Texas Reviews

Holden and Ford are a pair of Confederate veterans wandering the Texas prairies after the Civil War. They first run into trouble when Holden accepts a challenge to fight a local bare knuckles boxing champion and the fight degenerates into a wild melee involving most of the town. Later, after witnessing a stagecoach holdup, Holden and Ford rob the robbers; however, the sheriff takes them for the first set of thieves and the two narrowly escape his pursuit. Losing track of each other, Ford and Holden meet again much later. Ford has taken a job on the ranch run by Trevor and her father, Crehan, and Holden has turned outlaw, joining a gang of rustlers headed by Buchanan, who doubles as the town dentist. Ford is assigned to drive a herd to the railhead at Abilene, and Holden is ordered to steal the cattle. What's more, both men are in love with Trevor, although she only has eyes for Holden. Holden double crosses Buchanan and the gang and helps Ford get the cattle through, but when they try to get back to Texas, Holden is killed by the outlaws. Fast-moving and entertaining, TEXAS marked Columbia's attempt to make a lightweight and funny western after its bloated paean to the pioneer spirit, ARIZONA, went belly-up at the box office the year before. All of the supporting performances are good, especially Buchanan as the dentist and outlaw chieftain, a performance close to his own heart since he practiced dentistry before he turned to acting. Holden and Ford had long been rivals of a sort as they rose to stardom through the Columbia stock company, and director Marshall used this fact to coax better performances out of them, as well as to get them do their own stunts, approaching each actor separately and telling him the other had already agreed to do the stunt. At one point, Marshall even used this trick to get the actors to swim their horses across a lake, a particularly dangerous stunt.