Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1980): Lamont Johnson’s Charming Western Comedy, Starring Burt Lancaster, Amanda Plummer, Diane Lane (*AMOUR*)

Directed with verve by Lamont Johnson, Cattle Annie and Little Britches, is an original Western comedy about two spunky adolescent girls in the late nineteenth century.

Grade: B+ (**** out of *****)

Cattle Annie and Little Britches

 

Infatuation by the adventures of the outlaw heroes they had read about in Ned Buntline’s stories, the two femmes run off to join them

But when they get there, they only find the demoralized remnants of the previously infamous Doolin-Dalton gang, led by the aging Bill Doolin (Burt Lancaster).

Even so, Doolin tries to inspire them to live up to the legends created by Buntline, and they respond with a firm decision to rejuvenate the once famed but now fading gang.

Amanda Plummer (daughter of Christopher Plummer), in an impressive film debut, plays Anna Emmaline McDoulet, or Cattle Annie, a tomboyish woman from the East who hitchhikes out West in search of the desperado heroes she’s read about in Ned Buntline’s dime novels of the period.

Diane Lane is also compelling as the younger sister (not a relative), Jennie Stevens, finding a father figure in Doolin, who in the story line coined her nickname “Little Britches.”

The mature cast is excellent,m especially Burt Lancaster, as the aging but still charismatic outlaw boss, who functions as sort of their surrogate father.

Though triumphant, the girls cannot escape Marshal Bill Tilghman (Rod Steiger), and in the end are sent back East to a reformatory in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Director Lamont Johnson is clever enough to lend his cheerful mock Western the light, cheeky touch that such fables need in order to be entertaining.

Sadly (and inexplicably), the movie was abandoned by Universal, and thus failed at the box office.

*AMOUR*: Our Club for Abandoned, Misunderstood, Overlooked, Underestimated, Revisited Features.

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