The Man from Laramie is a 1955 American Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, and Cathy O'Donnell.
Written by Philip Yordan and Frank Burt, the film is about a stranger who defies a local cattle baron and his sadistic son by working for one of his oldest rivals. The film was adapted from a serial of the same title by Thomas T. Flynn, first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1954, and thereafter as a novel in 1955.
Shot in Technicolor, The Man from Laramie was one of the first Westerns to be filmed in CinemaScope to capture the vastness of the scenery.
This is the fifth and final Western collaboration between Anthony Mann and James Stewart, the other four being Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953) and The Far Country (1954). Mann and Stewart also collaborated on three other films: Thunder Bay (1953), The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and Strategic Air Command (1955).
Plot
Will Lockhart delivers supplies from Laramie to Coronado, an isolated western town. He immediately ends up tangling with the Waggomans, an influential family who owns the sprawling Barb Ranch. Lockhart is quietly searching for information about someone who sold repeating rifles to the Apaches; his brother, a young lieutenant, was one of many U.S. Cavalry soldiers killed in an Apache attack on a far reach of the Barb Ranch.
Patriarch Alec Waggoman is haunted by dreams of a stranger who intends to kill his adult son, Dave. He is also gradually losing his eyesight and cannot count on the immature and impulsive Dave.
Lockhart is told by Barbara Waggoman, Alec's niece, that he can collect salt for free from a dry lake, as cargo for his return journey. But Dave Waggoman accuses him of stealing the salt, shoots most of Lockhart's mules and burns all his wagons. Lockhart returns to town, provokes a fistfight first with Dave and then ranch foreman Vic Hansbro. Alec shows up and offers Lockhart compensation for his destroyed property. Sheriff Tom Quigby suggests that Lockhart then leave town quickly to avoid trouble.
Lockhart continues searching for the gun runner. Local drunk Chris Boldt tells him that he may know something, but is seen shortly afterwards attacking Lockhart with a knife. When he is himself found stabbed dead, Sheriff Quigby briefly arrests Lockhart on suspicion for the killing.
Vic considers himself a second son to Alec and is engaged to marry Barbara. Alec depends on and respects Vic, but holds him responsible for Dave's misbehaviour, and threatens to pay the compensation for Lockhart's destroyed property out of Vic's wages.
Dave follows Lockhart and attacks him. But the gunfight ends when Dave is shot in the hand by Lockhart. Lockhart is overpowered by the Barb Ranch cowboys, who look on bewildered as Dave then shoots Lockhart through the hand with Lockhart's own gun.
Afterwards, Vic rides after Dave and catches him trying to contact the Apaches to deliver 200 repeating rifles for which the Apaches have paid Vic and Dave in advance. After being held at gunpoint by a paranoiac Dave, Vic shoots Dave in self-defense, killing him, but then lies about the incident, allowing Alec to believe that Lockhart was responsible.
Meanwhile, Lockhart who is nursing his wounded hand takes refuge with a rival rancher, Kate Canady. She was Waggoman's long-ago fiancée, before he married Dave's mother, and now seeking to find a truce.
Alec goes over the ranch's account books and finds a payment for a wagon load of "fencing wire", that is very overpriced, though the Barb Ranch has no wire fences at all. He suspects that it conceals a rifle purchase and sets out to discover for himself if Dave was both stealing from him and selling rifles to the Apaches. Vic is unable to talk him out of it, so just before they reach the wagon, the two struggle and Alec is accidentally pushed off his horse and over a cliff. Assuming the old man is dead, Vic rides away.
Lockhart, who is searching for a hidden wagon load of rifles which he heard the Apache had paid for and expected to receive shortly, finds Alec wounded but still alive and takes him to Kate to tend to his wounds. When he regains consciousness, Alec is able to tell Lockhart about Dave and Vic and the rifles. Lockhart finds Vic sending a smoke signal to summon the Apaches to come for their rifles. Lockhart forces Vic to help him push the wagon off the hilltop (supposedly destroying the rifles). When he can't bring himself to kill Vic in cold blood, he tells him to just get away from him. Vic rides away, but is intercepted and killed by the Apaches.