User Reviews

"Great Day in the Morning" had one main point: While the Indians are fighting for the possession of the land, the white men are taking part in the events leading up to the Civil War for the same land...

Robert Stack acts with considerable force, humor and salty flavor since his arrival to Denver at the outbreak of the Civil War... In a Poker game, he wins a 'big hand' from a 'little lady.' Barbara Rush deals out a surprising twist of fate impossible to beat!

The glamorous blonde beauty Virginia Mayo plays, with just, the right romantic woman and adventurous spirit... And Ruth Roman proves to be a genuine strong-willed character... Unfortunately she is Raymond Burr's victim...

All the characters help disguise the weaknesses and lack of the originality of the gold rush fever... But Jacques Tourneur's camera-work on the great outdoors deserves top mention... His shots are so nice to watch...

Raymond Burr, who stakes his money and his saloon on the turn of the cards, appears fascinated in his heavy role...

In about 90 per cent of the 74 movies he directed Jacques Tourneur's name on the credits was as good as money in the bank, as was his father's Maurice in France, but everyone is entitled to an off day and Great Day In The Morning was Jacques, which is a shame because although he continued to direct he never shot another Western. Apart from Tourneur the Casting Director assembled a cast of great interest to film buffs if not necessarily bonding together. Top- billed Robert Stack was not a natural 'western' star and was much more at home as Elliott Ness in The Untouchables, his top-rated television show. Neither of his two leading ladies, Ruth Roman and Virginia Mayo offered much in the way of chemistry and chief heavy Raymond Burr appeared to be phoning it in. Leo Gordon's threat never really materialised and Regis Toomy was wasted as a priest. The plot began in the lead-up to the Civil War and featured unease between the Yankees and the minority of Southerners based in Denver. The conflict, such as it was, was resolved rather weakly when Alex Nicol looked the other way as Stack lit out for home. Worth a look as a curio but no more.

Jacques Tourneur brought a European intelligence, literacy and seriousness to his Hollywood westerns.

This 1956 Civil War film is strikingly set on the eve of the war, when the tensions rip apart early Denver but the cataclysm still hangs in the air. The film ends as the war begins, the Union civilians slip into uniform and the War shifts from words into killing. But Denver on the eve of the war catches the fear of division more familiar to 1950s Europe than to the American popular screen.

Robert Stack's Owen Pentecost is an unusual Western hero because he is completely selfish, an unheroic hero before the genre crawled with them. He's a Southerner with none of the history, values or pretences of the Old South gentleman. He's Rhett Butler without the charm.

The few Southerners in this rabidly Unionist town plead for and expect his support but as he admits, he is only out for himself. "Sure, I'm loyal. I've got an undying loyalty to myself and no one else, nothing else." In the climactic struggle for the gold to finance the rebels' cause, he undertakes to help them only if they pay him $200,000.

The hero's name is doubly suggestive. The Owen suggests a cypher, an O, zero, a man hollow at the core. He's also someone incurring debts — he's owing. He carries two debts in particular.

After killing a miner in a duel over a contested claim he conceals his responsibility and informally adopts the miner's young son, intending to raise him in his own values (self- preservation, gunplay, etc.). In the key gunfight Owen is wounded trying to secure the boy's safety.

His other key debt is to the bar-girl Boston Grant (Ruth Roman), who betrays her corrupt boss/beau Jumbo Means (a swollen Raymond Burr) in a poker deal that gives Owen Jumbo's gambling and mining empire. She loves Owen and he takes her but is drawn away to the more innocent blonde Ann Merry Alaine (Virginia Mayo).

That romantic tension echoes that between Katy Jurado and Grace Kelly in High Noon (1952), the archetypal pull between Experience and Innocence. The parallel emphasizes Owen's vacuity in contrast to the integrity of Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in the earlier film. Where Jurado represents Mexico, though, Boston's name represents the civilized East, which sets her above the crooked man of Means. But Boston is only her name; it's Ann Merry (!) who comes from the East with her trunks of women's fashion to civilize the West — and to try to make Owen honest. Ann's love for Owen is continually checked by her moral revulsion at him.

Owen holds back from Boston on the same principle of icy selfishness:

"I don't belong to anyone except myself. I'm not joining any parade - yours or theirs. I like walking alone - no ties. Don't ask questions; no one to answer to. Man's gotta be sentimental to fight a war; gotta have a lump in his throat about God and country and home and mother, all the pretty things.(He takes a drink, and looks at Boston.) No lumps."

Their love will inevitably be a casualty of the war. Boston asks, "Owen, if there's a war, I'm North, a Yankee, you're South. What happens to us?" He replies "I shoot you, I guess." But he doesn't have to. After falsely claiming to bring her to the boy, Means murders Boston before she can learn Owen loves her. She dies, his debt to her unpaid. All he could tell her was "I'll remember you as long as I remember anything."

Then there's that Pentecost, as odd a surname/label as the silver screen sagebrush ever offered. The name evokes revivalist Protestantism. Christianity is what Owen essentially lacks, what the Zero and Owing of his name replace. In this respect the neutral Owen is like both sides of the Civil War boiling over in the town: the lynch-mob Unionists and the equally destructive Confederates. They all serve themselves and their strictly secular values at the cost of humanity. The Unionist's vituperation abandons all sense of Christian brotherhood — and loses our sympathy: "I can smell a Southerner a mile off. Smell I don't like. Nor the breed. High and godly, slave-trading, slave-beating rebel secessionists. Not fit to live, none of you. Sorry we saved your worthless hide."

The town's other striking character is the Catholic priest, skirts and all. Father Murphy (of course, he has to be Irish) strikes a balance between his religion and the town's secular needs. He's killed when he steps between the town's warring factions in the saloon. But as the priest falls and the war erupts, Owen is drawn out of his selfishness into more humanist values.

Owen's growth appears in three stages. He tells the boy he killed his father, disillusioning him to keep him out of the war. He helps his South compatriots and then suspends his fee as payment for the wagon he'll use to escape. Finally, he asks the Union captain to tell Boston he loved her: "Love is never a word that came easy to me."

This humanity prompts the captain to let him escape. As one hatred provokes the other, one humanity does as well. This double transcendence of the conflict explains the film's Revivalist title, Great Day in the Morning, the new dawn of salvation. Captain Gibson provided a more domestic version of the overriding human community: "The North and South are natural enemies - like husband and wife." The division conceals — but threatens — the deeper union.

Just before the start of the Civil War a southern gunfighter annex gambler comes to Denver and stirs things up, shoots some people and falls in love with 2 women.

It sounds as the typical outline for a 50's western and that's exactly what this is. Only it just doesn't seem to work this time. First and foremost there is the main character played by Robert Stack. He may be quick on the trigger, handsome and so on but he sure ain't very likable and that remains so mainly all through the movie.

He gambles and wins by cheating (thanks to some smart card dealing from Ruth Roman) a whole lot of money and the complete saloon. No wonder the former owner (Raymond Burr) is quite angry. Then he starts another scheme by dealing out gold digging claims to some local folk but he wants 50 % of all the earnings. Right, this will work out fine. Things go wrong almost immediately as he kills one of the diggers who refuses to hand his share. To make it up somehow he takes care of young son of the gold digger, a very annoying kid as in most US fifties movies. In the end Stack then somehow redeems himself by turning to the Southern cause (?).

Stack does his best but he sure ain't no John Wayne or James Stewart who would have given the role some humour and some extra sympathy. The rest of the cast ain't very good either, most of them hamming it up (there's a lot of shouting in this movie).

Mind you, this role might well have suited Stack for his next two movies, both directed by Douglas Sirk, where he plays some really nasty characters and does it quite convincing.

There's also Virginia Mayo, still very attractive and we even get a bathtub scene but that's about all there is to her role.

So overall this movie is not exactly a classic despite some good photography and the otherwise very able director Jacques Tourneur at the helm. It would be his last western.

Finding Out of the Past and Berlin Express express to be interesting Film Noir's,I've been keeping a look out for more titles by auteur Jacques Tourneur. Gripped by the tough as nails Nordic Noir False Trail,I took a look to see what else was on the BBC catch-up service,and found a Tourneur Western that helped to turn my morning into a great day.

The plot:

As the US Civil War begins, cowboy Owen Pentecost wins a dirty card game that allows him to own a salon. Allowing dressmaker Ann Merry Alaine and the other staff to continue working at the salon,Pentecost tries to not take sides in the war between the North and the South. Finding the war to be building momentum,Pentecost fights to keep his salon safe whilst being a father figure to orphan Gary John Lawford,who (unknown to Lawford) dad was killed by Pentecost.

View on the film:

Holding Pentecost back from taking sides in the American Civil War, Lesser Samuels adaptation of Robert Hardy Andrews's novel greatly plays on Pentecost's ambiguity,with Pentecost's whip-smart skills gaining him enemies on both the North and the South lines, and the memories of how he killed Lawford's dad haunting Pentecost's attempts to be a father figure to Gary. Along with the powder keg fights, Samuels keeps the guns blazing with cracking dialogue that hits comedy one-liners and also goes into the concern Pentecost has of being trapped in the middle of the war

Going to the West for the final time, director Jacques Tourneur & cinematographer William E. Snyder bring the shadows of Tourneur's Film Noir's to the Western,as the sunlight that welcomes Pentecost into town turns into the darkness of war dawning on the town. Setting off spectacular stagecoach chases, Tourneur makes the final stand-offs impressively gritty,as elegant side shots subtly captures the killing of the great day.

Not needing the help of any man, Virginia Mayo gives an excellent performance as Ann Merry Alaine,whose off the cuff wisecracks and confidence in her own views allows Mayo to make Alaine as much of an outlaw as the cowboys. Left with a hand of nothing but bad options, Robert Stack give a great performance as Pentecost, thanks to Stack peeling away Pentecost initially cocky manner to reveal a torn with doubt outlaw,who fights to welcome a great day.

Disappointing film. The problem here is the incomplete character development. How will Owen Pentecost (Robert Stack) deal with the young lad whose father he killed in a gunfight? Ruth Roman getting knifed in the end by a threatening Raymond Burr, a character totally underdeveloped character, what's his real reason for wanting a Civil War between the states?

Owen admits his love for Ann (Virginia Mayo) who has come to Denver to open a dress store. Is it true love or was it convenient to say this so that the union soldier who loved her as well will free her?

The script is quite weak in this film. It's the same as a grammar lesson trying to convey the idea of dangling participles.

While there is little ammunition here, there is absolutely no beef?

There might be spoilers here. I am watching the movie on TCM July 30th, 2020. I love westerns. But the lead character Owen P. made the movie very distasteful (at 80 minutes of a 105 minute movie) with his ruthless selfishness. The lead character portrays an arrogant and grandstanding individual at all times (so far). His character has no redeeming qualities, and neither is there any other major character who portrays a counterpoint to Owen P. Maybe the counterpoint character emerges towards the end, if at all. Anyhow, as a western without a major character to counterpoint Owen P.'s malevolence it takes all the entertainment out of the film. I have seen bad characters who kill in westerns or even in other film genres. But with Owen P.'s character the movie is very lopsided in favour of a bad human being.