The screenplay by Jack Curtis certainly lent itself to a Film Noir approach to shooting, and director Stuart Rosenberg, who helmed many episodes of some of the best tv dramas of the late 1950s and '60s, made the most of this opportunity, with highly expressive use of light and shadow, strange camera angles, close-ups of characters' sweaty faces, boots, spurs... His centrepiece in this was femme fatale extraordinaire Lola Albright, looking highly alluring at 40 (an age which most on-screen glamor girls didn't reach in those days). The regular "Rawhide" cast do good jobs, notably "Mushy", who acts out of his skin -- and out of character -- to give possibly the performance of his life. Guests Strother Martin, Steven Hill and Vic Tayback were passably good. As bold an experiment as it was, it marked the last appearance of Eric Fleming as trail boss Gil Favor. The next season limped along through a dozen or so episodes with Clint Eastwood as trail boss, and nothing was ever the same again, what with the loss of mainstay characters Pete Nolan, Mushy, Hey Soos, Joe Scarlet and the rest. A shot at film noir might have been justified to wind up this season, but I'm thinking this over-the-top retro exercise did not do service to "Rawhide".
Review of The Gray Rock Hotel
