A Ticket to Tomahawk

Anne Baxter gets to do a Calamity Jane type role in A Ticket To Tomahawk where she is a hard riding fast shooting deputy to her father Will Wright. If Anne sang as well as acted, you'd swear she would have been poaching on territory established by Betty Hutton and later by Doris Day.

But the music is left to traveling man Dan Dailey who gets innocently dragooned into an attempted killing of her father. Wright and Baxter dispatch the perpetrators involved easily. Dailey can't ride and shoot as well as Baxter, but he's loaded with charm and in one instance an interesting friend in high places.

To complete the terms of a contract a Hooterville Cannonball type train must make a run to the frontier terminus of Tomahawk in Colorado. But their are a couple of miles of track missing for engineer Walter Brennan and fireman Arthur Hunnicutt to surmount. Never mind everybody pitches in and the results are ingenious and pretty funny.

Of course the owner of the existing stagecoach line is doing what he can to prevent the railroad from completing its mission. And they've got a spy in the railroad crowd in the person of devilishly charming and deadly Rory Calhoun. He's making some moves on Baxter and arousing the concern and jealousy of many.

Along for the trip are the troupe of entertainers that Connie Gilchrist heads. Look sharp and you'll see young Marilyn Monroe as one of the entertainers.

A Ticket To Tomahawk is a pleasant and entertaining western with nice musical interludes and dead shot Anne Baxter who learns she can't get a man with a gun.

This western, directed by a non western film maker, a director whose it is the only western, is not bad t all, and far better than its reputation of being a supposed comedy western flick. It is full of charm but of course it is not a gritty story, not the kind of western that, for instance, Henry Hathaway, Joseph Newman or Nathan Juran would have given us. It is full of action, with a beauticul color and it is not too long. I watched it long ago and still thought it was a Richard Bare's film, and not Richard Sale.... I have always confounded both directors names, that's why. But no, it's a true western, even better than a Disney Production stuff.

A railroad owner and a frontier salesman who are anxious to arrive, by rail, at the town of Tomahawk are escorted by the deputized granddaughter of the recently wounded town marshal and her chaperon, to see that the railroad reaches its destination by the prescribed time or the contract is forfeited to the Stage Line, whose owner will do anything to stop them.

The only problems are: Kit Dodge Jr.(Anne Baxter) believes that "Johnny Behind the Deuces" (Dan Dailey) was involved with her Grampa's shooting and besides he's a "drummer" and everyone knows that tall, handsome and suave salesmen are not to be trusted. Johnny, however, is the only "paying" passenger on the train and she must protect him although her trigger finger is prepared for his first wrong move. Not being aware of her feminine side holds some hilarious moments as Grampa makes his best tactful effort (words not to be missed ) at a quick version of "the birds and the bees". While she doesn't quite understand, her chaperon, Pawnee (Chief Yowlachie), does and a large Indian with his own tomahawk is the perfect deterrent.

This train ride should be an easy ride for about 40 miles, but the tracks run out a few miles out of town, so they must carry the engine, cars and passenger over a mountain and fight off the stage line's efforts to stop. Soon they meet up with the tracks that run to Tomahawk. Along for the ride is a group of entertainers including Connie Gilchrist and a young Marilyn Monroe. Also in the cast are Walter Brennan as the train's engineer and Rory Calhoun.

This is a fun movie for anyone with a ticket to Tomahawk!

A fun movie. Marilyn Monore had a bit part as a dance-hall girl. Colorado mountain colors were beautiful. Need more movies like this.

As the railroad is set to make its maiden voyage through the Colorado Rockies in 1876, stagecoach saboteurs are determined to halt the progress; meanwhile, a horse caravan is needed to help pull the locomotive after its discovered there's an absence of track. Anne Baxter is wonderfully bold as the sheriff's no-nonsense, deputized granddaughter (she shoots like a man but longs to be "bussed" like a woman!); Dan Dailey is the salesman and train passenger needed to make the trip a legitimate success; Rory Calhoun is the "pretty" double-crosser on-board; and Marilyn Monroe turns up uncredited as one of the showgirls along for the ride (she doesn't have any lines--and her bit of singing appears dubbed--but she's prominently placed most of the time). After a sluggish, corny start, co-writer and director Richard Sale shakes the lead out and delivers a high-spirited western adventure with Indians, fireworks, flaming arrows, and Walter Brennan as the indefatigable lover of his railroad car! Screenwriters Sale and Mary Loos received a WGA nomination for Best Written American Western. *** from ****