Night Passage

• Directed by James Neilson
• July 17, 1957 (Denver, CO) / July 24, 1957 (LA) / July 24, 1957 (NYC)
• Based on the 1956 novel Night Passage by Norman A. Fox

A former railroad man is entrusted to carry the company’s payroll in secret despite being suspected of having connections to the outlaws. Stewart helps get it to work.

Having seen Leave It To Beaver it’s weird to see if Hugh Beaumont playing an asshole. But as the number two man of the railroad Jeff Kurth he did it well here. You recognize Beaumont right away but he in no way does he channel Ward Cleaver here. He is openly hostile to Stewart’s Grant McLaine. You get a sense the hate goes beyond the events that caused McLaine to get fired.

McLaine is hired back to get the payroll successfully to the employees but because he let The Utica Kid (Audie Murphy) get away Kurth thinks it is a bad idea though his very experience with the outlaw is what got him the job. That and he was making a meager living playing an accordion so they figured he would do it to have a better income. So the guy barely making it and who might be criminally sympathetic is ideal to carry a fortune and protect it from outlaws? I guess so.

Jimmy Stewart, despite his lanky build was always an effective tough guy somehow. That’s what the French call ‘acting’. He’s the man who can’t be tamed with a bit of a broken heart and emotional baggage but not so much that it weighs and down and makes you question how he is still a functional human being.

Night Passage is a good brother versus bad brother story. Stewart’s Grant McLaine is the good brother. Maybe a tough guy, but he’s a good man. Audie Murphy’s Lee ‘The Utica Kid’ McLaine is the younger brother that fell into a life of crime. Bad but not beyond redemption. At least in the eyes of Grant.

When Murphy and Stewart are inevitably in a scene together, Murphy’s lack of skill as an actor in comparison to Stewart is apparent. Audie Murphy was never great, but he was certainly serviceable in such films as No Name on The Bullet. But you need to bring your AAA game when you’re with someone like Stewart. You may not be able to our class him, but you need to be able to come close. Murphy fell short. He relied too much on trying to bring a military bearing rather than craft a character.

Almost reflexively for the era we get a cute kid in this movie. Kids are always a tough sell and the further back you go the tougher of a sell they are. Few can be the center of attention in a scene let alone a movie and be authentic. It is not too bad here and appears to be a poor attempt by James Neilson and pals to show how Grant was with Lee in their youth. It also serves to reinforce that Grant is the genuinely good brother. 

I have a little trouble discerning how our villain Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea) is able to command a gang. He doesn’t come off as particularly smart or even tough. Whitey is just angry and more than a bit jumpy. And he’s not even strongly the brains of the operation. At least at the point of this film. Lee is the one who put them on the train robberies rather than banks and even plans things. Whitey is there for a participation trophy. They failed to demonstrate how he had authority.

The focus of Night Passage is not the train robbery but the relationship between the brothers and its effect on those around them. It never pulls these together as well as could be. Lee and Grant (some weird Civil War allegory?) never come to any understanding or real repair of the relationship. These estranged siblings realize they must work together.

At 90 minutes this movie gets to the point. Unfortunately, that means it leaves some characterization in the dust. The animosity between Kurth and Grant is just animosity and never gets used for much of anything. The love story between Lee and the girl doesn’t get enough behind it to give it strength. And other things. It causes what could have been great to reach only to ‘good.’

Is Night Passage great? No but it is good. How can you go wrong with Jimmy Stewart really? Despite its flaws it’s a good old fashion Western that will appeal to the fans of those, but the more modern audience may not like it. The action is thrilling with guns blazing at the end.