Four Faces West is a 1948 Western film starring Joel McCrea, his real-life wife Frances Dee, and Charles Bickford. It is based on the novel Pasó por aquà by Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Its plot concerns a down-on-his-luck cowboy who robs a bank.
Plot
Ross McEwen pulls an unusual bank job in the New Mexico town of Santa Maria, taking the banker Frenger with him, then letting him go a few miles away, minus boots but with an I.O.U. for the $2,000 he robbed.
Pat Garrett, the new marshal, will try to catch the thief, as will bounty hunters after Frenger's reward offer of $3,000. McEwen is bitten by a rattlesnake before he can board a train, where he is helped by a couple of passengers, Monte Marquez, a gambler, and Fay Hollister, a nurse.
The train tracks are washed out near Albuquerque, so the small group goes off alone via a route used to deliver mail. Fay finds out a posse from Santa Maria is after a wanted man and recalls that's where McEwen came on board. But he and she have developed an attraction.
When they reach an Alamogordo saloon that Marquez's cousins run, a cattleman named Burnett is willing to take on McEwen as a hired hand. Garrett and deputy Clint Waters come to town, so McEwen must leave but offers her an engagement ring. Fay rides along, but ends up separated and captured by Garrett's men.
After crossing the desert with difficulty, McEwen comes across a Mexican rancher named Florencio's family that is ill. He stays to help and starts a fire to signal the lawmen, needing their assistance. Marquez gets there along with Garrett and Fay, but because Florencio is another relative of his, pretends that McEwen is a total stranger.
Garrett isn't fooled, though, and McEwen is convinced to turn himself in, the marshal promising to vouch for his good deed.
Cast
- Joel McCrea as Ross McEwen
- Frances Dee as Fay Hollister
- Charles Bickford as Pat Garrett
- Joseph Calleia as Monte Marquez
- William Conrad as Sheriff Egan
- Martin Garralaga as Florencio
- Raymond Largay as Dr. Eldredge
- John Parrish as Frenger
- Dan White as Clint Waters
- Davison Clark as Burnett
- Houseley Stevenson as Anderson
- George McDonald as Winston Boy
- Eva Novak as Mrs. Winston
External links
- Four Faces West at the Internet Movie Database
- Four Faces West at the TCM Movie Database