Film Stories From The Book:
Hollywood of the Rockies

By: Frederic B. Wildfang

The Maverick Queen

1955 — Republic Pictures — written by Kenneth Gamet and De Vallon Scott (based on a novel by Zane Grey), directed by Joe Kane — starring Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Scott Brady, Mary Murphy, Wallace Ford, Ernest Borgnine, and Jim Davis

This Zane Grey western is about the notorious Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid gang — headquartered at a frontier saloon run by the Kid’s tough girlfriend, Kit Banion, “The Maverick Queen” (played by Barbara Stanwyck). Kit, however, is gradually wooed away from the Kid by the mysterious new gang member Jeff (Barry Sullivan), who is in reality an undercover Pinkerton agent seeking to find the murderer of a local rancher. As Jeff gets closer and closer to solving the crime (and closer and closer to Kit), the Kid makes a move to do away with Jeff — thwarted only by Kit’s timely intrusion on Jeff’s behalf — culminating in a classic, fiery shoot-out that results in the gang’s ultimate destruction.

Scenes were shot for this movie at a deserted ranch one mile south of Columbine Guest Ranch on highway 550 — as well as on one of rancher Joe Hotter’s pastures in the same area — and further up the highway on the north slope of Coalbank Hill. The town scenes were shot on Main Street and Blair Street in Silverton.

In The Maverick Queen — as in most of her movies (Annie Oakley, Stella Dallas, The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire, for instance) — Barbara Stanwyck plays a role “in which she is just as good as a man, if not better.” For her role in The Lady Eve, Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s and Video Viewer’s Companion awards her a Rosette “For holding more than her own in comedy or melodrama, and being a match to any man.” The following quotes (from Halliwell’s) help lay claim to her feisty-ness:

I want to go on until they have to shoot me....

Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before. I don’t even care if I was IN the rest of the damned thing — I’ll take it in those fifteen minutes....

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) received Academy Award nominations for her roles in Stella Dallas (1937), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), and Sorry Wrong Number (1948). In 1981, she received an Honorary Academy Award “for superlative creativity and a unique contribution to the art of screen acting.”