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Plot summary
Pearl Chavez is left without a family when her father, Scott Chavez, shoots her mother and the woman's lover and is put to death for it. He had arranged for her to live in Texas with his second cousin and former sweetheart, Laura Belle, at the Spanish Bit cattle ranch. Its owner, Senator Jackson McCanles, who gets around in a wheelchair, greets the girl with contempt and calls her a half-breed. Laura Belle's two grown sons differ sharply: Jesse, newly home from law studies, is courteous, while Lewt is a womanizer who tells Pearl plainly what he wants from her. Laura Belle summons a preaching gunman known as the Sinkiller to warn Pearl against temptation, and Pearl resolves to stay good.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Duel in the Sun (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- As shot, Duel in the Sun could not get past the Hays Code censors or religious review boards, so state censor boards heavily edited it, and some states refused to license it. It was nicknamed Lust in the Dust.
- Niven Busch wanted Veronica Lake for the female lead, offered it to Hedy Lamarr, who fell pregnant, and his then-wife Terese Wright turned it down as unsuited to her before Jennifer Jones took the part. Her lover and future husband David O. Selznick made demands until RKO's Charles Koerner sold the project to him at a profit.
- Duel in the Sun was one of the first films to have its own record album. Rather than use soundtrack excerpts, RCA Victor had Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra record Dimitri Tiomkin's music, issued on 10-inch 78-rpm discs in 1946.
- The film's production costs were rumored to be over $6,000,000, and its $2,000,000 advertising campaign was unheard of at the time. With Selznick's costly distribution tactics, the film only broke even.
- Most of the film was shot in Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, California. For the train derailment scenes, the filmmakers used the Sierra Railroad in Tuolumne County, California, combining a real train with large scale models.
- Martin Scorsese told James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio that Duel in the Sun was the first film he ever saw and that he holds it in high regard, mentioning it in his documentary on American films.
