigh, promoted as a distraction by Ryan. There is dissension among the captors, an escape attempt, lots of Rocky Mountain scenery, and a conventional ending that is totally out of keeping with the character of Howard Kemp. I don't know how conscious the echoes of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" were—with Janet Leigh slightly more animate than the gold there, Stewart doing a variant of Bogart's suspicious Fred Dobbs, and Millard Mitchell a less hammy elderly prospector like Walter Huston. One notable difference is that the ending of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" fits with what went before it.

Despite the interesting work by Robert Ryan, and the clever way in which the spur of the title becomes crucial, this is the least believable of the Anthony Mann westerns with determined James Stewart characters. The others also have well developed villains and striking scenery. My favorite is "Winchester 73," followed by "The Far Country".

Stewart was in some outstanding westerns not directed by Mann (Destry Rides Again, Broken Arrow, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the hilarious Cheyenne Social Club). Ryan was in two of the best 1960s post-Wild West westerns (The Wild Bunch and The Professionals) as well as in Mann's film of "God's Little Acre." Both of them and Millard Mitchell were in many outstanding films (Mitchell was in "Winchester 73" and "The Gunfighter," and memorable in nonwesterns including "Twelve o'clock High" and "Singing in the Rain"). Meeker is most remembered as Mike Hammer in "Kiss Me Deadly." For me, the recently deceased Janet Leigh made some impression in "Touch of Evil," "The Manchurian Candidate," and "Psycho." She made many other movies, but is more memorable for what befell her in "Touch of Evil," in Psycho," and in producing a daughter with Tony Curtis than for anything she actually did while onscreen. Lina, her character here makes no sense, though the fault must be shared between her lack of ability and the impossible role as it was written.

"The Naked Spur" is in the National Film Registry. Inexplicably, its implausible screenplay by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom was nominated for an Oscar.

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Other Anthony Mann movies I've reviewed:
Man from Laramie
The Far Country
Man of the West
The Fall of the Roman Empire

plus two Stewart westerns:
Firecreek
Two Rode Together

Recommended:
Yes