Springfield Rifle (1952) - full review!
Directed by André De Toth (The Gunfighter (1950)), with a screenplay by Frank Davis (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)) and Charles Marquis Warren that was based on a story by Sloan Nibley, this average yet colorful (in a cinema-graphic sense) Western stars Gary Cooper as Major Kearney, who eventually gets to use a fast loading model of the titled gun to shift the balance of power against some horse smugglers. The experimental top-loading breech, which ejects its own shell (e.g. called a trapdoor), enabled one to shoot the weapon fives times faster than its predecessor.
The story is set in Colorado during the Civil War and Cooper plays a Union officer accused of Southern sympathies; this leads to his court martial as a traitor and a coward (a yellow stripe is painted on his back!). But it's all a ruse intended to allow him to gain the confidence of the smugglers and infiltrate their midst in hopes of bringing them justice. Phyllis Thaxter plays the Major's unawares wife Erin. David Brian plays McCool, the South's rustler leader who always seems to know what route the outnumbered Union troops will be using while they attempt to move the herds of horses east for their Northern brethren fighting the war; Lon Chaney Jr. plays the leader of some non-military raiders that have allied with McCool. Paul Kelly plays Kearney's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hudson, and Philip Carey plays Captain Edward Tennick, who's part of the counterespionage scheme with the Major and Colonel Sharpe (Wilton Graff). Incredibly, the Union brass (higher ranking officers) believed that spying was a dishonorable tactic that was beneath them.
James Millican plays a detective that the Union had hired to try to find out why McCool and his men were always a step ahead of them (though naturally it's Cooper's character that discovers the reason). Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams plays Sergeant Snow, who remains loyal to Kearney even after the Major is disgraced; Martin Milner plays another, Private Olie Larsen. Alan Hale Jr. and Fess Parker (uncredited) play two of the raiders.
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