The Big Country

Rival Texas ranchers Charles Bickford and Burl Ives (in an Oscar ,winning performance) go to war over water rights and access to precious riverfront property owned by schoolmarm Jean Simmons. Easterner Gregory Peck, engaged to Bickford's spoiled daughter Carroll Baker, is a fish out of water in this conflict. Pacifistic Peck backs down from a fight with Ives' rowdy gang, and loses Baker's esteem when he refuses to fight her father's ranch foreman Charlton Heston -- who wants Baker for himself. But Peck's cool thinking will ultimately prevail in William Wyler's epic Western .