“Alvarez Kelly” is a western about a cattle drive from Mexico northward then eastward to Richmond, Virginia. The color Columbia Pictures production lasts 116 minutes. Some of it was filmed on location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The tagline describes the movie as “a herd of cattle against a herd of cannon!” This refers to the final few scenes where Confederate soldiers use stampeding cattle to help them run through Union troops who are trying to capture them.
William Holden plays Alvarez Kelly. An independent beef procurer for the highest bidder: in this case the United States. He has brought 2,500 head of cattle from Mexico and delivered them to the Union army near Richmond Virginia. Holden won an Best Actor Oscar for his role as Sefton, the unlikeable prisoner in “Stalag 17) (1953). He also received nominations for “Sunset Boulevard where his Joe Gillis was lost in the shadow of Gloria Swanson’s Nora Desmond. He was also nominated for the 1976 movie “Network” but lost to fellow star Peter Finch. . . . .
. . . Richard Widmark stars as Colonel Tom Rossiter, a Confederate office charged with stealing the cattle from the Union Army. He blackmails Kelly’s into helping him. Oh, and he cuts off one of his fingers too. Widmark was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for the 1947 “Kiss of Death,” role Tommy Udo. He lost to Edmund Gwenn in the “Miracle of 34th Street. He played opposite Kirk Douglas in “Judgment of Nuremberg,” but his performance was weak. Widmark was a natural for the angry tough guy in noir films, but he never seemed to play anything else.
