Intrada announces the premiere release of the 1957 Universal Pictures western Night Passage. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin was famous for his westerns, including such classics as High Noon, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Red River and Rio Bravo. Until now, very little of his score to Night Passage has been released. Here, Tiomkin displays his legendary talent for scoring the genre, including exciting action passages, broad sweeping themes and two songs written with lyricist Ned Washington: “Follow The River” is a soulful ballad, sweeping and wide, and “You Can’t Get Far Without A Railroad” is a folksy, comic song that a vaudevillian might have called a “novelty number.” Stewart, with his rustic, untrained baritone, performs both in the film (as can be heard in the Extras on this disc).
The CD was produced by Chris Malone using the original mono session masters stored in pristine condition at Universal. The score runs 52 minutes wiht an additional 24 minutes of extras.
In the film, James Stewart plays Grant McLaine, a onetime “trouble shooter” for railroad boss Ben Kimball (Jay C. Flippen). McLaine is now a vagabond who earns his supper playing the accordion and singing. Amid encounters with two old flames, Charlie (Dianne Foster) and Verna (Elaine Stewart), who is now Kimball’s wife, he learns that the railroad payroll has twice been stolen by an outlaw gang led by Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea) and that among the gang is The Utica Kid (Audie Murphy), whose personal history with McLaine is what led to the latter’s fall from grace. Kimball offers McLaine a shot at redemption if he will safeguard the payroll as it travels by train to the end of the line.
