As he would in the later Son of a Gunfighter (1965), Russ Tamblyn plays a frontiersman with father issues in the Allied Artists western The Young Guns (1956). A former juvenile (as Rusty Tamblyn, he was Spencer Tracy's son in Father of the Bride [1950] and Father's Little Dividend [1951]), the then 21-year-old actor was pointed toward more adult roles with his performance as Tully Rice, son of a notorious Wyoming badman, whose legacy of lawlessness makes him unwelcome in society. Taken into the fold of the "wild bunch" Bawdre Gang, Tully finds surrogate brothers in pistoleros Perry Lopez and Scott Marlowe, as well as a love interest in Gloria Talbott, daughter of absentee outlaw kingpin Matt Bawdre. A blending of tropes from westerns and juvenile delinquent films (Tamblyn would go on to JD glory in West Side Story [1961] while Scott Marlowe played the lead in Edward L. Cahn's Riot in Juvenile Prison [1959]), The Young Guns was the first film directed by Albert Band, who had assisted John Huston on The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and collaborated on the script for The Red Badge of Courage (1951). The Young Guns screenplay was the work of Louis Garfinkle, later a co-author of the unproduced stage play that served as the basis for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). Picking up an early paycheck as an assistant cameraman was William Fraker, later the celebrated cinematographer of another Hollywood classic concerned with unfortunate paternity - Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968).

By Richard Harland Smith