[4] With no better offers to be had, famous American Civil War upstart officer George Armstrong Custer takes over the Western Cavalry maintaining the peace in the Dakotas.

With his wife Elizabeth, Custer goes in and out of favor in Washington while failing to keep wildcatting miners like his own deserting Sergeant Mulligan from running off to prospect for gold in Indian country.

[1] Producer Philip Yordan decided to make his own Custer movie and hired Bernard Gordon and Julian Zimet to write a script.

He even wrote one speech for Custer… that made this point sharply.”[5] Yordan said he needed a known star (Shaw) and director (Siodmak) to raise the funds to make the movie.

What he didn’t anticipate, as he choreographed fifty couples, was that the actor—whose intervention was designed to give coherence to the scene—would go crazy, punch him in the chops, and walk off the set.

Within minutes he burst upon the scene, apologised on behalf of the government minister for his absence—due to a crisis in Washington—and announced an impending honour for Custer.

It was one of two big screen epics made by Security Pictures (a company of Louis Dolivet and Philip Yordan) in the Cinerama process, the other being Krakatoa, East of Java.