You don’t see many production shots from the Ranown pictures, so I was really excited to come across this one. Here’s Michael Dante, Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher working on Westbound (1959).
Boetticher (from an excellent interview with Sean Axmaker): “Randy came to me and said ‘I have a very serious situation to discuss with you. I have one more picture to do at Warner Brothers and I don’t know what to do!.’ And that’s when I went to Warner Brothers and said ‘I don’t care how little I’m going to make, I want to direct the picture.’ And that was Westbound… I had complete control over the filming, but not over the script. The script was already ready to go, and it reverted right back to the old Randolph Scott westerns. Which were not that good.”
Although Scott was a Box Office cert in the first 4 years
of the Fifties (Colt 45 a very mediocre Scott flick was a
huge hit) by 1955 he had fallen off the charts considerably.
Bad films like “Man Behind The Gun” had not helped.
“Shootout At Medicine Bend” shot in 55 but not released
until 57 was not even in colour with a hack director to boot!
The Ranown films at Columbia were very successful which
did not play well with the suits at Warners especially with
their old arch enemies cleaning up!
Going through their files Warners found that Scott owed them one more film which is how “Westbound” came about.
Budd certainly did not want his “star” directed by some
Warners contract hack which is how he ended up directing
it.Its still an agreeable little film though nowhere near the
other Scott/Boetticher output.
Toby,I hope that you can get an interview with Michael
Dante in your book,he must have some incredible tales
of working with the likes of Budd and Sam Fuller.
By the interviews with Dante in the extras on VCIs super
edition of “Apache Rifles” I gather that Dante had a lot of
time for Audie Murphy;which is nice because Audie gets
such bad press in other accounts.