The Hanging Tree is a 1959 American Western film directed by Delmer Daves, based on the novelette The Hanging Tree, written by Dorothy M. Johnson in 1957. The film stars Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden and George C. Scott, and it is set in the gold fields of Montana during the gold rush of the 1860s and 1870s. The story follows a doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, then earns the enmity of several prospectors while trying to protect a young woman whom he has nursed back to health after she was injured in a coach robbery. Karl Malden assumed directing duties for several days when Daves fell ill, and the film represented the first cinematic appearance for George C. Scott.