Tonight's Movie: The Daughters of Joshua Cabe (1972) - A Kino Lorber DVD Review

The TV-movie THE DAUGHTERS OF JOSHUA CABE (1972) has been released on DVD by Kino Lorber.

Buddy Ebsen leads a good cast in this short 73-minute Western comedy-drama. He plays the titular Joshua Cabe, a widowed homesteader who learns a new law will put his right to the land he works with partner Bitterroot (Jack Elam) at risk. Joshua's archenemy Amos Wetherall (Leif Erickson, THE HIGH CHAPARRAL) figures he'll finally be able to get his hands on a good chunk of Joshua's land.

Having additional family members file on sections of land will enable Joshua to retain all of his current property, so he travels to St. Louis to track down his long-lost daughters, who were sent East to be raised by his sister after his wife died. He hasn't heard from his daughters in years, and upon arrival in St. Louis he discovers that one of the girls (Julie Mannix) is now a nun and the other two are married and live in faraway New York. Clearly none of them are in a position to move west with him, especially as quickly as is needed.

Circumstances lead Joshua to hit on another idea: adopting daughters who can then file the claims for him. He finds three women in distress who need fresh starts and are (somewhat reluctantly) willing to move west: Mae (Lesley Ann Warren), a "lady of ill repute"; Charity (Karen Valentine), a thief newly eligible for parole from prison; and Ada (Sandra Dee), a pickpocket Joshua saves from arrest. As the advertising tagline said, "Joshua Cabe needed three daughters, fast...What he got were three fast daughters!"

The women aren't quite prepared for just how rough things will be living on the frontier, especially as Amos and his sons (William Katt, Don Stroud, Michael Anderson Jr., and Paul Koslo) trash Joshua's home while he's away, but they gradually come to care about Joshua and his ranch. When the Wetheralls decide to confront Joshua and Bitterroot in a gun showdown, the ladies take decisive action.

I enjoyed this movie, which was pleasant light entertainment. Sure, it's not the world's greatest script and it particularly could have stood more time to show the women adjusting to life on the frontier, but the cast is good, with a bunch of real pros, and it moves quickly.

Warren, it must be said, spends too much time staring blankly and seems to be "phoning it in," not making much of her part, but the two "Gidgets" in the film, Valentine and Dee, are lively and quite entertaining, with Valentine coming off particularly well as spunky Charity. Ebsen and Elam have some nice touching moments.

I remember seeing the ads for this film when I was a little girl, but I never saw it -- I'm sure part of the reason was it was too "adult" for me at the time -- so it was fun to finally check the movie out after all these years.

I really appreciate Kino Lorber regularly releasing TV-movies on DVD; the older TV prints may not be appropriate for Blu-ray, yet Kino Lorber still gives us the chance to revisit old favorites and discover unseen titles.

Great examples of Kino's TV-movie releases are longtime personal favorites YOUNG PIONEERS (1976) and YOUNG PIONEERS' CHRISTMAS (1976), which I reviewed last January. They've also released an interesting-looking version of SOUTH PACIFIC (2001), starring Glenn Close, and additional early '70s TV Westerns, THE TRACKERS (1971) and THE BOUNTY MAN (1972), all of which will be reviewed here in the future.

THE DAUGHTERS OF JOSHUA CABE was written by Paul Savage and directed by Philip Leacock, who did extensive work in episodic television, including THE WALTONS, DYNASTY, and FALCON CREST. It was filmed by Arch Dalzell.

The DVD print looks fine, nothing stunning but about what one would expect of a 1972 TV-movie. The disc includes a gallery of trailers for four additional films available from Kino Lorber; unlike most Kino Lorber discs, the trailers do not have separate menu listings but run one immediately after the other.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this DVD.