Red Skies of Montana

Red Skies of Montana is a 1952 American adventure drama film directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Richard Widmark, Constance Smith and Jeffrey Hunter. Widmark stars as a smokejumper who attempts to save his crew while being overrun by a forest fire, not only to preserve their lives, but to redeem himself after being the only survivor of a previous disaster. The film was loosely based on the August 1949 Mann Gulch fire, and filmed on location in Technicolor with the cooperation of the United States Forest Service. Bugle Mountain (also known as "Bugle Peak"), located in the Scapegoat Wilderness near Lincoln, Montana, gave its name to the fictional setting of the forest fire in the Selway National Forest shown during the first 30 minutes of the film. Plot Cliff Mason, a veteran foreman of the Forest Service's smokejumper unit, is called out with a crew on a fire, despite the fact that they have not rested in three days. Accompanied by R. A. "Pop" Miller and four other men, Cliff leaves the smokejumper base at Missoula, Montana to parachute into a nearly inaccessible area of Bugle Peak.