Wonderful character development!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

In this film, Alan Ladd is Jim Bowie, who comes to New Orleans to sell timber from the rural family farm in Louisiana. He wins some money, get all decked out in the finest fashion, meets and falls for the beautiful but treacherous Virginia Mayo, and fights or witnesses innumerable duels with knives, sword, and pistols.We follow him through business deals too, in which he makes a good deal of money gambling and trading things and speculating on land values. He keeps running into Virginia Mayo, which is not a bad idea in itself, but she deliberately lures him on and then dumps him for someone with more power, money, or breeding. Finally, he wises up. Two things have gotten him in trouble over the years -- Miss Virginia Mayo and that damned knife of his, supposedly forged out of meteorite iron; the knife, that is, not Miss Virginia Mayo, though she might have been. He blows off both of these trouble makers and marries a beautiful Mexican woman.I'm not a historian, but Wikipedia is available to everyone. That beautiful Mexican girl was Ursula Veramendi. She was the daughter of a powerful politician. Bowie promised to pay the family more than a quarter of a million dollars for the privilege but he lied about the land he owned. He lied about his age too. Ursula was nineteen and Bowie claimed to be thirty, although he was actually thirty-five.And here's how he made some of his money. It was illegal to import slaves into Louisiana, though not illegal to own or sell them. A reward, equal to half the value of the slaves, was given to anyone informing on slave importers. So Bowie would buy illegally imported slaves from a pirate, turn himself in as an illegal importer, and get half the value of the slaves as a reward for turning himself in. Then he would use the money legally to buy slaves for himself. A regular entrepreneur.None of this is in the movie, nor should it be. This is Hollywood's buffed-up version of the life of a man who started out poor and naive about women, but who finally won both a fortune and the love of a nice girl. He's a hero. At the fade out, he and Ursula are kneeling in church and being married. The Alamo is never mentioned. The Independence movement isn't mentioned either.Ladd, the principal figure, is ligneous. This wooden quality served him well in "Shane," where his character was supposed to be reserved, guarded about himself and his past, deliberate in thought and movement. Here, he's rather dull. Nothing much can be said for Virginia Mayo's performance either. She was fine as a Goldwyn Girl, the heroine of light-hearted action movies, and even as floozies in "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "White Heat." This is supposed to be a dramatic role and her problem is the opposite of Ladd's. She over acts. When her face is snuggled up next to his, Ladd's features are vacant while hers are twisted with gleeful deceit.The costumes and appointments are colorful and impressive. This is Southern society in 1830. Nobody's clothes are wrinkled or dirty. At least some of the duels we see really happened. Dueling lasted much longer in the South than it did in the North. New England was settled by Roundheads -- uptight, very religious, practical people with community commitments. The South was settled by Cavaliers, willing to take chances, to risk things, given to action rather than introspection, and they brought with them a culture of honor. It could be argued that the higher homicide rates in southern states are a relic of that tradition, what anthropologists call "the founder effect".But never mind all that. The film is strictly routine entertainment. It's Alan Ladd in fancy clothes trying to make out with Virginia Mayo and sometimes getting into fights. That's about it. Would this movie have been made if Jim Bowie's name had been Marmaduke Cherkovitz?

Viewers of this film shouldn't confuse anything here with actual history. By all accounts, Jim Bowie was a violent, unscrupulous fellow who later became a raging drunk after his wife and child died. Whether or not he died fighting at the Alamo, or just simply died there confined to his bed, has never been determined by any historian. That said, Alan Ladd does a fine job as an "heroic" version of Bowie in this film, taken from the popular 1950's novel of the same name. Virginia Mayo never looked better than she did in this film. The fact that her character has very few good qualities only helps the film and her performance. The production values of this film are high and in keeping with the standards of the day for period pieces. Director Gordon Douglas does excellent work with his cast, despite the mediocre material and some dubious history in the script. This movie did very well at the box office upon its release, and it's easy to see why.

Great Movie.. with the legendary Character Jim Bowie, and the legendary Knive, and how it came to be.Tales of how Jim Bowie came to become the legend; and how not to fall for the wrong women.If only he had listen to his brother/s and family about his love. Alan Ladd was excellent in this, as was Virgina Mayo....and he rest of the cast.Great movie. It really is.Is this released as a DVD yet? Please can someone tell me...???? I would love to get this film on DVDMaybe even this film could be remade for a new generation with even more detail given to how the knife was made etc, etcBut who would star????

As with most films, story details had to be compressed to fit it into a normal running time, but it still catches much of the flavor of the novel. The Alan Ladd portrayal is believable, though Paul Wellman's novel takes the saga all the way to the Alamo and the film ends long before that. However, it has the feel of a good period piece.The manufacture of the famous knife is foreshortened from that of the book, where Bowie discusses the design in detail with Black, the man who forges the knife. The action in the forging of the iron is quite dramatic and worthy of the reputation that the knife .. er .. carved out.The "duel in the dark" sequence was dramatically enhanced by momentary flashes of lightning, which wasn't half as ruthless as in the novel, where the entire duel was fought in pitch black.Major spoiler: The end of the film has Bowie treat the knife in sharp contrast to what happened in the novel, and for that matter, history (he gets rid of it). This may have been to create a Hollywood happy ending, but is a major shift from the novel, and from history.