Tag Archives: Town Taming

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 5, 2013

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Woody Strode, Andy Devine (1962; Dir: John Ford)

Director Ford with his two principal stars on set.

Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) return to Shinbone, the western town where he initially made his reputation decades earlier. As matters slowly develop, they are there for the funeral of an old friend, Tom Doniphan (John Wayne). And the movie goes into an extended flashback, to when Stoddard initially arrived, only to be robbed and badly beaten by a band of stage robbers. The gang is led by the Liberty Valance of the title, so there is no suspense on the fate that awaits Valance in the course of the film. The remaining question is who will take care of Valance, since the younger Stoddard doesn’t really seem up to the task.

Stoddard represents the forces of civilization that, as we all know, will ultimately be successful in taming even the West, although the question is in doubt in Shinbone at the start of the movie. The traditional tools of civilization, law and courts, seem powerless to deal with the brutal, relentless violence of Liberty Valance. The badly beaten Stoddard is brought to town by Doniphan and his hired hand/servant Pompey (Woody Strode), and given to the care of a family of Swedish immigrants who run a restaurant. Their daughter is Doniphan’s girlfriend, although he seems slow to do anything to move the relationship along. Doniphan is comfortable and capable in the west in a way that easterner Stoddard is not. Having been robbed, Stoddard earns his keep washing dishes in the restaurant, and he starts a school for adults and children and hangs out his shingle at the office of the newspaper (the Shinbone Star) run by Dutton Peabody (Edmund O’Brien).

The confrontation builds.

It’s clear that there will have to be a reckoning with Valance, described by Doniphan as “the toughest man south of the Picketwire, except for me.” (Use of the name of the Picketwire [or Purgatoire] River would seem to place this in southeastern Colorado Territory. And the talk of impending statehood would put it before 1876, when the Centennial State joined the Union.) We look forward to seeing Doniphan and Valance shoot it out. But Stoddard won’t leave town, despite his demonstrated ineptitude with a gun, and, worse, his determination not to use violence but the largely ineffective tools of the law.

“The next one is right between the eyes.”

That Insistence on staying in Shinbone results in a shootout that leaves Valance dead and makes Stoddard’s reputation. But in the wrangling over statehood that follows, Stoddard learns that events the night of the shootout were not quite what they seemed, even to him as a participant. His own career takes off; he marries Hallie and becomes governor and then senator; Tom Doniphan, who seemed much better suited to life in the west at the start of the movie, goes in a different direction–downhill.

The central conflict in this movie is among three, not two, characters: Valance obviously shouldn’t and doesn’t win; the realist Doniphan deserves to win but doesn’t, entirely. Stoddard, the face of American populist idealism, comes out on top, as we know from the beginning of the movie.

There’s a fair amount of Capra-esque Grapes-of-Wrath-style frontier populism in this movie, which wouldn’t be palatable without a strong underlying story, excellent main characters and the violence of the confrontations with Valance. This populist quality is emphasized by the presence of Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The faith in the common man as citizen and voter and the 1940s New Deal-ish black-and-white politics seem naïve now, and maybe they were even in the early 1960s. It all seems simplistic, with undue reverence for freedom of the press even when that press is in the hands of an alcoholic editor, the scenery-chewing Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brien)—a character very reminiscent of the alcoholic Doc Boone, played by Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach more than twenty years earlier.

Stoddard contemplates the non-legal way.

Speaking of black and white, it was an interesting choice to film the movie that way in 1962 when color movies had taken over pretty thoroughly. Half a decade earlier, even the relatively low-budget Boetticher-Scott westerns had been filmed in color, and Ford had been using it since the late 1940s. It adds to the retro feel—not back to the open west, exactly, but to the 1940s. Ford still has his visual style with a western, although this one is not set in Monument Valley. It’s shot largely on a studio back lot at Paramount. The opening stage robbery and beating takes place on an obvious sound stage, but other times there is great use of expansive western vistas, even with medium shots.

A twist at the end of the movie seems similar in many ways to the ending of an earlier John Ford movie, Fort Apache. In both, the film ends with the main character (Stewart here, Wayne in Fort Apache) affirming or allowing his support for an erroneous public version of a major historical event, when he knows the truth is different. As Stoddard recounts the actual truth of long-past events to the current editor of the Shinbone Star, he asks in surprise, “You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?” Scott replies with the signature line for this movie, and perhaps for many other Ford westerns: “No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” By this, director Ford seems to be encouraging a skepticism toward conventional history.

The closing paradoxes and strongly-developed characters give this film its lasting impact. John Wayne is at his best, even with his continual use of the word “pilgrim”—more than in any other movie he made. He smokes frequently on screen, ironic when we know that John Wayne will be dead within two more decades from lung cancer. In one shot, his exhaled cloud of smoke is used to dissolve to a past scene, a technique that seemed old-fashioned even in 1962. Stewart is good with his character’s ups and downs, although he sometimes seems a little too hysterical and his halting Stewart-ish mannerisms, especially in speech, can be slightly annoying. Wayne and Stewart are a little old for the age their characters are supposed to be for most of the movie, and Stewart plays much older than he actually is for the framing story. O’Brien is over the top as the loquacious newspaper editor, and we see too much of Andy Devine as the ineffectual but supposedly loveable town marshal Link Appleyard; he’s supposed to be the comic relief. Vera Miles is lovely and plays well in her minor part.

This movie has an all-star cast of villains, too: Lee Marvin is at his nastiest and most brutish as Liberty Valance, supported by the weaselly and perhaps mentally unstable Floyd (Strother Martin) and that personification of slit-eyed menace, Lee Van Cleef, as Reese. Valance’s sheer evil, with him always seemingly on the edge of losing control, and a psychotic tendency to try to kill people with his silver-handled whip, make this trio of evildoers more intimidating than their modest numbers would suggest.

Belgian poster for Liberty Valance, with pictures of Wayne and Stewart clearly taken from other movies.

The title song, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and sung by Gene Pitney, was a hit in the early 1960s, although the hit version does not appear in the film. Apparently Gene Pitney was not asked to record it until after the film was released. However, it ranks with Tex Ritter’s “Do Not Forsake Me” in High Noon and Johnny Horton’s theme for North to Alaska. They’re among the very best western film theme songs with actual singers.

Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last great western, although Ford continued making movies. It’s a good bookend for the second half of his career, since there are three actors in this who appeared in Stagecoach, the movie that kicked off that career segment: John Wayne, obviously, Andy Devine and John Carradine (as anti-statehood orator Cassius Starbuckle)—all of them Ford favorites. This was Wayne’s last film with Ford, although Stewart shows up again as a too-old Wyatt Earp in a strange lnterlude in Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn a couple of years later.

Hour of the Gun

Nicholas Chennault ~ August 30, 2013

Hour of the Gun—James Garner, Jason Robards, Robert Ryan, John Voight (1967; Dir: John Sturges)

This underrated retelling of the Wyatt Earp story features the grim James Garner (see also Duel at Diablo and A Man Called Sledge), not the comic one with the easygoing charm. Garner plays Wyatt, paired with Jason Robards as an excellent Doc Holliday—more believable as the tubercular gunfighter than the physically robust Kirk Douglas and Victor Mature in previous film versions of the story.

Garner as Wyatt Earp.

The Earp story has been more successfully retold in movies than any other from actual western history, with varying levels of accuracy. The best cinematic version of the Earp story may be Tombstone, although My Darling Clementine, one of the older and least historically accurate versions, has its proponents. Hour of the Gun belongs in this more than respectable company. In fact, gritty thriller writer George Pelecanos, who says that westerns are his favorite film genre, claims Hour of the Gun as his favorite western, as the upright lawman Earp becomes a colder and more implacable killer in hunting his brothers’ murderers (interview on NPR’s Morning Edition, October 9, 2009). Pelecanos points to the excellent Jerry Goldsmith score as one of the movie’s overlooked strengths. The cinematography by Lucien Ballard is also terrific. Edward Anhalt wrote the screenplay; he shows up briefly in the film as Doc Holliday’s doctor.

This was director Sturges’s second telling of the Earp story, a decade after his earlier Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. In the meantime, he’d made The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and The Hallelujah Trail, and he was at the peak of his game. He was one of the best directors of his time in dealing with large-scale stories and action, but this is a more modest effort in terms of scope and budget. While Gunfight goes with its title and builds up to the legendary battle, Hour of the Gun starts with the gunfight and focuses on Earp’s subsequent vendetta ride, as he hunts down those he holds responsible for gunning down his brothers. In telling this story, it keeps more to the historical facts than the older film did, but only to a point. Much of the dialogue in the courtroom scenes, for example, is taken from actual transcripts. Text on screen after the initial credits says, “This picture is based on fact. This is the way it happened.” Well, not quite, but it’s closer than previously filmed versions of the story.

The Earps and Holliday at the OK Corral.

In his 1967 review of the film, Roger Ebert called this one of Garner’s best performances. The casting is one of the film’s strong points, especially in the three primary roles: Garner as Earp, Robards as Holliday and Robert Ryan as an older and more cerebral Ike Clanton than we usually see. Robards is good as Doc, although he’s significantly older than the actual historical character. He mentions having killed during the Civil War, but the real Doc Holliday was much too young to have fought in the war. The Earp brothers (Virgil and Morgan) are not terribly memorable in this version of the story. Look for a young John Voight as Curly Bill Brocius in an early role. Interestingly, there’s no Johnny Ringo in this version of the story. And basically there are no women in this story, either.

Because of its focus on Earp’s search for revenge, the movie becomes more melancholy as Doc tries to keep Earp balanced. Doc: “I know you. You can’t live like me.” “Those aren’t warrants you have there. Those are hunting licenses.” Earp comes to realize the ultimate futility of revenge past a certain point. The vendetta itself is not celebrated as much as in Tombstone. The film’s climax shows Wyatt shooting it out with Ike Clanton in Mexico, which is not at all the way Clanton died. The end of the movie, with Doc dying in a Colorado sanitarium, is heart-wrenching. Wyatt says he’s going back to Tombstone as the U.S. marshal, so Doc will think he’s regained his idealism and respect for the law; in fact, he intends never to be a lawman again. The irascible dentist-gunman forces Wyatt to leave and sits playing cards with an orderly on an outdoor veranda as Wyatt drives off in a buggy.

The poster emphasizes the revisionist elements of the film.

Since the movie presented a revisionist view for its time of a famous western lawman, audiences weren’t sure what to make of it when it was released. But it stands up pretty well more than 40 years later. Garner would play Wyatt Earp again in Blake Edwards’ 1988 comedy-thriller Sunset. In Sunset, Garner is an aging Earp during the period of the late 1920s when the former lawman was in Hollywood advising on westerns, paired with Bruce Willis as Tom Mix.

Support Your Local Sheriff

Nicholas Chennault ~ August 29, 2013

Support Your Local Sheriff—James Garner, Joan Hackett, Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern (1969; Dir: Burt Kennedy)

This is probably the best western satire ever made. Yes, that includes Mel Brooks’ broader Blazing Saddles. The plot seems to follow Rio Bravo from ten years earlier, but that’s not an uncommon plot for westerns. (See 2008’s Appaloosa for a later, but more serious, example.) The title comes from a law-and-order bumper sticker popular with some in the late 1960s.

In a small western town, settlers and prospectors discover gold in Boot Hill while burying one of their own. That sets off a gold rush and overnight the town develops aspirations to respectability—except for the many rowdies attracted by the gold strike. Among those with newfound wealth are Mayor Ollie Perkins (played by Harry Morgan) and his daughter Prudence (Joan Hackett), along with others on the town council. The prosperity brings a fair amount of disorder with it, however, and the town council is unable to keep a live sheriff for long until they happen on Jason McCullough (James Garner, in his good-natured mode). McCullough is just passing through “on my way to Australia” when he decides to check out the gold rush. He seems handy enough with a gun, and he’ll actually take the job, however temporarily. So he’s hired.

Basically on his way to Australia.

His first act is to imprison Joe Danby (Bruce Dern), whom he sees kill a man in a saloon. Danby is part of an important Clanton-esque family of quasi-outlaws; the Clanton connection is strengthened because Pa Danby, head of the clan, is played by veteran character actor Walter Brennan in a role reminiscent of his Old Man Clanton in My Darling Clementine twenty years earlier. The Danbys can muster legions of relatives and gunmen, while McCullough’s support is mostly the town “character” (or drunk) Jake (Jack Elam) who becomes McCullough’s unwilling deputy, along with Prudy, to whom McCullough is attracted romantically.

Romancing the mayor’s daughter.

The writing is sprightly enough, but the genius of the film lies in the casting. This is the sort of role James Garner played better than anybody else; he’s basically reprising his Maverick character from the television series. If you want to see what a good job Joan Hackett does as Prudence, compare her with Suzanne Pleshette in the sequel Support Your Local Gunfighter. Pleshette is fine; she just doesn’t have the comic intensity and daffiness that Hackett does. Elam is marvelous. He demonstrates here that he has made the transition from playing criminals, villains and evildoers to full-blown character parts. As Elam’s Jake says while striking a pose at the end of the movie, he “goes on to become one of the most beloved characters in western folklore.” And we believe him, mostly.

Harry Morgan’s appearance as the town’s mayor and Prudence’s father is particularly interesting when compared with another role from earlier in his career. He played one of the townspeople who wouldn’t help Marshal Will Kane in 1952’s High Noon. When it comes to the showdown here, he doesn’t help Jason McCullough, either, although he is much more charming about it. And McCullough never seems all that threatened, anyway. Jack Elam’s “town character” also echoes his town drunk role from High Noon, but he comes through better here in a much meatier role.

The town character takes a hand.

Director Burt Kennedy has done a fair number of workmanlike westerns spread over several decades. He’s also known as the writer for the best of the Budd Boetticher-Randolph Scott westerns of the late 1950s. This movie represents the best of his work as a director. The script by writer-producer William Bowers is terrific. Too bad Bowers didn’t write the sequel. The Gunfighter sequel, with the same director, Garner, Elam and Morgan, is enjoyable, too, but not as perfect as this film. For more of Garner in his amiable con-man mode, see Skin Game, with Louis Gossett and Susan Clark.

Silverado

Nicholas Chennault ~ August 12, 2013

Silverado—Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, John Cleese, Rosanna Arquette, Jeff Goldblum, Linda Hunt, Lynn Whitfield (1985; Dir: Lawrence Kasdan)

After his successes with Body Heat and The Big Chill, Lawrence Kasdan apparently felt the desire to try his hand at the seemingly-defunct large-scale western and now had the resources to do that. Silverado is the result, a large-budget western that seems to have it all.

And that is its main problem. There are so many elements to this story that they are not quite stitched together effectively. There’s a range war with threatened settlers, there’s a group of emigrants making its way west, there’s racial tension and bigotry, there are outlaws reformed and mostly unreformed, there are shifty gamblers, there are corrupt sheriffs. And guns, lots of guns. No Indians, though. You can tell that this movie started in the minds of the writers (the Kasdan brothers) with several characters and situations, not with one overarching story. Still, it’s fun to watch, and it was especially appreciated when it was released, in an era when this kind of film was an anomaly. There weren’t many westerns being made, and especially not good westerns with traditional themes.

It’s 1880 in New Mexico Territory. The two principal characters are Paden, played by Kevin Kline, a one-time outlaw fallen on harder but more respectable times, and Emmett, played by Scott Glenn, recently out of prison after having killed the leader of the opposing side in a settlers vs. cattlemen range war. Emmett’s now returning to Silverado and his sister’s family to sort out what’s next for him. Only slightly less central are Mal (Danny Glover), a black man returning to his own family, and Jake (Kevin Costner in his first western role) as Emmett’s scapegrace younger brother. The four of them return to Silverado, only to be engulfed by old situations with new twists.

Emmet meets Paden.

There is a host of excellent supporting characters, including Brian Dennehy as a gleefully corrupt sheriff, John Cleese as a less corrupt sheriff with an English accent, Linda Hunt as a diminutive saloon proprietor, gravel-voiced James Gammon as the leader of an outlaw band, Lynn Whitfield as Mal’s prostitute sister, Jeff Fahey as Dennehy’s lethal deputy and Jeff Goldblum as a slick gambler of uncertain allegiances.

So what doesn’t work here? Two things: First, Rosanna Arquette as a supposedly desirable newly-widowed emigrant woman. It’s a thankless and underwritten role, and one gets the feeling that some significant part of it was left on the cutting room floor. Arquette’s character desperately needs a note of humor and more desirability than shows up on the screen. The other is the flip side of Paden’s own attractiveness. He’s always cool, charming and smooth, and he never loses his temper. While moving toward a climactic shootout (what else?), Paden sometimes has slightly too much good humor, with never a hard edge to show when he is pushed too far. It seems too much like a game. But these are quibbles, especially since Arquette’s character turns out not to be very important.

There’s lots to like in Silverado, and one has the feeling with many of the supporting characters that more could be made of them—that there was more story to be told. There’s so much that’s so good that it gets a top ranking. This movie is beautifully made, shot on location in New Mexico with top-flight production values. It features an excellent operatic score by Bruce Broughton, in the finest Elmer Bernstein tradition. The Silverado theme will stick with you for decades, perhaps because it’s always showing up at sporting events. Director Lawrence Kasdan’s only other try at a western was less successful–1994’s Wyatt Earp, also with Costner.

Tombstone

Nicholas Chennault ~ August 2, 2013

Tombstone—Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Stephen Lang, Bill Paxton, Dana Delany, Billy Zane, John Tenney, Harry Carey, Jr., Charlton Heston, Billy Bob Thornton, Thomas Haden Church, Jason Priestly (1993; Dir: George P. Cosmatos)

There have been a lot of movies made about Wyatt Earp and the famous gunfight at the OK Corral. Kurt Russell is a superb cinematic Wyatt Earp, in part because physically he looks so much like a well-known photograph of the lawman, down to the moustache, the hair and the blue eyes. But he’s also an excellent and sometimes under-appreciated actor. Of course, the really meaty role in any retelling of the Wyatt Earp story is that of tubercular gambler-dentist-gunfighter Doc Holliday, wonderfully played in this case by Val Kilmer.

Earps cinematic and historical: Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, and the real Wyatt.

The story is so well known that there are always questions about the historical accuracy of a movie telling it yet again. This is one of the more accurate, along with Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, which was made about the same time and which is much less enjoyable. Some events are telescoped close together in time, when they actually happened months apart, and there’s frequently a very theatrical signaling of impending events. The supporting roles here are very strong, including, in addition to Kilmer’s Holliday, Powers Boothe as Curly Bill Brocius, Stephen Lang as Ike Clanton, Michael Biehn as a psychotic Johnny Ringo, and Jon Tenney as the slippery Cochise County sheriff John Behan. Sam Elliot’s presence as older brother Virgil Earp is good, too, and Bill Paxton has a quieter role as younger brother Morgan. Dana Delany as Wyatt’s romantic interest, the actress Josephine Marcus, is not as strong as one might wish to match with Earp, but even this bit of casting works. One does appreciate the fleeting staging of the famous supposed Marcus photograph, even if throwing it into the middle of the gunfight seems kind of gratuitous. Charlton Heston has a cameo as rancher Henry Hooker. Tombstone town marshal Fred White here is played by aging western movie veteran Harry Carey, Jr., despite the fact that the real Fred White was only 31 years old.

There are a lot of characters here, and they’re handled well. Some movie retellings of the Earp story culminate in the famous gunfight at the OK Corral. It’s a high point here, with an unforgettable image of the Earps and Holliday striding toward the confrontation in their long black coats. As cinematic renditions of the legendary gunfight go, this is more accurate than most. But the gunfight is just the start of a series of strike and counter-strike moves, leading to Wyatt’s months-long vendetta ride against the Cowboys gang. There are a lot of small historical touches that are accurate if you know to look for them. For example, the use of then-current vernacular, as Doc Holliday responds to challenges with “I’m your huckleberry” and “You’re a daisy if you do.” And Wyatt pushes Johnny Tyler (Billy Bob Thornton) with “No need to go heeled to get the bulge on a tub like you” and “Go ahead, skin it! Skin that smoke wagon and see what happens!”

Holliday (Val Kilmer) and three Earps (Sam Elliot, Kurt Russell, and Bill Paxton), heading for the OK Corral.

This was Cosmatos’ only western, and he made the most of it, although there was a certain amount of directorial coming and going on this movie and it’s not entirely clear that all the credit goes to him. According to some (including Val Kilmer), Kurt Russell took over not too far in and finished the shooting. Russell himself commented in a 2006 interview, “I backed the [original] director; the director got fired, so we brought in a guy to be a ghost director [Cosmatos]. They wanted me to take over the movie. I said, ‘I’ll do it, but I don’t want to put my name on it. I don’t want to be the guy.'” If that’s true, Russell should do more directing. Cosmatos is rumored to have said, “I do slick American movies with a European sensitivity,” and that describes Tombstone. There’s a florid theatrical sensibility at work here, but it doesn’t get in the way. Cosmatos supposedly claimed that all the lightning and moustaches in the movie are real.

The battles and gunfights are well-staged, especially the famous OK Corral fight (surprisingly accurate historically), the battle at the river with Brocius and the other Cowboys (also quite accurate) and the final showdown between Holliday and Ringo (could have happened, but this version is made up because nobody knows what actually took place when Ringo died). There’s so much going on in this movie, with lots of excellent supporting performances, that it has a lot of re-watchability. One has the sense that there are a lot of small things (e.g., the part of Billy Breckinridge, played by Jason Priestley) that remain underdeveloped to limit the playing time of the movie.

In addition to the good casting and excellent acting, the music is by Bruce Broughton (Silverado). And the narration is in the recognizable tones of Robert Mitchum’s voice.

According to Hall Herring in Field & Stream (May 2012), this is the definitive retelling (among many by now) of the Earp saga. “The story is ancient: strong newcomers run up against entrenched economic interests that are a part of the legal and extra-legal power structure of the new place. The enforcers of the entrenched order resist the newcomers. Violence results. The arc of the story in Tombstone follows that model almost perfectly. But any American watching this movie brings to it a wealth of assumptions, and knowledge about mythical figures like the Earps, Holliday, or to a lesser extent, the adversaries like Ike Clanton and Curly Bill [Brocius]. The power of Tombstone is that it does not challenge, ever, what we think we know…. By the time the fight actually comes, we know everybody so well that we are utterly invested in the outcome–every shot, every misstep, is of grave concern. Tombstone is actually not too far from accurate in a historical sense. But if it were not, the movie is so powerful that we wouldn’t care one whit what the real history was.”

Kilmer as Holliday.

The film is rated R for violence, of which there is a fair amount. The body count during Wyatt’s Vendetta Ride is much higher than it was in real life. For a ranking and comparison of various movies about the Earps (of which there are five good ones), see below. The other Earp movies that made the list of great westerns here are John Ford’s My Darling Clementine from 50 years earlier and John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun from the 1960s. At least two others (Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp and John Sturges’ first Earp movie, Gunfight at the OK Corral) are very worth watching.

For more on the making of the movie, see The Making of Tombstone: Behind the Scenes of a Classic Modern Western, by John Farkis (2018).

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