Nevada Smith

Plot

In the West of the 1890s, a trio of outlaws – Bill Bowdre (Arthur Kennedy), Jesse Coe (Martin Landau), and Tom Fitch (Karl Malden) – robs, tortures and brutally kills the white father and Indian mother of young Max Sand (Steve McQueen). Max sets out to avenge their deaths. Fitch keeps a tobacco pouch made from the breast of Maxs mother that contains a piece of beaded deerskin from her shirt. Max uses this clue to help him find the men.

Max cannot read or write and is not skilled with a gun. He unsuccessfully tries to rob Jonas Cord, Sr. (Brian Keith), a traveling gunsmith. Cord recognizes that Maxs revolver is not loaded, and it is too old and rusty to be useful. Cord takes pity on Max, feeds him and teaches him how to shoot.

Max hunts the killers, who have since separated. With the help of saloon girl Neesa (Janet Margolin), a woman from the same tribe as his mother, he tracks down Jesse Coe in an Abilene, Texas saloon, and kills him in a knife fight. Max is wounded, and Neesa takes him to her tribes camp, where she cares for his wounds and becomes his lover.

After recovering, Max leaves Neesa to continue his pursuit. He commits a robbery and deliberately gets caught so that he will be sent to the prison where Bowdre is serving time. Pilar (Suzanne Pleshette), a Cajun girl working in the rice fields near the convicts’ camp, gives Max comfort and finds a boat to help him escape through the swamps. Max lets Bowdre join them and murders Bowdre along the way. The boat capsizes and Pilar dies from a snake bite.

Still blinded by revenge, Max pursues Fitch, the last of the murderers. He infiltrates Fitchs gang, calling himself "Nevada Smith". Fitch is aware that Max Sand is out there somewhere, waiting to ambush him. Though he accepts Sand into the gang, Fitch is wary of him. When the gang sets out to commit a robbery, Sand is spotted by Cord. Cord calls him by name, but Sand ignores him and the gang rides on.

During the robbery, Fitch suspects that one of his men is Sand. He warns them that he will kill any man who makes a mistake. The rest of the gang greedily scoops up the gold, but Sand stands on a hill and watches them. Fitch realizes that "Smith" is Sand, drops his share of the gold and flees. Sand pursues him and corners Fitch at a creek. The men trade gunfire. Fitch surrenders, but Sand continues to fire non-fatal shots into Fitchs body. The outlaw begs to be killed, but Max decides that Fitch is not worth killing, and he rides away.

Cast

Production

The movie was produced and directed by Henry Hathaway with Joseph E. Levine as executive producer, from a story and screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on a character from Harold Robbins 1961 novel The Carpetbaggers. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Lucien Ballard. The film is a prequel to 1964s The Carpetbaggers, in which Alan Ladd had played a much older version of the character Nevada Smith.

Nevada Smith was shot by Lucien Ballard on approximately 46 different locations in the Inyo National Forest (in parts of southern California and southwestern Nevada) and the Owens Valley (of southern California) in the Eastern Sierra mountains.

In the scene in the cattle pens when Max (Steve McQueen) fights Jessie Coe (Martin Landau), Max crouches behind a fence and opens the gate to let the cattle out. Some cattle come out the gate while others knock down the fence, and Max must dodge the flailing legs and hooves of the stampeding cattle. The knocking down of the fence was accidental, and Steve McQueen was very nearly trampled for real.