Still image from the 1948 film Blood on the Moon.

Blood on the Moon

Directed by Robert Wise

A gunslinger hired to drive off a rancher falls in love with the man's daughter.

1948 1h 28m Western TV-G

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CAST
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Robert Wise, Director
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Robert Wise
Director

1

Robert Mitchum, Jim Garry
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Robert Mitchum
Jim Garry

2

Barbara Bel Geddes, Amy Lufton
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Barbara Bel Gedde..
Amy Lufton

3

Robert Preston, Tate Riling
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Robert Preston
Tate Riling

4

Walter Brennan, Kris Barden
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Walter Brennan
Kris Barden

5

Phyllis Thaxter, Carol Lufton
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Phyllis Thaxter
Carol Lufton

FULL SYNOPSIS

After he is nearly trampled by a herd of runaway steers while camping on Indian reservation range land, Jim Garry is questioned by the herd's owner, John Lufton. The wary Lufton reveals to Jim that, after years of supplying the local reservation with beef, he is being forced out by Jake Pindalest, the new Indian agent. Lufton is also fighting rancher Tate Riling, who has organized the area homesteaders to prevent him from moving his cattle back to the basin grazing land that was once his. Although suspicious that Jim may be one of Tate's hired guns, Lufton asks him to deliver a note to his family, who have a house in the basin. As Jim approaches the spread, he is shot at by a woman, who turns out to be Lufton's daughter Amy. After Jim hands the note to Lufton's eldest daughter Carol, he meets with Tate, an old friend who had summoned him in a letter. Tate reveals to Jim that his true plan is to force Lufton, who must soon vacate the reservation, to sell his cattle to him at a cutrate price and then sell the herd to Pindalest, with whom he is in league, at an inflated rate. Because he is broke, Jim agrees to become one of Tate's henchmen, but expresses no enthusiasm for the scheme. The next day, Carol and Amy ride to meet their father at the basin crossing point indicated in his note. When they arrive, however, they are greeted by Tate, Jim and the gang. Amy reveals that her father deliberately wrote the wrong location on the note and angrily accuses Jim of betraying it...


VIDEOS
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You'll Make Up The Difference...
Movie Clip
Find My Blanket
Movie Clip
Note From Dad
Movie Clip
Original Trailer
Trailer

ARTICLES
Having broken through to success with his key supporting role in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), which earned him an Oscar nomination (astoundingly, his only one), Robert Mitchum was a hot commodity by 1948. RKO, which had him under contract at $3,000 a week, was so impressed with him that the studio was willing to pay David O. Selznick $12,500 per week (for a ten week shoot) to secure the actor's services. Mitchum also had a deal with Selznick's Vanguard productions, and it was Selznick's turn to use him in a picture. But RKO, who had done well with such previous Mitchum films as the Western Rachel and the Stranger (1948) and the film noirs, Out of the Past (1947) and Crossfire(1947), was more than willing to shell out big bucks for the rising star. For Blood on the Moon (1948), Mitchum proved to be the right choice for a story that played on his morally ambiguous image. As Jim Garry, he first appears as an old friend to the scheming Tate Billing (Robert Preston), agreeing to serve as a hired gun for Billing's plot to get rich off another cattleman's herd. But as the story progresses, Garry learns of his friend's treachery and falls for the victimized cattleman's daughter, revealing a forthright side to his character. He confronts Billing in a lengthy knockdown fistfight that's reminiscent of the final brawl between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in another popular Western of the year, Red River (1948). "In keeping with the realistic style of this film," according to...

NOTES
Luke Short's novel was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post between March 15, 1941 and April 26, 1941. Its British publication title was Blood on the Moon. Although the Homestead Act of 1862 was not mentioned in the film itself, the Daily Variety review notes that the story's action takes place after the passage of the legislation, which granted free family farms to settlers. A June 1947 Hollywood Citizen-News news item reported that James Stewart was to star in the picture. According to the Los Angeles Daily News review, exteriors for the film were shot thirty miles from Flagstaff, AZ. A Hollywood Reporter news item, however, claims that location shooting was done in New Mexico. In a modern interview, director Robert Wise added the following information about the production: RKO bought Short's novel years before his involvement in the project, but shelved it because of script problems. Wise and producer Theron Warth liked the story, howev...

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