Maureen O'Hara

Alfred Hitchcock's last British film before leaving for Hollywood. Orphaned Mary Yelland (Maureen O'Hara, in her first major role) arrives at a lonely Cornish coaching inn run by her brutal uncle Joss (Leslie Banks) — headquarters of a gang that wrecks ships on the rocks and murders the survivors. Charles Laughton, who also produced, plays the local squire Sir Humphrey Pengallan with deliberate, scenery-chewing menace. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier's novel, the production was famously contentious — Laughton reshaped scenes around himself — but the wreckers' coast, the inn, and O'Hara's debut charisma carry it. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Crime · Adventure · Drama

Sam Peckinpah's feature directing debut, made after years of television westerns. When drifting gunfighter Yellowleg (Brian Keith) accidentally kills the son of dance-hall hostess Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara), he insists on escorting her across Apache country to bury the boy beside his father — a journey the whole town considers madness. Steve Cochran and Chill Wills play the outlaws who tag along for a bank payroll. The film already shows Peckinpah's fixations: guilt, obsession, and violence that solves nothing. Shot in CinemaScope on Arizona locations, it flopped on release but is now watched as the first chapter of one of the great western careers. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western