Rails Into Laramie

Plot synopsis:
In the Wyoming Territory during 1869, Union Army Sgt. Jefferson Harder enters a casino and, within minutes, instigates a brawl. Just as he is thrown through the window, the soldiers sent by Gen. Augur to bring Jeff back to the fort arrive. Back at the fort, Argur explains to the hot-headed officer that the construction of the cross-country railroad has been halted outside Laramie by Jim Shanessy, who runs the town and wants the crew to stay and spend their money at his hotel and casino. It is only the threat of the blockade that convinces Jeff to take the assignment. He is further annoyed when his arrival in Laramie is met with dismay from the chief railroad engineer, Lee Graham, Judge Pierce and Mayor Frank Logan, who expected him to bring troops.
Graham, Pierce and Logan grow more aghast when Jeff warmly greets Shanessy, his childhood friend. Jim is at first pleased when Shanessy offers him free board at the hotel, but when the businessman's henchmen, brothers Con and Ace Winton, deliver a two-thousand dollar gift, Jeff recognizes it as a bribe. In the lobby, Jeff agrees to meet later that night with Pierce, who is still suspicious of him, and then visits the ineffectual but good-hearted marshal, Orrie Sommers, and advises him to ready the jail cells.
At the casino soon after, Shanessy introduces Jeff to his partner, beautiful Lou Carter, but Jeff spurns Lou's advances and returns the money to Shanessy. Shanessy, who remains friendly even after Ace threatens Jeff and is beaten up in return, invites Jeff to his home, hoping that Jeff's lingering feelings for Shanessy's wife Helen will keep him from pursuing his new duties. Later, Jeff meets with Graham, Pierce and Logan, and then, armed with their promise of complete authority, visits the railroad work site, where the men are drinking, gambling and sleeping. After Jeff knocks out the brawny foreman, the other men back away, allowing him to shut down the makeshift saloon. The next day, however, when Jeff posts notices that all the men have been fired and construction suspended, both the workers and the town merchants complain bitterly.
Graham calls a council meeting, at which some merchants demand Jeff's court-martial but, after he explains that he can rid the town of gambling and alcohol and only those who want to work will remain, they agree to give his plan a two-week trial. Shanessy counters by refusing to grant workers credit, and when they gather into an angry mob, as he has planned, he easily convinces them to wreak havoc on the town and defeat Jeff's plan. Jeff, however, arrests Shanessy, and that night, Lou invites Jeff to her room and, explaining that no local jury will convict Shanessy, offers to help. A mistrustful Jeff kisses her but then leaves. At the jail, Shanessy talks Jeff into visiting Helen, and when Jeff later leaves her house, too attracted to her to stay, he is beaten and deposited into a railroad car by Shanessy's men. In the morning, Jeff's absence results in a mistrial. Shanessy then instructs the workers to burn down all the railroad camps, after which every arrest Jeff makes is dismissed by crooked juries. He then sends for backup troops, but Shanessy shuts down the telegraph and, anticipating that Jeff will travel to see Augur himself, creates a landslide that blocks all traffic.
Graham, Pierce and Logan insist that Jeff rehire the workers, and when he refuses, they send Orrie on horseback to Cheyenne to order Jeff court-martialed. Soon after, Jeff discovers that Orrie has been killed on the trail, and Lou informs him that Shanessy is the culprit, but the only way to convict him is to construct a jury out of the Wyoming women who have just been granted the right to vote. Still skeptical, Jeff visits Shanessy, and when Ace pulls out a gun, Jeff shoots him and arrests Shanessy again. This time, Lou sits as foreperson on the female jury, and, to Shanessy's shock, they find him guilty. Jeff thanks Lou afterward, and although she first spurns him, he grabs her and she falls into his arms.
The night before Shanessy's scheduled hanging, Helen slips him a gun, and with it he knocks out Jeff and races to Lou's, shooting her in the back. Jeff revives and gathers a posse while Shanessy commandeers a train to Cheyenne, not realizing that the landslide has just been cleared on the tracks, and a passenger train is headed straight toward him. Jeff rides to Shanessy's train, leaps on and shoots his way to the front. There, with the passenger train fast approaching, he knocks out Shanessy and reverses the train only moments before a collision. Weeks later, railroad construction has resumed, and Jeff reports to a recovering Lou that although he must return to the Army for six months, he will consider Laramie his home base.

Tags: violence

Review:
Ridin' the rails ........
John Payne stars in this 1954 sagebrush saga, which also features several western favorites as co-stars.
The railroad sends a representative to get to the bottom of a gang's attempts to disrupt the rail-lines.The film is well-paced and Payne is a good choice to play the lead role.
Dan Duryea steals many of the scenes he appears in and the great Lee Van Cleef was fine in his all too brief supporting role.Payne appeared in a number of Westerns in the '40's and '50's, but was never able to reach the same success as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart or Glenn Ford had in the genre.
This film was a good example of his work and should be enjoyed by die-hard Western movie fans.........
Saving the Railroad.
Troubleshooter Jefferson Harder (John Payne) is sent to Laramie by the Army to investigate the sabotage that is preventing the railroad from finishing it's line connecting the East and West.
Upon arrival Payne quickly finds out the worst kept secret in town, that old buddy and current town saloon owner Jim Shanessy (Dan Duryea) is behind the chicanery, though nobody is ever able to prove Shanessy and his henchmen (Myron Healey and Lee Van Cleef) are involved.
The town leaders, while happy about support from the Army, are disappointed from the start that they have only sent one man to do the job and grow increasingly critical of the heavy-handed tactics employed by Payne to clean up the town.Rails Into Laramie packs a lot of action into it's 80 minute run time.
Between busting bad guys heads Payne barely has time to strike up a romantic relationship with Dance Hall owner and partner of Jim Shanessy, Lou Carter (Mari Blanchard).
Very little melodrama to be found in this one as Payne spends most of his time eradicating the town's scofflaws.This movie follows the Universal International Pictures formula of using off the A-list leading actors with familiar casts, packaged in a medium budget production.
A formula that worked very well for them and it works here too.
John Payne may be the best leading actor of the post World War II era that few people remember today.
A versatile actor Payne looked equally a home whether in the saddle, a crime drama or a comedy.
Here he carries the day in this action saddle flick.Good drive-in grade Western flick..
The Equality State.
In this quality B western rails are going into Laramie, Wyoming, but they're not leaving.
That's because saloon owner Dan Duryea with the implicit connivance of the town's merchants is finding all kinds of ways to keep the railroad workers spending their pay in their town and not getting any work done.
All this is troubling the railroad owners and troubleshooter John Payne is detached from the army to deal with the trouble.Rails Into Laramie takes elements from the DeMille classic Union Pacific and Destry Rides Again and a nice story is concocted.
Payne is a stalwart no nonsense hero who when he's not on the job is a bit of a hell raiser himself.
But when he's given this job he's quite serious.Dan Duryea the chief villain is married to Joyce McKenzie, but has his partner in the saloon Mari Blanchard on the side.
He's also got to do his bidding treacherous telegrapher Douglas Kennedy, bully boy railroad worker Charles Horvath to intimidate the others, and a pair of killer brothers Myron Healey and Lee Van Cleef.If you know the plots of both the previous mentioned films than you know the result in the end.
What I really liked about Rails Into Laramie was the fact that Wyoming was organized as a territory at the same time as the transcontinental railroad was coming through and women got the vote.
They also got some other rights and that fact is integrated into the plot.One of John Payne's good B westerns from the Fifties and the rest of the cast supports him well.
And Dan Duryea is always excellent..
There's only one problem...why?
This part of the film never really made much sense....
A very common and rather clichéd plots for old westerns is the notion of someone trying to stop the railroad.
While there really wasn't a historical basis, too many films were about a supposed overt or covert effort to stop progress.
In most all of them, however, the reason why the baddies are doing this is pretty obvious...but in this one I really couldn't see why Shanessy (Dan Duryea) is doing this...and it's a major weakness of the film.The man sent to help get the railroad built is an Army Sergeant, Jeff Harder (John Payne) and through most of the film, he makes very little progress thanks to Shanessy and a rather stupid town that tolerates Shanessy's antics.
It all leads up to a murder conviction, a jail escape and train chase.
None of it's bad...none of it's outstanding in any way.
A standard and rather clichéd film.By the way, late in the film a lady is shot from about 8-10 feet away with what is probably a .45 Colt cartridge.
Amazingly, she survived...a miracle and a half!.
Get back to work you drunken bums!.
Progress on the railroad has pretty much ground to a halt as the workers spend most of their time drinking rotgut in Dan Duryea's boozer.The leading citizens of the town request military help and tough soldier, Payne, is appointed as a sort of temporary marshal.
Trouble is, he's an old mate of Duryea so it looks as though there's going to be a conflict of interests.This is an above average Universal western: the two main protagonists play off each other well and there is excellent support from a very large cast of familiar westerners (many uncredited).
Special mentions must go to Lee Van Cleef as a menacing, trigger happy bad guy (was he ever anything else?), Mari Blanchard as a saloon girl with a heart of gold (was she ever anything else?) and James Griffith, cast against type in a humorous role, as a bumbling ineffectual lawman.Action scenes are well staged - particularly those on the trains - the photography is first class and the Technicolor beautiful as always.Oh, and as an added bonus for B western fans, there's a title song over the opening credits rumbled out by the ever popular Rex Allen.....
intelligent screenplay, good direction by Jesse Hibbs.
Jesse Hibbs directed some westerns like this one, "Ride Clear of Diablo" and "The Spoilers" which achieved a rare overall perfection, considering what they were aiming at, a public wanting to see a B Technicolor production.
Besides Hibb's direction there are the good performances by John Payne and Dan Duryea.
Mari Blanchard is not as good here as she was in "Destry" , made in the same year.
The intelligent screenplay by D.D. Beauchamp and Joseph Hoffman, even makes a point about the political importance of women, in situations where they are braver than men.
Dan Duryea is Jim Shanessy, a man who is making money counting on the spending of the railroad workers, and in consequence, trying to make them slow down so they can stay longer where he has his establishments.
Jeff Harder (John Payne), his old time friend is set in charge of cleaning up the place.
When he arrives, the town leaders, which are expecting hundreds of soldiers , and do not absorb his friendship with Shanessy have a reaction that reminds us of "Destry Rides Again" and "Destry".
There are excellent scenes of Harder using his fists and fighting skills.
Rex Allen sing the main theme song..
"You either go backwards or forward.
You can't stand still.".
The premise of this picture managed to puzzle me right from the start and I couldn't figure it out.
In any other Western, the town boss or main villain would be looking for a way to buy out all the surrounding ranchers so he would have control of the property when the railroad would eventually come through.
A railroad station usually meant increased business traffic for the local establishments, which were also usually controlled by the principal bad guy.
In this story, businessman Jim Shanessy (Dan Duryea) wanted to slow up or stop the railroad construction to keep the local workers hanging around his saloon in town or the one he owned at the mining camp.
It all seemed kind of contrived to me.As in any other Western however, the hero needs to step in and stop the skulduggery going on.
Jeff Harder (John Payne) is a Cavalry sergeant disturbed out of his twenty eight day leave to go on a special mission to Laramie and solve the railroad problem.
Arriving in town he quickly surmises that he'll eventually have to go up against long time pal Shanessy and his henchmen, Ace (Lee Van Cleef) and Con Winton (Myron Healey).
Shanessy's business manager and partner Lou Carter (Mari Blanchard) appears to be the wild card in this stacked deck, and you might consider her eventual turn to be a bit of a twist ending.The story introduces a nifty element of American history by inserting a sequence involving an all woman jury, the first of it's kind in the country making headlines in the Laramie Journal.
This followed Wyoming becoming the first state to give women the right to vote, and it was an interesting departure from the main story.
It also proved to be the impetus for the undoing of Shanessy as the town's principal money man, though it would take a bit more leg work on the part of Harder.
Right up until the end I wasn't sure what Lou Carter was really up to but the closing clinch with Jeff Harder answered that question.
Apparently he'd be facing a new hitch once his cavalry one ran it's course..
The rail line has trouble reaching Laramie..
Universal-International presents a western thought of as mediocre by critics; but this doesn't mean the movie is not worth watching.
RAILS into LARAMIE stars John Payne as Jefferson Harder, who intends to go to Laramie and clean up the wide-open town.
Plus there is the matter of the railroad having problems building their line into town.
Everybody around knows that all of the crime is coming from a gang taking orders from Jim Shanessy(Dan Duryea).
No charges are able to stick in court because somehow the all-male juries are intimidated.
Shanessy is surprised when his old buddy Harder arrives in town.
It doesn't take long for Jeff Harder to find out that the railroad is not progressing, because Shanessy and saloon gal-pal Lou Carter(Mari Blanchard)are a tough team keeping the railhead out of Laramie so both can control their criminal activities without any interference.
Well, Harder is in town and is determined to clean up Laramie, so the rail line can come through.Decent old west saga that also features: Barton McLaine, Ralph Dumke, James Griffith, Joyce Mackenzie and Lee Van Cleef.