In this classic western by Anthony Mann, James Stewart is the bounty hunter Howard Kemp who, a few years after the American Civil War, found himself in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains somewhere in Colorado. He is looking for Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan), an outlaw who killed a sheriff in Kansas, and he will hire old gold prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) for help. When they realize that Ben has hidden on top of a rock, the shooting will attract a young soldier Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker) who will also join them in action, and the agreement is that they will split the reward money at the end. Once they somehow manage to reach the escaped bandit, they will realize that he is not alone, but in his company is a girl named Lina (Janet Leigh), the daughter of Ben’s old robbery partner who was killed during a previous raid in Kansas.
“The Naked Spur” was one of those classic westerns with a really simple premise, only five characters and the dangerous setting of the Rocky Mountains. While Kemp and the rest of the company try to bring the outlaw to the authorities and give him a one-time trip to the gallows, he tries in every way to create unrest among them and make them quarrel. Of course, the situation will get extremely complicated, it will be difficult for anyone from this team to stay cool with young blonde Lina. What would a classic western be without a conflict with Indians who have unsettled accounts with some of them, and although “The Naked Spur” does not belong to the very top of this genre, it stands out for its excellent construction and characterization of the characters because they all have an interesting background story and some motives of their own.
It is interesting that Stewart appeared in as many as five westerns filmed by Mann (a total of eight films of various genres), and this film was once a big hit in American cinemas. Although Janet Leigh is mostly remembered today for her role as Marion Crane in the famous Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, it is interesting how she actually became an actress by accident. While wintering in the Sierra Nevada, early film star Norma Shearer noticed a photo of a young, smiling blonde on a hotel wall, and upon returning to Los Angeles showed the photo to an MGM talent scout. It turned out that this pretty blonde with an angelic smile was the then 18-year-old Jeanette Helen Morrison, who soon accepted the invitation to Hollywood, changing her name first to Jeanette Reames after her second husband (she didn’t waste time, she got married for the first time, and divorced even faster when she was 15 -year-old) then into Jeanette Morrison, finally into Janet Leigh, by which name we still remember her today.