# The Ballad of Cable Hogue
**The Ballad of Cable Hogue** is a 1970 American Western comedy directed and produced by [Sam Peckinpah](https://www.edgepedia.org/sam-peckinpah), in which a prospector abandoned to die in the desert founds a way station on a water spring he discovers, only to see the motorcar make his business obsolete. Jason Robards Jr. plays the title character, with [Stella Stevens](https://www.edgepedia.org/stella-stevens) as the prostitute Hildy and David Warner as the itinerant preacher Joshua Duncan Sloan. The film followed Peckinpah's violent *The Wild Bunch* (1969) and was, by his own account, possibly his best film, but it failed at the box office and was long treated as a neglected entry in his work before retrospective praise restored its standing.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) • [2](https://cinema.wisc.edu/2025/03/12/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-oasis-in-the-desert/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 18 March 1970 (Los Angeles opening); 121 minutes; rated R; Technicolor, 1.85:1[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) |
| Director and producer | Sam Peckinpah, for Phil Feldman Productions, distributed by Warner Bros.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) |
| Writers | John Crawford and Edmund Penney; Peckinpah and associate producer Gordon Dawson co-wrote an uncredited revised screenplay[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) |
| Principal cast | Jason Robards Jr. (Cable Hogue), Stella Stevens (Hildy), David Warner (Rev. Joshua Duncan Sloan), Strother Martin (Bowen), L. Q. Jones (Taggart)[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) |
| Cost | $1.5 million over budget, for a final negative cost of $3 million[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) |
| Reception | 94% Tomatometer (17 reviews) and 81% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.2/10 on IMDb from about 12,000 users[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ballad_of_cable_hogue) • [4](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065446/ratings/) |
| Music | Score by Jerry Goldsmith; songs by Richard Gillis, including "Butterfly Mornin's" sung by Robards and Stevens[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) |
## Spoilers
### Story
Cable Hogue is a prospector robbed of his supplies by his partners Bowen ([Strother Martin](https://www.edgepedia.org/strother-martin)) and Taggart ([L. Q. Jones](https://www.edgepedia.org/l-q-jones)), who steal his mule and horse and leave him to die in the desert. After four days of wandering and praying, he finds water in a muddy hole, the only water within 40 miles and close to the stagecoach route between the towns of Deaddog and Lizard. He stakes a claim, financed by a $100 investment from the town banker Cushing after the stagecoach manager Quittner refuses, and establishes Cable Springs, charging travelers a 10-cent drinking fee; he shoots his first customer for refusing to pay.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) • [5](https://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/b/balladofcablehogue.q.shtml)
Two companions share the enterprise. The Reverend Joshua Duncan Sloan (David Warner) is a lecherous itinerant preacher who guards the waterhole while Hogue rides to town to file his claim, and who courts women under cover of his ministry. Hildy (Stella Stevens), a prostitute driven out of Deaddog by pious citizens, takes refuge at Cable Springs, and she and Hogue fall in love, though she leaves for San Francisco in search of a rich husband.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) • [6](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/11703/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue)
The ending joins revenge and irony. Hogue's former partners return for his fortune; he traps them in a snakepit, shooting Taggart and sparing Bowen. When Hildy, now widowed and wealthy, arrives to take him to New Orleans, Hogue is accidentally crushed by her automobile and dies as Sloane eulogizes him.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE)
## Production
Peckinpah purchased the rights to John Crawford and Edmund Penney's screenplay in November 1966, with financing and distribution from Warner Bros.–Seven Arts. [Principal photography](https://www.edgepedia.org/principal-photography) began on 27 January 1969 in the desert around Las Vegas, Nevada, with location work in [Valley of Fire State Park](https://www.edgepedia.org/valley-of-fire-state-park); inclement weather forced Peckinpah to write a new sequence calling for rain, and desert shooting was rained out for a total of 21 days. Delays also came from his choice to shoot in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio with older camera equipment that frequently jammed. Throughout part of production he worked six-day weeks on *Cable Hogue* while editing *The Wild Bunch* on Sundays; location filming in Nevada and Arizona was completed by 16 April 1969.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE)
The film went $1.5 million over budget, reaching a final negative cost of $3 million, and by AFI Silver's account went "wildly overbudget," again straining Peckinpah's standing with the studios.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) • [7](https://silver.afi.com/movies/detail/0100004922/) Before release, Peckinpah clashed with Warner Bros. over its handling of the film, objecting to single-theater "showcase" openings in Los Angeles and New York; he won a partial victory with a multi-theater Los Angeles release. He also objected to the Motion Picture Association of America's decision to rate the film R rather than M.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE)
## Release and reception
The film opened in Los Angeles on 18 March 1970 and in New York the week of 14 May 1970. Some later sources give different dates: Rotten Tomatoes lists a theatrical release of May 13, 1970, and Men's Journal states May 22, 1970.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ballad_of_cable_hogue) • [8](https://www.mensjournal.com/news/1970-western-classic-originally-a-box-office-flop-has-near-perfect-rotten-tomatoes-score)
**Commercial failure, critical regard.** The film was critically praised but commercially ignored; the DVD Journal's review describes it as a light-hearted comic turn that "landed with a thud at the box office," with audiences still wanting more of *The Wild Bunch*.[7](https://silver.afi.com/movies/detail/0100004922/) • [5](https://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/b/balladofcablehogue.q.shtml) Roger Ebert, the [Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-sun-times) critic who won the [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/pulitzer-prize) for criticism in 1975, gave it 3.5 of 4 stars and called it "a splendid example of the New Western" and "a wonderfully comic tale we didn't quite expect from a director who seems more at home with violence than with humor."[9](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-1970) The film was selected for the Sorrento-Naples Film Festival and chosen as one of two U.S. entries for the San Sebastian Film Festival, though Warner Bros. pulled it from competition; in 1972 the Association of Spanish Critics named it Best Foreign Picture.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE)
Peckinpah himself valued it highly. He told the writer Garner Simmons that "Cable Hogue is possibly my best film. A real love story," adding that when he left violence out of a film, nobody bothered to see it; Stella Stevens put the release failure more bluntly, telling David Weddle that "Warner Bros. didn't release it. They flushed it."[2](https://cinema.wisc.edu/2025/03/12/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-oasis-in-the-desert/) Later rankings reflect the rehabilitation: StudioBinder placed it at No. 36 on its list of the greatest Westerns, and SlashFilm ranked it the No. 3 most underrated Western of all time.[10](https://www.mensjournal.com/news/1970-classic-originally-a-box-office-flop-named-one-of-the-greatest-westerns-of-all-time)
## Themes and style
The film belongs to Peckinpah's recurring subject, the closing of the [American frontier](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-frontier) and the obsolescence of the independent Westerner. Cable Hogue builds a small empire on water and stagecoach traffic, and the arrival of motorcars ends his trade; the film's tagline material describes a man who "never went to church but the whole desert was his cathedral."[6](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/11703/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue) Film scholars Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, writing on the demystification of Western mythology, classify it among the elegiac Westerns of the period, alongside the generically subversive *McCabe & Mrs. Miller* (1971) and the satirical *Blazing Saddles* (1974).[11](https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/675/RAFFERTYPoliticisingStardom2010.pdf?sequence=1)
In tone it is Peckinpah's gentlest film, with very little violence compared with *The Wild Bunch*, and it mixes comedy, action, romance, nostalgic elegy, and song. Time Out called Hogue "probably Peckinpah's most likeable hero" while judging the tone uneven; the DVD Journal notes comic elements, including fast-motion sequences, that do not always work.[12](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue) • [5](https://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/b/balladofcablehogue.q.shtml) • [8](https://www.mensjournal.com/news/1970-western-classic-originally-a-box-office-flop-has-near-perfect-rotten-tomatoes-score) The film also experiments visually, using split-screen frames during Hogue's desert ordeal in the opening, set to [Jerry Goldsmith](https://www.edgepedia.org/jerry-goldsmith) and Richard Gillis's song "Tomorrow Is the Song I Sing."[2](https://cinema.wisc.edu/2025/03/12/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-oasis-in-the-desert/)
The characters carry the film's moral weight. Cable and Joshua both talk with God directly, and the film treats morality through acceptance rather than judgment; when Hildy asks Hogue whether her profession bothers him, he answers, "Well, what the hell are you? A human being, trying the best you can. We all got our own ways of living."[5](https://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/b/balladofcablehogue.q.shtml) Critics singled out the two leads: Ebert wrote that Robards was "plenty raspy and human enough on his own" without Bogart imitations, and that Stevens was one of the few actresses who could be funny and feminine at the same time.[9](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-1970)
## References
1. [The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20621-THE-BALLAD-OF-CABLE-HOGUE)
2. [Josh Martin, "The Ballad of Cable Hogue: Oasis in the Desert," UW–Madison Cinematheque, March 12, 2025](https://cinema.wisc.edu/2025/03/12/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-oasis-in-the-desert/)
3. [The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ballad_of_cable_hogue)
4. [The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) – Ratings, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065446/ratings/)
5. [Dawn Taylor, The Ballad of Cable Hogue review, The DVD Journal](https://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/b/balladofcablehogue.q.shtml)
6. [Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, The Ballad of Cable Hogue review, Spirituality & Practice](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/11703/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue)
7. [The Ballad of Cable Hogue, AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center](https://silver.afi.com/movies/detail/0100004922/)
8. [Melody McCune, "1970 Western Classic, Originally a Box-Office Flop, Has Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score," Men's Journal](https://www.mensjournal.com/news/1970-western-classic-originally-a-box-office-flop-has-near-perfect-rotten-tomatoes-score)
9. [Roger Ebert, The Ballad of Cable Hogue review, Chicago Sun-Times (1970), RogerEbert.com](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue-1970)
10. [Andrew McCarty, "1970 Classic, Originally a Box Office Flop, Named One of the Greatest Westerns of All Time," Men's Journal](https://www.mensjournal.com/news/1970-classic-originally-a-box-office-flop-named-one-of-the-greatest-westerns-of-all-time)
11. [Rafferty, F., Politicising Stardom, Queen Mary University of London thesis (2010)](https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/675/RAFFERTYPoliticisingStardom2010.pdf?sequence=1)
12. [The Ballad of Cable Hogue review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Westerns before 1980 › Released 1961 to 1979*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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