Marie Gomez in The Professionals (1966)

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A crack team of specialists combines their powers to rescue the kidnapped wife of a wealthy Texan businessman in Richard Brooks’s Wild West adventure drama The Professionals (1966). Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode, and Robert Ryan star as middle-aged frontiersmen with special skills ranging from detonation to horse wrangling. Their skills don’t come cheaply, but wealthy J. W. Grant (Ralph Bellamy) can’t afford to skimp––not when the life of his beautiful wife (Claudia Cardinale) is on the line. Box Office called Brooks’s adventure “one of the best Columbia westerns of all time,” and you have to wonder if Cardinale and costarlet Marie Gomez colored their view. Both actresses are capable of making a cowboy’s heart beat rapidly by climbing into the saddle.