Robert Montgomery

Ride the Pink Horse

Ride the Pink Horse

Hollywood actor turned idiosyncratic auteur Robert Montgomery directs and stars in this striking crime drama based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. He plays a tough-talking former GI who comes to a small New Mexico town to shake down a gangster who killed his best friend; things quickly turn nasty. Ride the Pink Horse features standout supporting performances by Fred Clark, Wanda Hendrix, and especially Thomas Gomez, who became the first Hispanic actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for his role here. With its relentless pace, expressive cinematography by the great Russell Metty, and punchy, clever script by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, this is an overlooked treasure from the heyday of 1940s film noir.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1947
  • 101 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • English
  • Spine #750

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary featuring film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini
  • New interview with Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
  • Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1947, featuring Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, and Thomas Gomez
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by filmmaker and writer Michael Almereyda

    New cover by Marc Burckhardt

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary featuring film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini
  • New interview with Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
  • Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1947, featuring Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, and Thomas Gomez
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by filmmaker and writer Michael Almereyda

    New cover by Marc Burckhardt
Ride the Pink Horse
Cast
Robert Montgomery
Gagin
Thomas Gomez
Pancho
Rita Conde
Carla
Iris Flores
Maria
Wanda Hendrix
Pila
Grandon Rhodes
Mr. Edison
Tito Renaldo
Bellboy
Richard Gaines
Jonathan
Andrea King
Marjorie
Art Smith
Bill Retz
Martin Garralaga
Barkeeper
Edward Earle
Locke
Harold Goodwin
Red
Maria Cortez
Elevator girl
Fred Clark
Hugo
Credits
Director
Robert Montgomery
Produced by
Joan Harrison
Music
Frank Skinner
Director of photography
Russell Metty
Assistant director
John F. Sherwood
Screenplay
Ben Hecht
Screenplay
Charles Lederer
From the novel by
Dorothy B. Hughes
Art direction
Bernard Herzbrun
Art direction
Robert Boyle
Film editor
Ralph Dawson
Sound
Leslie I. Carey
Sound
Jack A. Bolger Jr.
Set decorations
Russell A. Gausman
Set decorations
Oliver Emert
Orchestrations
David Tamkin
Hairstylist
Carmen Dirigo
Makeup
Bud Westmore
Gowns
Yvonne Wood

Current

Ride the Pink Horse and Nonurban Noir
Ride the Pink Horse and Nonurban Noir
When we think of film noir, we think of shadowy city streets, often in Los Angeles or New York. But Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink Horse, which we released last week, is one of a handful of dark-toned films made after World War II that take plac…
Ride the Pink Horse: Bad Luck All Around
Ride the Pink Horse: Bad Luck All Around

Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism.

By Michael Almereyda

Owen Kline’s Top 10
Owen Kline’s Top 10

The director of Funny Pages gathers an eccentric list of favorite films, including classics by W. C. Fields, Robert Downey Sr., and Robert Montgomery.

Illeana Douglas’s Top 10
Illeana Douglas’s Top 10

Actor, writer, and director Illeana Douglas has starred in Cape Fear (1991), To Die For (1995), Grace of My Heart (1996), Picture Perfect (1997), and Ghost World (2001).

Ride the Pink Horse Burns Up Santa Fe

Repertory Picks

Ride the Pink Horse Burns Up Santa Fe
Look what’s on the cover of Pasatiempo, the Santa Fe New Mexican’s weekly arts magazine, this morning! Robert Montgomery’s brilliant if underseen 1947 noir Ride the Pink Horse is screening tonight at the city’s Jean Cocteau Cinema, to coincid…
Inside the Pink Stable
Inside the Pink Stable
Long unheralded and at last rediscovered, actor-director Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink Horse is one of the key Hollywood features of 1947, the year film noir flooded the screen like a ruptured reservoir of India ink. Adapted from the popular cr…

By Chuck Stephens