One of the superlative works turned out in the waning days of RKO as the studio atrophied under the erratic, inattentive leadership of Howard Hughes,The Lusty Men should never have come out so well. All its characters have seen better days, too: Robert Mitchum as the washed-up saddle tramp who knows when to walk; Arthur Kennedy as the ranch hand who still clings to a childhood of bronco-busting stardom; and Susan Hayward, who made the mistake of shackling herself to the immature Kennedy. Based on a Life Magazine article and a mountain of research on the slang, rituals, and attitudes of modern-day cowpokes, the film had at least six writers; Mitchum and Ray purportedly threw out much of this work and simply improvised, writing the next day’s scenes when filming concluded each evening. Accordingly, The Lusty Men plays like a burnished myth, a folk mosaic that simply rose from the dirt. The best lines—“There never was a bronc that couldn’t be rode, there never a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed” —approach the archaic sublime.

Restored by Warner Bros. in collaboration with The Film Foundation and The Nicholas Ray Foundation. (KW)

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