The cast includes Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt and Arthur Hunnicutt, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1832, Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) is travelling in the Kentucky wilderness when he encounters an initially hostile Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin).

Zeb has brought along Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt), a pretty Blackfoot woman he had found several years earlier after she had escaped from an enemy tribe.

Later that evening, however, Boone changes his mind and decides to return to Teal Eye, which pleases Jim greatly, and the two men remain friends as they finally go their separate ways.

Film critic Manny Farber, writing in the September 27, 1952, issue of The Nation, offered this assessment of the picture: "The Big Sky shows a whiskey-laden keel boat being poled and pushed up the Missouri River.

Cast with some amiably fearsome stars who act as if they have been coached by Andy Capp, and saddled with a talkative Western plot, this film is not up to the talents of its director, Howard Hawks.

[1] The eight-minute suite for The Big Sky was released on Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin (1976), performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt.

UPC 8-8697-77933-2-5 The original motion picture soundtrack for The Big Sky was restored by the Brigham Young University Film Music Archives for a 2003 compact disc release.