As Dilys Powell said, there are no bad westerns; there are great westerns, there are good westerns and there are just plain westerns and "The Proud Ones" is certainly a good one. The director was Robert D. Webb, hardly an auteur but a decent jobbing director and this thoroughly old-fashioned oater, nicely shot in Cinemascope, starred Robert Ryan, (the good guy), Jeffrey Hunter, (not quite the bad guy he first appears to be), and Virginia Mayo, (somewhat wasted as the girl in love with Ryan), while the fine supporting cast includes Walter Brennan, Arthur O'Connell and Robert Middleton, (the real bad guy), and thanks to an above-average screenplay from Edmund H. North and Joseph Petracca and highly watchable work from its highly watchable cast it's consistently enjoyable. As Dilys said, there are no bad westerns.
Review of The Proud Ones
