Delmer Daves’ 1958 Western Cowboy opens in a Chicago hotel where Frank Harris (Jack Lemmon) is a clerk who has fallen in love with the daughter of a Mexican cattle baron, Vidal (Donald Randolph). Vidal orders Harris to stay away from the girl (Maria, played by Anna Kashfi), and returns with her to Mexico. In order to follow her there, Harris purchases a partnership in Tom Reece's (Glenn Ford) next cattle drive. Regretting his decision to take a tenderfoot on the trail, Reece attempts to buy Harris out, but Harris holds him to their deal. Life as a cowhand strips away Harris's romantic delusions. In Mexico, he learns that Maria's father has married her off and that she is not interested in leaving her new husband. On the trail, he discovers that the men with whom he is working are not even remotely like the heroes of Western dime novels. As he adjusts to being a “cowboy,” Harris becomes first hostile and then callous. Reece attempts to mentor him on the trail, but Harris refuses to listen. After Reece saves his life in a cattle car on the train going back to Chicago, Harris finally grows up. Back in Chicago, Reece, Harris, and the other rambunctious cowboys take over part of the hotel where Harris used to work. In the final shot of the movie, Reece and Harris are enjoying the fruits of their labor, sitting in their bathtubs, drinking whiskey and smoking cigars, laughing, and shooting cockroaches off the bathroom walls.

Advertised as an ‘adult’ Western, Cowboy received mixed reviews upon its release. The review in Variety lavished praise on the movie, calling it “one of the fastest, freshest Westerns in a long time” and enthusing that it “has everything a Western should have. Cowboys and Indians, cattle (including a stampede) and cow ponies, barroom brawls and bronco busting, all the classic elements … seen with a fresh approach that gives it a special stature of its own.” Meanwhile, Bosley Crowther in the New York Times was much less enthusiastic: “For a movie supposedly intended to give you a realistic idea of the lean and leathery lives of the fellows who drove cattle and trailed herds in the old days, [producer] Julian Blaustein's ‘Cowboy’ has a surprisingly plump and comfortable look …