I'm sad to say I don't remember seeing this as a 17 year old. It wasn't advertised as much as the big name star Westerns. I never missed a Cheyenne show as a kid. Clint Walker was great in this one, even though it didn't have the old well known character actors in it. I heard they wanted John Wayne for the lead, but he was busy. Clint done a great job. I only seen it the first time a couple years ago. I recorded it on DVD for my collection. It was a good Western in my opinion. Ed Burns wasn't the best co-star. ONE OF MY TOP 10 Favorite Westerns.I was busy learning about girls. I surprised this one didn't show up at the drive in movies.I did see The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman, and Rio Bravo with John Wayne. Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum.

Yellowstone Kelly is directed by Gordon Douglas and adapted to screenplay by Burt Kennedy from the Clay Fisher (AKA: Heck Allen) book of the same name. It stars Clint Walker, Edd Byrnes, John Russell, Ray Danton, Claude Akins, Andra Martin and Rhodes Reason. A Technicolor production filmed out of Sedona and Coconino National Forest in Arizona, with music by Howard Jackson and cinematography by Carl Guthrie."The West was opened by courageous trail-blazing pioneers like Lewis and Clark and Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly - - trapper, surveyor, and Indian scout who was the first frontiersman to cross the mighty Yellowstone Valley."A very well made Western, one that features some quite breath taking scenery captured by Carl Guthrie (Fort Massacre/Gunfight At Dodge City), Yellowstone Kelly falls into the category of straight conventional Oaters.Story concerns fabled fur trapper Luther Kelly (Walker), who having saved the life of a Sioux chief (Russell) is allowed to move freely in the Sioux territories. However, he finds himself piggy in the middle when the oafish US Cavalry move in to shake their might at the Native Americans. Things are further complicated when he is forced to save the life of an Arapaho woman (Martin), who subsequently runs away from the Sioux's to seek shelter with Kelly and his newly acquired companion, greenhorn Anse Harper (Byrnes). With potential love in the air putting another problem into the equation, Kelly has much to carry on his mightily broad shoulders.Originally slated to be a John Ford/John Wayne production (they decided to make The Horse Soldiers instead), Yellowstone Kelly is pretty much what it appears to be, that of a vehicle built around Walker as a device to push him forward as a lead actor. Unfortunately, in spite of his massive screen presence, Walker just didn't have the acting chops to be a grade "A" lead off man in film. Yet he was always watchable and engaging, such is the case here. The character of Kelly is interesting and around Walker are a number of TV stars and contract players to ensure there's a professional polish to the production.There's no surprises in store or deep psychological stirrings, though one extended sequence of Walker and Byrnes shacked up in a log cabin is open to homo-erotic interpretation, and the host of white actors playing Native Americans will irritate some, but this moves along at a good clip and makes for a fun afternoon viewing experience. 6.5/10

I finally got to see Yellowstone Kelly today and found it to be a decent enough western. Back in the day I was going to see it at the age of 12, but did not want to deal with the unbelievably long lines or the screaming teens who came to see Kookie.This was not Edd Byrnes first feature film, but the first after his success on 77 Sunset Strip. The bobbysoxers were nuts about him back in the day and crowded out us connoisseurs of the western. I remember the long lines and the stories about how one could not hear the dialog with the adolescent females going gaga for Kookie.The real star in the title role was another Warner Brothers TV veteran, Clint Walker. He plays a mountain man trapper and scout, the last of a breed. He's allowed to do his thing on Sioux land because he saved John Russell's life who is the chief.After taking on Edd Byrnes as a young assistant, the two visit the Sioux where both of them catch the eye of Andra Martin who is an Arapahoe captive and Russell's personal squeeze. Another brave Ray Danton would like to replace Russell in her tepee. When she runs away and follows Walker and Byrnes to their cabin, Russell and Danton come calling with the tribe. These kind of things start wars as the Ancient Greeks would be the first to tell you.As much as Kookie got all the publicity and was the reason for Yellowstone Kelly's box office, this film belongs to the stoic Clint Walker who if he had come along a decade earlier would have been a great cowboy hero. Walker is smart and stoic in the title role.I have to say that Andra Martin as a blue eyed Arapahoe was most disconcerting. Just like Burt Lancaster in Apache.Despite that Yellowstone Kelly was a well made action western that any fan of the horse opera will love.

The second of three western films Walker made with director Douglas during the down time of his tenure on "Cheyenne", this is the only one in color. He plays a scout and trapper who shares a tenuous relationship with the Sioux which is placed in jeopardy when Martin, an Arapaho held captive by the Sioux, decides to run away and seek sanctuary with him in his cabin. Things are complicated further by the presence of Byrnes, a greenhorn kid who has come to stay with Walker and learn how to live in the stark wilderness. Meanwhile, cavalry Major Reason wants Walker's help and resists taking no for an answer. Walker, a towering hunk who dwarfs everyone around him and sometimes even the landscape, lends a solid performance. He has one rough-and-tumble fight sequence in which he clearly performed his own stunt work. Clad in a red shirt and with a long shock of black hair, he is quite a sight to behold. In what must be one of his most alluring and sexy appearances in film, he has a nighttime sequence in which he reclines in bed, shirtless, with his hair deliberately tousled as he chitchats with young Byrnes. Byrnes enjoys an engaging role, lightly comedic, but with more serious elements than he would tend to be given elsewhere. His character displays an obvious respect for Walker (try counting how many times he says, "Mr. Kelly"!) and, like Walker, sleeps presumably in the raw despite allusions to the harsh weather! Russell plays the Sioux chief and provides dramatic weight and a dose of dignity that helps him to overcome his anachronistic hairstyle. Danton plays his nephew (with a similarly goofy, parted on the side, wig) and poses a nice threat as he obsesses over Martin. Martin, with gleaming grey-blue eyes and covered in buckets of body make-up, is unlikely as an Indian maiden, though this was the rule of the day then. She comes off as more of a Caucasian captive than a fellow Indian, so quickly does she adjust to washing plates in a bucket and keeping house! Like the two gentlemen, she also prefers to sleep in the altogether, which had to have seemed a tad daring in 1959! She undergoes a brief, but pretty harrowing, medical procedure in her first scene. However, some of her dialogue is a hoot ("You have looked at me…") Reason adds just that much more handsomeness to the film, though his role isn't anything special. He has two soldiers in his outfit who would go on to greater fame, Akins and Oates. Director Douglas liked to populate his films with good-looking men and here he had quite a bonanza, which does make viewing easier for those inclined. Additionally, he had quite an eye for location scenery and it is nicely exploited here as well. It's not a milestone film, but Walker in his prime is always worth watching and the rest of the able cast, along with the location work, helps make this a pleasure to watch.