The Hanging Tree

The Hanging Tree is a 1959 American Western directed by Delmer Daves. Gary Cooper plays Joseph "Doc" Frail, a physician who arrives in a Montana gold-mining camp carrying a troubled past he hopes to leave behind. He rescues a man named Rune from a hanging tree and takes him on as a servant, then settles in as the town doctor. His life changes when he treats Elizabeth Mahler, a young immigrant woman who survived a stagecoach robbery and has been left blind. As she recovers, the two develop feelings for each other, but her business dealings with a partner named Frenchy Plante turn violent, and Frail's intervention puts them both at risk from the miners and a fanatical preacher.

The film comes fairly late in Daves's career; among the eleven titles listed it is the ninth, following 3:10 to Yuma, The Badlanders and Cowboy, and preceding the same year's A Summer Place. Maria Schell plays Elizabeth, with Karl Malden as Frenchy and George C. Scott as Grubb. Produced by Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd from a screenplay by Wendell Mayes and Halsted Welles, it runs 107 minutes and carries 39 credited cast members.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.1 from around 5,500 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.7 from roughly 130 votes. A critics' rating of 7.5 from nine reviews places the film somewhat higher with reviewers than with the wider public.