Review of Return of the Frontiersman

Until recently I had no idea that this movie existed having grown up watching Gordon MacRae in musicals, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that he turned in a fairly convincing acting job as the tough young son of the local sheriff played by veteran Jack Holt, who gets framed for a crime he didn't commit. Rory Calhoun plays his friend, another early performance from the western star of countless cowboy pictures of the fifties. Singer Julie London is the beautiful love interest to brighten up MacRae's troubled time in the movie. Julie London doesn't sing in this but there is a small scene where Gordon MacRae strums and sings a short piece but it doesn't encroach on the drama or look out of place, so credit to Warner Bros for not spoiling the action. Rory Calhoun pretty much played the same part throughout the hundred or more film and TV westerns that he made but we'll never know how good an actor Gordon MacRae could have been as he abandoned movies (or they abandoned him) to concentrate on his his greater gift of singing.