Rachel and the Stranger (1948) - full review!
Directed by Norman Foster, this 80 minute drama gives one a real sense of the role of women in the pioneering days of the old West. Times were a lot different then, and women were expected to do chores from sun up to sundown with little thanks or appreciation while their menfolk cleared the land, farmed it, and caught or killed something for her to cook as their dinner. Loretta Young plays Rachel while William Holden plays the titled "stranger", a widower with a preteen son (Gary Gray), who "buys" her to replace his recently departed wife. His wife had wanted her son to be raised properly, as a boy in the East would be, despite the wilderness in which they lived. So, in order to provide the boy with the proper education and schooling, Holden's character marries a bonded (because she was repaying her deceased father's debt) woman, Rachel, after paying "18 (dollars) plus 4" (more later) for her. The parson (Tom Tully) and his wife (Sara Haden) had convinced him that living under the same roof with another woman wouldn't be proper unless they were husband & wife.
Holden's character, David Harvey, proceeds in treating Rachel like chattel until his old friend, and wandering hunter Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) comes to call. Apparently David and Jim had competed for the affections of the woman that became David's first wife. She had married David because he was more proper, and less wild than Jim, who thus far had shown no willingness to settle down. Davey (Jr.) would love to do as Jim does, which was the main impetus for David to go and find a replacement "wife" in the first place, to respect his first's wishes and raise Davey proper. However, soon Jim has become a long-term guest of the Harveys, and (seeing the way that Jim treats his "in-name-only" wife) David begins to notice that Rachel is more than just his "slave", but a woman in her own right. He discovers that she has musical skills (Mitchum sings too!) like his first wife, and she makes it a point to secretly learn to shoot like his first wife could as well. It is the latter of these skills which wins over his boy Davey. Eventually, David and Jim are repeating their earlier pattern of competing for the same woman. Fortunately, some real Western action involving the native Cheyenne tribe is introduced into the story, which saves the film from stalling and wraps up the story nicely, if predictably.
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