bsmith5552
"The Wild and the Innocent" was a different sort of western for star Audie Murphy. In it he plays a naïve, innocent semi illiterate mountain man who sees the lights of a big town for the first time.Yancy (Murphy), his Uncle Lije (George Mitchell) and Lije's wife Kiri (Lillian Adams) are on their way to trade their beaver pelts at their usual trading post. Along the way, Uncle Lije is mauled by a bear and is unable to continue. Yancy is forced to carry on alone. The trading post has been burned to the ground as a result of drunken Indians made so by rot gut whiskey sold to them by the unscrupulous Ben Stocker (Strother Martin). Stocker, who is travelling westward with his wife and several children, offers up his eldest daughter, the unkempt Rosalie (Sandra Dee) for half of Yancy's furs. He refuses. But Rosalie leaves her family and attaches herself to Yancy much to his dismay. The two continue on to the nearest town and arrive on the 4th of July amid the celebrations.In town, Yancy gets into an altercation with drover Chip (Peter Breck) and is rescued by the town sheriff (Gilbert Roland) who takes a shine to Rosalie. Yancy meanwhile, takes his furs to the General Store run by Forbes (Jim Backus) who is playing in the town band. Yancy sees Marcy (Joanne Dru), a saloon girl and becomes smitten with her.The Sheriff in the meantime, cleans Rosalie up, dresses her in a fancy gown and begins to wine and dine her while all the time she pines for Yancy. Yancy unaware of the town's feelings, asks Marcy to the town dance. The townsfolk shun her and she is forced to explain the facts of life to the innocent Yancy. She tells him that the Sheriff is the owner of the Dance Hall and that Rosalie is with him.Yancy being a bible thumping sort, sees red and goes and gets his gun and goes after Rosalie and...............................................................................Murphy and Dee make a May-September couple. Murphy's character is supposed to be in his early 20s but in fact was 35 at the time and Dee only 17. Roland on the other hand, was in his 50s at the time making him a somewhat of a dirty old man.The best part of the movie is when Strother Martin is on the screen. His portrayal of the slimy slithering whiskey drummer is classic Martin.Not much action but "The Wild and the Innocent" is an enjoyable little opus nonetheless.
zardoz-13
Audie Murphy never took an Oscar home, but he was an adequate actor. Some roles gave him more leeway to experiment, while others confined him to formulaic roles. Nevertheless, Murphy is thoroughly convincing as a wet-behind-the-ears young man named Yancy who has spent his entire life in the mountains with his trapper uncle and Native American wife. A rugged frontiersman and a crack shot with a rifle, he knows nothing about social customs. He knows nothing about women, prostitution, and little about the outside world. Co-writer & director Jack Sher and "Joe Butterfly" scenarist Sy Gomberg have fashioned a solid, unpretentious, offbeat western that happily doesn't cast Murphy as a gunfighter. Instead, he plays a man out of touch with reality when he get his first taste of city life on the frontier. Murphy does a good job of playing a naïve young man. "The Wild and the Innocent" isn't a town tamer western, a cavalry western, a revenge oater, or a wagon train chronicle. This Universal-International release could qualify as a coming-of-age saga. After Yancy's uncle is attacked by a bear one evening, Yancy must ride out by himself to sell their pelts. The owner of the General Store in the nearest town is leaving when Yancy catches him and he recommends that Yancy sell his furs in Casper. This means that he must ride two extra days. He encounters a liquor salesman, Ben Stocker (Strother Martin of "Cool Hand Luke"), when he is told to go to Casper. Stocker is a low-down, no-account, scoundrel, and he is responsible for driving the General Store manager away. Stocker has a good-looking daughter, Rosalie (Sandra Dee of "Gidget," who he tries to pawn off on Yancy. Yancy refuses all of Stocker's proposals, but Rosalie slips away from her terrible father. She wants to ride with Yancy and get herself a job in Casper. Initially, Yancy wants nothing to do with her, but eventually he lets her join him. Rosalie is as naïve about life as Yancy. When the two arrive in Casper, and they learn some important lessons about life and love. The town of Casper is ruled by the Town Marshal, Paul (Gilbert Roland of "The Bad and the Beautiful"), who owns and operates a bordello. He learns about Yancy's arrival after a rowdy cowpoke, Chip (Peter Breck of "Shock Corridor"), tries to rough him up, and Yancy baptizes Chip in a horse trough. Chip sloshes up out of the horse trough and tries to shoot Yancy, but his gun is too wet to fire. These two have a running feud throughout "The Wild and the Innocent" and they clash later during a dance on Independence Day. Chip challenges Yancy to a gunfight, but Yancy prefers to bodily attack Chip. Incredibly, Yancy stomps on Chip's hand and breaks it when the young galoot tries to shoot him. Meantime, Paul takes an interest in Rosalie and wants her all to himself. Yancy lays his eyes on a prostitute, Marcy (Joanne Dru of "Red River"), and he becomes infatuated with her. They get together, but Yancy wants her, but he must learn the hard way about the social stigma surrounding prostitution. Basically, Yancy is a man of considerable resource but no guile. While all this is going on, Rosalie gets a job in a whore house, but she doesn't want to work there. Eventually, Paul and Yancy clash. Yancy learns that Paul made the citizens breathe easier after he took over the duties of town marshal. Yancy topples Paul from power as the town boss, decides to leave Casper, and finds himself pursued by Rosalie. The opening and ending scenes serve as book markers. Jack Sher does a solid job of staging the bullet-riddled action. "The Wild and the Innocent" ranks as one of Murphy's better movies.
bkoganbing
Audie Murphy stretched his youthful appearance once too often in doing The Wild and The Innocent. Neither he or Sandra Dee are all that wild, but brother are they innocent enough. If this were done today, both probably would have had sex scenes with Joanne Dru and Gilbert Roland.It's hard to believe such folks exist, but Murphy plays a mountain trapper, probably one of the last of his kind in the rugged Wyoming Rockies. Normally he goes to a trading post to sell his furs, but as he gets there the trading post has been burned down because some peckerwood played by Strother Martin sold some moonshine to the Indians with predictable results.Murphy's got to take his furs to Casper and this is first time in the big city. God only knows what he would have thought of Chicago or New York if Casper, Wyoming is defined as a city. Strother Martin leaves his daughter, young Sandra Dee with Murphy and both go to Casper.Which is having a Fourth of July celebration. Let's say that both Murphy and Dee get a big city education from Dru and Roland.The characters are a bit too much to swallow. Murphy's education may be lacking, but I can't believe he didn't learn a bit about the birds and the bees living in the wild. In fact country folk probably have a far more relaxed attitude about sex as they see it in the livestock they raise.Gilbert Roland is one of my favorite character actors, I love him in anything and another good performance here is Peter Breck as a cowboy tough who Murphy deals with quite expeditiously. Still Murphy and Dee look like one very odd couple.
