Will Penny

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Will Penny

Directed by	Tom Gries
Produced by	Fred Engel, Walter Seltzer
Written by	Tom Gries
Starring	Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett, Donald Pleasence
Music by	David Raksin
Cinematography	Lucien Ballard
Editing by	Warren Low
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	16 February 1968 (Finland), 10 April 1968 (USA)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Will Penny is a 1968 western film starring Charlton Heston as an aging cow hand who at the end of a long trail hires on to ride the boundary of a ranch over the winter. He immediately comes across a woman (Joan Hackett) and her son using one of the remote cabins to over-winter and despite his bosses instructions gives them a week to move on. He runs into trouble and is brought back to health by the woman and they fall in love. In the end though he realizes he is too old (pushing 50) to finally settle down and rides off into the proverbial if not actual sunset.

The film features a David Raksin and Robert Wells song "The Lonely Rider" with vocals by Don Cherry. The exteriors were filmed in Inyo County, California, USA. The movie was based upon an episode of the 1960 Sam Peckinpah television series The Westerner called "Line Camp," which was also written and directed by Tom Gries.

Charlton Heston frequently cites Will Penny as his personal favorite film from his career.

[edit] Reviews

"The admirable thing about the movie is its devotion to real life. These are the kind of people, we feel, who must really have inhabited the West: common, direct, painfully shy in social situations and very honest." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times [1]

"...Will Penny ranks as a superior Western for a multitude of reasons. Heston, so often required to play larger-than-life characters throughout his career, here delivers a sublime performance in a role that is the exact opposite." — Reel.com DVD review [2]