Ep. 35 - The Big Country with Roseanne Caputi & Burton Brown

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We’re back in the Old West again this week on Fabulous Film & Friends to discuss William Wyler’s 1958 Technirama Masterpiece The Big Country, starring Gregory Peck, Charleton Heston, Carroll Baker, Jean Simmons, Charles Bickford, Chuck Connors and Burl Ives in an Oscar winning role. 

My guests today are Roseanne Caputi and Burton Brown.

And now the synopsis:

A tale of two rival Texas cattle barons, the Big Countrty pits  Marjor Henry Terrell against  Rufus Hannessy, whose anger towards each other reaches a boliling point after Terrell’s future son-in-law, James Mckay an Eastern sea captain,  is hazed and humiliated by Rufus’ wayward son Buck upon McKay’s arrival in Texas. 

Patricia Terrell, the major’s doting daughter and McKay’s fiancé feels McKay is  too timid after McKay refuses to exact revenge upon Buck in a hunting party led by the Major and his  foreman and nearly-adopted son, Steve Leech. And when McKay goes out by himself into the Texas wilderness to survey the land and to ultimately buy Patricia a wedding present from Patricia’s school teacher friend Julie Marrigon, he is assumed lost. 

Returning to the Terrell’s ranch, Leech calls McKay a coward and a liar in front of Patricia and challenges him to a fight, which McKay rejects, causing Patricia to call him a coward outright and for that McKay breaks off his engagement with her. 

Before he leaves, however, McKay wakes Leech up in the middle of the night for a memorable goodbye fistfight with only the quiet Texas plains as obsevers. 

Meanwhile, the present that McKay buys off of Julie is her family land that contains The Big Muddy a river that both the Terrells and Hannesseys use during the dry seasons to water their cattle. 

Knowing The Big Muddy to be the source of the hatred the Terrells and Hannessey’s hold towards one another, McKay intends to let both families water their cattle on it, but Rufus has plans of his own and he kidnaps Julie Marrigon in the efforts to both take the Big Muddy from her and to lure The Major into a trap in the treacherous Blanco Canyon, near Hannessey’s Homestead that will result in one final, triumphant battle. 

Having developed feelings for Ms. Marrigon, McKay and his new friend, Ramon, the Major’s livestock hand, face certain death  and ride into Blanco Canyon to rescue her with The Major and his men close behind.

Who wins? What’s it all about?

Find out!