Edmond O'Brien made Cow Country (1953) immediately following three film noirs -- The Turning Point (1952), The Hitch-Hiker (1953) and Man in the Dark (1953). Next would come a turn in the star-studded Julius Caesar (1953), and a year later he'd win an Oscar for his supporting turn in The Barefoot Contessa (1954). But in the middle of that run of movies was Cow Country, a routine and now-forgotten western from Allied Artists that was fairly well-reviewed at the time.

The setting is 1875 south Texas, and cattle ranchers are facing a serious economic depression. A market glut has sent the price of beef plummeting. One rancher (Robert Barrat) is trying to ride out the bad times and hold the community together, but the owner of a local hides-and-tallow business (Robert Wilke) is working in cahoots with a crooked banker (Barton MacLane) who seeks to foreclose on the ranchers. Their cohorts start destroying some cattle (by dynamite!) and rustling others into the hides-and-tallow plant. Edmond O'Brien plays the owner of a stagecoach shipping line who gets caught up in it all.

The cast all received good marks, with supporting actress Peggie Castle making an especially strong impression thanks to a vivid scene in which she horsewhips a man (Robert Lowery) to the ground, after he taunts her for believing that he would marry her. "Peggie Castle is appealingly effective in her best stint to date," declared The Hollywood Reporter, adding: "O'Brien plays with rugged sincerity but looks a little chubby."

Allied Artists had been formed in 1946 as a unit of low-budget studio Monogram, as a reaction to the fact that the market for B pictures was drying up. Allied's films were designed for higher budgets and more prominent star wattage than the usual Monogram fare. In 1953, when Cow Country was released, Monogram transitioned entirely to the Allied Artists name. Allied's head of production at the time was Walter Mirisch, then 31, who would go on to become one of the most successful independent producers in Hollywood history, working with directors like Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, and Norman Jewison.

By Jeremy Arnold