Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, and Jeff Morrow came over from America to appear with a cast of Irish players starring in Captain Lightfoot. It's a story of Ireland in the post Napoleonic era with the dashing Captain Thunderbolt looking for a successor to carry on with banditry and villainy all in the cause of a free Ireland.
Morrow is the legendary Thunderbolt getting on in years and when in the guise of a parson spots young Rock Hudson taking on a British dragoon. That was it, Morrow has found his man.
He also finds his son-in-law as well as his daughter Barbara Rush eventually falls for Hudson who after a period where she thinks of him as a country bumpkin, starts falling for him. She names his Lightfoot because of lack of ability on the dance floor. There relationship is not approved of by Morrow and first and Rush is a spitfire. There's a lot of borrowing from The Taming Of The Shrew here.
Hudson seems a bit ill at ease in a part that a young Errol Flynn would have gone to town with. Also if you've seen Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in The Fighting O'Flynn with that kind of élan Fairbanks brought to the part it was a shame he was about 15 years too old for the role.
Rush and Morrow are great and the Irish locations and the talents of the supporting cast, many of them members of the Abbey Theater really do make the film a visual treat and a treat for the ears. The finale involving storming the castle at Ballymoor is well staged.
He wasn't well cast, but the role did no harm to the rising career of Rock Hudson.
