Year Released: 1958
Directed by: William Wyler
Starring: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Burl Ives, Charlton Heston, Caroll Baker, Chuck Connors
(Not Rated, 165 min.)
Genre: Western, Romance
Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor: Burl Ives

Patricia Terrill: “Don’t you care what people think of you?”
Jim McKay: “ I’m not responsible for what people think, Pat…Only for what I am.”

With all this talk about what it means to be a man or a woman, The Big Country offers a unique spin from over 6 decades ago. It also defies the stereotypes of the 1950s, when it was made.

Let’s set the story up first, though:

A New England sea captain in the 1880s arrives at his fiancée's sprawling Texas ranch, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between two families over a valuable patch of land.

It’s a little like the clash of East and West also explored in Giant, made two years earlier, but this time it is the guy, Gregory Peck’s John McKay who is the Easterner, while it’s his fiancée Patricia (Caroll Baker) who is the died-in-the-wool Westerner. As in Giant, both leads are from great wealth. Jim McKay is a not just a former sea captain, but also heir to the entire shipping company. Patricia is the sole heir to a huge ranch owned by her father, The Major (Charles Bickford). She expects Jim to defend her honor at all costs, but McKay is not so easily manipulated.

We are reminded that Jim McKay’s experiences at sea and see quite soon that he is used to giving orders, not receiving them. But evidently he also has had to work his way up in the shipping company, once recalling how he was keelhauled after passing the equator, which he refers to as a sort of hazing, although the actual definition of the term makes it seem certainly much more ominous:

Keelhauling (Dutch kielhalen;[1] "to drag along the keel") is a form of punishment and potential execution once meted out to sailors at sea. The sailor was tied to a line looped beneath the vessel, thrown overboard on one side of the ship, and dragged under the ship's keel, either from one side of the ship to the other, or the length of the ship (from bow to stern).

Thus, when Buck Hannassey (Chuck Connors), and his fellow drunken Hannassey cowboys taunt and lasso McKay in front of Patricia, Jim dismisses it as another type of hazing. After all, he ventures, greenhorns are always given a little trouble out West.

This is one of many times he disappoints Patricia and her father as well. Jim refuses to put on a show when the head ranch hand Steve Leech (Charlton Heston in one of the few films he did not play the lead) tries to get him to ride the rank stallion Old Thunder as another hazing in public view.

“I’ll ride him some other time,” Jim quips, which seems like cowardice to the surrounding crowd hoping for the ritual humiliation of a greenhorn. Later we see that Jim literally meant those words, just not for public display.

An interesting bit of trivia here is that … According to actor Slim Pickens' daughter, her father doubled Gregory Peck in the scene where Peck's character was bucked off the horse. Pickens owned the horse and didn't want anyone else riding it.

That Western macho mystique – also gently satirized in Clint Eastwood low key 2021 gem Cry Macho – is in full display in Heston’s ranch hand, obviously in love with Patricia as evidenced by his glowering stares. He wants things settled with a fight, just like all the others in the big country, but again Jim McKay will not abide, at least not in front of a crowd.

The foil for the vamping Patricia, who buries Jim in fussy kisses when she is not berating him for not defending her honor, is her friend the school marm and incidentally owner of some most valuable land in the country, Jean Simmons’ Julie Maragon. “How many times does he have to win you?” she asks Patricia. And Julie’s dress and demeanor are without frills just as her words are:

Her demeanor as a real woman, not the cardboard stereotype Patricia presents, is evident to Jim, especially in their conversation at her old abandoned ranch house.

Than there is the little issue of Patricia’s relationship with her father the Major. which overflows with pycho-sexual overtones as explored in some depth here

Patricia … idolizes her father to a disturbing degree. At a party in her fiancé’s honor, she declares her father the most handsome man in attendance and tells Jim that she could never move away because she “couldn’t stand being away” from the Major. Incestuous undertones aside, Patricia doubts Jim’s mettle when he questions the Major’s attack on the Hannasseys, declines Leech’s offer to ride Old Thunder, and dismisses Leech’s many attempts to start a fight. Patricia wants to be fought over (“How many times does a man have to win you?” Julie asks her friend at one point), and so she fails to recognize or appreciate Jim’s intelligence and control. In one sequence that finds Jim away for days, exploring the vast plains on a horse, Patricia forgets that, as a sea captain, he needs only a map and compass to find his way. And being a modest man whose sense of honor comes from within, his proposed marriage to Patricia collapses when she demands that Jim conform to the West’s code of violence. –Brian Eggert

Our review would not be complete without a salute to Burl Ives, who won his sole Oscar for the role of Rufus Hannassey, the rough cut head of his uncouth tribe, who nonetheless has more class and integrity than the soft spoken and polished Major. Again, as in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Ives commands our attention. And even in this smaller role, his words and actions are pivotal.

I'll tell you why I'm here, Major Terrill. The next time you come a-busting and a-blazing into my place, scaring the kids and the women folks...when you invade my home, like you was the law or God Almighty...then I say to you...I've seen every kind of critter God ever made, and I ain't never seen a more meaner, lower, pitiful, yellow, stinking hypocrite than you! Now you can swallow up a lot of folks and make them like it, but you ain't swallowing me. I'm stuck in your craw, Major Terrill, and you can't spit me out! You hear me now! You've rode into my place and beat my men for the last time, and I give ya warning - you step foot in Blanco Canyon once more and this country goin' to run red with blood, until there ain't one of us left!

Finally, we have the wonderful score by Jerome Moross, which epitomizes the splendid scenery, just a blip below the theme from The Magnificent Seven (and later the now maligned Marlboro Man commercials.) And right up there with “…Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western contributions “ (Matt Brunson), which Incidentally, the persicketty Director, William Wyler loathed and tried to change.

In the great trivia compiled below you will find more about these issues as well as some juicy bits about the many prima donnas involved in filming. Even the great Gregory Peck is taken down a peg or two:

Both Heston and Peck were on the verge of playing two of their most iconic characters: Ben-Hur and Atticus Finch.

Chuck Connors plays a character that's the complete opposite of his portrayal of Lucas McCain in the TV series "The Rifleman."

Then US President Dwight Dl Eisenhower gave the movie four consecutive showings at the White House and called it "simply the best film ever made. My number one favorite film."

Gregory Peck had the feud with director Wyler, because, as usual with many other directors, Peck asked for retakes over and over again. He wanted absolute perfection for his role.

Jean Simmons was so traumatized by the experience making the film that she refused to talk about it for years until an interview in the late 1980s when she revealed, "We'd have our lines learned, then receive a rewrite, stay up all night learning the new version, then receive yet another rewrite the following morning. It made the acting damned near impossible."

Director William Wyler absolutely hated Jerome Moross’s score for "The Big Country", and insisted on hiring another composer to redo the job. But preview audiences were so enthusiastic about the music, especially the opening theme, that star and co-producer Gregory Peck persuaded Wyler to back down. Moross went on to earn an Oscar nomination and his score for "The Big Country" is now considered one of the classic western soundtracks

Charlton Heston initially turned down the role of ranch foreman Steve Leech because he didn't think the part was big enough. His agent convinced him that it would be worth it just for the opportunity to work with Gregory Peck and William Wyler.

You may have overlooked this film since it is not as well known as other Gregory Peck or Charlton Heston vehicles. So fix that and watch this epic saga right now, if not sooner.

–Kathy Borich
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Trailer

The film features the delicious feast served at the engagement party for Jim McKay and his daughter Patrica at his elegant home, the simple tortilla dinner McKay eats on his two day campout, and the plain but hearty dinner offered to Julie Maragon with her forced “visit” to the Hannassey’s home.

The last one looks ever so much like good old beef brisket to this Texas transplant, so that is what we’re going with, okay? I know you will love it, even if poor Julie seems to have lost her appetite.