On the run from the law, spiffily dressed cowboy Gable rides into town and hears tell about Wagon Mound, a settlement outside of the cosmopolitan urban center, run by the five McDade widows. Yep, there's the old lady who runs the spread with a gnarled and iron fist, Jo Van Fleet, who deserves an oscar every time she plays a stubborn old lady, either for acting or for overacting. Then there's these four young widows, Jean Willis, Eleanor Parker, Barbara Nichols, and Sarah Shane. They all get gussied up just because there's now a man around but Van Fleet will have none of that flirting and frottage and other stuff. She don't hold with it.
But why, you -- the discerning viewer ask -- why did Gable want to get into this nest of mixed-up women in the first place. Well, I'll tell you. He done heard in the big city that there was one hundred thousand dollars buried someplace on that land but nobody knew where it was. The widows' husbands stole it but then got theirselves blown up without revealing where they'd kept the stash. One of the McDade boys got away but he's been gone for years. So Gable is now in loco visitor. Just curious, kind of, about the location of all that gold.
Van Fleet remains skeptical and keeps a weather eye on Gable but the others get glandular by degrees. Nichols is anxious to hop in the sack with Gable at once. Willis too. She even stops smoking cigars. Shane is girlishly eager. Only Eleanor Parker, using a throaty voice that virtually crackles with hostility, holds back. She and Gable had something in common, too, she being from Cedarville and he from Cadiz, both in the great state of Ohio.
Act Two gets a little sluggish and talky. It has Gable investigating the four poor sobbing widows who are overjoyed to see him. He wafts from one to the other, leaving a cloud of pheromones behind him and inquiring about the location of that buried gold. En fin, he discovers it and runs off with Eleanor Parker after seeing to it that the gold is returned to those who earned it. The end is abrupt and strains credulity. I kept expecting the return of one of Ma's "boys" and a final shootout. But no.
It was shot around what was then the little town of St. George, Utah. I, an alien gentile, enrolled in the tiny community college not long after the picture was completed and some of the structures still stood -- more or less. The community seemed to take with aplomb the fact that so many Westerns and historical epics had been filmed there. I tried to sign up as an extra for "They Came to Cordura" but was rejected when I expressed doubt about my ability to gallop a cavalry horse. My plea that I was a quick study and that they had so few horses in Newark fell on deaf ears.
But why, you -- the discerning viewer ask -- why did Gable want to get into this nest of mixed-up women in the first place. Well, I'll tell you. He done heard in the big city that there was one hundred thousand dollars buried someplace on that land but nobody knew where it was. The widows' husbands stole it but then got theirselves blown up without revealing where they'd kept the stash. One of the McDade boys got away but he's been gone for years. So Gable is now in loco visitor. Just curious, kind of, about the location of all that gold.
Van Fleet remains skeptical and keeps a weather eye on Gable but the others get glandular by degrees. Nichols is anxious to hop in the sack with Gable at once. Willis too. She even stops smoking cigars. Shane is girlishly eager. Only Eleanor Parker, using a throaty voice that virtually crackles with hostility, holds back. She and Gable had something in common, too, she being from Cedarville and he from Cadiz, both in the great state of Ohio.
Act Two gets a little sluggish and talky. It has Gable investigating the four poor sobbing widows who are overjoyed to see him. He wafts from one to the other, leaving a cloud of pheromones behind him and inquiring about the location of that buried gold. En fin, he discovers it and runs off with Eleanor Parker after seeing to it that the gold is returned to those who earned it. The end is abrupt and strains credulity. I kept expecting the return of one of Ma's "boys" and a final shootout. But no.
It was shot around what was then the little town of St. George, Utah. I, an alien gentile, enrolled in the tiny community college not long after the picture was completed and some of the structures still stood -- more or less. The community seemed to take with aplomb the fact that so many Westerns and historical epics had been filmed there. I tried to sign up as an extra for "They Came to Cordura" but was rejected when I expressed doubt about my ability to gallop a cavalry horse. My plea that I was a quick study and that they had so few horses in Newark fell on deaf ears.