Tag Archives: Richard Widmark

The Way West

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 30, 2015

The Way West—Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Lola Albright, Sally Field, Jack Elam, Michael Witney, Katherine Justice (1967; Dir: Andrew V. McLaglen)

Kirk Douglas was a big star in the 1950s and 1960s, and he tended to indulge in flamboyant dress or other characteristics to emphasize his character in westerns. (See his clothes in The War Wagon, for example, or the way his gunfighter character in The Last Sunset uses only a derringer.) He’s the most prominent of the three big stars in this movie, and here the gimmick is the color red. When we first see his character, he’s wearing a bright red cloak. He drives a carriage with red wheels and undercarriage, and his Conestoga wagon is painted red.

This story is based on a novel by Montana author A.B. Guthrie, who also wrote The Big Sky and These Thousand Hills, both of which were turned into western movies. This one tells the fictional story of the first wagon train of settlers going west from Missouri along the Oregon Trail to Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 1843.

Senator William J. Tadlock (Kirk Douglas) in his red cloak.

The moving force behind the expedition is former senator William J. Tadlock (Kirk Douglas) of Illinois. He recruits Dick Summers (Robert Mitchum), a mountain man character from The Big Sky, to serve as the scout and guide for the company. The group includes the Evans family, headed by Lije Evans (Richard Widmark), who is afflicted with the need to constantly move toward the frontier, his longsuffering wife (Lola Albright), to whom the widowed Tadlock is attracted, and their teenaged son Brownie. There are the McBees, a family from Georgia (headed by Harry Carey, Jr.), taking their nubile daughter Mercy (Sally Field), several young peach trees and a bevy of unconvincing accents to the new land. Newlyweds Johnnie (Michael Witney) and Amanda Mack (Katherine Justice) are stymied because the attractive Amanda is emotionally unbalanced and unable to face the idea of sex. There is a stowaway preacher (Jack Elam, previously always a bad guy but about to move into more general character roles), unpersuasive and unattractive in his person and his religion, the first of many such in westerns. Lije Evans becomes a leader and spokesman for those who don’t like Tadlock’s high-handed, autocratic ways.

The big three look ahead: Sen. William Tadlock (Kirk Douglas), scout Dick Summers (Robert Mitchum) and Lije Evans (Richard Widmark).

They have the usual hardship episodes as they move west, with river crossings and Indian troubles. Mercy McBee and Johnnie Mack fall together for a night, and as they finish Johnnie hears a sound and shoots at it, only to find that he has killed an Indian boy dressed in a wolf skin. Although the wagons get away, the Sioux pursue, insisting on retribution for the killer. Tadlock says the killer will receive white man’s justice—hanging—if they can identify him. Eventually the discouraged Johnnie Mack gives himself up, and his fate further unhinges Amanda, not to mention leaving Mercy McBee pregnant. As they cross some desert, the Tadlock carriage, driven by his young son Billy, overturns and kills the boy. At Fort Hall, now in Idaho, they are welcomed to stay or to switch to a California destination until word gets around (falsely) that a sick member of their party has smallpox. The local Hudson’s Bay factor can’t get rid of them fast enough then.

After a rebellion against Tadlock, the train arrives at a cliff about 30 miles from their destination. When an attempt to lower a wagon and its driver goes badly wrong, the party accepts Tadlock’s iron-fisted direction again. He’s the last to be lowered, but somebody cuts the rope and he falls to his death. It’s the unhinged Amanda Mack, who holds him responsible for her husband’s death. Brownie Evans marries Mercy McBee and takes responsibility for her child. And Dick Summers, now losing his eyesight, heads back for Independence.

Dick Summers (Robert Mitchum) bringing up the rear.

This is a glossy and brightly-colored production, episodic in nature. Except for Fort Hall, there’s no attempt to relate the episodes to actual points on the map. The actors are fine, but their motivations seem arbitrary and sometimes inconsistent, as if it’s enough just to state them and not to show them developing. Andrew McLaglen had been a successful television director (especially with Have Gun Will Travel) and had made it into movie directing with Gun the Man Down (1956) and McClintock! in 1963. His father, Oscar-winning Irish actor Victor McLaglen (The Informer, Gunga Din, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, etc.), had been one of John Ford’s favorite actors, and Andrew had connections with John Wayne and his production company through that association. But something of his direction stayed rooted in television, although he continued to direct the occasional western movie for decades. Douglas, Mitchum and Widmark all produced better performances elsewhere.

Visually, you can see some of the difference by comparing the lowering of wagons down the cliff to a similar sequence in Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail from more than 35 years earlier. Although the Walsh film is in black and white, the visual effect is much more striking and memorable in the earlier film than in McLaglen’s large-scale color production. The intention was obviously to produce an epic here, too, but it didn’t work out as well. Reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote in the N.Y. Times: “It is hard to believe that anybody could have made such a hackneyed hash of that fine A. B. Guthrie Jr. novel, The Way West, as [producer] Harold Hecht and Andrew V. McLaglen have in the Western movie of the [same] title…” It’s watchable, but not terribly memorable. Shot at various locations in Oregon (Bend, Eugene, Mt. Bachelor, Crooked River Gorge, and the actual Willamette Valley), at 122 minutes.

Warlock

Nicholas Chennault ~ April 2, 2014

Warlock—Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, DeForest Kelley, Tom Drake, Frank Gorshin (1959; Dir: Edward Dmytryk)

This excellent psychological western feels overstuffed, with a little too much plot and more good actors than it quite knows what to do with. It has two competing town tamers, one legitimate and the other less so, a Doc Holliday-character with a spotted history, a scarlet woman (often really dressed in scarlet), a wealthy if inexperienced young mining heiress, and a Clanton-esque gang of cowboy-outlaws, all coming together in one town where the law is not working.

Warlock is a mining and ranching town in Utah, but so remote that the county sheriff seldom makes an appearance. There is a town marshal of sorts, but the opening scene shows him getting run out of town by Abe McQuown (McEwen? McCune? Played by Tom Drake), head of the San Pablo ranching crowd. He’s presumably a rancher, but of the Ike Clanton sort—given to various forms of crime (rustling, stage robbery) and intimidation of the town. His men, including Johnny Gannon (Richard Widmark), his brother Billy (Frank Gorshin, uncredited) and Curley Burne (DeForest Kelley), appear to be a bunch of thugs and back-shooters.

The local citizens send for gunman Clay Blaisdell (Henry Fonda) from Fort James, a sort of marshal-for-hire. He brings with him Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn), a gambler-gunman with a clubfoot, who sets up his own saloon-casino (calling it “The French Palace,” a sign they have brought with them) and who keeps off the backshooters. Blaisdell has pleasant manners but few illusions about the cycle of civic support and distaste he can expect. “I’m a simple man, handy with Colts,” of which he has a gold-handled pair that he only uses for Sunday best. He gets paid a lot for his skills ($400 a month), but he expects his sojourn in Warlock will be brief. The citizenry will soon have second thoughts about the gunman they have brought in to impose law in their town. Blaisdell wastes no time in confronting the San Pablo gang, which he initially does effectively but without bloodshed.

Johnny Gannon appears to be having second thoughts about his participation in the San Pablo gang as well. Lily Dollar (Dorothy Malone), a former saloon girl with a past relationship with Morgan, shows up. She was bringing a brother of Ben Nicholson, whom Blaisdell had once killed. She seems to be trying to get back at Morgan, and thinks killing Blaisdell may be the quickest way to do that. However, the brother is killed by Tom Morgan with a rifle during an attempted stage holdup by the San Pablo gang. Two of the San Pablo men (including brother Billy Gannon) are arrested and Blaisdell saves them from being lynched. They are ultimately let go in a legal proceeding in the county seat, Bright City, by a jury intimidated by McQuown. The distant sheriff visits, doesn’t like Blaisdell’s presence, and points out to the crowd that none of them will take the deputy sheriff’s job. But Johnny Gannon does, which sets his new authority in potential opposition to Blaisdell’s.

Meanwhile, Blaisdell quickly develops a relationship with young mining heiress Jessie Marlow (Dolores Michaels) and begins to think about marrying her and putting down roots. Johnny Gannon forms a relationship with Lily Dollar. Tom Morgan would prefer that neither of these happen; he wants Blaisdell to think of moving on to the next town, Porfiry City.

Blaisdell to new deputy sheriff Johnny Gannon: “I remember when I first killed a man. It was clear and had to be done. Well, I went home afterward and puked my insides out. I remember how clear it was. Afterwards, nothing was ever clear again. Except for one thing. That’s to hold strictly to the rules. It’s only the rules that matter. Hold onto ’em like you were walking on eggs. So you know yourself you’ve played it as fair and as best you could. But there are things to watch for … in yourself. Don’t be too fast. When there are people after you, you know it and you worry it. Then you think, ‘If I don’t get drawn first and then kill first–.’ You know what I mean?”

Blaisdell has posted the San Pablo gang, meaning that they can’t enter town without an armed confrontation with Blaisdell. Brother Billy Gannon and another come into town in defiance of that posting. Gannon tells Billy, “I ain’t backin’ him, because you’re my brother, and I ain’t backin’ you, because you’re wrong.” Blaisdell, with a slight deference to Gannon, tries not to kill Billy but is left with no choice. Gannon, thinking to avoid further such bloodshed, goes to the San Pablo ranch to dissuade them from coming to town. They beat him up, and Abe McQuown puts a knife through his right (gun) hand.

When the gang comes in force, Lily begs Blaisdell to help Gannon. He’s willing, but Gannon insists that it’s his duty alone. He tries to help anyway, but Tom Morgan holds him out with a gun, revealing the truth about the Nicholson brothers and their deaths. When Gannon confronts the gang, one of them, Curly, unexpectedly keeps off the backshooters and the wounded Gannon is even more unexpectedly successful with the help of a few of the townsfolk. But he’s not done.

Tom Morgan doesn’t like the way things have gone, with Gannon having become the local hero, and has been drinking heavily. He tries to push Gannon into a shootout. Blaisdell intervenes now, locking Gannon in one of his own cells and killing Morgan, going slightly crazy. Gannon then orders Blaisdell out of town, and Blaisdell says he won’t go, setting up yet another confrontation the next morning.

As Blaisdell walks down the street the next morning, he’s wearing the gold-handled Colts. Gannon’s wounded hand doesn’t work very well, and Blaisdell outdraws him easily with his right hand. Then he throws the gun in the dirt. He outdraws him again with his left hand, and throws that Colt in the dirt, too. He gets on his horse and rides out of town, seemingly leaving Jessie behind.

This is black-listed director Edward Dmytryk’s best western, and it put him back in the directing mainstream. Richard Widmark has top billing, but Henry Fonda has the dominant character. Anthony Quinn is excellent, and so is Dorothy Malone. Tom Drake and DeForest Kelley are both very good in smaller roles. Dolores Michaels is adequate but mostly forgettable. Based on a very good novel by Oakley Hall, the story brings with it echoes of the Wyatt Earp story and of Fonda as mentor to an inexperienced lawman, as in Anthony Mann’s The Tin Star two years previously. It has a memorably articulate screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur. Leigh Harline, who had won Academy Awards for Pinocchio (1940) and done the music for Broken Lance, among many others, provided an excellent score. Shot in color around Moab, Utah, and on the 20th Century Fox lot.

This is another of those 1950s westerns that makes a point about about how townspeople are uneasy with those they hire to enforce the law and with the violence used to do it (e.g., High Noon, The Tin Star). But it has a lot of other things going on, too. It moves right along and could probably have been a bit longer, to wrap up some of the plot’s loose ends.

Dorothy Malone was in several good westerns, from Colorado Territory to Quantez to The Last Sunset. DeForest Kelly showed up as a gang member in other films, like The Law and Jake Wade and Tension at Table Rock, and this is one of his best. Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda were at the peaks of their careers in westerns, although they would continue to make more through the 1960s, with Fonda moving into a couple of memorable spaghetti westerns (Once Upon a Time in the West, My Name is Nobody) around 1970. Anthony Quinn, who was always good in westerns (The Ride Back, Man from Del Rio, Last Train from Gun Hill), did not make many more, moving more into ethnic roles in big movies (The Guns of Navarone, Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia). Silent film star Richard Arlen has a small supporting role.

Cheyenne Autumn

Nicholas Chennault ~ April 1, 2014

Cheyenne Autumn—Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Gilbert Roland, Ricardo Montalban, Dolores del Rio, Karl Malden, Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Sal Mineo, Ben Johnson, Patrick Wayne, John Carradine (1964; Dir: John Ford)

This is the self-consciously epic story of the Northern Cheyennes’ escape from Indian Territory back to their northern homeland in late 1878. It’s unusual to see a John Ford movie with this level of pretentiousness—overture, entr’acte, etc.

The Cheyennes, led by Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland) and war chief Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban), are slowly dying at their Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) agency run by ineffective Quakers. When their attempts to get action from Washington fail, they depart in the middle of the night, heading 1500 miles northward. Their Quaker schoolteacher Deborah Wright (Carroll Baker) goes with them, caring for their children.

Leaving Monument Valley: Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban), Tall Tree (Victor Jory) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland)

Once they cross the Canadian River marking the border of Indian Territory, they are in breach of their treaty and are pursued by cavalry led by sympathetic Capt. Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark). Archer is also romantically interested in Wright, but there’s little apparent chemistry there. Among the Indians are Spanish Woman (Dolores del Rio), Dull Knife’s wife, and his son Red Shirt (Sal Mineo), a hot-headed young warrior interested in Little Wolf’s younger wife, and elder Tall Tree (Victor Jory). The troopers include Lt. Scott (Patrick Wayne, also headstrong in wanting to avenge his father’s death in the Fetterman Massacre) and Troopers Plumtree (Ben Johnson) and Smith (Harry Carey, Jr.), subject of a running joke when Archer can’t remember his name. The Indians set a successful trap for the cavalry; Scott is wounded and the Cheyennes escape to the north.

Rumors of savages on the loose inflame Dodge City, leading to a not-terribly-effective comic interlude featuring an overage Wyatt Earp (James Stewart) in a southern planter’s getup and a buffoonish Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy).

A too-old and extraneous Earp (James Stewart) and Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy)

After the interlude, the Indians are suffering terribly from hunger and exposure in the snow. They split, with half following Dull Knife to seek food and shelter for the women and children at Fort Robinson in northwestern Nebraska. The others, under Little Wolf, continue north. At Fort Robinson, commanded by German Capt. Oskar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are imprisoned in a warehouse and denied food and warmth until they agree to head back to Indian Territory immediately.

Archer heads to Washington, D.C., to try to help, and surprisingly encounters a sympathetic Secretary of the Interior in Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson). They head west together by train. Meanwhile, Dull Knife’s band breaks out of Fort Robinson, with about half of them apparently killed. They make it to Victory Cave in the Black Hills, where they reunite with Little Wolf. When Schurz and Archer find them there, they’re about to be fired on by the local cavalry until Schurz brokers a deal that will let them stay in the north. Archer and Wright apparently marry and adopt a Cheyenne girl hurt during the exodus. Little Wolf kills Red Shirt. Life goes on.

Capt. Archer (Richard Widmark) and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson).

This is Ford’s last film, but not one of his best. There’s a patronizing tone not unexpected in the 1960s, and the mix of pathos and sentimentality is not in good balance. Desolate Indian Territory looks surprisingly like the Monument Valley or Arches National Park (Moah, Utah), as does everything between there and their northern homeland. The Earp-Dodge City interlude is just plain awful. Sal Mineo doesn’t look much like a Cheyenne; Roland, Del Rio and Montalban (all of Mexican ancestry) are quite noble and effective. Most of the actual Indians are the Navajos Ford frequently used on his films, not Cheyennes. Cinematography is by William Clothier, music by Alex North. Based on the Mari Sandoz book. Long for its time, at 154 minutes.

The real Little Wolf and Dull Knife; the photograph was taken in Washington, D.C., in 1873. The Northern Cheyennes were finally given a reservation adjacent to their long-time enemies the Crows in southeastern Wyoming, on the Little Bighorn, where Little Wolf died in 1904. Dull Knife ended up (by choice) on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation in South Dakota, where many of his descendants still live. The real story of the Northern Cheyennes trying to flee the army northward is one of the more heart-wrenching of Indian history. If you’re interested in the real story, start with Dee Brown’s chapter in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (good writing but not unbiased and now more than 40 years old), and then go on to one of the more extended (and balanced) accounts of recent years. This movie has its roots in the story, but is not as affecting.

Two Rode Together

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 26, 2014

Two Rode Together—James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Shirley Jones, Linda Cristal, John McIntire, Andy Devine, Olive Carey, Harry Carey, Jr., Ken Curtis, Annelle Hayes, Henry Brandon, Woody Strode, John Qualen (1961; Dir: John Ford)

A clunky title, and not a well-put-together story set in 1870s Texas. This is one of those, like Rio Grande, that John Ford appears to have made simply for contractual reasons or for the money, not because he had a compelling story to tell. The two riding together are straight-arrow cavalry Lt. Jim Gary (Richard Widmark, seeming a bit old for the role at 45) and venal Tascosa marshal Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart, wearing the same battered hat from his 1950s westerns with Anthony Mann and also seemingly old for the role at 52).

McCabe has a sweet situation in Tascosa, where he gets ten percent of all the businesses in town, including Belle Aragon’s saloon and <ahem> in addition to his modest marshal’s salary. The cavalry at Fort Grant is under pressure from civilians to recover their captive relatives from Quanah Parker’s Comanches; most have been with the Indians for years. The cavalry, led by Major Frazer (John McIntire), can’t go onto Indian land without breaking the existing treaty and re-igniting active hostilities, so Frazer is recruiting McCabe for the job. McCabe thinks an army scout’s pay ($80 a month) isn’t nearly enough for this kind of risky mission, so he gets contributions from the civilians and hears their stories. One of the civilians is Marty Purcell (Shirley Jones), who’s looking for her brother. Gary falls for her, although the relationship is inadequately developed. (It seems to be taken for granted that anyone would fall for Shirley Jones, which may be true.)

Lt. Gary (Richard Widmarl) and Marshal Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart) mull things over.

McCabe takes off for Parker’s camp, accompanied by a reluctant Gary in civilian clothes. He trades guns and other weapons to Parker (played by six-foot-five-inch German-born Henry Brandon—Scar from The Searchers). Parker has his own difficulties with militants like Stone Calf (Woody Strode), but he’s quite willing to trade his white captives, one of whom is Stone Calf’s wife, who turns out to be the Mexican Elena de la Madriaga (Linda Cristal). Taking back Elena and Marty’s now much older brother, McCabe is attacked by Stone Calf and kills him.

Back at the post, the rescued captives have trouble integrating. Marty’s brother is thoroughly an Indian, and he kills a slightly deranged white woman who claims to be his mother. He is lynched for it. The whites, especially the cavalry wives, do not accept Elena among them, either. McCabe goes back to Tascosa to find he’s been replaced as marshal and in Belle Aragon’s affections. He takes off for California with Elena to where their pasts presumably won’t follow them, and Gary and Marty get engaged.

The beautiful Linda Cristal as Elena, a young Mexican woman recaptured from the Comanches.

The film has a large cast, including Harry Carey, Jr. (by this time it was becoming clear that he’d never be more than a bit player) and Ken Curtis (from The Searchers—at the time he was Ford’s son-in-law) as brothers and supposed comic relief. Andy Devine is a fat sergeant, and Olive Carey is the major’s sympathetic wife. John Qualen is a Scandinavian settler whose daughter won’t come back from the Comanches. The Belle Aragon role (Annelle Hayes) sparks a little interest, but it’s not developed. Linda Cristal (see her also in John Wayne’s version of The Alamo) is excellent, and Shirley Jones is underused. And the leads are too old for the roles they play, although they’re both excellent actors (kind of like Gary Cooper in Man of the West). This time around, there’s no Monument Valley. The Comanches look pretty clean.

This film has some echoes of The Searchers—looking for whites among the Comanches, even the actor (Henry Brandon) playing the Comanche chief—but it’s not as coherent or focused. It was also not a critical or box office success. There’s no real resolution of the conflicting social attitudes, which is probably realistic. The real Quanah Parker’s mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, a white captive. This was the first of three westerns Stewart did with Ford, just before The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Ford seems to be moving toward a more sympathetic view of Indians, which would come to full flower in his final movie three years later, Cheyenne Autumn, also with Widmark as a cavalry officer and Stewart badly miscast as a comic Wyatt Earp. In color, with cinematography by Charles Lawton, Jr. Written by Frank Nugent, a favorite of Ford’s. Not Ford’s best work, but watchable.

Stewart and director Ford wait between scenes.

From Dave Kehr, NY Times columnist. “Two Rode Together finds its most intimate moment in an unbroken four-minute shot in which a career officer (Richard Widmark) and a mercenary Indian trader (James Stewart) exchange their views on women and independence. But this comic sequence proves to be the lead-in to a nightmarish evocation of domestic life gone wrong, as Widmark and Stewart enter an encampment of traumatized families, each hoping that Stewart will be able to negotiate the release of a member held captive by Comanches. The love of a husband for his wife or a mother for her child proves to be pitifully inadequate in the face of the cultural divide that has risen between them.

“Ford’s darkest and most bitter film, Two Rode Together opens into the mythic perspective of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), where the shortcomings of human relations are subsumed by the greater march of civilization — a glorious lie masking an unbearable truth.”

The Alamo (1960)

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 18, 2014

The Alamo—John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Richard Boone, Chill Wills, Frankie Avalon, Linda Cristal, Ken Curtis, Joseph Calleia, Denver Pyle, Hank Worden (1960; Dir: John Wayne)

This retelling of the Alamo story and the beginnings of Texas independence from Mexico is perhaps the most John Wayne film ever made: Wayne was the star, producer, and director, and his company provided some of the financing. Wayne as an actor was at his peak in the wake of The Searchers and Rio Bravo, and the movie was released to great hype. From our vantage point more than 50 years later, one would expect that it would have done well at the box office but perhaps not been greeted with much enthusiasm by critics. In fact, it was the opposite. A hugely expensive production in its time ($12 million) with an enormous cast, it only made back $8 million domestically. Wayne lost his personal investment. The movie eventually went into the black, making lots of money in Europe and Japan, but Wayne no longer owned it by that time. Critical reaction was mixed at best, but the movie was one of the few nominated for for the Best Picture Academy Award for 1960.

In 1836, Texans are declaring their independence from Mexico, and Mexican president/generalissimo Santa Anna is bringing his experienced army of more than 6000 north to bring them back into the fold. There is not much of a Texas army to oppose him—only 600 men under Fannin at Goliad and 187 men commanded by William Barret Travis (English actor Laurence Harvey) at San Antonio, using the old mission at the Alamo as a fortress of sorts. Sam Houston (Richard Boone in his curmudgeonly mode) is trying to put together a real army to oppose Santa Anna, but he desperately needs time to do that.

In addition to Travis, “Colonel” Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark), former Louisiana land speculator and knife fighter, commands some militia at the Alamo. And a bunch of roistering Tennesseans nominally led by former congressman Davy Crockett (John Wayne) are in town with an uncertain destination. Travis offends local Hispanics such as Juan Seguin (Joseph Calleia), who would otherwise support Texas independence, Travis and Bowie bicker constantly, and Travis ineffectively tries to recruit the Tennesseans.

During the build-up, Crockett bonds with his men, gives the occasional speech about how the word “republic” chokes him up, and makes a play for a young and attractive Hispanic widow (the beautiful Linda Cristal). She has no apparent dramatic purpose, since she doesn’t actually get together with Crockett and she doesn’t stick around after the first third of the movie. In the midst of their drunkenness, Crockett manipulates the Tennesseans into joining the defenders of the Alamo.

Laurence Harvey as Travis and Richard Widmark as Bowie (with his volley gun).

Santa Anna and his good-looking army show up and blast away at the Alamo. Crockett and Bowie conduct a commando operation to destroy the biggest Mexican gun, and there are constant conflicts with Travis. It can be no secret to us (or to audiences of 1960) that in the end the defenders are overwhelmed by Santa Anna’s forces and slaughtered to a man in an extended battle sequence, creating the first heroes of Texas independence. Each of the three defending principals gets an appropriately heroic end.

The need to make this a John Wayne movie means this film disproportionately focuses on the supposed Crockett, who seems not very authentic historically. He’s not too old for the part, since Crockett was almost 50 when he died at the battle. There’s a lot of meandering in the first two-thirds of the movie with extraneous characters. The Tennesseans (especially Chill Wills) quickly become tedious in their constant drunken revelry. Apparently having learned from Rio Bravo that one should always have a teen-idol singer in the cast to appeal to the younger demographic, Frankie Avalon here is another in a series of unnecessary young brothers and compatriots (Fabian in North to Alaska, Bobbie Vinton in Big Jake and The Train Robbers) who can’t act well.

In production design, there are a few concessions to 1836 this time, especially in the hats and firearms. Bowie’s seven-barrel flintlock volley gun (called a Nock gun, after its British maker) looks impressive; such a gun was developed by the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars for naval warfare but was not widely used because of its horrific recoil. Crockett’s coonskin cap looks hot and foolish; thankfully, he often wears more regular hats.

In Rio Bravo the year before, one of the prominent musical features was the constant playing of the Deguello, Mexican-flavored trumpet and guitar music that was said to have been played by Santa Anna’s men at the Alamo, signifying that no quarter was to be given. It was a romantic story, but, In fact, the tune was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin for that film. Here the theme music is a combination of the Tiomkin Deguello and the melancholy “Green Leaves of Summer” by Tiomkin, which would be nominated for an Oscar and become a big hit for the folk group The Brothers Four. The overture and musical intermission are usually omitted for television broadcasts.

Cinematography was by the excellent William Clothier. The screenplay was by James Edward Grant (Angel and the Badman), long a favorite (and often clunky) writer-friend of Wayne’s. The two or three patriotic speeches dropped in, especially those for Wayne, stop the action and don’t work very well. Producer/director Wayne wanted to express his patriotic sentiments and he got his way, but that aspect doesn’t play well now. The final battle scene has some curious editing, showing Mexican soldiers lunging at one or another of the notable defenders, cutting away, and seconds later returning to the defender, now skewered with a bayonet or sword and falling over.

The Alamo received seven Academy Award nominations. It won the Oscar for Best Sound (Gordon E. Sawyer, Fred Hynes) and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Chill Wills), Best Cinematography (William Clothier), Best Film Editing (Stuart Gilmore), Best Musical Score (Dimitri Tiomkin), Best Music (Song) (Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster for The Green Leaves of Summer) and Best Picture. Chill Wills placed a tasteless ad in Variety, soliciting votes and referring to those who voted for him as his “Alamo cousins.” Groucho Marx responded in a small ad of his own: “Dear Mr. Wills, I am delighted to be your cousin, but I voted for Sal Mineo” (nominated for Exodus).

Wayne directing, apparently in the same hat he wore from Stagecoach (1939) through Rio Bravo (1959). The hat does not appear on-screen in The Alamo, though.

This film is a relic of John Wayne in the 1960s at the height of his career, and that is the reason to watch it. John Wayne learned that he didn’t want to direct, although he took over that role again (uncredited, at his insistence) on 1962’s The Comancheros when Michael Curtiz was dying of cancer. As in the making of other films (see The Cowboys, for example), Wayne’s right-wing politics sometimes conflicted with those of others in the production. In this case, Widmark didn’t get along with him well. Widmark repeatedly challenged Wayne’s direction and once they almost came to blows; thereafter the two remained professional but distant. The movie is long, at 167 minutes, and there is a director’s cut at 203 minutes (1993, obviously done without Wayne’s participation) if you want even more and if you can find it. The movie was re-released in 1967 at 140 minutes, so there are lots of choices. Some of these cuts are in need of restoration.

So how accurate is it? Not very. For example, Bowie did not brandish a seven-barrel volley gun, nor was he wounded in the leg during the final assault, nor did his wife die during the time of the siege. He fell ill due to typhoid fever and was barely awake during the final attack, and Bowie’s wife had died a year before the battle was fought. Fannin was not ambushed and slaughtered during the siege of the Alamo. He and his men were murdered in Goliad on Palm Sunday three weeks after the Alamo fell. Bowie and Crockett never made the decision to leave the Alamo as shown in the movie. Though Bowie and Travis disliked each other intensely, they agreed that the Alamo should be defended. And the time frame for the battle is wrong. The movie shows the final battle taking place during the day; in reality, the final Mexican attack was pre-dawn, while most of the Alamo defenders were sleeping. The individual deaths of Travis, Bowie and Crockett are fictional, for dramatic effect. They were killed, but, especially for Crockett, the individual circumstances are not generally known and are still a matter of debate.

Billboard art by Reynold Brown, emphasizing the film’s epic scale and the final battle.

In a bit part as an aide to Santa Anna, look for famed Mexican bullfighter Carlos Arruza; well-known director Budd Boetticher would fizzle away his career in Mexico during the 1960s trying to make his magnum opus, a documentary on Arruza, before Arruza’s early death in 1966. If Arruza’s presence in the film was intended to make it appeal to Mexicans, it didn’t work; the film was banned in Mexico. There are various Canutts (related to Yakima, legendary stuntman and second unit director), Patrick Wayne, even an uncredited Pilar and Toni Wayne.

The first movie about the battle at the Alamo was the silent The Immortal Alamo (1911), now thought to be lost. There have been at least eight films portraying it, and three television productions, including Disney’s “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” episode on Disneyland. This is not the best film ever made about the Alamo, but it might be the most prominent. For a better, more historical Crockett performance, see Billy Bob Thornton in The Alamo (2004). The 2004 movie, which tries for greater historical accuracy, is not among the greatest westerns, but it’s better than this version and Thornton’s performance is terrific. The definitive Alamo movie has yet to be made.

For more actual history of the Alamo and its defense, focusing on the three protagonists (Crockett, Bowie and Travis) and doing a good job of separating the legends from what is actually known, see the books Three Roads to the Alamo (1999), by William C. Davis and The Blood of Heroes (2012), by James Donovan.

The Last Wagon

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 15, 2014

The Last Wagon—Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr, Nick Adams, Susan Kohner, Tommy Rettig, Stephanie Griffin (1956; Dir: Delmer Daves)

Sheriff Bull Harper: “Don’t be fooled by the color of his eyes and his skin. He may be white, but inside he’s all Comanche.”

As the movie opens, Comanche Todd (Richard Widmark) is on the run on foot from what appears to be a posse. He gets two of them before the leader, the brutal Sheriff Bull Harper (George Matthews), captures him. While Harper’s taking him back for trial, they encounter a wagon train of devout Christian emigrants in Apache territory and band together with them, at least for protection from the Indians. We’ve seen Todd kill others in the posse already, but Bull Harper doesn’t seem all that trustworthy either.

[After capturing Todd, Sheriff Harper offers to join Colonel Normand’s wagon train.] Col. William Normand (Douglas Kennedy): “He’s safe in your custody, I suppose. It’s just that we got women and children with us.”

Sheriff Bull Harper: “He’ll be safe. The first time he don’t look safe, he’ll get dead.”

The next night several young people are off swimming and, when they return to the wagons, they find them burned and everyone killed by the Apaches. Todd, who was manacled to a wagon wheel, went over a cliff with the wagon, but he’s still alive. And he’s the only hope of the young people to get out of the desert and wilderness alive. Only he has the survival skills and the wilderness knowledge they’ll need. Jenny (Felicia Farr) and her young brother Billy (Tommy Rettig) are inclined to trust Todd, but two others (including Nick Adams) don’t and the remaining one (half-Indian, played by Susan Kohler) is undecided.

Comanche Todd: “We’ve got six bullets, and that idiot uses up three of them on a stinkin’ rattler you could kill with a stick.”

The relationships develop while Todd guides them toward safety, with death lurking constantly around every corner. Eventually Todd saves a patrol of soldiers, who then take him into custody. The final scene is Todd’s trial before General Oliver O. Howard, where it comes out that the sheriff and his three rotten brothers had raped and killed Todd’s Comanche wife and son and had left him for dead. He’d been hunting them ever since.

Delmer Daves, like John Sturges, is one of those directors from the 1950s whose westerns are usually worth watching. So is this. Although it’s quite watchable, however, it’s not smoothly plotted. The ending doesn’t have the same edge that the rest of the film does. Widmark is excellent as Todd, keeping us unsure how bad or good Comanche Todd is, and Felicia Farr is also very good. At this stage of his career, Widmark was playing both bad guys (The Law and Jake Wade) and good guys (Sturges’ Backlash and this) in westerns, although he had made his initial reputation ten years earlier playing psychotic killers in films noir. To see Farr in another western, she plays the girl who catches Glenn Ford’s interest in a barroom and delays him long enough that he gets captured in the original 3:10 to Yuma (1957), also directed by Delmer Daves. She’s also in Daves’ Jubal. This film is better looking than much of Daves’ work. Shot in color (Cinemascope and Technicolor) in Sedona, Arizona. 98 minutes. Music is by Lionel Newman, younger brother of Alfred Newman.

Backlash

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 7, 2014

Backlash—Richard Widmark, Donna Reed, John McIntire, Robert Wilke, Harry Morgan, Barton MacLane (1956; Dir: John Sturges)

Director John Sturges was in the middle of a pretty good run of westerns. He made this just after Bad Day at Black Rock and just before Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Law and Jake Wade (also starring Widmark, but that time as a psychotic bad guy) and Last Train to Gun Hill. This is a step below those, but it’s still quite watchable.

This one opens with a rider in black, who turns out to be Karyl Orton (Donna Reed) in a curiously flat-crowned had, obviously made for women. She encounters Jim Slater (Richard Widmark) digging at the site in Gila Valley, Arizona Territory, where Apaches had killed five men. Slater, a Texan from Nacogdoches and veteran of the Civil War who never knew his father, thinks that his father was one of the five. And he’s looking for a sixth man who escaped the Indians with $60,000 in gold. Orton’s husband, also a Confederate veteran whom she hasn’t seen since the war, was in the group, too. While they’re getting to know each other, somebody starts shooting at them from the rocks above. Slater outflanks the shooter and kills him when he won’t put down his gun; Slater is obviously both good with a gun and doesn’t back down from a challenge or from authority. The dead man has a badge that says he’s a deputy sheriff in nearby Silver City, and they take him back there.

The sheriff, somewhat hostile, says that the dead deputy was named Welker. His brother was one of those killed at Gila Valley, and he has two more brothers who are both good with guns and of bad character. Slater isn’t sure he can trust Orton much, and they seem to go their own ways. They move on to Tucson separately, where they’re both looking for a Sgt. George Lake, who was in charge of the detail that buried the victims in Gila Valley. It turns out he’s at Benton’s trading post, and when they get there, it’s under siege by Apaches.

Lake (Barton MacLane) obviously has other things on his mind and isn’t interested in rehashing Gila Valley. The Apaches run off the whites’ horses, and Lake and Slater figure the only way out is to return the favor and escape with the horses still hitched to the stagecoach. They carry out that mission and develop more of a rapport, getting away with a couple of Indian horses. Lake, however, is badly wounded. Before he dies, he tells Slater that three of the bodies were identifiable (one was a Welker) and of the two that were not, one was missing a left hand from an old injury. The sixth man, the one who got away, was riding a horse with Major Carson’s Texas brand. Lake knew, but didn’t think much of, Orton’s husband Paul.

Back in Tucson, the nasty Welker brothers Jeff (Robert Wilke) and Tony (Harry Morgan) commandeer Orton in a hotel, looking for Slater. As Jeff takes her upstairs in a saloon, Slater walks in and Orton identifies him to them. He gets both Jeff and Tony, but is wounded himself in the left shoulder and leaves town. Orton follows him and doctors his wound. She’s pretty casual about taking off her shirt to use as a not-terribly-effective bandage, and she admits that her Confederate husband never came back because he heard that she was “fraternizing” with the enemy Yankees in Atlanta. She and Slater come to a rough understanding.

As they approach Carson’s ranch the next day, they are stopped by two of his men, one of whom, Johnny Cool (William Campbell), clearly fancies himself as a gunslinger, in the stereotypical black leather and all. Carson and other big ranchers are about to move against Jim Bonniwell (John McIntire), a rancher-rustler who has recently taken to hiring gunmen and being more overt in his stealing of cattle. While at Carson’s ranch, they learn that Carson’s nephew was the corpse with the missing hand.

As Carson’s small army prepares to ride into town early the next morning Slater and Orton head for town, to find that Johnny Cool is apparently working for Bonniwell and still wants to kill Slater. Bonniwell stops him, and rides out; Slater is put in jail by the local sheriff, who thinks Slater’s working for Bonniwell. Tony Welker shows up, still looking for Slater, and antagonizes Johnny Cool, who has decided he wants Orton. Cool wins the shootout with Welker, reducing by one the number of people who want to kill Slater.

Even earlier than Carson, Bonniwell brings his own smaller army into town the next morning to set up an ambush for Carson. He kills the sheriff, whom he correctly assumes to be on Carson’s side, and he lets Slater out, discovering in the process that he is Slater’s father. Johnny Cool won’t be dissuaded from trying to kill Slater, and Bonniwell lends Slater his gun. Slater wins; he’s not as showy as Cool, but he’s faster. It’s part of his genetic legacy from Bonniwell, apoparently.

Slater (Richard Widmark) meets his father (John McIntire).

As the ambush develops, Slater warns Carson by firing shots and Bonniwell tries to kill Slater. As the final shootout between father and son develops (with Bonniwell cheating), Bonniwell is shot in the back by one of the Carson band. And Slater and Orton ride off together with their dark pasts.

The best line: When Bonniwell is setting up his ambush in town, he comments in avuncular style: “You know, I’ve never seen it fail. When you take a trigger-happy bunch sitting it out like this, somebody’s bound to start fooling with his gun.”

Widmark and McIntire are good, with McIntire playing much like his role in The Far Country. Reed isn’t a natural at westerns (this is the last of her eight westerns), but she’s fine here. Neither Widmark (supposedly from Texas) nor Reed (supposedly from Atlanta) has an accent that relates to their origins, but that’s just as well. When Widmark tried a southern accent in Alvarez Kelly, it wasn’t terribly persuasive. There are geographical oddities: the trip from Arizona Territory to Texas seems to take no time at all. Lots of ins and outs for just 84 minutes. From a book by Frank Gruber, the screenwriter was Borden Chase. In color, shot partially in Old Tucson.

The Law and Jake Wade

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 21, 2014

The Law and Jake Wade—Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark, Patricia Owens, Henry Silva, Robert Middleton (1958; Dir: John Sturges)

“Do you want to die now, or in a few minutes?”

This is from director John Sturges’ early period; he made several very good westerns in the 1950s. His major period was thought to be a little later, in the 1960s with larger-scale movies (The Magnificent Seven, The Hallelujah Trail, The Great Escape). But with Escape from Fort Bravo, Bad Day at Black Rock, Last Train from Gun Hill and others, his work is worth seeking out.

Robert Taylor was usually kind of a wooden performer, but that stoic quality can work okay in westerns, of which he made several in the 1950s. The real star of this modest western (shot at Lone Pine in Owens Valley) is Richard Widmark as Clint Hollister, a near-psychotic badman with whom Taylor has a past.

Hollister and Wade negotiate.

Jake Wade (Taylor) is now a city marshal of a small town in New Mexico, but he springs Hollister from jail to save him from hanging because Hollister once did the same for him when they ran in the same outlaw gang. The completely amoral (or even immoral) Hollister then repays him by abducting Wade and his fiancée Peggy (Patricia Owens). It turns out that when Jake left the gang more than a year previously, he took the loot from their most recent robbery. Now Hollister wants it, and he wants to kill Jake, too.

The plots works itself out in the ghost town where Wade had buried the money in the cemetery, with a raid by Comanches and, ultimately (inevitably), a shootout between Wade and Hollister.

Widmark is excellent as the relentlessly nasty Hollister. Notable supporting characters include Robert Middleton as Otero, and Henry Silva and DeForest Kelly (later of Star Trek) as other members of Widmark’s gang. Silva shows up again as Chink, an evil henchman of Richard Boone in The Tall T, also made about this time, and as a Mexican Indian outlaw in The Bravados. He often has an ethnic edge of some kind. This is very watchable. In color, with Wade wearing Taylor’s usual black. See also Saddle the Wind, made with Taylor about the same time.

Garden of Evil

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 10, 2014

Garden of Evil—Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Cameron Mitchell, Hugh Marlowe, Victor Manuel Mendoza (1954; Dir: Henry Hathaway)

During the California gold rush (putting this more or less in the 1850s), passengers on a steamship are stranded in Puerto Miguel on Mexico’s Pacific coast. They include Hooker (Gary Cooper), a former sheriff from Texas; Fiske (Richard Widmark, in what turns out to be a good-guy role), a gambler; and Daly (Cameron Mitchell), a bounty hunter. Leah Fuller (a husky-voiced Susan Hayward) arrives in town, desperate for help in getting her mining engineer husband John out of a gold mine, where he lies trapped with a broken leg. The title of the film refers to the region surrounding the mine, about three days of rough travel into Apache country.

Fiske: “You know, at first I thought she was one of those women who come along every so often and fascinate men without even trying or even knowing why.”

Hooker: “And now what?”

Fiske: “She tries, and she knows why.”

Hooker, Fiske and Daly sign up for $2000 each, along with Vicente Madariaga (Victor Manuel Mendoza), a Mexican. After an arduous trip on which Daly makes a move on Leah, they find the mine, rescue Fuller (Hugh Marlowe) and fix his leg. The unreliable Daly gets his fill of gold and they head back, followed by Apaches and slowed down by the injured and embittered Fuller.

At the first stop, Daly helps Fuller escape on a horse to get rid of him. Daly is killed by the Indians, and the group finds Fuller’s body hung upside down from a cross. The party is now on the run. Vicente is killed, and they reach the narrow trail down a cliff just ahead of the Apaches. Fiske stays behind to hold them off, and Hooker and Leah make their escape. Hooker goes back to help Fiske, but it’s too late. The suggestion is that Leah and Hooker go off together, perhaps with some of the gold from the cursed mine.

Motivations are uneven. Leah appears to love her husband (he doesn’t think so), but she also appears to be attracted to Fiske (maybe) and Hooker, though not to Daly. It’s taken for granted that she drives all the men crazy with lust, although only Daly seems to act badly on that impulse. (What, no bathing in a stream scene?) The Apaches’ motivation doesn’t appear to be all that consistent, either, and they don’t look much like Apaches. Clothes and equipment (guns, particularly) don’t fit the 1850s. The writing is a little spotty, and there are obvious comparisons to Treasure of the Sierra Madre. One or two of Cooper’s brief speeches get a little heavy-handed, but his presence is strong as always. This story could have used a bit more character background development.

“I guess if the earth were made of gold, men would still die for a handful of dirt.”

There are questions left at the end. For example, did any of the gold get out, and what happened to it? Did Hooker get his $2000? This is watchable, but not the unrecognized gem some would claim. Spectacularly shot on location in Mexico in early Cinemascope and Technicolor, but there are occasional obvious painted backdrops, too. Good score by Bernard Herrman and competent direction by Henry Hathaway. If you like Susan Hayward in this, catch her in Rawhide with Tyrone Power, where she’s even better.

Yellow Sky

Nicholas Chennault ~ December 20, 2013

Yellow Sky—Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, Anne Baxter, John Russell, James Barton, Charles Kemper (1948; Dir: William Wellman)

Talky, noir-ish western with a small cast. James “Stretch” Dawson (Gregory Peck) is the leader and perhaps the toughest of a gang of seven outlaws. In 1867, the gang robs a bank in northern Arizona or New Mexico and is pursued by a posse into the desert. One of them is killed, and they set out across the waterless waste. (An outlaw gang pursued by a posse is a traditional set-up for a desert/isolation story, used, for example, in 3 Godfathers, Quantez and Purgatory, among a number of others.) The survivors include Dude (Richard Widmark), a gambler with a gold fixation; Lengthy (John Russell), who likes both gold and women; Bull Run (Robert Arthur), a young man; Walrus (Charles Kemper), a hefty guy with a drinking problem: and Half Pint (Harry Morgan), the least developed character of the six.

On their last legs, they arrive at Yellow Sky, a ghost town, where they find water, an old prospector (James Barton) and his tomboyish granddaughter Mike (real name: Constance Mae, played by Anne Baxter). Trouble starts almost immediately, with various lusts coming into play. And then Dude discovers that the prospector and Mike have gold. With numbers on their side, Stretch makes a deal to split the gold 50-50. Lengthy and Stretch are developing interests in Mike, and some backstory develops with Stretch. It turns out he’s a Yankee veteran of the war on the border fighting Quantrill, and his intentions toward Mike may be more or less honorable, in contrast to Lengthy’s.

Mike (Baxter) meets Stretch (Peck). Dude considers his chances for the gold.

As matters develop, eventually the gang with Dude as the dominant personality rejects Stretch’s leadership, and Stretch joins the prospector and Mike as they shoot it out. Bull Run is killed, and Dude turns on Lengthy. Stretch gets Walrus and Half Pint to join him, and in the end has to shoot it out with Dude and Lengthy in an old saloon. None of the saloon shootout is shown—just the bodies on the floor afterward. Stretch returns the stolen bank money, presumably to settle down to a permanent relationship with Mike. This is one of the first westerns where an outlaw gets to return his ill-gotten gains and walk away (unlike, say, Joel McCrea in Four Faces West, Fred MacMurray in The Moonlighter or John Wayne in 3 Godfathers, all of whom have to serve some jail time as part of their rehabilitiation).

The story relies on believing Peck’s basic decency, even when he seems to be a bad guy. Peck was initially reluctant to play an outlaw, feeling that he was miscast. Hank Worden and Jay Silverheels have uncredited tiny parts. Watchable but a bit talky, with an excellent cast. This may have been one of John Russell’s best roles. Charles Kemper is largely forgotten now, but in the late 1940s and very early 1950s he was an excellent character actor in such westerns as this, Wagon Master and Stars in My Crown before his early death in an automobile accident. Harry Morgan shows up in a surprising number of good westerns, from The Ox-Bow Incident to this to High Noon to Support Your Local Sheriff, to mention just a few.

This was an early entry in the series of “adult” or psychological westerns of the 1950s. The setup has some similarities with The Law and Jake Wade, made a few years later. Some say this is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but if so it’s not a very close one. Director William Wellman said in the book “The Men Who Made the Movies” that he had no idea of the connection. Wellman also made such excellent westerns as The Ox-Bow Incident and Westward the Women. Produced by Lamar Trotti, who wrote The Ox-Bow Incident, among many other films. Shot in Death Valley and the Alabama Hills in Owens Valley in black and white. Music by Alfred Newman.

Great Western Movies

An In-Depth Guide to Westerns