New Picture

Western Union (20th Century-Fox) is another episode in Hollywood's saga of U. S. industrial evolution. Like Wells Fargo and Union Pacific, Western Union deals with the westward march of pioneer communications. More Western than Union, it touches lightly on the telegraph, rides away full-gallop into a rousing tale of Indians, cattle rustlers, bad men battling on the prairie.

Based on the late, great Western Novelist Zane Grey's last story, Western Union bears the sterling hallmark of sagebrush romance. When Outlaw Vance Shaw (Randolph Scott), riding hard to escape a sheriff's posse, stumbles on an injured man, against his better judgment he risks capture by helping the man in to the nearest stagecoach station, then rides off into the night. The man is Engineer Edward Creighton (Dean Jagger), surveying the country west of Omaha for Western Union's next push toward the Pacific.

In Omaha next year Vance turns up, gets a job as scout in Creighton's line-building expedition. Vance takes one look at Creighton's pretty sister (Virginia Gilmore) and decides to go straight. But as the line of poles with its thin strand of wire moves slowly west, they meet a band of outlaws who steal their horses, turn the Indians against them, fire their camp. Leader of the outlaws is Vance's brother, Jack Slade (Barton MacLane). Vance's resolution wavers but in the end he proves worthy of Creighton's trust, dies in a glorious gun-battle with his brother.

Superbly filmed (in Technicolor) by Vienna-born Director Fritz Lang, Western Union has the same swift pace and scenic beauty that distinguished John Ford's Stagecoach two years ago. The players are uniformly ingratiating--including Robert Young as a brash young tenderfoot from Harvard who finally avenges Vance's death. But acting honors go to lean, tall (6 ft. 2 in.) Randy Scott, who in Western Union plays his 18th Zane Grey character, looks more than ever like a 1941 Bill Hart. Virginia-born, educated at swank Woodberry Forest School and the University of North Carolina, Actor Scott was once called by Zane Grey "the perfect Westerner," was chosen by Author Grey himself, before he died, to play Vance Shaw.

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