What happens to Robert Ryan in Best Of The Badmen comes under the heading
of no good deed goes unpunished. Ryan is a Union Army major who persuades
the last of Quantrill's Raiders to give up and accept an amnesty. Those are his
orders, but he also was waiting on his discharge. When both come around the
same time it causes trouble when he shoots a man who was trying to prevent
these outlaws from taking the oath of allegiance to the USA as prescribed in
Lincoln's amnesty policy. Ryan gets arrested and tried and convicted and sentenced to hang.
Villain of the piece is Robert Preston who is a carpetbagger looking to set up a quasi dictatorship in the area. The script isn't too clear about just where this is all supposed to be. There were carpetbag governments in Texas, but not in Kansas or Missouri or in what was the Indian nations or Oklahoma. Be that as it may Preston is an unscrupulous nasty customer. He's so bad he has a wife who left him to sing in saloons. Claire Trevor also helps Ryan escape.
What else is Ryan to do but throw in with the same men he freed who are now real outlaws. An impressive cast was assembled by RKO that included Lawrence Tierney, Bruce Cabot, Jack Beutel, Robert Wilkie, Tom Tyler, John Archer, and Walter Brennan. Barton MacLane is his usual nasty rasping self as Preston's chief henchmen.
This really great cast puts over this western which is not terribly accurate.
Villain of the piece is Robert Preston who is a carpetbagger looking to set up a quasi dictatorship in the area. The script isn't too clear about just where this is all supposed to be. There were carpetbag governments in Texas, but not in Kansas or Missouri or in what was the Indian nations or Oklahoma. Be that as it may Preston is an unscrupulous nasty customer. He's so bad he has a wife who left him to sing in saloons. Claire Trevor also helps Ryan escape.
What else is Ryan to do but throw in with the same men he freed who are now real outlaws. An impressive cast was assembled by RKO that included Lawrence Tierney, Bruce Cabot, Jack Beutel, Robert Wilkie, Tom Tyler, John Archer, and Walter Brennan. Barton MacLane is his usual nasty rasping self as Preston's chief henchmen.
This really great cast puts over this western which is not terribly accurate.