These Thousand Hills is a 1959 Western film starring Patricia Owens, Alfred Hayes and Richard Egan, and based on the novel of the same name by A. B. Guthrie Jr.. It was directed by Richard Fleischer.The movie stars Don Murray as Lat Evans, a sheltered rancher brought up under the stern gaze of his Bible-thumping father. Lat heads off into the world intent upon making his fortune, and befriends Tom (Stuart Whitman) on the cattle-herding trail.