Patricia Neal, in her memoir As I Am, did not look back fondly on Raton Pass (1951), the last film of her Warner Brothers contract. She'd signed with the studio in 1947 as one of the hottest young actresses of the day, in strong demand after a brilliant run on Broadway in Another Part of the Forest (1946). For that performance, her Broadway debut, she had won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play at the tender age of 21.

Though Warner Brothers placed her in some notable films such as The Fountainhead (1949), The Hasty Heart (1949) and The Breaking Point (1950), the studio didn't really seem to know how to use her, and her career stagnated. Nonetheless, she later recounted, she did everything the Warners publicity department ever asked of her, including marching in silly parades, posing for tourists at amusement parks, and serving as honorary mayor of Burbank for a day. The only time she ever said "no," she wrote, was to "a cheap little western, the title of which I've blocked." The studio responded by taking her off salary until she accepted a part in another western, Raton Pass, which she didn't like much either. "Changing my hair back to brown did not help in the least. The golden age of Patricia Neal was over in more ways than one."

By the time she finished the film, she realized that she "was becoming an expensive commodity for the studio. Their investment in me had not paid off. The critics had been kind, but I had not hit the jackpot at the box office. I certainly had not become the new Garbo." Warner Bros. did not renew her contract and she left for Fox and a three-picture deal, starting with The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

During these years, Neal was having an affair with Gary Cooper -- until he made it clear that he would not leave his wife to marry her. When Neal became pregnant, she chose to have an abortion, and Cooper was with her through the process. She forever regretted the decision, later writing, "If I had only one thing to do over in my life, I would have that baby." In 1953, she married the author Roald Dahl.

Raton Pass, meanwhile, did not turn out nearly as poorly as Neal thought of it, though some reviewers did note that her role was difficult to make believable -- a function of the script more than of Neal. The story involves a New Mexico cattle baron (Dennis Morgan) who marries a scheming and conniving woman (Patricia Neal). When a railroad money man (Scott Forbes) arrives to do business with Morgan, Neal latches onto him and schemes to marry him while still keeping Morgan's ranch. To this end she hires a gunslinger played by Steve Cochran, and eventually stirs up a mighty range war.

"Good old-fashioned western action stuff, right down to the amazing recovery Mr. Morgan makes after being shot in the back," noted The New York Times. Variety said, "Of the stars, Cochran scores best, throwing everything into his flamboyant character." Dennis Morgan and Neal were certainly both odd choices for a western. As a critic in the Los Angeles Examiner wrote, "Miss Neal is as bad as bad can be (by nature, not performance) in the role of a scheming wench with a roving eye, and the way she twists big strong men around her very little finger is a caution. However, I hope the producers will leave Miss Neal in non-Western pace hereafter; she has so much to offer us in other directions, and she looks so much yummier in chicly modern trappings."

By Jeremy Arnold