BY LEE PFEIFFER

"Night Passage", a top-notch 1957 western showcasing James Stewart and a terrific supporting cast. The film was to be yet another collaboration between Stewart and director Anthony Mann but things fell apart when Audie Murphy was cast as Stewart's brother. Mann objected, saying he found their physical differences too unbelievable for that concept and felt the film would be undermined by the casting. Mann dropped out and television director James Neilson took over the troubled production. The hard feelings between Stewart and Mann ended their long friendship as well as their professional collaborations. Neilson was able to exploit the wonders of Technirama, a short-lived widescreen process that was competing with CinemaScope in an attempt to lure increasingly prosperous Americans away from their new television sets and get them back into movie theaters. The screenplay was by the estimable Borden Chase. adapting a story from The Saturday Evening Post, as he had done for Howard Hawks' 1948 masterwork "Red River".

In "Night Passage", James Stewart plays Grant McLaine, a middle-aged drifter and cowpoke who had once been hired by the railroad to thwart a string of robberies committed by the Utica Kid (Audey Murphy), who is later revealed to be McLaine's kid brother. Seems that the railroad boss Ben Kimball (J.C. Flippen) became steamed when McLaine allowed the Utica Kid to escape on one occasion, though he did not know the two men were brothers. Kimball was convinced that McLaine and the Kid were in cahoots and fired McLaine. Now a new series of payroll robberies is occurring on the transport train with dismaying regularity. Kimball rehires McLaine, though he still harbors suspicions about him being in collusion with the Utica Kid and his gang. In fact, the Kid is indeed with a new gang, but this time it's run by Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea), a cold blooded thief and killer who is plotting another robbery of a payroll shipment. McLaine ensures he is aboard the train, but he has secreted the payroll money on himself. When the gang boards the train after devising a way to waylay the security guards, they find no money in the safe- so they take Kimball's wife Verna (Elaine Stewart) hostage until they are paid the $10,000 in payroll funds. Meanwhile, McLaine finds himself caring for a precious pre-teen orphan boy, Joey Adams (Brandon DeWilde), who helped him hide the payroll money when the crooks boarded the train. The rest of the film follows McLaine as he tracks the gang to their hideout and has a rather tense reunion with his brother, who ignores his pleas to quit his career in crime. The entire affair ends with an exciting shootout at an abandoned mine camp that pits the two brothers on opposite sides.