Although it sounds like a western, Green Grass of Wyoming (1948) is really an "outdoor picture," according to Gary Cooper in the coming-attractions trailer. Cooper has nothing to do with the movie, so his outdoorsy image must have gotten him the job of narrating the trailer. He's right as far as he goes, but most of all, Green Grass of Wyoming is a horse picture. More precisely, it's the third and final installment in the short-lived Flicka franchise, launched in 1943 with My Friend Flicka, continued in 1945 with Thunderhead - Son of Flicka, and polished off in 1948 with Green Grass of Wyoming, which might have sold more tickets if the producers had remembered to put Flicka's name in the title.

The three Flicka films are based on three eponymous novels by Mary O'Hara about a boy and his horse. The main human character is Ken McLaughlin, played by Roddy McDowall in the first two pictures and Robert Arthur in the third. In the 1943 film, Ken is a failing fifth-grader whose mom talks his dad into letting him raise an unpromising colt so he'll learn responsibility. In the 1945 film he's attempting to groom Flicka's elegant son Thunderhead for a racing career.

Green Grass of Wyoming combines selected ingredients from both predecessors: Ken is slacking on his chores and hanging out too much with pretty neighbor Carey Greenway, so mom talks dad into letting him train an unpromising horse as a responsibility lesson; meanwhile Thunderhead is running wild in the mountains and luring mares from the corrals of ranchers in the area. In a new story element, Ken's mare, Crown Jewel, has a mishap that leaves her gravely ill with congested lungs. After he saves her life - outdoing the local horse doctor with help from Gus, the folksy hired hand - he starts preparing her for the harness-racing circuit, where he'll be competing with Carey's grandfather, Beaver Greenway, an old-timer hoping to regain his former glory. Trained horses, wild horses, harness racing, veterinary medicine - the story has something for everyone!

Adapted from O'Hara's novel by Martin Berkeley, whose screenplay received a Writers Guild nomination for best-written American western, Green Grass of Wyoming isn't very original. It makes up for this, however, with a top-notch supporting cast. Nice guy Dad is portrayed by tough-guy specialist Lloyd Nolan, who plays against type like the seasoned professional he is. Gus, the guitar-strumming hired hand, is played by Burl Ives in one of his first screen appearances. In a fascinating twist, fresh-faced Carey is played by Peggy Cummins, who took this wholesome role just two short years before her hugely seductive performance in Joseph H. Lewis's classic Gun Crazy (1950), where her sharpshooting, man-slaughtering character is a poster girl for anarchy.

In the film's most creative casting coup, Carey's mumbling, whisky-sneaking Grandpa Beaver is played by Charles Coburn, one of the most mannerly actors ever. And a very busy one, sandwiching this picture (plus almost a dozen others) between Alfred Hitchcock's courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947) and Douglas Sirk's musical comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal (1952), two of the most underrated movies of their day. Coburn had a gift for projecting dignity; look over his credits and you'll see honorifics like Sir, Lord, Doctor, General, Judge, Captain, and Professor in front of one character name after another. Yet here he is in a cowboy outfit, on a horse, wearing his trademark monocle, and yearning for a nip from the bottle with the other fellas! Sure enough, Coburn pulls it off, proving that he's a versatile actor as well as a gracious, imposing, and lovable one.

Coburn was a harness-racing buff in real life, so he may have been attracted to Green Grass of Wyoming by its connection to that sport and to the Governor's Cup sweepstakes in Ohio, where Coburn himself attended races. Beaver is a drunk, but he's a drunk with a dream, and after reforming he trains himself and his horse, Sundown, for a return to the trotting track. This complicates the film's family dynamics quite a bit, especially for Carey, since her grandpa and her boyfriend are entered in the same competition. Who's she supposed to root for? The movie's suspenseful climax shows three successive races, and while someone has to lose, the outcome proves satisfactory for all. I won't reveal any more except to say that a certain Crown Jewel turns out to be pregnant by a certain Thunderhead, who's back in civilization after sowing his oats in the mountains. The folks at the Flicka-film factory, aka Twentieth Century-Fox, were evidently planning a fourth installment in the franchise. Unfortunately, they were on the losing end of that particular sweepstakes.

Green Grass of Wyoming was shot in Wyoming, Utah, and Ohio, on locations captured in spectacular Technicolor by Charles G. Clarke, who earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Color Cinematography. The horses look magnificent too, especially when Crown Jewel, who's black and glistening, shares the screen with Thunderhead, who's white and radiant. This said, the movie's emphasis on animals and landscapes has a downside; not everyone will be comfortable with a scene where Crown Jewel gets mired and immobilized in a treacherous mud pit. Horses don't know what acting is, and this one is obviously in distress. Today's moviemaking rules probably wouldn't allow this, but it's a fairly brief sequence, and the horses look quite happy the rest of the time.

Reviewing the movie when it first opened, film-industry reporter and occasional critic Thomas M. Pryor called it a picture that "doesn't go anywhere in particular, but...leaves one in a genial mood." He didn't mention the mud-pit scene, but he did raise his eyebrows at "the way the romancing horses are permitted to carry on," speculating that when "inquisitive small fry" see the film, curiosity about Crown Jewel's pregnancy "will put a lot of parents on the spot." Maybe in 1948, surely not today. By current standards, Green Grass of Wyoming is as mild-mannered as its title, and it still leaves one in a genial mood.

by David Sterritt