Western Watch: Montana Belle (1952)

Watched:  05/07/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Allan Dwan

This movie opens strong by being both racist and deeply misogynistic in just the first three lines and, in this regard, refuses to take its foot off the gas til the end. Truly breathtaking.  It is also a movie from 1952 out of RKO, so it's a release from right in the meaty part of Howard Hughes' control of the studio.

How can you tell it's a Howard Hughes joint?  

• Jane Russell stars
• Jane Russell's elaborate wardrobe
• For no real plot reason, Jane Russell stops to do a musical number
• All of the men speak in tough-guy clipped voices 
• Guns guns guns
• No adherence whatsoever to history while using known historical figures

Russell stars as real-life sometimes-outlaw, Belle Starr.  Chucking her real life out the window, this is an entirely fictional version interacting with a fictional version of the Dalton Gang.  

It seems the Dalton Gang is hiding out in the Oklahoma Territory when one of the brothers rides up with a freshly widowed Belle Starr in tow.  He's rescued her from the noose, because he dislikes *injustice*, but mostly because she looks like Jane Russell.  But... everyone agrees women are trouble.  

There's no small amount of threat of sexual violence (see: another Howard Hughes item) which she just seems irritated by.  And one of the brothers decides she's his woman - an idea she doesn't seem to share.

Meanwhile, an insurance company is tired of paying out on the robberies performed by the Dalton Gang, and so they hire walking Honey Baked Ham George Brent to put an end to it.  He hires Andy Devine to send the gang straight to his saloon where he plans to nab them.  But when the Daltons ride off to prepare to rob Brent, a posse stumbles over the hideout thanks to Iron Eyes Cody (the actor who played the weeping Native American* in the litter commercial).  Belle and her fellow leftovers make good their escape.

Convinced the Dalton Gang sold them out, Belle, Mac and Ringo (the very white Jack Lambert in bad make-up also faking being Native American in a way I'll describe as "iffy") form their own gang and begin robbing trains, banks, whatever.

In disguise, they come to Brent's saloon where Belle shows up Brent at cards and he offers Belle a partnership.  She's obviously clever and cunning, and knows her way around a saloon.  But, mostly, she looks like Jane Russell and this is a frontier town mostly full of dudes named "Smitty".

Trouble's a-brewing because the Daltons figure out Russell's game and start interfering.

Look, I... am not a George Brent fan.  He's a better actor than George Raft, but I missed the part of his career where he seemed like a leading man.  He's believable enough, but feels oddly cast here.  Everyone else is employing basic-1950's B-movie acting techniques, and the dialogue is as fresh as hamburger buns left at the back of breadbox for two months.

At one point, Russell is supposed to pass as a man because she's in pants, and never before has a disguise failed so decidedly.  

Sometimes you just finish a movie because it's short and you want to see where it's going, and that's this flick.  It is not good.  And ends with a kind of boring shoot out and Belle willingly going to jail, I guess?  

I'm not mad, but I can't say I felt like this one was particularly worth anyone's time.

On a side/ historical note - the real lives of these people are *always* way weirder and stranger than fiction.  The line between law officer and criminal thin as a spider-web.  Multiple marriages, divorces and curious pairings always get listed.  And in the case of someone like Belle Starr, you're left wondering: wait, how did a girl from what seems a respectable family wind up running with gangs and wind up dead from a shotgun blast?  

No one ever makes that movie.

*word on the street is that Iron Eyes was never actually Native American, but Italian?  Which...  man.  Sometimes showbiz is just wild.