The Naked Hills
Tracy Powell, an Indiana farmer, gets the gold fever and heads for Stockton, California in 1849. There, he abandons his first partner, Bert Killian, and teams up with Sam Wilkins, a claim jumper employed by Willis Haver. Six years later, Powell returns to Indiana and his sweetheart, Julie. They marry and he tries farming again but, on the night their son is born, he takes off again searching for gold. This time he heads for the hills with an inveterate prospector, Jimmo McCann. A decade later, the two are still hunting for their big strike when McCann is killed in an accident. Powell returns home with news of a big strike but the deserted Julie will have nothing to do with him. His friend Killian will not believe him but Haver, now a banker gives him a small loan and then beats him out of his claim. Many years pass before he comes home, now sixty-years-old, and this time, his wife and son open their home to him. But he vows to go prospecting come next spring.
John Chard@John Chard
Gold Discovered In California.
The Naked Hills is directed by Josef Shaftel, who also co-writes the screenplay with Helen S. Bilkie. It stars David Wayne, Keenan Wynn, James Barton, Marcia Henderson and Denver Pyle. Music is by Herschel Burke Gilbert and Pathecolor cinematography is by Frederick Gately.
1800s California and Tracy Powell (Wayne) is gripped by gold fever and deserts his friends and family to search the hills for the precious metal.
Very routine gold fever Oater that plays like a poor man’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It spans decades as Powell lets the search for gold take over his life, while the background threads involving his partners, both romantically and gold seeking, make up the drama as he heads towards his day of destiny. An opportunity is wasted to really produce a psychologically strong film about an obsessive man who keeps failing, but Shaftel constantly resorts to formula fodder to tell his story and it hurts the piece. Cast are fine, especially Wayne, who gets a chance to be the lead man and delivers a performance of note in spite of the insipid screenplay. 4/10