Of the five reviews contributed here for GUNS OF THE TIMBERLAND so far, four are quite negative, so today, on the date of Alan Ladd's centennial, please allow me to balance out the critical consensus. I'm a big fan of Ladd and a huge fan of westerns (I've reviewed a few dozen on IMDb) and I had a good time with this film, which I watched on TCM when it aired last week. Sure, Ladd was old and tired and near the end of his career, but he still has that movie star quality that put him at the top of the box office chart so consistently in the 1940s and early '50s. There's a sense of sincerity and conviction he brings to every role he played. We believe him. Here he plays the fair-minded boss of a logging crew at odds with neighboring ranchers in timber country. The ranchers have powerful arguments against logging and one can't help but agree with them. One of the ranchers, a pretty but tough lady named Laura Riley (well played by Jeanne Crain), even gives Ladd a tour of a ghost town that was made uninhabitable by flooding after logging on adjacent hills led to erosion and mud slides. Ladd listens to the arguments and eventually gets into a confrontation with his stubborn partner, Monty, played by Gilbert Roland, leading to an action-packed forest fire climax.
The plot moves well, is reasonably suspenseful, and boasts lots of action. We see plenty of train action, trees falling, and the dynamiting of a mountain pass at one point, all enhanced by extensive location shooting. The townsfolk present a united front against the loggers, leading to a big brawl in town in one sequence where the loggers have come on a Saturday night to take over the saloon. One of the ranchers is played by Lyle Bettger, who usually played particularly vicious heavies in westerns throughout the 1950s. (He's Ike Clanton in GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL.) He masterminds a couple of devious maneuvers against the loggers here, but he's actually, overall, a good guy, which is quite surprising.
Ladd would have turned 100 today (September 3, 2013), but died 50 years ago, in January 1964, from a lethal (and probably accidental) combination of alcohol and pills. He had a good run in Hollywood for 20 years and made far more films I like than films I didn't. He was a quintessential Hollywood movie star, studio-created but fan-supported. He may not have had much range, but was very dependable within his range and always gave the fans what they wanted.
