A Distant Trumpet
Encyclopedia
A Distant Trumpet is a 1964 American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Western film
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

, the last directed by Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh...

. It stars Troy Donahue
Troy Donahue
Troy Donahue was an American actor, who was active between the late 1950s and late 1990s.-Life and career:...

, Suzanne Pleshette
Suzanne Pleshette
Suzanne Pleshette was an American actress, on stage, screen and television.After beginning her career in theatre, she began appearing in films in the early 1960s, such as Rome Adventure and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds...

 and Diane McBain
Diane McBain
Diane McBain is an American actress who, as a Warner Brothers contract player, reached a brief peak of popularity during the early 1960s...

.

The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by John Twist, Albert Beich, and Richard Fielder is based on the 1951 novel of the same name by Paul Horgan
Paul Horgan
Paul Horgan was an American author of fiction and non-fiction, most of which was set in the Southwestern United States. He was the recipient of two Pulitzer prizes in History...

.

Plot

In 1883, US Cavalry lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

 Matthew Hazard, newly graduated from West Point, is assigned to isolated Fort Delivery on the Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 border of Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

, where he meets commanding officer Teddy Mainwarring's wife Kitty, whom he later rescues from an Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 attack.

Soon after a new commander, Major General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...

 Alexander Quait, takes charge. When his efforts to capture Chiricahua
Chiricahua
Chiricahua are a group of Apache Native Americans who live in the Southwest United States. At the time of European encounter, they were living in 15 million acres of territory in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona in the United States, and in northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico...

 chief War Eagle fail, he orders Hazard into Mexico to cajole the man into surrendering
Surrender (military)
Surrender is when soldiers, nations or other combatants stop fighting and eventually become prisoners of war, either as individuals or when ordered to by their officers. A white flag is a common symbol of surrender, as is the gesture of raising one's hands empty and open above one's head.When the...

. Hazard convinces War Eagle to return with him with the promise the Indians will be provided a safe haven at a reservation
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...

 in Arizona. En route to the fort, they encounter Major Miller, who orders the Indians be sent to Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

. Hazard and Quaint journey to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 to request government officials to reverse their decision and allow Hazard to keep his word to War Eagle.

Cast

  • Troy Donahue
    Troy Donahue
    Troy Donahue was an American actor, who was active between the late 1950s and late 1990s.-Life and career:...

     as Matthew Hazard
  • Suzanne Pleshette
    Suzanne Pleshette
    Suzanne Pleshette was an American actress, on stage, screen and television.After beginning her career in theatre, she began appearing in films in the early 1960s, such as Rome Adventure and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds...

     as Kitty Mainwarring
  • William Reynolds
    William Reynolds (actor)
    William Reynolds is a retired American television and film actor. He is best known for television roles in the 1960s and 1970s....

     as Teddy Mainwarring
  • James Gregory
    James Gregory (actor)
    James Gregory was an American character actor noted for his deep, gravelly voice and playing brash roles such as McCarthy-like Senator John Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate , the audacious General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and loudmouthed Inspector Luger in Barney Miller...

     as Alexander Quaint
  • Diane McBain
    Diane McBain
    Diane McBain is an American actress who, as a Warner Brothers contract player, reached a brief peak of popularity during the early 1960s...

     as Laura Frelief
  • Claude Akins
    Claude Akins
    Claude Marion Akins was an American actor with a long career on stage, screen and television.Powerful in appearance and voice, Akins could be counted on to play the clever tough guy, on the side of good or bad, in movies and television. He is best remembered as Sheriff Lobo in the 1970s TV series...

     as Seely Jones
  • Kent Smith
    Kent Smith
    Kent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theater, and television.Born Frank Kent Smith in New York, New York, Smith made his acting debut on Broadway in 1932 in and, after spending a few years there, moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The...

     as Secretary of War

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 called the film "a deadly bore...so dull you even lose interest in watching the horses and the stunt men doing their stuff...Seldom has there been a Western picture on which so much money was spent...from which so little excitement, energy or colorfulness exudes. It's as though Mr. Walsh and everybody were bitten by tsetse flies
Tsetse fly
Tsetse , sometimes spelled tzetze and also known as tik-tik flies, are large biting flies that inhabit much of mid-continental Africa between the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts. They live by feeding on the blood of vertebrate animals and are the primary biological vectors of trypanosomes, which...

 and went through the business of shooting the picture in a state of drowsiness."

Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

said, "The stunning location terrain of the Red Rocks area of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

 and Arizona's Painted Desert
Painted Desert
Painted Desert may refer to:In places:* Painted Desert, Arizona, an area of badlands in the southwestern United States* Painted Desert , a mountainous area in south-central Australia...

 gives the production a tremendous pictorial lift. Max Steiner's score is a driving dramatic force but the use of the main theme seems a trifle excessive. The picture would benefit from a lot more pruning by editor David Wages."

Time Out New York feels that despite "an average script and a colourless lead performance from Donahue" the film "[emerges] as a majestically simple, sweeping cavalry Western, a little reminiscent of Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

in mood and manner. Brilliantly shot by William Clothier, it tends to have its cake and eat it by indulging in a spectacular massacre before introducing the liberal message, but still goes further than most in according respect to the Indian by letting him speak his own language (with subtitles)."

External links

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