It's not a bad film, but I found it pretty heavy going. Rancher Burt Lancaster adopted a half Native American daughter (Audrey Hepburn) years ago, and the local tribe wants her back now that she's old enough to marry, and none of the local white people will defend a mere half-breed. All rather grim, violent, melodramatic, and humorless, and with a heavy-handed moral about racial tolerance.
The only thing I really like about this movie is that one of my favorite practical jokes of all time happened behind the scenes. Egomaniacal director John Houston and temperamental star Burt Lancaster didn't get on very well (to say the least), and Houston decided he was going to get Lancaster good. Lancaster was entered in a local golf tournament, he took golf very seriously indeed. The morning of the tournament Houston went out and bought a crate of ping-pong balls, and hired a crop duster. He had the pilot fly out to the country club where the tournament was being held, and when the excitement of the competition was at its highest (as high as excitement in golf ever gets, anyway) he started throwing the ping-pong balls from the airplane onto the golf course. Did you ever notice how a ping-pong ball is almost exactly the size and shape of a golf ball? None of the golfers could tell the balls in play from the rain of ping-pong balls, and the tournament was cancelled in mid-play. Lancaster practically had a stroke.
The only thing I really like about this movie is that one of my favorite practical jokes of all time happened behind the scenes. Egomaniacal director John Houston and temperamental star Burt Lancaster didn't get on very well (to say the least), and Houston decided he was going to get Lancaster good. Lancaster was entered in a local golf tournament, he took golf very seriously indeed. The morning of the tournament Houston went out and bought a crate of ping-pong balls, and hired a crop duster. He had the pilot fly out to the country club where the tournament was being held, and when the excitement of the competition was at its highest (as high as excitement in golf ever gets, anyway) he started throwing the ping-pong balls from the airplane onto the golf course. Did you ever notice how a ping-pong ball is almost exactly the size and shape of a golf ball? None of the golfers could tell the balls in play from the rain of ping-pong balls, and the tournament was cancelled in mid-play. Lancaster practically had a stroke.