The editor of a small-town newspaper in Dakota territory, Colonel Clement Lounsberry (Ron Hayes), has to turn down an offer to accompany General George Armstrong Custer (Duane Grey) on his expedition to suppress the Sioux in the spring of 1876 because of his wife's illness and assigns his assistant, Mark Kellogg (John Clarke), to cover the story. When word gets to Lounsberry of the massacre of Custer and all of his men at Little Big Horn, he has the Western Union telegrapher (Walter Sande) in Bismarck keep the line open to the office of the New York Herald and its publisher, James Gordon Bennett (Michael Emmet), despite the high cost of wire charges, until he can piece the whole story from Kellogg's last dispatch, Kellogg's recovered blood-stained diary, and interviews with wounded men from Major Reno's unit who witnessed Custer's movement into Little Big Horn and have arrived in Bismarck by riverboat. In New York, Bennett's editor, Miller (Gregg Barton), argues for waiting until confirmation arrives from the War Department, which initially denies the story. General Philip Sheridan (Maurice Manson) even makes an appearance. It's an incredibly suspenseful story and a vivid and electrifying tribute to the journalists involved. "Death Valley Days" excelled at sharply focused accounts like this. I saw this when it played on Starz Encore's Western Channel.
Review of The Great Lounsberry Scoop
