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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: 20th Century Fox
Salesrank: 25802
Released: May 23, 2006 |
| Our Price: $7.40 |
| Used Price: $6.38 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Oscar®-winner* Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird) stars in this ?brilliantly cast? (The Hollywood Reporter) Western epic featuring ?an unusually fine story and magnificent direction ? unleashing dramatic power seldom found in this type of film!? (Daily Variety)
A band of outlaws, led by tough, gruff Stretch (Peck) find themselves knocking at death?s door after becoming lost in the treacherous western Badlands ? only to find their salvation in a lonesome town called Yellow Sky, where the only inhabitants are a doddering old man and his mysterious, alluring daughter. But their deliverance from danger is short-lived when the gang discovers a fateful secret hidden within the dusty, rotting walls of this ghost town ? one that will turn brother against brother in a desperate battle to the death!
Description of Yellow Sky:
It seems no one has ever had an unkind word for Yellow Sky, yet somehow this handsome, hard-edged, and very well-made late-'40s Western remains little-known. That may change with its release on a DVD so crisp and luminous, one wants to swear off Technicolor and luxuriate in the frosty glow of its highlights, the velvet blackness of its shadows, and the electric silver-gray of its desert skies.
Story's pretty good, too. Seven men led by Gregory Peck ride into a small Southwest town, wet their whistles at the saloon, then hold up the bank with a minimum of fuss. Escaping should be a cinch, except for a troop of cavalry who reduce their number to six and watch the survivors ride off into a desert they probably won't live to cross. Unexpected salvation looms in the form of Yellow Sky, a ghost town where the bandits find water, an old man (James Barton) and his tomboy granddaughter (Anne Baxter)--and the tempting rumor of gold. That's when the real trouble starts. The criminal partnership is severely strained by greed, several varieties of lust (for the girl as well as the treasure), the troublesome onset of conscience in some breasts and its total absence from others--notably Richard Widmark's.
Yellow Sky re-teams director William A. Wellman and writer-producer Lamar Trotti, who five years earlier had made The Ox-Bow Incident, an authentic but rather pretentious Western classic. Yellow Sky's opening scene is all but lifted from Ox-Bow (along with two character actors), but this time around, Wellman eschews self-importance and just concentrates on spinning a gritty yarn (from a novel by W.R. Burnett). Apart from sequences shot in Death Valley, the principal location is Yellow Sky itself, a grand ruin set against the timeless backdrop of the Alabama Hills. And oh yes, the man responsible for those awesome whites, blacks, and silver-grays is Joe MacDonald, the cinematographer of My Darling Clementine. --Richard T. Jameson
Yellow Sky Reviews:
A Good Little Western 
2009-11-09 - YELLOW SKY(1949)---Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, Anne Baxter
Although I'm not a particularly big fan of Gregory Peck, I do like him in this movie. It's a good little western, directed by William Wellman. Peck is the leader of a band of bank robbers on the run. They end up in a "ghost town" called Yellow Sky, which was once a mining center. There they encounter Anne Baxter and her grandfather, who still live in the town and have built up a store of gold. The movie is fast-paced and Widmark plays one of the gang who eventually challenges Peck for leadership of "the boys". If you like westerns, I think you'll enjoy this one.
Western ahead of its time 
2009-02-22 - In the late 1940s when many westerns still had the good guys in white taking on bad guys in black, William Wellman's Yellow Sky came along. After robbing a bank in a little town, Stretch Dawson and his gang hightail it out of town with a cavalry troop hot on their trail. But the gang rides out into the desolate salt flats, 70 miles until the next town, and the cavalry lets them go. After days of riding, Dawson's gang stumbles upon a ghost town, Yellow Sky, where there's only two residents, an old man and his tom-boy granddaugeter. There's tension between the groups, but things get worse when the talk of gold arises. There's no good guys here, all the characters are in that gray area between good and bad. It's almost a film-noirish western, a pyschological movie more interested in showing how these characters interact. Filmed in Death Valley, there's some gorgeous shots of riders crossing the arid desert, years before David Lean used similar shots. Not your typical western, it's not that well known, but take advantage of the DVD and give it a try.
Leading a strong cast, Gregory Peck plays one of his more sinister characters, James "Stretch" Dawson, an ex-cavalryman leading his gang to safety after a bank robbery. Dawson isn't necessarily a bad guy, he has a change of heart, but he's not exactly on the up and up either. Anne Baxter is good as Constance Mae, or Mike, a young woman living with her grandpa (James Barton) out in the desert. Unlike a lot of female characters inserted into westerns, Baxter's Mike fits in perfectly, the tough tom-boy who can shoot and fight as well as many men. Richard Widmark is the most villainous member of the gang, Dude, who is interested in himself and little else. The rest of the gang includes Robert Arthur, Harry Morgan, Charles Kemper, Robert Adler, and John Russell, one of his best roles as Lengthy, who's got sites on Baxter.
The DVD offers the movie in its standard presentation, the black and white cinematography looking great with the Death Valley shooting. Special features include three separate photo galleries, a trailer, and trailers for three other Fox Flix westerns. A very underrated western that's never received much in the way of recognition, Yellow Sky is well worth a watch!
WILLIAM A. WELLMAN, OPUS 62 
2008-11-13 - ***** 1948. Directed by William A. Wellman. 1867. A gang of bandits, led by Gregory Peck, must cross the desert in order to escape the army after their last hold-up. They finally arrive to a ghost town where they meet an old prospector and his granddaughter. After three or four screenings of YELLOW SKY during these last years, what striked me the most yesterday was the religious references scattered throughout the film by the screenwriter and the director. The crossing of the desert, numerous allusions to the seven deadly sins and Anne Baxter as the temptress are only a few clues you can find in this remarkable film. This is also Richard Widmark's fourth movie and his first western; four parts, four incarnations of bad guys that stay in our memory. Masterpiece.
Western Film Noir
2008-11-08 - YELLOW SKY(1948) is a black-and-white, almost noirish western from director William A. Wellman.
Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark star as the leaders of an outlaw band that robs a bank, then makes their escape over a vast, deadly desert. They reach the ghost town of Yellow Sky, only populated by crusty old prospector James Barton and his daughter, Anne Baxter.
When the outlaws discover than Baxter and Barton are hiding a cache of gold, they decide to take it for themselves, but by this time Peck has fallen for Baxter and his loyalties are thus challenged.
This exciting, well-acted adult western co-stars John Russell and Harry Morgan as members of the gang.
© Michael B. Druxman
One of the greats!
2008-07-21 - I do not know how I ever missed this movie, being the movie buff that I am. Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark were great. Gregory Peck was such a magnificent actor, and you add to that the the talents of Richard Widmark, with his trademark smile and laugh, along with the beautiful Anne Baxter and a good story; and you cannot lose.
