User reviews

Man Without A Star is directed by King Vidor and adapted by Borden Chase & D. D. Beauchamp from the Dee Linford novel. It stars Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Crain, Claire Trevor, William Campbell & Richard Boone. Photographed by Russell Metty in Technicolor around the Thousand Oaks area in California, with the title song warbled by Frankie Laine.

Dempsey Rae (Douglas) is easy going and a lover of life, so much so he has no qualms about befriending young hot head Jeff Jimson (Campbell). The pair, after a scare with the law, amble into town and find work at a ranch owned by the mysterious Reed Bowman. Who after finally showing up turns out to be a lady (Crain), with very ambitious plans. As sexual tensions start to run high, so do tempers, as the boys find themselves in the middle of a range war.

It's all very conventional stuff in the grand scheme of range war Western things, but none the less it manages to stay well above average in spite of a tricky first quarter. For the fist part Vidor and Douglas seem to be playing the film for laughs, with the actor mugging for all he is worth. Add in the wet behind the ears performance of Campbell and one wonders if this is going to be a spoof. But once the lads land in town and the girls show up (Trevor classy, Crain smouldering), the film shifts in gear and starts to get edgy with Vidor proving to have paced it wisely. The thematics of era and lifestyle changes, here signified by barbed wire, are well written into the plot. While interesting camera angles and biting photography keep the mood sexually skew whiff. Boone lifts proceedings with another fine villain performance, and Jay C. Flippen in support is as solid as he almost always was. 7/10

This excellent 50's western from Universal Pictures and director King Vidor stars Kirk Douglas as Dempsey Rae, a wandering cowhand in old west Wyoming. He and recently-acquired friend Jeff (William Campbell) find good work on a large cattle ranch, but new owner Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain) complicates things, bringing in so many new head of cattle that the other, smaller ranchers will be forced out. Those ranchers have no choice but to start stringing up barbwire fences to save some grazing land for their own herds, which sets off a range war.

I liked this western despite the familiar story line, mainly due to the offbeat characters and good direction by Vidor. Douglas in particular assays a complicated man, a rowdy, seemingly fun-loving roughneck who is also capable of deadly violence at a moment's notice. His character Dempsey is not a heroic man, instead driven by personal demons that may lead to self-destruction or a sort of redemption. William Campbell is good as the young kid learning the ropes, while Jeanne Crain plays an alpha female not afraid to use her sexuality to get what she wants. And few actors of the time made better western villains than Richard Boone.

This is probably my favorite Kirk Douglas western. Although it has plenty of action this is not just another action western. Rather it deals with the implacable transition of the west from open range available to all to individually-controlled patches of range that are fenced off with barbed wire. Dempsey Rae (Douglas' character) loves open range and keeps drifting north to avoid the barbed wire which destroys it. Finally, however, he realizes that the small ranchers must fence off the range to protect themselves from the massive herds of a greedy rancher and her ruthless foreman and helps string and protect the wire that he hates so thoroughly. I love this under-rated western.

Terrific stuff! Kirk Douglas is a whiskey-sluggin' man's man who drifts into a Wyoming cattle town after taking young, hot-tempered William Campbell under his wing; they get jobs on cattle baroness Jeanne Crain's ranch, but she's fixin' to muscle in on her rancher-neighbors's land (for the grass) until her neighbor puts up a barbed-wire fence--something Douglas has a violent aversion to. Obviously a quality package, what with King Vidor directing and Douglas at the peak of his rough 'n tumble charms; his paternal relationship with Campbell suits him, as does tough-lady Crain as a possible love-interest. Screenwriters Borden Chase and D.D. Beauchamp get this outdoor yarn off to a great start, and it just keeps going from there. Strong cast includes Richard Boone as the villain, an uncredited Jack Elam as a killer, and Claire Trevor, wonderful as a bar hostess. Douglas swaggers, shoots, bites, plays the banjo and sings! It's one of his very best films. *** from ****

A cowboy is hired as a foreman for a powerful landowner , but he then helps ranchers to stop the egoistic cattle owner from taking over their lands . As he , subsequently , changes sides and will fight against her , as he helps mistreated settlers who put barbwire to protect their herd . The cowboy fighting for justice will tame his vital code he lives by and supporting other neighboring cattlemen who are harassed by her .

This is a moving western dealing with the ordinary conflict between freedom and the need for order and settlements . The picture regards interesting issues such as the economical abuses by powerful owners including violence , and the sexual resources that the beautiful land lady , gorgeous Jeanne Crain , uses to get her purports . Nice and feisty acting by the great Kirk Douglas as the sympathetic as well as impulsive gunfighter . Being one of the first movies that Kirk Douglas made through his own production company , Bryna Productions . Support cast is pretty good , such as : Claire Trevor , Richard Boone , Jay C. Flippen , Jack Elam , Paul Birch , George Wallace , Mara Corday , Roy Barcroft and special mention for William Campbell as a stubborn young gunfighter . Colorful and brilliant cinematography in Technicolor by Russell Metty , being filmed on location in Conejo Valley , Thousand Oaks , Janss Conejo Ranch , California , and Grand Canyon , Arizona . Besides , a moving , stirring musical score by two uncredited composers , Hans J. Salter and Herman Stein .

The motion picture , based on a screenplay by the Western expert Borden Chase , was compellingly directed by King Vidor and lavishly produced by Aaron Rosenberg who financed a lot of westerns for Anthony Man/James Stewart . Although he and Kirk had strong problems , as Douglas and Vidor had arguments , and the latter left the shooting and was fired . However , King shows some his peculiar visual style . In addition , the picture went on to become a box office hit . Vidor directed other good westerns as ¨Duel in the sun¨ , ¨Northwest passage¨, ¨Billy the Kid¨ , and ¨Texas Rangers¨ . And made several classic movies as ¨War and peace¨ , ¨Comrade X¨ , ¨Stella Dallas¨ , ¨Fountainhead¨ , ¨Our daily bread¨ , ¨The citadel¨ , ¨The crowd¨ , ¨Big parade¨ , among others .

While traveling clandestine in a train, the drifter cowboy Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) befriends the naive youngster Jeff "Texas" Jimson (William Campbell) and helps him when he is arrested by mistake in a train station. Dempsey Is hired by the foreman Strap Davis (Jay C. Flippen) to work in the ranch owned by the greedy Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain), who brings civilized habits from the East, like having a bathroom inside the house. When the owners of minor ranches use barbed wire fence in the open grass to protect some land for their cattle in the winter, Reed hires a gang of troublemakers leaded by Steve Miles (Richard Boone) to work in her ranch and tries to seduce Dempsey to convince him to help her. But Dempsey decide to help the ranchers against the gunmen and Reed.

"Man Without a Star" is a flawed but entertaining western. Kirk Douglas performs a nice cowboy that "adopts" a youngster to be the substituted for his brother that was killed in a dispute of land; hates barbed wire fences that he associates to the cause of the death of his brother; and is very successful with women. However, despite telling that barbed wire comes together with fights and killings, his character is incoherent when he defends the ranchers that are installing barbed wire fences. Jeanne Crain is amazingly seductive and sexy with her beauty, and her manipulative character is strong but totally forgotten in the end of the story. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Homem Sem Rumo" ("Drifter")

Kirk Douglas is perfectly cast as Dempsey Rae, the happy wanderer cowboy, expert in guns and horses... Rae rides the open range of the Old West with an eye for the ladies and a fancy way with six-shooters...

The theme of the film is the gradual disappearance of freedom as the Wild West settles down to business and puts up barbed wire to mark the lines of investment... Dempsey Rae is a happy wanderer, content to move further and further west to escape the fences... He meets up with a naive farm-boy "Texas" (William Campbell) who yearns to be a man of action and almost as inept... In Dempsey "Texas" finds the right tutor...

The two team up and get themselves a job working for a beautiful ranch owner, Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain), who turns out to be as unscrupulous as she is attractive... Reed is a 'cattle queen' who rides down the fences of her neighbors carrying the action to its absolute limit in order to prosper and make money...

Dempsey is happy to work for the lady for $30 a month and even happier to make love to her but he draws the line at laying his life for her in range wars... He quits the crooked beauty and drifts into the nearby town, to renew his acquaintance with Idonee (Claire Trevor), a madam with the proverbial heart of gold...

The likable Dempsey is rocked out of his contentment by his successor at the Bowment Ranch, a brute named Steve Miles (Richard Boone) who feels he has to defeat every man in sight, especially when motivated by his glamorous boss...

"Man Without a Star" is a mighty satisfactory entertaining Western, once its premise is established... William Campbell helps Douglas make it so... The two performances are sympathetic, with Campbell looking to Douglas for leadership...

Douglas comes out as a likable star when he announces his presence by throwing his 'good looking' saddle on a window; he is graceful when he combs his hair with water from a goldfish bowl; and he is charming when he plays the banjo and sings a gaily ballad called: "And the Moon Grew Brighter and Brighter."

Jack Elam is cast as the leering, treacherous gunslinger trying to knife Douglas...

Director King Vidor had long established his ability with action sequences and pictorial scope in films like "Northwest Passage," and "Duel in the Sun," and "Man Without a Star" has a full measure of Vidor directed bar room fights, stampedes and chases...

With a lot of color, humor and action Vidor's motion picture is a traditional cattle range movie distinguished by its sheer energy and forceful visual style... The film traces some sex interest between Douglas and Crain, centering on a bathtub 'inside' the house...

This is a better western then King Vidor's Duel In The Sun and just as good as some of Kirk Douglas's westerns. Douglas's westerns were always better when he worked with a better director like Howard Hawks on The Big Sky and Joseph Mankiewicz on There Was a Crooked Man. Douglas also had another western come out the same year as this one called The Indian Fighter but this one was much better. Douglas is a drifter leaving Texas and heading out west and winds up becoming a mentor to William Campbell. Claire Trevor runs a brothel and is friends with Douglas and he winds up getting a job working for Jay C. Flippen. Jeanne Crain turns out to be the real owner and brings in some hired guns like Richard Boone. It's a pretty good western and one of Douglas's best.

Man Without a Star is not ranked as one of Kirk Douglas's great films, but it's a personal favorite of mine and a tour de force for this player.

I don't think any actor in screen history could ever go from zero to 120 in intensity as Kirk Douglas. His character Dempsey Rae in this film is a free footloose cowpoke with charm to spare. When provoked he changes like lightning and he's a man not to be trifled with. Kirk Douglas could do this better than any other actor.

Douglas gets good support here from western regulars like Jay C. Flippen, Eddy Waller, Roy Barcroft. Claire Trevor, although she's played more heart of gold floozies than anyone else in cinema history is never bad. Jeanne Crain as the boss bad gal did well being cast against type.

William Campbell was famous for two things, a role in the original Star Trek series as a Klingon Captain named Koloff and the fact he was married once to Judith Exner who also was linked to President Kennedy and Sam Giancana. He's pretty good in this however as Douglas's sidekick/protégé who turns on him for a while. And Richard Boone never gave a bad performance in his life and doesn't do so here as the foreman Jeanne Crain hires to run roughshod over the smaller ranchers.

Western fans and Kirk Douglas fans will love this.

Director King Vidor had seen better days by the time he came to make Man Without a Star in 1955. It's a surprisingly routine film both for Vidor and star Kirk Douglas. The story of a freewheeling cowboy who gets more than he bargained for when he gets involved with a rancher has existential undertones that make it stand apart from the typical oater of its time, but not far enough. Kirk Douglas is, as usual, energetic in the lead, but was never a credible cowboy; and while he's well cast, his modern personality and style of acting continually obtrude, and destroy what small chance this modest film had of becoming the sleeper it was intended to be.

Your enjoyment of "Man Without a Star" may very well depend to a large degree on your feelings about Kirk Douglas's over-the-top performance. For me, it was just a little too much of Kirk Douglas being Kirk Douglas: he's all physicality and coiled energy, tight-wasted, barrel-chested, (dimple-chinned, natch), lusty brawler in this one. Nobody pulled this off quite like Douglas, so I may in fact be underestimating what he brought to this movie, but... whenever there's the hint of something like grandeur or poetry, for instance (say, in the direction and/or cinematography), here comes Douglas barreling across the screen. (I should add that I've very much enjoyed other Douglas performances. Vincente Minelli's Vincent Van Gogh biopic "Lust for Life" comes to mind, for instance, which I thought marshaled Douglas's seemingly boundless energy in precisely the right direction; and I remember liking him quite a lot in another, later western, "Last Train from Gun Hill.") Likewise, there are moments of broad humor which I found slightly tiresome, for instance, the running joke about the bathroom in the house. I also thought Claire Trevor was nearly wasted in this movie: though her role was more than a cameo, and she played a part in the film's climax, her role was strangely underdeveloped, a mere tool in Douglas's cowpoke Dempsey Rae's story. That's unfortunate, because Trevor is a fine actress and a compelling screen presence, and I thought her character might have been one of the more interesting in the movie had it been developed a little more, even if it just highlighted her jealousy of Dempsey's fascination with Jeanne Crain's Reed Bowman, the new ranch owner with dollar signs in her eyes. As it is, the story has Dempsey sort of caught between his lust for Reed and his loyalty to his conscience and Wyoming's other ranchers, mostly upright men simply trying to survive and make a living herding cattle on the range. There's a young buck in tow (William Campbell as Jeff Jimson, or Tex), which allows for a number of mentoring scenes (some of which, frankly, just play as an excuse for Douglas to play Western movie star via sharp-shooting, gun twirling, etc.). I guess my main complaint was that there were hints of something else, something more mature: scenes in the boarding house, for instance, reminded me of scenes from "Of Mice and Men" (the novel as well as different movie versions), but here the stye was all Hollywood and very little realism. Overall, I would hardly say that "Man Without a Star" is without its pleasures: it's nicely directed and shot, with colorful Technicolor cinematography, and there's some fine work among the supporting players (Jay C. Flippen and Richard Boone are of note). But I mostly only recommend this for classic movie Western fans who like Kirk Douglas at his broadest. (The Movie Czar 10/17/21)

Jeanne Crain is one of those women who comes off even better in jeans than she does when she's wearing a dress.Coming after "Ruby Gentry" ,which gave Jennifer Jones one of her most intense parts and depicted a mad passion à la "duel in the sun" ,"the man without a star" is a male story though .Kirk Douglas carries the movie upon his strong shoulders and he succeeds in giving a subtle performance ,in a portrayal that shows every side of his fragility and despair ,under the guise of good humor and unlimited self- confidence:the scene in which he shows his chest packs a real wallop;the things we learn about his family tends to indicate he is not the man we thought he was .His pairing with Texas displays echoes of Howard Hawks' "the big sky" (1952):the users who have seen that movie will notice the similarities between the final scenes.The "father"/"son" relationship is common in westerns (see also Ray's "run for cover").

This one is very similar to many other westerns, lacking anything unique.

The sequence of events is very predictable - you know how it is going to end in the middle of the movie. The story is very simple and the personalities are vapid (the characters are very similar to those in many other westerns).

Kirk Douglas performs very well as he always did. But most of the rest of the cast is rather wooden, with the exception of Richard Boone who comes across as convincingly menacing.

Before Eastwood, before Spaghetti, Westerns came in two flavors: the first was Gary Cooper; serious gunslingers and death, and the other was John Wayne; tales of manliness and Western values.

Douglas here is definitely in the latter vein. The plot of the cattle ranchers and the greenhorn is very familiar and this is definitely a character driven piece.

It is full of energy, charm, and fun. It is not however a great film; I never felt involved, but I was entertained.

It is too lightweight to be anything other than a good Western as seen through Hollywood's eyes. Fine and dandy for a while, but really instantly forgettable afterward.

If you like Westerns then this is definitely worth viewing - just don't expect it to do anything than entertain.

It is a nice adventure film. We follow Kirk Douglas' Dempsey Rae as he goes through this one little town and gets embroiled into the various local dramas and situations. Each little events leading to a culminating feud that pits everyone against each other.

One great thing this movie does is carefully laying out the lifestyle of the West. It is very didactic in its approach and takes the time to present and explain all these little things and how they work. There is an amount of romantic admiration for that rancher lifestyle and the life on the frontier. It is harsh and unforgiving, and the film gives all of those pains mostly to the kid Dempsey befriends. But, it also infuses Dempsey with a carefree attitude that is obviously endearing. The first half of the film, when Dempsey takes the kid under his wing and they become ranchers, is wholesome, informative and fun. It is something you rarely see in film anymore: just a story of people getting a job, and doing said job.

The film somewhat breaks down when the idealised picture of the West is confronted with the plot. The first half has barely any drama in it. The second half is almost nothing but drama. The plot is interesting and also representative of the economics of the old West. Yet, it is tonally inconsistent with the quasi-wholesomeness of the beginning of the adventure. The movie turns dark pretty much without notice.

There is something to be said about the main character. It is at first established that Dempsey is against barbed wire in grazing. The film opposes a rather decentralized organisation view against a more monopolistic/predatory approach. That stuff is in itself great, it takes a rather obtuse economic concept and illustrates it clearly. However, later on the plot forces Dempsey to take a stand for barbed wire and spends most of the movie in support of that practice. There are action scenes of our hero putting up barbed wire. It cheapens a bit the character and you got the feeling that overall Dempsey is too removed from the central tension. It is a flip-flop on such a central issue of the movie; that it feels like he does not actually care. Therefore it softens the tension that would have been.

In my view, what the film does best is illustrating that the western genre needed an update in its form and function. That revolution would come with the Italian westerns, where the focus would go from the specific logistics and practices of the West to deeper emotional resonance and riveting characters arcs. Not so much about grazing rights and cattle management, but rather life and death; good and evil.

Film so good that it was copied eight years later Season One Episode 15 of the Virginian entitled "Duel at Shiloh". Brian Keith adroitly plays the Kirk Douglas role. This episode also marks the introductory episode of Shiloh ranch hand Steve Hill played by Gary Clarke.

The man without a star is Douglas, and the Star is the picture here. Douglas apes, cavorts, and even sings his way thru the part of the seasoned cowboy attempting to teach a tenderfoot the ways of the range. Campbell is good as the young green-horn that learns his lessons perhaps too well. Although the fun seems a bit forced at times, this one is hard not to like.

One of those all too bright and cheery semi-comic easygoing Westerns full of stupid men behaving childishly.

Were it not for Kirk's star turn and some nice touches in the first half of its running time, this rather silly affair wouldn't be worthwhile at all.

The character motivation is all at sea and the hero's barb wire trauma is ridiculous from the get-go.

There are some interesting topics hidden among the posturing, but the execution is half-hearted at best.

4 out of 10 interior bathrooms