Urge Shock Citation for
Movie Star Ralph Meeker

     If Hollywood presented an award for the year's most hair-raising performance, Ralph Meeker might well deserve the Oscar.
     Meeker is tied to a post and skinned alive, presumably that is, in his current picture, RKO's "Run of the Arrow," now at the _______ Theatre. The actor stars with Rod Steiger, Sarita Montiel and Brian Keith in the widely-discussed adventure shocker.
     According to Samuel Fuller, the film's Producer, Writer and Director, the hair-raising incident in which Meeker is tortured by Indian renegades, is the factual reproduction of a warfare ritual practiced by militant American Indian tribes during early periods of paleface encroachment.
     The actor has the role of Lieutenant Driscoll, U.S. Cavalry officer, in "Run of the Arrow" which deals realistically with Indian resistance to white migration on the western frontier a hundred years ago.
     Meeker's part might be described as that of a controversial villain. Commanding an Army outpost garrison in the Indian country, he permits his instinct of self preservation to invite a massacre. The ensuing debacle leads to his capture and the above-mentioned atrocity.
     In emotional depth, the portrayal has been compared to Meeker's stunning performance in the Pulitzer Prize play, "Picnic," for which he was handed the New York Critic's Award in 1954.
     "Run of the Arrow," brought to the screen in Technicolor and filmed on the wasteland stretches at St. George, Utah, is probably the most spectacular picture in which Meeker has appeared. Scores of mounted Indian braves and U.S. Cavalrymen take part in running battle sequences staged against a backdrop of distant mountain ranges.
     Other well known performers in the cast include Jay C. Flippen, Charles Bronson, Olive Carey, talented little Billie Miller and Col. Tim McCoy. Joseph Biroc was the film's Cinematographer and Victor Young composed the symphonic musical score.

(From 1957 pressbook)