thedavidovitch A real B movie Western that's showing its age. Of course it wasn't unusual during the genre's heyday to find white actors playing Native Americans or to find story lines that portrayed them as duplicitous savages, but the breathtaking racism of this script, coupled with some hilarious casting, with a quite obviously blue-eyed white guy as the Sioux chief, makes it a pretty challenging watch for a modern audience.Some nice cinematography and decent enough fight scenes are mildly diverting, but it's certainly not a classic of the genre. More, it's a reminder of how, at worst, the Western was a pretty ruthless exercise in historical revisionism.

bkoganbing I finally got to see Yellowstone Kelly today and found it to be a decent enough western. Back in the day I was going to see it at the age of 12, but did not want to deal with the unbelievably long lines or the screaming teens who came to see Kookie.This was not Edd Byrnes first feature film, but the first after his success on 77 Sunset Strip. The bobbysoxers were nuts about him back in the day and crowded out us connoisseurs of the western. I remember the long lines and the stories about how one could not hear the dialog with the adolescent females going gaga for Kookie.The real star in the title role was another Warner Brothers TV veteran, Clint Walker. He plays a mountain man trapper and scout, the last of a breed. He's allowed to do his thing on Sioux land because he saved John Russell's life who is the chief.After taking on Edd Byrnes as a young assistant, the two visit the Sioux where both of them catch the eye of Andra Martin who is an Arapahoe captive and Russell's personal squeeze. Another brave Ray Danton would like to replace Russell in her tepee. When she runs away and follows Walker and Byrnes to their cabin, Russell and Danton come calling with the tribe. These kind of things start wars as the Ancient Greeks would be the first to tell you.As much as Kookie got all the publicity and was the reason for Yellowstone Kelly's box office, this film belongs to the stoic Clint Walker who if he had come along a decade earlier would have been a great cowboy hero. Walker is smart and stoic in the title role.I have to say that Andra Martin as a blue eyed Arapahoe was most disconcerting. Just like Burt Lancaster in Apache.Despite that Yellowstone Kelly was a well made action western that any fan of the horse opera will love.

dougdoepke One good thing—WB popped for some scenic Arizona locations, at the same time they didn't stint on extras to flesh out the big battle scene. However, reviewer Dinky is spot-on about the negatives. As a drama, the film is definitely inferior to the underrated Fort Dobbs (1958) that features the same production team. Writer Kennedy, for example, specialized in tight, emotionally complex Westerns, such as the legendary Ranown series with Randolph Scott. Here, however, he has to accommodate a host of WB contract players, including Sunset Strip hipster Edd Byrnes. This results in an over-crowded, over-stretched slice of eye candy that dissipates impact over a series of climaxes.Arguably the movie's most interesting feature is the way the relationship between Kelly (Walker) and Anse (Byrnes) is handled. Now, if the masterly muscular Kelly is added, on one hand, to the submissive pretty-boy Anse, on the other, the sum is two iconic stereotypes of the gay community. Of course, production could have plunked a hat on Byrnes like everyone else and lessened his looks. But that would have outraged fans of the teen idol whose trademark had become a comb. So, the visual earmarks remain. At the same time, the screenplay puts this suggestive two-some into a wilderness cabin for the winter, where the big-hair half does womanly duties like cooking and cleaning, while the macho trapper brings home the bacon. So, together you've got an unmistakable situation for perceptive 50's audiences that putting a woman (Wahleeah) into the mix doesn't erase. Plus, these visual hints are compounded with the homo erotic bed scene that Dinky describes so well. My point is that toying with this taboo could not have been lost on the filmmakers, causing me, at least, to wonder what their reasoning was. After all, the Western is about the most macho of all movie genres. It's worth noting that the movie's overall quality is not affected by this one aspect. In fact, none of this would be worth remarking on if the movie were not from the uptight 1950's, when the topic of same-sex attraction could not even be mentioned, e.g. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). So in that sense, the film remains something of an oddity for its time. But the movie itself ranks a lot higher on the list of glamorized Westerns than on the list of compelling ones.

nwatson-5 Yellowstone Kelly was a super show, I really liked the actors in the movie and I have always liked Clint Walker. I have always wished I could find a DVD or VHS copy of the particular movie but I have not found one yet. There are just no words that I can use to describe what this movie meant to me. I will always remember it. Thank you for letting give my opinion on this, means a lot to me. Clint Walker, Ed Byrnes, John Russell were some of my favorite actors back when this was made. Yellowstone Kelly was so great in the acting, in the scenery where it was made. The actors gave great performances dealing with Indian culture and things of this sort. It was just one of my favorite movies.