Hangman's Knot

Hangman's Knot is an exciting, suspense-filled Western starring Randolph Scott and an excellent supporting cast, including Donna Reed (Best Supporting Actress Oscar® winner From here to Eternity, 1953) and Lee Marvin (Best Actor Oscar®-winner Cat Ballou, 1965). At the end of the Civil War, a small band of Confederate soldiers ambush a Union gold shipment. To their horror, they learn from a dying soldier that the war between the North and the South has been over for a month. Now facing certain criminal prosecution for acts committed while they thought the war was on, the troop seeks refuge in a stagecoach way station. A feisty ex-Union army nurse (Reed) and three others are held captive while the men plot their next move. The troops' leader (Scott) wants to return the gold in exchange for amnesty, but the bloodthirsty bounty hunters are closing in, and have every intention of taking the loot and hanging the soldiers. This handsome Technicolor production proved to be Scott's biggest commercial and critical success. The top-notch cast includes Jeanette Nolan (The Big Heat, Orson Welles' Macbeth), Richard Denning (An Affair to Remember) and Claude Jarman, Jr. (The Yearling).