The Young Land
Encyclopedia
The Young Land is a 1959 American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Western
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...

 drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Ted Tetzlaff
Ted Tetzlaff
Dale H. "Ted" Tetzlaff was a noted Academy Award-nominated Hollywood cinematographer active in the 1930s and 1940s. He was particularly favored by actress Carole Lombard...

 starring Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...

 and Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

. The cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...

 was by Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 developer Winton C. Hoch and Henry Sharp. The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures Corporation
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

.

It is the third and final of only 3 films produced by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was an American businessman, film producer, writer, and government official, as well as the owner of a leading stable of thoroughbred racehorses....

's C. V. Whitney Pictures; the first being The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...

in 1956 with John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...

 and directed by John 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...

, the second being The Missouri Traveler
The Missouri Traveler
The Missouri Traveler is a 1958 American coming-of-age period piece drama film directed by Jerry Hopper starring Brandon De Wilde and Lee Marvin. It is based on the novel by John Burress. The cinematography was by Technicolor developer Winton C. Hoch with harmonica and banjo score by Jack Marshall...

in 1958 with Brandon De Wilde
Brandon De Wilde
Andre Brandon deWilde was an American theatre and film actor. He was born into a theatrical family in Brooklyn. Debuting on Broadway at the age of 7, De Wilde became a national phenomenon by the time he completed his 492 performances for The Member of the Wedding and was considered a child...

 and Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6' 2" stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou , he landed more...

.

Having previously been featured in a number of his father's films, this was the 20-year-old Wayne's attempt at a leading role while he was still enrolled at Loyola Marymount University
Loyola Marymount University
Loyola Marymount University is a comprehensive co-educational private Roman Catholic university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions located in Los Angeles, California, United States...

, graduating from there in 1961.

Music scored by Dimitri Tiomkin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian-born Hollywood film score composer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact." Tiomkin...

. Nomination for Academy Award for Best Original Song
Academy Award for Best Original Song
The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...

 for "Strange Are the Ways of Love" (The Young Land theme) with lyrics by Ned Washington
Ned Washington
Ned Washington was an American lyricist.-Biography:Washington was nominated for eleven Academy Awards from 1940 to 1962...

 and sung by Randy Sparks
Randy Sparks
Randy Sparks is a musician, singer-songwriter and founder of The New Christy Minstrels and The Back Porch Majority. Prior to that, in the late 1950s he had a solo career and released two albums under the Verve label, a self-titled album in 1958 and Walking the Low Road in 1959...

.

Plot

In 1848, after the end of the Mexican–American War
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S...

 and with the advent of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 statehood, an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 gunslinger
Gunslinger
Gunfighter, also gunslinger , is a 20th century word, used in cinema or literature, referring to men in the American Old West who had gained a reputation as being dangerous with a gun...

 named Hatfield Carnes (Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

) kills a Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....

 man in California. He is arrested for the murder by Jim Ellison (Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...

), a former United States marine
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...

 and now sheriff with neither a gun nor a badge. Appointed by prominent local businessman and politico Don Roberto de la Madrid (Roberto De La Madrid
Roberto de la Madrid
Roberto de la Madrid Romandia was a Mexican elected official who served as governor of Baja California from 1977 to 1983. He was the first American-born governor of a Mexican state. He was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party .De la Madrid was born February 3, 1922, in Calexico,...

), Ellison has designs on de la Madrid's spoiled daughter, Elena (Yvonne Craig
Yvonne Craig
Yvonne Joyce Craig is an American actress best known for her role as Batgirl from the 1960s TV series Batman, and as the Orion Marta in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Whom Gods Destroy”.-Early life and career:...

). By the book Judge Millard Isham (Dan O'Herlihy
Dan O'Herlihy
Daniel O'Herlihy was an Oscar nominated Irish film actor.-Early life:O'Herlihy was born in Wexford, Ireland in 1919. His family moved to Dublin at a young age...

) arrives in town with Deputy Marshal Ben Stroud (Cliff Ketchum) to conduct the trial. Wanted tough guy Lee Hearn (Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the long-running CBS western television series Gunsmoke.-Early years:...

) has problems of his own with the law, but is willing to help Ellison as a deputy. Carnes is then placed on trial in the new Mexican Cession
Mexican Cession
The Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the present day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S...

 territory with the Hispanic populace waiting to learn if American justice will convict Carnes.

Cast

Actor Role
Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...

 (as Pat Wayne)
Sheriff Jim Ellison
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

 
Hatfield Carnes
Yvonne Craig
Yvonne Craig
Yvonne Joyce Craig is an American actress best known for her role as Batgirl from the 1960s TV series Batman, and as the Orion Marta in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Whom Gods Destroy”.-Early life and career:...

 
Elena de la Madrid
Dan O'Herlihy
Dan O'Herlihy
Daniel O'Herlihy was an Oscar nominated Irish film actor.-Early life:O'Herlihy was born in Wexford, Ireland in 1919. His family moved to Dublin at a young age...

 
Judge Millard Isham
Roberto de la Madrid
Roberto de la Madrid
Roberto de la Madrid Romandia was a Mexican elected official who served as governor of Baja California from 1977 to 1983. He was the first American-born governor of a Mexican state. He was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party .De la Madrid was born February 3, 1922, in Calexico,...

 
Don Roberto de la Madrid
Cliff Ketchum Deputy Marshal Ben Stroud
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the long-running CBS western television series Gunsmoke.-Early years:...

 
Lee Hearn
Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez
Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez
Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez was an American character actor best known for his appearances in a number of John Wayne movies....

 
Deputy Santiago
Ed Sweeney (as Edward Sweeney) Sully / Kelly
John Quijada  Vasquero
Miguel Comacho Miguel
Tom Tiner Court Clerk Charlie Higgins
Carlos Romero  Francisco Quiroga
Eddie Juaregui (as Edward Juaregui) Drifter
Los Reyes De Chapala Mariachis

Home media

No less than six different releases of The Young Land were produced on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

. Similarly, several DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 versions were released over the years, mainly as an inclusion in a multiple film "western pack". Presently, The Young Land is available on Region 0 DVD through VCI Entertainment and video on demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...

 in standard non-widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 format.

Trivia

Roberto de la Madrid
Roberto de la Madrid
Roberto de la Madrid Romandia was a Mexican elected official who served as governor of Baja California from 1977 to 1983. He was the first American-born governor of a Mexican state. He was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party .De la Madrid was born February 3, 1922, in Calexico,...

, who appeared in the film as the father of Yvonne Craig's character, was later elected governor of Baja California
Baja California
Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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