The Ox-Bow Incident
Short description
In 1885 Nevada, word spreads through a small town that a rancher has been murdered and his cattle stolen. With the sheriff away, the local men form a posse to hunt down those responsible. Two drifting cowboys, Gil Carter and Art Croft, join the group, and when three men are found, the crowd is divided over whether to take them back for trial or hang them immediately. Gil and Art argue for restraint, but the demand for revenge pushes the townspeople toward taking the law into their own hands.
William A. Wellman directed this drama, working from a screenplay by Lamar Trotti, who also produced it for 20th Century Fox. The film runs 76 minutes and features Henry Fonda as Gil Carter and Dana Andrews as Donald Martin, with Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn, William Eythe and Harry Morgan among the credited cast of 44. It came ninth among the 16 films Wellman directed in chronological order, between Beau Geste and Buffalo Bill.
Audiences rate the film highly: on IMDb it holds 8 out of 10 from roughly 27,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.7 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 8.8 out of 10 from 24 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- William A. Wellman loved Walter Van Tilburg Clark's novel 'The Ox-Bow Incident' and had long nurtured the idea of filming it, but the rights holders insisted that he include a role for Mae West in the film, which Wellman considered absurd. Eventually, Wellman bought the rights to the novel himself in order to film it as he saw fit.
- Henry Fonda, who had a deferment, immediately joined the Navy after finishing filming.
- Henry Fonda was generally dissatisfied with the quality of the films he was contractually obligated to make with 20th Century Fox. "The Ox-Bow Incident" is one of only two films from that period he worked on with enthusiasm. The other was "The Grapes of Wrath."
- In 1998, the film was included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
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