Movie Description
The Lusty Men is a 1952 Western film released by Wald-Krasna Productions and RKO Radio Pictures starring Susan Hayward, Robert Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy and Arthur Hunnicutt. The picture was directed by Nicholas Ray and produced by Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna from a screenplay by Wald, David Dortort, Horace McCoy, and Alfred Hayes that was based on the novel by Claude Stanush. The music score was by Roy Webb and the cinematography by Lee Garmes.
The film's world premiere was at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas.
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised the film's realism: "This vivid and pungent demonstration of the activities of professional 'saddle tramps'—the cowboys who scratch erratic livings on the circuit of the Western rodeos—gives such a harsh, discouraging insight into this form of commercialized sport that every backyard bronc-buster who sees it should go back to being a railroad engineer. ... Director Nicholas Ray has really captured the muscle and thump of rodeos."
