Sam Peckinpah was born in 1926 in California and got a master's degree in drama from USC. He worked as a stagehand, first in theater then at a local TV station. He broke into pictures as a dialogue director for Don Siegel, then moved into television directing and writing, often on Western series. He made his film debut with The Deadly Companions (1961), a Western starring Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith.

After Ride the High Country, Peckinpah made 14 more features. His behavior became more difficult and erratic as the years went on, due to alcoholism and various chemical dependencies, and his later pictures didn't achieve the stature and success of his earlier work. He died of a stroke in 1984, just a few months short of turning 60.

A man who seemed equally at home in a dinner jacket or cutting up in a witty Preston Sturges comedy, Joel McCrea's true life ambition was to be a cowboy. If he couldn't do that, he would settle for playing one on screen. His easy-going charm and clean-cut good looks earned him a place as a popular leading man of the 1930s. He was equally at home in dramas, comedies, and adventure films, and played opposite some of the screen's most glamorous actresses. In the 1940s, he was one of Hollywood's most bankable stars and worked with many top directors. Beginning in 1946, with enough clout by that time to call the shots in his career, he went exclusively into Westerns, turning in solid performances for notable directors and making only one non-Western, an urban crime thriller, for the remainder of his career. He was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1969, seven years before his last screen appearance and 21 years before his death.

Like McCrea, Randolph Scott was a handsome, All-American leading man of the 1930s who found his true calling in the Western genre in the 1950s. Early in that decade, he formed a partnership with veteran producer Harry Joe Brown. Under the production company banner Ranown, he found new success when other stars of his generation were slipping in popularity. As a weathered, aging Western star, he became one of the top box office draws of the decade, and his work with director Budd Boetticher is critically important to the history of the genre and its recognition as cinematic art. Over the course of seven films between 1956 and 1960, the two created an archetype of a solitary man. It was a protagonist that was not always a "hero" or stereotypical good guy, one who faced great odds and tough moral dilemmas. Although generally considered mere second-feature programmers in their day, these Westerns (Ride Lonesome, 1959, Comanche Station, 1960, etc.) were immensely popular and in recent years have earned much critical re-evaluation and respect. Scott retired after this movie and was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1975, 12 years before his death.

Although she has appeared in many features and many television appearances over the past 40 plus years, Mariette Hartley is most often recognized as the female partner to James Garner in a long-running series of ads for Polaroid cameras. The two made such a good team in the commercials that many people thought they were married in real life.

Gravelly-voiced character actor Edgar Buchanan appeared in countless Westerns during his nearly 40-year career. He was the rascally Uncle Joe on the TV sitcom Petticoat Junction in the 1960s.

Several of the supporting players became a stock company of sorts for Peckinpah, working with him several times: R.G. Armstrong (four pictures), L.Q. Jones (five), John Davis Chandler (three), and Warren Oates (four, including the starring role in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, 1974).

Shortly after completing this movie, James Drury took the lead role in the long-running TV Western The Virginian.

Lucien Ballard's film career spanned more than 50 years. After an auspicious start as the cinematographer on several Josef von Sternberg films in the early 30s, he shot many Three Stooges comedies as well as some B Westerns over the next decade. Some of his finest early work was uncredited: Morocco (1930) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935) with von Sternberg and Dietrich, Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1943), and the noir thriller Laura (1944). He worked with Peckinpah on The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Junior Bonner (1972), and The Getaway (1972).

In 1944, Ballard married Merle Oberon. The actress's face had been scarred in an auto accident several years earlier, and Ballard invented a special light (nicknamed "Obie" in her honor) to conceal her scars. It was mounted next to the camera and lit the subject's face head on, reducing unflattering lines and facial shadows. He used it to light his wife in four films before their divorce in 1949.

Years later, Ballard was asked by film critic Leonard Maltin about a striking close-up of McCrea near the beginning of the picture. Ballard explained it was there because they had to avoid the water towers and other contemporary objects in the background of the Metro lot. "Everything in this business is a compromise," Ballard said. "Chances are we had to do it because of necessity."

Screenwriter N.B. Stone was not helped at all by Ride the High Country's critical acclaim. By most reports a disoriented and barely functioning alcoholic, Stone's script was completely rewritten by William Roberts, with substantial additions and changes by Peckinpah. But because his name was the sole credit on the picture, many producers hired him. However, it quickly became evident they could not get a coherent page out of him. According to producer Richard Lyons, they would then call him and ask how he ever got a decent script out of Stone for Ride the High Country. "And I'd have to say, 'Well, it wasn't easy.'"

Editor Frank Santillo began his career as an assistant to montage specialist Slavko Vorkapich. He received editor credit for the first time in 1954. Santillo worked with Peckinpah two more times and earned an Academy Award for his work on Grand Prix (1966).

The tents in the mining camp were made of material that had been used for the ship sails in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

Famous Quotes from RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY

SAMPSON (Percy Helton): I must say, Mr. Judd, I expected a much younger man.
JUDD (Joel McCrea): I used to be. We all used to be.

SAMPSON: The day of the Forty-niner is gone. The day of the steady businessman has arrived.

JUDD: Boys nowadays. No pride, no self-respect. Plenty of gall but no sand.

KNUDSEN (R.G. Armstrong): Levity in the young is like unto a dry gourd with seeds rattling around.

WESTRUM (Randolph Scott): Like the fellow said, gold is where you find it.
JUDD: If it's not yours, don't covet it.
WESTRUM: Don't worry, boy. The Lord's bounty may not be for sale but the devil's is. If you can pay the price.

WESTRUM: Do you know what's on the back of a poor man when he dies? The clothes of pride. They're not a bit warmer to him dead than alive. Is that what you want, Steve?
JUDD: All I want is to enter my house justified.

ELSA (Mariette Hartley): According to my father, every place outside this farm is a place of sin.

ELSA: Every single man is the wrong kind of man. Except you.

WESTRUM: (noticing the hole in Judd's boot) Dandy pair of boots you got here.
JUDD: Juan Fernandez made those boots for me in San Antone. Special order. I had a hell of a time getting' him to put that hole in there. A fine craftsman, Juan, but he never understood the principle of ventilation.
WESTRUM: I remember Juan. Always felt the boot should cover the foot.
JUDD: Short sighted.

ELSA: My father says there's only right and wrong, good and evil. Nothing in between. It's not that simple, is it?
JUDD: No it isn't. It should be but it isn't.

WESTRUM: Don't worry about…about anything. I'll take care of it, just like you would have.
JUDD: Hell, I know that. I always did. You just forgot it for a while, that's all.

Compiled by Rob Nixon