A couple of people who would obtain stardom in the 60s, actor Troy Donahue
and folksinger Rod McKuen are in the cast of this B western for Universal about
a pair of families the Breslins and Bascombs who settle in the west. Will Rogers,
Jr. is first billed in Wild Heritage but basically he doesn't do anything but watch
over the pioneer families. Rogers is a judge but they have no courts and no sheriff and really no law.
Which is why a couple of outlaw brothers can shoot the Breslin family patriarch
Paul Birch down and nothing done about it. Later on Stephen Ellsworth the
head of the Bascombs is killed in a wagon accident. Which leaves widows
Breslin and Bascomb played by Maureen O'Sullivan and Jeanette Nolan to
carry on and homestead with their kids.
The kids who are Gigi Perreau, Rod McKuen, Gary Gray, and George Winslow
for O'Sullivan and Troy Donahue and Judi Meredith for Nolan don't really get
along for the most part. But pioneer life and the elements of nature and the
common enemies of those two who shot down Birch make allies.
Wild Heritage is nothing spectacular, but it holds up well as a nice family film
even for today.
