Monthly Archives: May 2015

Three Violent People

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 28, 2015

Three Violent People—Charlton Heston, Anne Baxter, Gilbert Roland, Tom Tryon, Forrest Tucker, Bruce Bennett, Barton MacLane, Elaine Stritch, Robert Blake (1956; Dir: Rudolph Maté)

This combines a romantic melodrama with a brother-goes-bad story, all set in post-Civil War carpetbag Texas. The central question is: What will happen when a respectable man discovers his new wife’s sordid past?

Capt. Colt Saunders, a former Confederate cavalry officer, is returning to the family ranch in southern Texas after the war. He sees the oppression by the carpetbaggers but is careful not to get involved himself, until he notes a well-dressed woman about to be manhandled when she tries to alight from a stagecoach. The woman is Lorna Hunter (Anne Baxter), and in the ensuing fight Saunders is knocked unconscious. Lorna puts him in a hotel room and makes off with $900 she finds on his person, but on second thought she has it put in the hotel safe with a receipt made out to Saunders. It turns out the hotel and its related saloon are run by her old (and shady) friend Ruby LaSalle (Elaine Stritch), who disapproves of whatever game Lorna’s playing with Saunders.

Early Days: Lorna Hunter (Anne Baxter) and Colt Saunders (Charlton Heston) get to know each other.

When he wakes up, Saunders is taken enough with Lorna to marry her impulsively on the spur of the moment. Arriviing at the Saunders Bar S ranch founded by Saunders’ grandfather, they find that (a) it has been kept running by foreman, gunman and resident sage Innocencio Ortega (Gilbert Roland) and his five sons, (b) the carpetbag government has taken virtually all the Saunders cattle, leaving them only a hidden horse herd, and (c) Saunders’ one-armed black sheep brother Beauregard “Cinch” Saunders (Tom Tryon) has returned to complicate everything else.

Saunders and Lorna go off to visit a neighbor, where instead they find the local carpetbag Tax Commissioner (Bruce Bennett) and his minions, including Cable (Forrest Tucker), a gunfighter. One of the minions recognizes Lorna from St. Louis, where as a member of Gen. Benjamin “Beast” Butler’s staff he had once frolicked with her during the war. It’s a bad way for Saunders to find out, and he doesn’t take it well. Against Ortega’s advice, he orders her to leave while he’s off on an extended tour of the ranch.

Carpetbagging gunslinger Cable (Forrest Tucker) gets what he wants.

Thinking better of it, especially when he learns that Lorna is pregnant, he heads back to ranch headquarters early, only to find that Cinch has persuaded Lorna to help him make off with the remaining Saunders horses, which they plan to sell for $30,000. With the help of Ortega and his sons, Saunders recaptures the herd and takes the horses and Lorna back to the ranch, at least until the baby is born. Ortega decides he must leave in the face of such stupidity. Cinch Saunders has been banned from the ranch for his perfidy, but he schemes with the carpetbaggers to take over the Saunders ranch, even as Texas’ carpetbag government is falling apart.

Hard-headed Colt Saunders (Charlton Heston) negotiates with his brother Cinch, with his wife Lorna, and with carpetbaggers.

The baby is born, and Lorna prepares to leave as Saunders had demanded. Cinch shows up to take over but is double-crossed by the Commissioner and Cable, who plan to leave no witnesses to their shady dealings. He redeems himself by taking out Cable at the cost of getting shot himself, while Saunders, Ortega and the Ortega sons kill the Commissioner and drive off the other nefarious carpetbaggers. Cinch dies nobly, and Lorna and Colt Saunders are apparently back together. And Ortega and his sons (one of whom is played by Robert Blake) decide to stay.

Charlton Heston was hitting the peak of his career, having just finished as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956, not yet released at the time this was filming) and coming up as Steve Leech in The Big Country (1958) and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur (1959). He manages to convey the competence and implacability of Colt Saunders, although this is not on the scale of those three big productions. Anne Baxter is good as a woman with a past (The Spoilers [1955], Cimarron [1960] and even The Ten Commandments). And Gilbert Roland, who had been in movies since the silent era of the 1920s, played this kind of role—a polished Hispanic man of the world, good with a gun—better than anybody else, although here he verges on a stereotype. On the whole, this feels a little overheated to current audiences, but melodramas are no longer fashionable in movies. It’s quite watchable, although you wish the characters (except for Roland, who talks a lot) would talk to each other more, and that there was a little more subtlety in the relationship between Colt and Lorna Saunders. Tom Tryon as bitter one-armed brother Cinch is too much a one-note character. It would be good if glimmers of something other than the bitterness were shown. Some of the names (Colt? Cinch? Beauregard?) are a bit of a problem.

Rudolph Maté, who had started as a cinematographer in Europe in the early 1920s, was an experienced director of westerns (The Rawhide Years, The Far Horizons, The Violent Men). The screenplay was by James Edward Grant, a favorite of John Ford and John Wayne. Shot in color in and around Old Tucson, Arizona, by Loyal Griggs, at 100 minutes.

It’s not entirely clear who the three violent people are (there would seem to be more than three), but they’re probably Colt Saunders, Cinch Saunders and Innocencio Ortega. Maybe including Lorna Saunders, since the title isn’t limited to men. Not to be confused with Maté’s The Violent Men (1955), with Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck and Brian Keith.

For Charlton Heston in better westerns, see him in the sprawling The Big Country (1958) with Gregory Peck and Burl Ives and in the excellent character study Will Penny (1968). Gilbert Roland shows up in Anthony Mann‘s The Furies (1950) with Barbara Stanwyck, Bandido (1956) with Robert Mitchum and as a noble Cheyenne chief in John Ford‘s last film Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

Slow West

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 23, 2015

Slow West—Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Caren Pistorius, Ben Mendelsohn, Rory McCann (2015; Dir: John Maclean)

Life in 1870 in Colorado Territory was apparently “nasty, brutish and short,” as in the well-known quotation by Thomas Hobbes and as depicted in this low-budget current western with a high body count. Young (16-year-old) Scotsman Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is out of his element, searching for his lost love Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius). A narrator (Silas, as it turns out) describes him as “a jackrabbit in a den of wolves.” The mood is set as the credits role over Jay riding through an Indian burial site. We are shown in a series of flashbacks how Jay’s uncle was accidentally killed in an altercation, causing Rose and her father (Rory McCann) to flee Scotland for the wilds of the New World. The flashbacks also reveal that Rose, of a lower social caste, does not think of Jay as a lover. What Jay also does not know is that a bounty of $2000 (very high for the time) has been posted on the Rosses, causing legions of distasteful bounty hunters to pursue them.

Silas: “Kick over any rock, and most likely a desperado would crawl out and knife you in the heart if there was a dollar in it.”

This is not as much a standoff between a masked Silas (Michael Fassbender) and a young Jay Cavendish as it would at first appear.

As Jay gets closer to the Silver Ghost Forest (a name more allegorical than real-sounding) somewhere in Colorado, he is confronted by three ex-soldiers hunting Indians for sport, until he is rescued by Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), one such bounty hunter. Silas quickly and pitilessly dispatches the three, and Jay gives Silas his remaining money to get him safely to his destination. They arrive at an isolated general store, and spot another bounty hunter, dressed as a minister and carrying an elaborate rifle. While they are at the store, a desperate Swedish couple arrives and tries a hold-up. The storekeeper kills the husband, and, as the wife holds a gun on Silas, Jay shoots her. As they flee the scene, they see two blond children waiting outside the store.

Sickened by it all, Jay sneaks away from Silas and falls in with Werner (Andrew Robertt), a man in a yellow wagon who appears to be a 19-century anthropologist “recounting the decline of the aboriginal tribes in the hope of preventing their extinction by their conversion to Christianity.” As Werner notes, “In a short time, this will be a long time ago,” showing a keen (and perhaps anachronistic) awareness of the transitory nature of the Old West. When Jay awakens the next morning, he discovers that Werner has departed in the night with his horse, clothes and possessions. He stumbles across the prairie until Silas finds him and gives him back his horse and clothes. Silas denies having killed Werner for it.

Chaperoned by Silas (Michael Fassbender), Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) makes his way farther west.

As they camp one evening, they are accosted by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn), who presides over a band of scurrilous bounty hunters and with whom Silas once rode. Payne plies them with absinthe, and Jay stumbles into Payne’s camp, noting that they appear to have the two blond children with them now. When Jay and Silas awaken the next morning in a downpour, they have lost their guns and most of their meager possessions. But they make it to the Silver Ghost Forest, and see the Ross cabin in the distance. Silas ties Jay to a tree to keep him from dashing into the situation.

[Spoilers follow.] We see that the reverend/bounty hunter has arrived first, and he picks off John Ross. He is in turn blasted by Payne’s men, who lay siege to Rose and an Indian within the house. As Silas tries to help them without a gun, he is shot twice and rendered helpless. Silas, Rose and the Indian have reduced the number of Payne’s band, however. Jay finally gets loose and makes his way to the cabin, only to be shot by a shaking Rose as he enters. Payne finally enters as well and appears to have them at his mercy, but Rose slips a dying Jay her pistol and uses her body as a shield to give him the chance to shoot Payne.

Payne (Ben Mendelsohn), leader of a pack of ruthless bounty hunters, in his impressive fur coat.

As the movie comes to an end, we see Rose, Silas and the two blond children, apparently living as a happy family. It pans back over Silas’ killings that we saw earlier. Maybe all the bounty hunters are dead; if not, we have no idea why they are able to live so peacefully now.

The title is curious but not inaccurate. This was written and directed by first-time Scottish director John Maclean, with a bit of a European sensibility. Sometimes the dialogue does not seem entirely authentic, as with Silas’ repeated “Let’s drift” when he’s ready to get going. Jay crosses the U.S. (or at least the western part of it) on horseback without a hat, which seems unlikely. The film does not always explain what’s going on, resulting occasionally in a slightly surreal feel, reminding us of, for example, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man—another tale of a stranger in a strange western land. Still, it is skillfully executed in its way and worth watching. Most viewers will find it more accessible than Dead Man. The siege at the cabin is well-filmed; it could easily have been very confusing with so many characters involved, but we can follow it well enough.

Rose (Caren Pistorius) finds herself besieged by bounty hunters and surrounded by flying bullets.

If the scenery does not always look completely like Colorado, that’s because this was shot mostly in New Zealand. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, and was released in May. The twangy music by Jed Kurzel is very good. Excellent cinematography is by Robbie Ryan. In color, at 84 minutes; rated R for the violence.

Irish actor Michael Fassbender is by far the best-known cast member, but all four of the main performers are excellent–Fassbender, young Kodi Smit-McPhee, Caren Pistorius and Ben Mendelsohn. For South African/New Zealander Pistorius, in particular, it may prove to be a breakthrough role, although she isn’t actually on screen much until the end. (Her name appears to be misspelled on one of the film’s posters.) Fassbender had a production role as well, which is why the film got made. If you have the opportunity, watch it twice; it will flow better the second time.

Poster for the UK release of Slow West, scheduled for late June 2015.

Rodrigo Perez in The Playlist was one of the more enthusiastic reviewers: “Brilliantly executed, Maclean’s movie is certainly an unconventional Western with a European and outsider’s perspective. While it has its share of traditionally moody and atmospheric elements, Slow West is perhaps best defined by its sharp wit, absurdist violence and fairy tale qualities. Evincing a magic realism of fable dreaminess, juxtaposed with harsh severity, Maclean is right at home with this tone.

“Slow-burning and simmering, Slow West knows how to kick the voltage into high gear. As the movie gallops to its inevitable epic conclusion, the narrative is like three wicks lit and racing to a thrilling and explosive ending with a high body count, but with heart and soul, too. A dark but spirited fable about the pitilessness of the West, the meaning of home on the range and the worthwhile qualities of wicked, seemingly irredeemable men, Slow West is a terrific little parable, and a strong debut by John Maclean worth treasuring.”

Domino Kid

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 21, 2015

Domino Kid—Rory Calhoun, Andrew Duggan, Kristine Miller, Yvette Duguay, Eugene Iglesias (1957; Dir: Ray Nazarro)

In 1957 and 1958, Rory Calhoun was juggling his career between movies and television. Not enough good movie roles were coming his way, so he took a producing role in a few westerns, working with journeyman director Ray Nazarro. The best of these was probably Apache Territory (1958), based on a story by Louis L’Amour, in color. Less ambitious efforts were The Hired Gun and Domino Kid, both in 1957.

Domino Kid is Court Garrand (Rory Calhoun), taking his name from the Double Six Ranch where he grew up. While he was away fighting in the Civil War, a roving band of five outlaws raided the ranch and killed his father. As the movie begins, Domino is hunting down the outlaws one by one. By the time the movie is a few minutes old, he has killed Haymes and Trancas and is looking for Ed Sandlin. He finds him in a saloon, with Sandlin sounding like he wants to make amends but really planning an ambush. Domino manages to get Sandlin and escape town, looking for number four: Sam Beal (played by an uncredited James Griffith, with his distinctive voice). Domino gets Beal but does not get away unscathed. Badly wounded, he is rumored to be dead. And he has no idea who the fifth man in the gang was.

Former girlfriend Barbara (Kristine Miller) accuses Domino (Rory Calhoun) of becoming just another gunslinger–and not much of a guitar player.

Back in his home town of Pradera, former friends, including girlfriend Barbara (Kristine Miller), hear of his vengeance quest with increasing disquiet. Wade Harrington (Andrew Duggan), a new banker in town, is interested in his Double Six Ranch, and hopes he’s dead. But when Barbara visits the place, she finds him there, recuperating from his wounds. He tries for a loan from Harrington but is denied. On his way home he finds Harrington’s men damming the water his ranch depends on, claiming that the stream is on public land. Domino threatens to kill Harrington if he doesn’t tear down the dam.

Domino drinks more heavily in Rosita’s cantina with Juan (Eugene Iglesias), an old friend who saw the five outlaws at the time of the original crime. Domino broods about whether he’s becoming just another killer, as people seem to think. One night, an oaf in the cantina uses his quirt on Rosita and Domino decks him. Juan hauls the unconscious oaf off the premises but is captured by the oaf’s friends. As they are about to torture Juan, Domino shows up and decks him again. Juan says the oaf is the fifth man Domino’s been looking for.

As Domino prepares to leave the next morning at 10, Harrington challenges him in the street with a rifle. He chooses not to respond, but we know that Harrington has already placed the oaf and some others at the site to help him. As they fire at him, Domino fires back getting a few but taking some slugs himself. As he falls, he gets the fifth man. Harrington seems to be fine. And Barbara promises to nurse Domino back to health.

Publicity stills of a steely-eyed Rory Calhoun; and Domino (Calhoun) and Barbara (Kristine Miller) getting together.

The ending is hopelessly muddled. At one point in the shoot-out, it looks like Harrington is helping Domino out, but we have no idea why, since he arranged for this attack. And several plot threads relating to the ranch are left unresolved. What about the dam? Is it on public land? What about Harrington? Is he in fact a good guy, or at least not so bad as we had thought? Is the ranch idea going to work? The Mexicans—Rosita (Yvette Duguay) and Juan (Eugene Iglesias)—are among the best characters in this one.

Rory Calhoun could do well in westerns, and he deserved better material, direction and writing than this. Since he was a producer, however, maybe he had only himself to blame. But the story works for a while, until it trips over its own feet. For better Rory Calhoun in protagonist roles, see Dawn at Socorro and Apache Territory. He had the best male widow’s peak in movies since Robert Taylor.

The Unforgiven

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 18, 2015

The Unforgiven—Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Charles Bickford, Lilian Gish, John Saxon, Joseph Wiseman, Albert Salmi, Doug McClure (1960; Dir: John Huston)

Audrey Hepburn was an elegant and accomplished actress, but seemingly not a natural in westerns—more a creature of the modern world, with a very slight and vaguely European accent. This was her only western, and she has kind of a peripheral role, although a controversy about her is the central conflict of the movie. In fact, she is not well cast here for what her character is supposed to be. In addition to Hepburn, there is a lot of top talent involved here: director John Huston, writer Alan LeMay (known for The Searchers), big star Burt Lancaster, and western star Audie Murphy.

The movie opens with an interesting shot of cattle grazing on the sod roof of the Zacharys’ ranch house in the Texas panhandle in the years immediately after the Civil War. The family patriarch, Will Zachary, had been killed by Kiowas several years previously, and because of the long conflict with the Kiowas many whites, including middle brother Cash Zachary (Audie Murphy), hate Indians. The Zacharys are partners of a sort in a ranching venture with the Rawlins family headed by Zeb Rawlins (crusty Charles Bickford), left crippled by Kiowa torture some years previously.

Sister Rachel (Audrey Hepburn) and brother Ben Zachary (Burt Lancaster) riding together.

The head of the Zachary family now is oldest brother Ben Zachary (Burt Lancaster), first seen returning from Wichita with newly-hired hands to make the long drive back to Wichita with the combined Zachary-Rawlins herd. The proceeds should make both families financially secure for the first time. Brother Cash Zachary is good with a gun but hot-headed; youngest brother Andy Zachary is just inexperienced; and sister Rachel Zachary (Audrey Hepburn in dark makeup) is a foundling adopted by the family a couple of decades earlier.

Early in the movie, Rachel encounters a mysterious older figure dressed what appear to be parts of a Confederate uniform, carrying a saber. He is Abe Kelsey (Joseph Wiseman), who makes cryptic quasi-Biblical pronouncements and may be crazy. Ma Zachary (Lilian Gish in her second Texas matriarch role, after Duel in the Sun more than ten years earlier) clearly feels threatened by him. Ben and Cash give chase, and, although they do not catch Kelsey, they kill his horse.

Abe Kelsey (Joseph Wiseman), who may be crazy, stirs up old wounds.

Rachel Zachary: “Ben, what did those Indians want?”
Ben Zachary: “They offered to buy you for those five horses.”
Rachel Zachary: “Well, did you sell me?”
Ben Zachary, grinning: “Nope; held out for more horses.” (In fact, he has just told the Kiowas that there are not enough horses to buy her.)

Meanwhile, young Charlie Rawlins (Albert Salmi, who tended to play thugs or clods—here he’s a clod) is interested in Rachel, although Ben doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about Charlie’s romantic attentions to his (non-genetic) sister. Kiowas show up, claiming that Abe Kelsey has told them that Rachel is an abducted Kiowa and sister to the Kiowa leader. As Ben rejects the Kiowa overtures, they respond by killing Charlie Rawlins. A clearly distraught Ma Rawlins reacts by claiming to believe the Kiowa story, and the Rawlinses threaten to pull out of their partnership with the Zacharys if the story is true. A combined force of Zachary and Rawlins men hunts down Abe Kelsey when he steals Rachel’s horse. Under interrogation at the Rawlins ranch, he says that when his own son was captured by the Kiowas years before, he had wanted to trade young Rachel for his son and the Zacharys had refused. As Kelsey sits on a horse with a noose around his neck, Ma Zachary kicks his horse and he hangs.

Oldest brother Ben Zachary (Burt Lancaster) negotiates with the Kiowas.

[Spoilers follow.] Back at the Zachary ranch, Ma Zachary admits that when Will Zachary returned from a settler raid on a Kiowa village a couple of decades earlier, the only survivor was an infant girl, who was then adopted by the Zacharys in the place of their recently–deceased baby girl. That was Rachel. Cash is having none of it and leaves in a rage. The Zacharys find themselves besieged by Kiowas and hold out for a day under the leadership of Ben. Ma is shot and dies because she doesn’t tell anybody about her wound. The next day, the Kiowas drive the Zachary cattle onto the top of their house, causing the roof to collapse. Cash returns with ammunition just in time and kills several Kiowas but is wounded a couple of times himself. Rachel, with only a few rounds in a pistol, is confronted by her Kiowa brother and has to choose between the only family she has known or her Indian heritage. She shoots the Kiowa brother. At the end, with their ranch in ruins, the latent romance between Ben and Rachel comes out, and they decide to get married.

This is a typical sort of John Huston movie, with dark secrets from the past influencing or controlling the present. Burt Lancaster is a strong lead, seldom wearing a hat during the entire movie so his vigorous growth of hair is always on display. Audie Murphy is perfectly adequate in one of his few A westerns (along with Night Passage). Lilian Gish is good at being a frontier matriarch haunted by the dark past. Audrey Hepburn doesn’t look much like an Indian despite her dark makeup, and she has an unusually refined persona for any kind of frontier woman.

Preparing to receive the Kiowas: Rachel (Audrey Hepburn, in her dark makeup) with her frontier skills.

Huston saw this as a story about racial relations and bigotry; the studio wanted to make sure that it was primarily commercial, and the two concepts do not always make for a comfortable mix. Some of the dialogue and references to Indians (they are continually referred to as “red-hide Indians” and worse) seems a bit virulent for modern tastes. It has some themes in common with John Ford’s The Searchers, although in this case it’s an Indian child abducted by whites and not the other way around. Big budget or not, this is watchable but seems somewhat overheated. Music is by Dimitri Tiomkin and cinematography by Franz Planer. Filmed in color in Durango, Mexico, at 125 minutes. Not to be confused with Clint Eastwood’s 1992 masterpiece Unforgiven.

Lancaster’s production company was behind the film, and he initially saw Kirk Douglas in the role of his brother Cash. That idea was shot down because it was thought that Douglas would alter the balances between the brothers as written in the story. When it was decided not to use Douglas, Tony Curtis and then Richard Burton were considered for the role before Audie Murphy was ultimately chosen. Bette Davis turned down the Lilian Gish role because she didn’t want to play Burt Lancaster’s mother.

The surviving Zacharys: Andy (Doug McClure), Ben (Burt Lancaster), Cash (Audie Murphy) and Rachel (Audrey Hepburn).

Before filming began, director Huston and Lancaster took Lillian Gish out to the desert to teach her how to shoot, which she would have to do in the film. However, Huston was surprised to discover that Gish could shoot faster and more accurately than either he or Lancaster, who both thought themselves expert marksmen. It turned out that early in her career during the silent movie era, Gish was taught how to shoot by Oklahoma outlaw Al Jennings, who had become an actor after his release from a long prison sentence for train robbery and was cast in one of her films. She found that she liked shooting and over the years had developed into an expert shot.

Audrey Hepburn was seriously injured during production when she was thrown by a horse between scenes. Hepburn, who was pregnant, spent six weeks in the hospital healing from a broken back and, when she returned to the set, was able to complete her role wearing a back brace, which her wardrobe had to be redesigned to hide. Sadly, she suffered a miscarriage a few months later, which some blamed on her injury from this movie. Indeed, John Huston blamed himself for the mishap, although Hepburn harbored no ill feelings toward the director. While Hepburn was in the hospital, Huston filmed scenes using a double. Of course, it didn’t help Hepburn’s health that her weight fell to 98 pounds during filming, and that she increased her smoking to three packs a day.

In his autobiography, John Huston describes this film as the only one he ever made that he entirely disliked. Film critic David Thomson, not usually a Huston admirer, called it his best film. It pretty clearly is not: The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen and The Man Who Would Be King all have stronger claims to that honor.

Shooting Stars, Part 3

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 14, 2015

Shooting Stars: A Ranking of the 29 Greatest Western Actors Since 1939
Part 3—Eleven Through Fifteen

Here we continue with our ranking of the top actors in westerns since 1939. For the top ten such actors, see our posts Shooting Stars Part 1 and Shooting Stars Part 2.

11. James Garner [Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend, Hour of the Gun, Duel at Diablo, Support Your Local Sheriff, Support Your Local Gunfighter, Skin Game, A Man Called Sledge, The Castaway Cowboy, One Little Indian, Murphy’s Romance, Sunset, Maverick; on television, Maverick, Bret Maverick and The Streets of Laredo]

Oklahoma native James Garner is best known for his roles as an amiable western con-man, first demonstrated in the Maverick television series of the late 1950s. He was better at that kind of role than anybody else (see Support Your Local Sheriff, Skin Game and Support Your Local Gunfighter). He successfully played variants of that role in movies set in more modern times, including a couple of good ones set in World War II (The Great Escape [1963] and The Americanization of Emily [1964]) and a number of 1960s romantic comedies (Boys’ Night Out with Kim Novak, Cash McCall with Natalie Wood, The Thrill of It All and Move Over, Darling, both with Doris Day). But that wasn’t the limit of his talents. He could also do well at a kind of grim, humorless role, as he showed in Duel at Diablo (1966) and while playing Wyatt Earp in John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun (1967). It was his misfortune that mainstream westerns were starting to decline in popularity when he was at his peak, and by the mid-1970s he was showing up in light, Disney-produced westerns with Vera Miles that haven’t been much seen (The Castaway Cowboy, One Little Indian). More successful was his venture back into television as private detective Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files (for six seasons, starting in 1974).

In the later stages of his career, he was very good in a modern romantic western with Sally Field in Murphy’s Romance (1985), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. He showed up in two more westerns, once again as an aging Wyatt Earp in Hollywood of the late 1920s in Sunset (1988), and in the Mel Gibson Maverick remake (1994). He returned to television with a short-lived series reprising his original Maverick character in Bret Maverick (1981) and with a credible turn playing an aging Capt. Woodrow Call in the television miniseries The Streets of Laredo (1995), based on a sequel to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. (One story has it that he had been offered the role of either Woodrow Call or Gus McCrae–his choice–in the original Lonesome Dove miniseries but was sidelined by health problems. Lonesome Dove, of course, went on to become a classic with Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall in those roles.) An interesting sidelight of his late career was to see him together with fellow westerns star Clint Eastwood as aging astronauts in Space Cowboys (2000).

Like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, Garner was long interested in automobile racing. He was a good enough driver that he did his own driving stunts in The Rockford Files because he was better at it than any stuntman they could find. In a 1973 interview, John Wayne called James Garner the best American actor. Of all his films, The Americanization of Emily, with Julie Andrews (1964), was said to be Garner’s favorite—an excellent movie, wonderfully written and superbly acted but unfortunately not a western.

12. Burt Lancaster [Vengeance Valley, The Kentuckian, Vera Cruz, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Unforgiven, The Hallelujah Trail, The Professionals, The Scalphunters, Valdez Is Coming, Lawman, Ulzana’s Raid]

Burt Lancaster was one of the biggest movie stars of his time, from the late 1940s well into the 1970s. Known especially for a vigorous brand of physical athleticism (he had once been a circus acrobat), an equally vigorous growth of hair and a large grin showing off a full set of very white teeth, he was willing to take any role that interested him. He won an Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance in Elmer Gantry (1960). For an early performance in a western, see him as the grinning unscrupulous quasi-outlaw Joe Erin in Vera Cruz (1954), playing with and against the more traditional and stolid Gary Cooper. One of many to play Wyatt Earp, he did a credible version in John Sturges’ Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), and he could also play a certain kind of comedy convincingly (The Hallelujah Trail [1965], The Scalphunters [1968]). He was not afraid of taking a role secondary to lesser star Lee Marvin in The Professionals (1966), and his strong performance alongside Marvin made for an excellent western.

By the 1970s, as westerns faded in popularity as a cinematic genre, Lancaster was doing some of his strongest work in westerns as old scout Bob Valdez in Valdez Is Coming (1971) and as old scout Archie McIntosh in Ulzana’s Raid (1972), probably the last really good cavalry movie. He’s even good as the central figure in the revisionist Lawman (1971) with Robert Ryan, which otherwise has some problems with its writing and direction.

13. Gregory Peck [Yellow Sky, Duel in the Sun, The Gunfighter, Only the Valiant, The Big Country, The Bravados, How the West Was Won, The Stalking Moon, Mackenna’s Gold, Shoot Out, Billy Two Hats, The Old Gringo]

Gregory Peck shared Joel McCrea’s ability to project a basic American style of decency, although his brand of that quality was a little flintier and less self-effacing than McCrea’s. His ultimate cinematic expression of that quality is probably as southern lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). It made him convincing in playing reforming outlaws (Yellow Sky [1948], The Gunfighter [1950]), but less so in portraying bad guys (Duel in the Sun, 1947). He was a big star, both comfortable and convincing at the center of a large-budget production (The Big Country [1958]).

He didn’t make many westerns in the 1960s, part of his period of greatest stardom—only appearing in How the West Was Won (1962), as one among many stars. Toward the end of the decade he appeared in a fairly good western thriller (The Stalking Moon [1968]), but like others he didn’t fare well as the genre, and his career generally, moved into a twilight period. He showed up in such turkeys as Mackenna’s Gold (1969) and Billy Two Hats (1974). Shoot Out (1971), which is watchable but not remarkable, is probably his best western from this period. In his last western, he starred as crusty writer Ambrose Bierce, the titular character in The Old Gringo, during the period of Mexican revolutions in the 1910s, with Jane Fonda (1989). He is justly praised for The Gunfighter and The Big Country; Yellow Sky and The Bravados are probably the most underrated of the westerns in which Peck appeared.

14. William Holden [Arizona, Texas, The Man From Colorado, Rachel and the Stranger, Streets of Laredo, Escape from Fort Bravo, The Horse Soldiers, Alvarez Kelly, The Wild Bunch, The Wild Rovers, The Revengers]

Like Burt Lancaster and Gregory Peck, William Holden is not remembered first for his westerns. He is remembered first for his roles as the young writer found floating face down in a swimming pool in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, and for Wilder’s World War II drama Stalag 17, for which he won his Best Actor Oscar. But his slightly acid modern-seeming persona translated well enough to westerns if the material and directing were right. He starred in them from his earliest days in the movies, beginning before World War II with Arizona, with Jean Arthur and Edgar Buchanan (1940), and Texas, with Glenn Ford and Edgar Buchanan (1941). After service in the war, he resumed his film career generally, and westerns specifically, with such good films as The Man from Colorado, again with Glenn Ford (1948) and with the colonial western Rachel and the Stranger, with Loretta Young and Robert Mitchum (1948).

Even with his success and elevation to stardom with Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, he made the occasional good western during the 1950s, working with director John Sturges in the underrated Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) and with John Ford in the Civil War cavalry story The Horse Soldiers, playing an army doctor continually feuding with John Wayne (1959). Even as Holden’s alcoholism took its toll on him, Holden’s work in the 1960s included the good Civil War story Alvarez Kelly, with Richard Widmark (1966), and the western for which he is best remembered now: Sam Peckinpah’s landmark The Wild Bunch (1969), in which Holden very effectively plays Pike Bishop, leader of an aging outlaw gang trying to pull off a last job amid the Mexican revolutions of the 1910s. His career in westerns ended on an ignominious note with The Wild Rovers (1971), although the seldom-seen The Revengers (1972) is slightly better.

15. Kirk Douglas [Along the Great Divide, The Big Sky, Man Without a Star, Last Train from Gun Hill, The Indian Fighter, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Lonely Are the Brave, The Last Sunset, The Way West, The War Wagon, There Was a Crooked Man, Posse, The Man from Snowy River]

One of the biggest stars of his time (the prime of which was the late 1940s into the early 1970s), Kirk Douglas appeared in a surprising number of westerns. But many of them weren’t all that good, and in some of them his persona seemed to be fighting with the traditional western ways of looking at things. Like Burt Lancaster, he liked to not wear a hat, or to wear it only pushed back on his head. He experimented with especially tight and unlikely wardrobes (The Last Sunset, The War Wagon) which emphasized his robust physique and athleticism. He played a gunfighter who improbably only used a derringer (The Last Sunset). He didn’t really need the theatrical gimmicks, though. If you look only at his best work in westerns, you find one of the best mountain man movies (The Big Sky), his athleticism and physical strength (not to mention real acting ability) used to good effect without gimmicky costuming in Last Train from Gun Hill, the bitter edges of his personality being used effectively as Doc Holliday in Gunfight at the OK Corral, and as an isolated loner in the modern west in Lonely Are the Brave.

His ego was extraordinarily large (not unusual in Hollywood), but he managed to team well with Burt Lancaster (Gunfight at the OK Corral) and John Wayne (The War Wagon) when those two were in the dominant roles. As the 1970s came in, he starred in less effective revisionist westerns (There Was a Crooked Man, Posse), which would probably not have been made without him. In his last western, he chewed the scenery in dual roles in The Man from Snowy River.

Save

Canadian Pacific

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 11, 2015

Canadian Pacific—Randolph Scott, Victor Jory, J. Carroll Naish, Nancy Olson, Jane Wyatt, Robert Barrat (1949; Dir: Edwin L. Marin)

Randolph Scott seemed to have bad luck in romantic triangles in western movies. In the earlier stages of his career, in Virginia City, Western Union and Jesse James, he was an ethical guy with a shady past or even a good guy in an insipid role, doomed to lose the girl to Errol Flynn, Robert Young and Tyrone Power. Later in his career, plots of his movies sometimes found him interested in two women, one of whom insists that he give up his guns (Angela Lansbury in A Lawless Street, Jacqueline White in Return of the Bad Men and Jane Wyatt in Canadian Pacific). In two of those movies he actually ends up with the woman who wants him to change, but in this case Jane Wyatt loses out.

Tom Andrews (Randolph Scott) is a surveyor and troubleshooter for the Canadian Pacific Railway, now trying to find a path over the Rocky Mountains. The railroad is meeting resistance from the local metis (a group of mixed French-Canadian and Indian ancestry) led by fur trader Dirk Rourke (Victor Jory). The animosity between Rourke and Andrews is complicated by the fact that they both fancy the same girl—Cecille Gautier (Nancy Olson, in her first significant screen role), daughter of a metis leader. Andrews finds a pass for the railroad and is not scared off when Rourke takes a shot at him. He is unsuccessful at dissuading a metis meeting from supporting Rourke, and returns to the railroad.

Publicity stills of Andrews and his romantic interests: Cecille Gautier (Nancy Olson) and Tom Andrews (Randolph Scott) in the Canadian Rockies; and Tom Andrews successfully romances the lady doctor (Jane Wyatt).

The railroad extension effort is led by Cornelius Van Horne (Robert Barrat), who persuades Andrews to come back to the railroad instead of marrying Cecille. Andrews encounters railroad lady doctor Edith Cabot (Jane Wyatt), a beautiful and intelligent but priggish easterner with her own hospital railroad car who views him as a gun-wielding barbarian. Nevertheless, she patches him up from the occasional bullet wound, and presides over his lengthy recovery when he is grievously injured by a dynamite blast triggered by a shot from Rourke. Meanwhile, Rourke persuades the Blackfoot Indians to attack the railroad, and Cecille rides to warn Andrews.

Dynamite Dawson (J. Carroll Naish) lives up to his name, smoking a little dynamite with the Blackfeet.

Just recovering after several months and having found an attraction to Dr. Cabot, Andrews leads the defense, while his friend Dynamite Dawson (J. Carroll Naish) rides for help. During the battle, while Rourke and Andrews are shooting it out, Andrews sees Rourke killed by a convenient falling tree, but not before Rourke has successfully given the signal for the Indians to attack. At the end, Dr. Cabot can’t forgive Andrews his return to violence, and he ends up with the (much younger) Cecille. And the railroad goes through.

Andrews (Randolph Scott) and the railroad men desperately fight off a massive Indian attack from behind a makeshift barricade.

This was an attempt in a way to remake Cecil B. Demille’s Union Pacific story from ten years earlier. However, the writing isn’t as good and the story doesn’t hang together convincingly. It was filmed on location in the beautiful Canadian Rockies around Banff National Park. It was shot in color, but the print hasn’t aged well. 95 minutes long.

For Randolph Scott enthusiasts, note that this is one of the few instances when he wears (and uses) two guns. He was more persuasive with one. And this is one of the earliest appearances of Scott’s famous leather jacket, which would show up periodically in progressively more worn condition for the rest of his career (Hangman’s Knot, Ride the High Country, etc.). Director Edwin L. Marin was at the helm for several of Scott’s westerns in this era (Abillene Town, Fighting Man of the Plains, The Cariboo Trail, Fort Worth), but his work is generally unremarkable. For another adventure involving Randolph Scott north of the border, this time with a herd of cattle, see The Cariboo Trail the next year (1950).

This was Nancy Olson’s first significant screen role, and the usually-blond Olson doesn’t seem very persuasive as a dark-haired metis girl. At 21, she was thirty years younger than Scott. Next, she went on to one of her biggest screen roles, as screenwriter William Holden’s girlfriend in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Other than that, she may be most familiar now for her wholesome work as the frequent girlfriend/wife in Disney comedies of the early 1960s, like The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and Son of Flubber (1963).

Three Hours to Kill

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 7, 2015

Three Hours to Kill—Dana Andrews, Donna Reed, Dianne Foster, Stephen Elliott, Richard Coogan, James Westerfield (1954; Dir: Alfred L. Werker)

In the classic western The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Dana Andrews was one of three innocent victims of a lynching, along with Anthony Quinn and Francis Ford. In this, Andrews returns three years after he was the victim of an unsuccessful lynching attempt to find out who was responsible for the murder for which he was almost killed.

There are mixed, but mostly negative, reactions as Jim Guthrie (Dana Andrews) confronts one by one the leaders of the lynch mob. In flashback we see the story of how banker Carter Mastin (Richard Webb) was killed at a dance, with certain strategic gaps so we don’t know who actually did it. Guthrie’s main suspects are saloon owner Sam Minor (the unctuous James Westerfield), barber Deke (a frazzled Whit Bissell), hostile rancher Niles Hendricks (Richard Coogan) and smooth gambler Marty Lasswell (Laurence Hugo). Guthrie’s long-time friend Ben East (Stephen Elliott) is now the sheriff, and he doesn’t immediately lock Guthrie up, although Guthrie is still officially accused of the murder. Instead, Ben gives Guthrie three hours until he has to leave town—hence the title with the double meaning.

Flashback: Irate citizens attempt to hang Jim Guthrie (Dana Andrews) immediately after the banker’s murder.

None of the four candidates seems entirely satisfactory as the real killer, and a lot of people disliked Carter Mastin, but other matters develop as well. When Guthrie barely escaped with his life, his fiancée Laurie Mastin (Donna Reed), sister of the murdered man, was pregnant and married Niles Hendrick to give her son a father. Saloon girl Chris Palmer (Dianne Foster) still has a thing for Guthrie, although he doesn’t appear interested. Gambler Lasswell has two women (unusual in a 1950s western) and attempts to leave town with them but is apprehended by Guthrie.

Jim Guthrie (Dana Andrews) holds his four murder candidates at Sam Minor’s saloon.

[Spoilers follow.] As the four principal suspects sit out the three hours in Minor’s saloon, they review the events of the night of the murder. Laurie still seems to have feelings for Guthrie, but will he break up her family? As the accounts of the murder are examined, a new candidate starts to emerge, although we know him and see it coming. In the end, Guthrie and the real killer shoot it out, Laurie stays with her family, and Guthrie and Chris ride out of town together.

This is a modest, effective and underrated western whodunit, and it is not really well known today. Dana Andrews is remembered more for modern roles (Ball of Fire, Laura, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc.), although he made a number of westerns, even some good ones (The Ox-Bow Incident, Canyon Passage, Strange Lady in Town). In the early 1950s Donna Reed made several westerns (The Far Horizons, Gun Fury, Hangman’s Knot, They Rode West, Backlash, etc.), and she is good here as the conflicted Laurie in a difficult situation. This was produced by Harry Joe Brown, who did a number of Randolph Scott movies, including those with director Budd Boetticher.

Eventually, of course, Guthrie (Dana Andrews) is forced to resolve matters in a final shootout.

On the whole, it’s worth watching and should be more widely remembered. In color, at 77 minutes. For another western featuring vengeance from an innocent man almost lynched, see Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High.

Ride, Vaquero!

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 4, 2015

Ride, Vaquero!—Robert Taylor, Anthony Quinn, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Jack Elam, Ted de Corsia, Charles Stevens (1953; Dir: John Farrow)

This story takes place immediately after the end of the Civil War near Brownsville in southern Texas, on the Mexican border. José Esquedo (Anthony Quinn) is the leader of a large gang of banditos and outlaws, with whom the law in the area (Ted de Corsia) does not have the resources to cope. Esquedo’s right-hand man is his foster brother known only as Rio (Robert Taylor, with a lot of makeup, showy gun rig and leather cuffs). With the end of the war, military resources in southern Texas are being beefed up.

King Cameron (Howard Keel) has bought up a lot of land in the area, and at the start welcomes his new wife Cordelia (Ava Gardner) to southern Texas. Esquedo and his men keep burning ranches to keep out ranchers, settlers and their accompanying law. Cameron stubbornly keeps rebuilding. Rio has met Delia and is apparently attracted to her, but he says and does nothing that would give that away.

Rio to Esquedo: “Why do you talk to me this way? You wouldn’t kill anything…unless it was alive.”

Esquedo (Anthony Quinn) surrounded by loyal retainers Barton (Jack Elam) and Rio (Robert Taylor).

As the conflict between Cameron and Esquedo escalates, Rio is sent to burn Cameron’s newest ranch house, which is well-fortified. Before the task is complete, a cavalry unit shows up, and Rio and his men have to run for it. Pursued closely by Cameron, Rio’s horse stumbles and throws him. Captured by Cameron, Rio then promises to help him round up and bring back horses from Mexico in return for Cameron not turning him over to the law or shooting him. So the central conflict in the film is about Rio and his struggles with the ideal of loyalty.

Rio keeps his promise, to the disgust of Esquedo. As Cameron leaves on an extended trip to purchase equipment, Rio is in effect his foreman. Delia insists on being taken to Esquedo to try to talk him out of his war with Cameron. Despite misgivings, Rio takes her. The meeting goes badly, but Esquedo allows Delia and Rio to leave; he’s sure that Rio will come to his senses and rejoin him if given time. Back at the Cameron ranch, Delia kisses Rio, and despite his attraction to her, he is horrified at her lack of loyalty to her husband, and he disappears.

José Esquedo: “The strong will fight the strong for possession of the weak.”
Cordelia Cameron: “The meek shall inherit the earth.”
José Esquedo: “Only six feet of it, Senora.”

Rio (Robert Taylor) and Cordelia Cameron (Ava Gardner) get to know each other. And Esquedo (Anthony Quinn) takes aim.

Finally Esquedo loses patience and takes over Brownsville with his men, killing the outgunned sheriff, looting the bank and local saloons. As Esquedo’s men hear of approaching cavalry, they begin to desert him. Cameron returns to Brownsville and stands up to Esquedo, although he can’t really match him with a gun. Finally, Rio takes on the increasingly irrational Esquedo in the saloon where he’s about to kill Cameron and demonstrates finally where his loyalty lies.

John Farrow was not really a great director of westerns. His best western, Hondo, was at least partially directed by John Ford. The other two, Copper Canyon and this, are flawed. Many of the women who worked with him, including Ava Gardner, seemed to despise him. Howard Keel was not really a terrific actor, especially when he wasn’t singing, but he’s not bad here. Ava Gardner made few westerns (just this and Lone Star the previous year); her part here seems underwritten. It’s pretty well known that director Farrow (married to Maureen O’Sullivan, with whom he had seven children, including actress Mia Farrow) and Gardner were having an affair during filming.

We know that Robert Taylor could be very good in the right circumstances (see Ambush and Westward the Women from about the same time, for example). But here he seems stiff and heavily made up, and his part as the conflicted Rio is not well written. Still, he manages to be interesting. Anthony Quinn could be an excellent actor (Man From Del Rio, The Ride Back, Warlock), but here he chews the scenery as an over-the-top stereotyped Mexican bandit chieftain. Jack Elam is effective in one of his meatier (if brief) roles as Esquedo’s right-hand man after Rio leaves. Geronimo’s Apache-Mexican grandson Charles Stevens is one of Esquedo’s banditos.

Rio (Robert Taylor) and a debauched Esquedo (Anthony Quinn) meet over a prostrate Cameron (Howard Keel).

A considerable part of the weakness here is in the writing by Frank Fenton, who could do better (Station West, River of No Return, Escape from Fort Bravo, Garden of Evil). Still, it’s watchable as the enigmatic Rio works out where his loyalties will lie. For another character named Rio in a much worse western, see Jane Russell as Billy the Kid’s romantic interest in The Outlaw (1943).

Shot in color by the estimable Robert Surtees near Kanab, in southern Utah, at 90 minutes. Music is by Bronislau Kaper.

Like most other movies featuring a strong relationship of any kind between two men (Warlock, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and many others), comments have been made about a supposed homosexual subtext. If it’s there at all (and it’s doubtful), there’s certainly nothing overt. It becomes a lot campier if you start thinking about it in Freudian terms.

Great Western Movies

An In-Depth Guide to Westerns