Albuquerque

Movie-wise, there are few experiences more pleasurable than kicking back with a Randolph Scott western.



Scott knew his audiences, understood what they wanted, and gave it to them. I have recollections of reading that Scott was among the most consistent moneymakers throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. While none of his films were blockbusters, they didn’t lose money either. I would think that an executive who green lighted a new Scott western did so with no trepidation.



Critics sing hosannas over the seven films he made towards the end of his career with director Budd Boetticher and you’ll get no argument from me. They’re jewels, filled with interesting, flawed, if not slightly eccentric characters who happen to play their dramas against the beautiful panoramas of the west.



The Scott westerns of the post-war era leading up to the Boetticher years are more traditional, but still very entertaining. While some may be better than others, I can’t think of any out and out clunkers. Indeed, I can’t think of a moment’s regret spent watching a Randolph Scott western.



“Albuquerque” (1948) is a case in point. I stayed engrossed and entertained over the course of its 89-minute running time. It was directed by Ray Enright (who coincidentally also directed Scott seven times, including a real winner, “Coroner Creek”, also from 1948), and Enright sure moves things along. There’s hardly a wasted scene.



At one point, Enright superimposes iris-like shots of townspeople placing bets on the success of a freight expedition leaving town, which we see in the background. That’s an effective way of showing two different images without cutting back and forth between them.

Randolph Scott plays Cole Armin, who comes to the town of Albuquerque to work for his uncle John Armin (George Cleveland). Fans of the Lassie TV series may be surprised to see Cleveland not playing a kindly Uncle John, but a martinet who rules the town and surrounding territory with ruthless efficiency.



Cole had come to Albuquerque on a stagecoach with fellow passengers Ted Wallace (Russell Hayden) and his sister Celia (Catherine Craig), along with a little girl played by Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu of Zuzu’s Petals fame).



The Wallaces traveled to Albuquerque to start a freight transportation operation but have their money stolen in a stagecoach robbery. Cole finds out that his uncle was behind the robbery. He retrieves the money, and throws in with the Wallaces to help them start their company in opposition to his uncle.



John Armin has the town sheriff in his back pocket, and a group of thugs headed by Lon Chaney to keep everyone in check. Enright must have liked Chaney’s features, because he gets more close-ups than anyone else in the movie, including Randolph Scott and leading lady Barbara Britton.

Scott and Chaney have a pretty good fisticuffs sequence. I was amused to see Chaney’s cigarette stay lodged in the corner of his mouth even after Scott delivers some pretty vicious punches. Finally, at the end Scott delivers a couple of terrific wallops which finally dislodge the cigarette.



Britton plays Letty Tyler, a spy planted in the Wallace operation by John Armin. She begins relaying information to Armin about the Wallace’s plans but soon changes her mind when she finds herself falling in love with Ted.



“Albuquerque” was shot on location in Sedona, Arizona in the two-tone Cinecolor process, which was one of the more acceptable Technicolor substitutes. It looks fine to me on the DVD transfer.

On loan from Republic Studios is George “Gabby” Hayes as Juke, who becomes a teamster driver for the Wallaces and participates in the film’s big action sequence towards the end, when Cole and Juke have to traverse wagons full of supplies down a narrow mountain ridge with the ledge only a step or two away. One of Armin’s men has sabotaged Cole’s brake, and the horses get skittish and erupt into a run. Cole desperately tries to control the horses and yell warnings at Juke as they both speed down the mountain. It’s a good action scene marred only by some obvious process screen work in the close-ups.



But the medium and far shots of the horses speeding down the mountain with the wagon wheels brushing against the drop off are very well done and satisfying in a way modern-day CGI can’t be. These are actual horses and stunt drivers accomplishing these stunts.



Also supporting the action is a first-rate score by Darrell Calker, a composer I’m not very familiar with. His opening title theme is a real winner, and I look forward to seeing what else of his is out there.



Margaret Mitchell wanted Scott to play Ashley Wilkes but he lost the role to Leslie Howard. A native of Virginia, I always felt Scott would have made a splendid Ashley.



Randolph Scott ended his screen career in 1962 with Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country”, one of the finest westerns ever. He had grown rich from real estate investments and didn’t need to work any further. Along with John Wayne, Randolph Scott can lay claim to ending his career with one of his very best films and performances. More distinguished and well-revered names cannot make that claim.



Family Lore: In the mid 1930s, my uncle was a young boy and sold newspapers at Chicago’s LaSalle Street station. In those days when air travel was far less common, travel by train was the way to go from coast to coast. Many a celebrity was spotted at LaSalle Street station waiting to transfer on a train to the West Coast, but my uncle only remembered seeing one celebrity. He heard a voice ask, “Son, can I get a paper” and he looked up and saw it was Randolph Scott. He sold him the paper and even got an autograph from him.



My dad remembered my uncle racing home to tell everyone he met Randolph Scott and showed them the autograph. Over the years the autograph got lost but even later in life my uncle always said Randolph Scot was the most handsome man he ever saw.

The Budd Boetticher Collection

One of the great pleasures of the last couple of years of my film viewing has been the rediscovery of the American Western, a genre that once held little appeal for me aside from the obvious classics like Stagecoach and High Noon. But starting with the postwar Westerns of John Ford and moving to the Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher Westerns of the 1950s and finally on to the lesser known examples of the genre from 1945 through the early 1960s, I've come to appreciate a genre that I once had little regard for. How satisfying and unpretentious these films—stripped to the basic elements of characters in conflict, uncomplicated themes, and the starkly iconic landscapes of the American West—seem to me as examples of the best in American cinema of the time in comparison to the ponderous message and social issue movies that got so much attention and praise.

For the last two years—ever since the box set of Westerns from Columbia written by Burt Kennedy, directed by Budd Boetticher, and starring Randolph Scott, who also co-produced, was released—I've slowly been working toward seeing all five of these films, a task I just recently completed when I watched 1960's Comanche Station (a shot from the opening is pictured above), the last film in the series. The series actually got off to a start with Seven Men from Now (1956), a movie not included in the box set (probably because it was released by Warner Bros, not Columbia.) In that film Scott plays a former sheriff who systematically tracks down the seven men who killed his wife during a holdup. Seven Men from Now introduced many elements that Kennedy and Boetticher would return to in the Columbia movies. Shot in widescreen and color, it deals with a pursuit and revenge theme with Scott as the nemesis of evildoers, features a supporting cast of highly capable character actors, and has as the chief villain an actor not well known at the time but destined to become famous for this type of role, here Lee Marvin. And as in all of the later films, it moves step by step toward the inevitable climactic showdown between Scott and his adversary, what Andrew Sarris describes in The American Cinema as "the deadly confrontations of male antagonists . . . man to man in an empty arena on a wide screen before a very quiet, elemental camera."

AN OVERVIEW OF THE FILMS

The Tall T (1957)
***^½


The Columbia series got off to a strong start with this film, based on a story by Elmore Leonard. Scott plays Pat Brennan, a rancher who hitches a ride on a stagecoach driven by an old friend (Arthur Hunnicutt, in a colorful Walter Brennan-like turn). The coach has been hired by a pair of newlyweds, Willard and Doretta Mims (John Hubbard and Maureen O'Sullivan) to take them on their honeymoon. When the coach stops at a relay station, Scott and his companions are confronted by three outlaws. The cowardly Willard, who has married the middle-aged heiress Doretta for her money, proposes that the outlaws collect a kidnap ransom from her rich father. The leader of the gang, the smooth-talking Frank Usher (played with quiet menace by Richard Boone), rides off with Willard to collect the ransom, sending his two henchman away to their hideout with the two hostages. Once there, Scott must devise a scheme to outwit the gunmen and disarm them before Usher returns, and he must persuade the terrified Doretta, dispirited by her new husband's betrayal, to help him.

With its several unmotivated murders of harmless people (including a child), kidnapping, attempted rape, and coolly sadistic villain, this is probably the most overtly violent of the five movies. Whereas in the later films, violent acts committed against innocent victims have already taken place before the film begins or else exist as a threat that might happen in the future, here that violence occurs during the film, making it all the more disturbing. The film presents a spectrum of Western manhood, from the cowardly, unprincipled fortune-hunter Willard to the fearless but equally unprincipled villain Usher to the courageous man of honor played by Scott. Like most Westerns, these films are male-centric, having few important female characters—typically one in each film—who tend to be rudimentary types lacking the psychological definition of the male characters. The Tall T is distinguished by having in Maureen O'Sullivan's Doretta Mims the most fully developed and most touchingly portrayed female character of the series. The Technicolor cinematography is by Charles Lawton (The Lady from Shanghai), who shot three of the films. Also featuring Henry Silva and Skip Homeier.


Decision at Sundown (1957)
**^½


Sundown is the name of the small town where the movie takes place. At the beginning, Bart Ellison (Scott) and his best friend Sam (Noah Beery, Jr. in a very warm performance) ride into town searching for Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll), the man who Elllison's wife deserted him for before later committing suicide and who Ellison blames for her death. Sundown is one of those Wild West towns run by an unscrupulous strong man, with the sheriff under his control and the townspeople intimidated into a state of collective cowardice, and that man is Kimbrough. The day Ellison arrives, Kimbrough is set to marry a young woman named Lucy Summerton (Karen Steele, who appeared in several other films directed by Boetticher, including one more in this series). Ellison manages to stop the wedding, telling Lucy that he plans to kill her fiancé by sundown that day. When Kimbrough orders his men to kill Ellison, Ellison takes refuge in a stable, where he plans to stay until he meets his foe in the street for the showdown. The rest of the movie details Ellison's efforts to avoid Kimbrough's schemes to have him killed and stay alive for the gunfight at sundown.

I found this, the only one of the five movies not written or co-written by Burt Kennedy, the weakest of the series. One problem I had with it is that Scott spends a large part of the movie holed up in the stable. This, combined with the fact that many other scenes are also set indoors, creates a set-bound feeling. An overreliance on dialogue to put across plot points also gives the film a static quality not associated with an action genre like the Western. I have seen Westerns that rely on interior scenes and dialogue more than the typical example of the genre—I'm thinking of movies like 3:10 to Yuma and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—and in which such an approach doesn't end up being a liability. But those films had the advantage of using interiors and dialogue to pursue a novel situation, and the situation in Decision at Sundown, with a cowardly populace intimidated by a ruthless strong man and his cronies, seems quite familiar, a variation of High Noon. This time the photography is by Burnett Guffey (From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde). Also featured are many familiar faces—Andrew Duggan as the sheriff, John Archer, John Litel, Vaughn Taylor, Richard Deacon, and Bob Steele.


Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
***


Scott stars as Tom Buchanan, returning to Texas from Mexico with a stash of gold to buy a ranch. After crossing the border at the town of Agry, he gets caught up in the machinations of the corrupt Agry family who run the town—Simon, a rich rancher who is also the town judge, his squabbling younger brothers Lew, the town sheriff, and Amos, the dim-witted owner of the town hotel, and Simon's debauched son Roy. Buchanan befriends Juan de la Vega, the son of a Mexican landowner, who shoots Roy for raping his young sister. When the greedy family learn about Buchanan's money, they accuse him of being Juan's accomplice and prepare to lynch them both. Only the intervention of Abe Carbo (Craig Stevens), the only man outside the Agry family with any real influence in the town, prevents the hanging, getting the two men a trial in which Juan is convicted and Buchanan exonerated. Spurred by a large ransom offered by Juan's rich father, many complications ensue—bribery, murder, double-crossing, sibling rivalry over the ransom money and Buchanan's gold. Working with Abe Carbo, Buchanan is able to sort things out, reclaim his gold, and restore a semblance of order to Agry before riding away, leaving Carbo in charge of the town.

With its bordertown setting, especially Simon Agry's Mexican-style hacienda, and its Mexican characters, Buchanan Rides Alone has a distinctly Southwestern flavor unique to the series. Some commentators have detected a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward the material. Indeed, the cast does seem pretty relaxed given the overall seriousness of the plot. Moreover, there is a certain drollery in the Agry family's degeneracy and infighting, and Buchanan seems a bit of a trickster with his insouciant attitude to personal danger, his confidence in his ability to overcome difficulties, and the cunning way he manipulates his enemies by using their own avarice and hunger for power to play them against each other. The cinematographer is the great Lucien Ballard, a man associated especially with Western pictures. The cast contains no female characters of note but does include film noir and Western stalwart Barry Kelley as the sheriff, Peter Whitney as the hotelier brother (he played the hulking twins Mert and Bert in the 1945 Fred MacMurray black comedy Murder, He Says), and L. Q. Jones.


Ride Lonesome (1959)
***^½


Scott plays Ben Brigade, a bounty hunter who captures the wanted killer Billy John (James Best) and then must survive a number of threats while transporting him back to the town of Santa Cruz. He must fight off Billy John's brother Frank (Lee Van Cleef) and his outlaw gang, who trail Brigade, waiting for an opportunity to ambush him. Stopping at a stagecoach station, he encounters two more outlaws, Boone (Bonanza's Pernell Roberts) and Whit (James Coburn, in his first film role), who are after Billy John for their own reasons. Also at the station is Carrie Lane (Karen Steele), whom the chief of a group of Indians wants to claim for his squaw. Brigade and his prisoner, accompanied by the two outlaws and Carrie, head for Santa Cruz, and Brigade must now contend with Frank's gang, hostile Indians, and two rivals for the capture of Billy John. Brigade's strange behavior during the journey soon makes it apparent that he has more in mind than delivering Billy John and claiming the reward. He is in fact using Billy John as bait to maneuver his brother Frank into a trap. Frank is his real prey, for it is Frank who was responsible for murdering Brigade's wife by hanging her from a hanging tree, and it is to this tree that Brigade is luring Frank to get revenge. He does get his revenge in the end, and the film concludes with perhaps the most striking single image in the entire series—Brigade setting fire to the hanging tree and watching from nearby as the flames symbolically consume the past wrongs that have haunted him.

To my mind, Ride Lonesome is the best of the Boetticher-Scott Westerns for a number of reasons. It has the strongest cast of any film in the series. It also has the most intriguing and meticulously organized plot of the five films. From a simple beginning, complications pile on one after the other, and details that initially seem straightforward gradually build in intricacy. The device of having the hero simultaneously imperiled by threats from three distinct sources intensifies and heightens the tension of the situation. In Brigade, Ride Lonesome has Scott's most complex incarnation. The revelation that his apparently mercenary motivation is something altogether deeper and at the same time more primal than we were led to believe at the beginning of the film, that the impetus for his every move is the overwhelming need to avenge the murder of his wife, gives Brigade's actions and character unexpected nuances. His remarkable skills at reading human behavior, predicting the reactions of his opponents, and using strategy to control and direct them exceeds that ability even in Buchanan Rides Alone and The Tall T. All this propels Ride Lonesome to that unforgettable final image, with Scott in the background on one side of the frame dwarfed by the burning tree looming in the foreground on the other side. This was the first of the films shot in CinemaScope, and in this shot Boetticher and director of photography Charles Lawton went all out to use the extreme proportions of the frame to create a summative image that shows not only how bitterness has completely ruled Brigade, but also that it finally burns itself out.


Comanche Station (1960)
***


The film opens with a long shot of a lone man, Jefferson Cody (Scott), riding across a rocky vista leading a pack mule. When Cody is confronted by a group of Comanches accompanied by a disheveled white woman, Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates), he trades the goods on the mule for the woman. It seems he heard that a white woman had been captured by Indians and was actually out searching for her. While stopping at Comanche Station, the two meet up with three men led by Ben Lane (Claude Akins), a bounty hunter, who have been chased there by Indians. Cody and Lane have a history. Years earlier, Cody and Lane served in the Army, and Lane was responsible for recklessly provoking an Indian attack that wiped out the fort Cody commanded. Lane reveals that he and his men are also looking for Mrs. Lowe because her husband has offered a $5,000 dollar reward for her return to him in Lordsburg. Cody was unaware of the reward, but Mrs. Lowe doesn't believe him and loses respect for her rescuer. What Lane doesn't reveal is that the reward was offered for her return dead or alive and that he plans to kill both her and Cody before they reach Lordsburg. On the journey to Lordsburg, Cody must now contend with Mrs. Lowe's uncooperative attitude, the threat of attack by Indians, and, unknown to him, the planned treachery of Lane. It is only toward the end of the film that Mrs. Lowe learns that Cody's own wife was captured by Indians and that he has been searching for her for years, traveling anywhere he hears a report of a captive white woman.

Fittingly, the final entry in the series revisits many of the themes of the earlier films—Scott trying to redress wrongs done to his wife, a journey across barren territory fraught with danger, threats from Indians as well as scoundrels encountered by chance along the way. If it doesn't really cover new ground, it still manages to be a very entertaining variation on familiar themes. After Doretta Wims in The Tall T, the film has in Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates is quite good in the part) the next strongest female character in the series. With the complicated and shifting relationship between her and Cody, and the fact that she is a major character from the beginning of the film right up to the very end, she plays the most important part in the narrative of any female character in the series. Comanche Station was the third of the movies photographed by Charles Lawton, like Ride Lonesome in CinemaScope, and for me the real star here is the rocky landscapes surmounted by vast expanses of cloudless blue sky. (The movie was shot in the Sierra Nevada of California near Mt. Whitney.) Costarring Skip Homeier and Richard Rust (a familiar face from TV and low-budget movies whose best-known role was probably as Cliff Robertson's partner in crime in Samuel Fuller's Underworld, U.S.A.).

THE ENIGMATIC RANDOLPH SCOTT

Of the many recurring elements in the five films, the most commanding is the presence of Randolph Scott, who acts as both the moral center of the film and the force that drives its action. Scott's weathered, impassive face seems almost an icon of resolve to defend a masculine sense of honor under threat. The characters Scott plays in these films have different names and move in different circumstances, yet they might be the same individual. (He even wears the same costume in two of the pictures and in two others merely exchanges a gray shirt and tan kerchief for a blue shirt and tan kerchief.) Impelled by a single purpose, he can become nearly obsessive in the pursuit of that purpose. The nature of that purpose is clear in each of the films. What is less clear is the motivation that drives him, his very inexpressiveness effectively masking the true nature of his motivation.

Scott makes it subtly apparent how fine a line exists between the righteous duty to achieve justice through retribution and the selfish desire to exact personal revenge through destruction. But even if you can occasionally see the dark side of the man peeking out from behind the mask, he never surrenders to the darkness that runs like an undercurrent through his character, always remaining at heart an honorable man. Even though he must overcome his opponents by matching their ruthlessness and exceeding their cleverness and calculation, he never abandons his sense of fair play. And at the end of the movie, when the foe has been defeated, there is little sense of triumph, only the feeling that the man's duty is at last completed and that he can now move to whatever lies ahead.

Mr. Soft Touch, The Desperadoes, Avatar

This is one of those blogs where one thought leads to another. I’ll start with a recent viewing of “Mr. Soft Touch” and end with a discussion of “Avatar.” With a big budget Technicolor western in the middle.

By sheer coincidence I happened to recently catch two movies starring Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes: “The Desperadoes” (1943) and “Mr. Soft Touch” (1949). Doing a little research, I was surprised to see they had co-starred together in three additional films, “Adventures of Martin Eden” (1942), “Flight Lieutenant” (1942) and “The Mating of Millie” (1948).

Not one of the great screen teams, but there must have been something in box office returns that Columbia Pictures kept pairing them. Ford has always struck me as a likeable enough actor, but sometimes so low key he’s almost catatonic. However, he does exhibit strong signs of life when playing opposite Rita Hayworth, and can you blame him?

TCM ran “Mr. Soft Touch” this month, and I wondered why they didn’t run it in December as so much of it is set during the Christmas season. In the film, Ford robs a casino and hides from the law in a downtown settlement house, run by Keyes. Of course you know Ford is going to reform thanks to Keyes and the poor but honest kindness of the house’s residents. Also, since his character’s name is Joe Miracle, it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll change his ways.

It’s pleasant enough, though hardly memorable. The huge Christmas tree that decorates the house’s gym is a real beauty however, and there’s an amusing scene where Ford escapes from the law by masquerading in a Santa Claus suit. All that’s missing is a giant stogie, like Edward G. Robinson had sticking out of his mouth while wearing his Santa Claus suit in the very funny Warner Bros. crime comedy “Larceny, Inc.” (1942).

For such a light hearted effort, the film does open with a bang – a pretty good car chase with Ford, in a desperate attempt to escape from a pursuing cop car, driving through a crossing gate and over a bridge just as its going up to make way for a passing boat below. Promise of a crime thriller is offset by the more gentle activities that follow.

“The Desperadoes” was Columbia’s first Technicolor film and it’s a real beauty to watch. There was a special quality to Technicolor photography under the Columbia banner that other studios could not match (though 20th Century Fox, I feel, rules as the pre-eminent studio with their Technicolor offerings. Some of that photography practically melts the eye balls, it’s so vivid).

Based on a novel by Max Brand, “The Desperadoes” is standard though enjoyable fare about two friends, one a sheriff (Randolph Scott) and his outlaw friend (Ford) who reunite to tame a wild frontier town. Keyes is the woman they’re both in love with. Good support from pros like the always welcome Claire Trevor, Guinn Williams, Edgar Buchanan and Porter Hall, as a seemingly respectable banker. Gee, didn’t any one in that town ever see “The Plainsman” (1936)? I wouldn’t trust Hall with the milk money, but that’s the fun of old movies.

Scott is one of my favorite actors, and it’s a pleasure to be witness to his quiet confidence. Sitting back on a cold winter’s evening watching a Randolph Scott western means all is right with the world.

I was thinking about “The Desperaodes” while watching “Avatar” Sunday afternoon. It was pretty spectacular, and the world director James Cameron was very impressive. Many are talking about the visual splendor of “Avatar” and rightfully so, but I feel that a three-strip Technicolor production from Hollywood’s Golden Age is every bit the visual wonder.

Look at what “The Desperadoes” gives us. Vivid blue skies, beautiful horses at full gallop (is there anything more thrilling to watch than racing horses in front of some of the more gorgeous scenery in the world), elaborate costumes – for me, westerns like “The Desperadoes” offer just as much visual pleasure as “Avatar” and its Technicolor photography is just as eye popping as the computer-generated imagery of “Avatar.”

Something else that occurred to me while watching “Avatar.” So much of the visuals are reminiscent of the John Carter of Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Cameron has admitted in interviews that Burroughs was a huge inspiration in “Avatar’s” creation. (I’m assuming he means Edgar Rice and not William).

The first John Carter novel, “A Princess of Mars”, is about to begin production as the first live action offering from Pixar Studios. Release date is 2012. When it comes out, I’m sure there will be lots of complaints that it’s a rip off of “Avatar.” I’m hoping Pixar rolls out the publicity machine early on this, and let all the fanboys out there know that Burroughs was there first, all the way back in the 1912.

Which leads to another thought and that is watching 3D movies. It’s likely middle age (I’m 47), but halfway through “Avatar” during a lengthy dialogue sequence I had to take those glasses off and give my eyes a rest.

For me, 3D doesn’t add a whole lot to the experience. It could be my irritation at paying an extra $3 for a pair of glasses that likely cost all of 50 cents to produce. No wonder the studios are jumping on the 3D bandwagon. Good writing and characters can draw us into the story every bit as much as 3D images. The trailers for Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” (or the new Christopher Lee movie, as I like to think of it) look extremely promising and I can’t wait to see it, but I think I’ll forego the $3 extortion and just see it flat.

But…but…but…that beggars the question if seeing it flat is really what the director intended and shouldn’t I support the film in the process the director filmed it? I refuse to watch full-screen versions of widescreen films because I feel I’m missing too much of the visual information the director wishes to impart. So using the same standards, if a director films a movie in 3D shouldn’t I see it in that format?

On the other hand, I’m still seeing all the information as the director intended, just not in 3D. I don’t need to see the floating head of the Cheshire Cat in the foreground when I can still see it floating in the flat version.

So I’ll likely see “Alice in Wonderland” flat and see if I feel cheated. If I do, I’ll just have to pop a couple of aspirin before I don those glasses again.

1962: Hollywood's Second Greatest Year? Part 4

An Elegy for the Western

The fifth American masterpiece of 1962 is another Western, Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country. Like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (which I wrote about in Part 3 of this series), this is a movie that emphasizes theme more strongly than the traditional Western, and that theme is strikingly revealed in its very first scenes. The movie opens with Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) ambling down what seems to be the typical street of a town in a typical Western movie. But Judd, gazing intently all around him, is clearly puzzled, for something is wrong here. The street is deserted; there is no traffic on it, no horses, wagons, or people. The sidewalks, though, are crowded with people expectantly watching the street, and the buildings are festooned with flags and bunting. It almost looks as though the whole town has turned out to welcome Judd.

Suddenly a uniformed policeman hurries up to Judd, shouting, "Get out of the way, old man. Can't you see you're in the way?" And a few moments later a camel bearing a cowboy comes thundering down the street, followed by several more cowboys on horses. The circus—or in this case, the Wild West show—is in town and Judd has just witnessed the end of a race between a camel rider from the show and a group of local cowboys. When Judd is then nearly run down by a primitive automobile, the point of the movie becomes clear: This is not a movie glorifying the Old West, but a lament for its passing; what for Judd is a way of life has become for everyone else a sideshow. Ride the High Country is not just another Western, but an elegy for a movie genre that has lost its relevance.

Judd, a retired U. S. Marshall, has come to town to do a job. He has been hired by the local bank to travel to Coarsegold, a mining camp in the Sierras and bring back $250,000 worth of gold bullion from the miners there. But he needs help to do that, and he finds it in an unexpected place. While visiting the Wild West show, he encounters an old friend, Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), who is performing as a sort of imitation-Buffalo Bill Cody sharpshooter called the Oregon Kid. Westrum volunteers himself and his young friend and fellow performer (he was the camel rider) Heck Longtree (Ron Starr) to accompany Judd on his mission to the Gold Country.

When we next see Westrum, he looks completely different. Gone are the long hair and beard he wore in the show. Has he gotten a haircut and shaved? Or, which seems more likely, has he simply shed a long-haired wig and false beard along with the elaborate buckskin costume and stage make-up he was obviously wearing when we first saw him? Either way Westrum's whole Wild West persona was plainly just a disguise used while performing as part of a nostalgic Wild West fantasy. This pretense seems an appropriate touch, for it is quickly revealed that Westrum and Longtree plan to rob Judd on the way back and take the gold for themselves.

Within fifteen minutes of the first scene, the men are on their way. From that point on, the movie follows a classic structure dating back to Greek mythology: the two-part, mirror-image division into a journey in and a journey back, like Orpheus descending to hell and returning. When the men spend their first night in the barn of a ranch, they unexpectedly pick up a traveling companion, Elsa Knudsen (Mariette Hartley), the ranch owner's young daughter, who wants to escape her puritanical and overly protective father to join her fiancé, who lives near Coarsegold.

Arrival in Coarsegold reveals that nothing is what the travelers anticipated. It is clear that Elsa's fiancé and his brothers are a family of lascivious degenerates who plan to share Elsa and use her essentially as a sex slave. Coarsegold itself is a hellish place, a tent city run by the owner/madam of the local saloon/brothel, Kate, and her crony, the alcoholic Judge Tolliver (Edgar Buchanan, who is terrific). And the expected $250,000 in gold turns out to be only $11,000 worth.

The "marriage" ceremony the drunken judge performs for Elsa is a surreal farce, taking place in the scarlet-walled saloon/brothel with Kate as Elsa's "bridesmaid" and the prostitutes as her "flower girls." Judd, Westrum, and young Longtree (who has developed a crush on Elsa) cannot allow the sham marriage to be consummated. Judd coerces the judge into invalidating the marriage, and the three men and Elsa leave Coarsegold, pursued by the angry bridegroom and his brothers, and begin their return journey, passing the same landmarks they had encountered previously.

When Westrum and Longtree make their move to seize the gold, Judd overpowers them and now has to contend not only with the vengeful pursuers but with two prisoners as well. After one shootout with the pursuers, they manage to make it back to Elsa's ranch, only to find that the surviving pursuers have reached it first, killed Elsa's father, and are waiting to ambush them. Westrum uses his sharpshooting skills to help Judd overcome the remaining pursuers and redeems himself by promising the dying Judd, who has been wounded in the shootout, to complete their mission and deliver the gold to the bank.

Ride the High Country was hardly the first anti-romantic Western. The demythologizing of the Old West in movies began at least as early as 1948 with John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (although admittedly that film is set in Mexico). This reappraisal of the genre continued with the Anthony Mann-James Stewart Westerns and the Budd Boeticcher-Randolph Scott Westerns of the 1950s. These were tough, cynical movies whose main characters were no longer unambiguously heroic, but had paradoxical and sometimes outright undesirable qualities and motivations. Happy endings in which unequivocally good people defeated unequivocally evil people were no longer a given of the genre. Desirable outcomes, if they occurred at all, came at a high price and were balanced by sacrifice and loss. And sometimes, even when bad people were overcome, the victory was a hollow one that left an unpleasant aftertaste.

In John Ford's Westerns most people are decent and peaceful. Ford doesn't deny the existence of villains like Liberty Valance who seek to victimize these decent people, but the villains are the exception and are subject to control by the collective resistance of ordinary people and the heroic actions of extraordinary people like Tom Doniphon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The Mann and Boetticher Westerns begin to blur the distinction between hero and villain, with each of these opposing forces sharing some traits of the other. The villains have their own warped code of honor while the heroes are ruthlessly dedicated to achieving their aims at any cost, and ordinary people are often unfortunately caught in the middle of this conflict.

In Ride the High Country Peckinpah takes the concept of the Old West as idealized myth and gives it his own slant. He darkens the Western genre even further than Mann and Boetticher by superimposing on the traditional formulas of the John Ford-style Western his own unrelentingly bleak view of humanity, in which people are almost without exception driven by their most ignoble qualities. His characters are motivated by greed, revenge, the desire to exploit others, or just plain self-interest rather than conscience, a sense of right and wrong, or a belief in justice, as Ford's characters are. He doesn't seem to be denying altogether that idealistic people and selfless actions existed in the Old West, but rather that they were the rare exception. In Ride the High Country there are precious few morally neutral people. Judd and the innocent Elsa are the only unalloyed forces of honor and truth in the entire movie. Everyone else is, if not openly corrupt, then false and covertly corrupt. And Peckinpah seems to be saying that the force of their corruption makes them juggernauts able to smash nearly everything in their path.

Peckinpah also seems to be suggesting that in addition to the baser human motivations, time and change are destructive forces as well, a theme he further explored in 1969's The Wild Bunch. Judd is a man out of time, a noble but quixotic figure whose adherence to a code of honor makes him an anachronism. In his Westerns Peckinpah's brand of cynicism is expressed in the belief that any potential for good in the Old West was swept aside by the passage of time before it was able to be fulfilled. This strikes me as the cynicism not of the born nihilist, but of the disillusioned idealist. Perhaps that explains the one bit of hope he allows in this dismal view of humanity: the rare instance when someone like Westrum is inspired by the example and self-sacrifice of someone like Judd to undergo a transformation for the better and, at least temporarily, master his most unethical instincts and impulses.

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Next week I'll be concluding my series on the year 1962 in American films.

Virginia City

There’s a lot to like in “Virginia City” (1940), but it never quite comes together. There are some fatal casting problems, and the script is all over the place, but it’s all quite watchable and has the Warner Bros. professionalism stamped all over it. Still, despite being directed by the great Michael Curtiz, this is one of the lesser Errol Flynn entries of his starring years.

I would think some 1940 moviegoers must have felt terribly cheated after watching “Virginia City” if they were expecting a sequel to one of 1939’s biggest hits “Dodge City.”

Flynn had one of his biggest successes with “Dodge City”, a Technicolor town-taming western that holds up quite well today. At the end of that film he is asked to clean up another rough and tumble western town, Virginia City in Nevada. He agrees to the assignment, and the last scene shows him and frequent leading lady Olivia deHavilland off to Virginia City, accompanied by a triumphant Max Steiner music cue.

“Virginia City” appeared a year later, not as a sequel, but as a Civil War western, and based on an actual historic incident. It also boasts the same director (Curtiz), screen writer (Robert Bruckner) and composer (Steiner), but, alas, no Technicolor.

Having escaped from Libby Prison with pals Alan Hale and Guinn “Big Boy’ Williams (also holdovers from “Dodge City” and the three would play together in “Santa Fe Trail” a year later), Flynn realizes the dying Confederacy needs one last daring plan to keep it going. The mining town of Virginia City is home to many Confederate sympathizers and its possible some of the gold and silver mined there will be used to refinance the Confederacy. It turns out he’s right, and it’s no less than Randolph Scott as the Libby warden who agrees to guide the treasure-laden ($5 million worth) wagon train from Nevada to the South. Randolph Scott is a welcome presence in any movie and he plays the Southern gentleman here to a T. Supposedly he was Margaret Mitchell’s choice to play Ashley Wilkes. I wish he had.

It’s a lot of fun to see Flynn and Scott recognize each other in a Nevada saloon, with both thinking the other was back East.

Of course there’s a woman both men love, a Confederate sympathizer played by Miriam Hopkins. I adore Hopkins in “Trouble in Paradise” (1932) and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1932) but she’s too brittle and harsh for the role and is arguably one of Flynn’s least effective leading ladies. They go together like pickles and milk. It’s not an enjoyable screen coupling, and her rendition of “Rally Round the Flag Boys” is also pretty rough on the ears. I prefer her singing “Jazz Up Your Lingerie” in Lubitsch’s “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931), one of the greatest songs ever written.

The second miscasting mistake is the Mexican bandit John Murrell, played by, of all people, Humphrey Bogart. Yikes! His Mexican accent is strictly of the Frito Bandito type, and why they had to make him Mexican I’ll never know. They should have just made him a regular black-clad outlaw, like his role in the marvelously entertaining “The Oklahoma Kid” (1939). Many people feel Bogart’s worst screen performance is in “The Return of Dr. X”, his only horror film, but I have to give the nod to “Virginia City.”

Despite the miscasting, and the often unwieldy script, there’s much to enjoy. Curtiz’s compositions during the action scenes remain a marvel, and Steiner provides some of the best traveling stagecoach music ever. Flynn and Scott provide some stirring self-sacrifice at the end and we even get a climatic plea to Abraham Lincoln that is corny but somehow fits.

The film runs 121 minutes, and, unusually for a Curtiz film, one feels the whole two hours. A little trimming would have helped.

But it’s not a bad film by any means, and I will no doubt re-visit it again in the years ahead. Errol Flynn and Randolph Scott in a big budget western is not something to be ignored.

Rating for “Virginia City”: Two-and-a-half stars.

To the Last Man

“To the Last Man” (1933), a western about two feuding families and based on a Zane Grey novel, has one of the most unusual opening credit sequences I’ve ever seen.

The technical credits come up, but there’s no cast listed. The movie begins, and lo and behold, there’s a credit. Each time a major character is introduced in a scene, the actor’s name and the character he or she plays shows up at the bottom of the scene.

Randolph Scott appears in the 20-minute mark, which means we’re still reading credits 20 minutes into the movie. It’s odd, and it’s no wonder that this never became a favored practice.

This approach, though, heightens the fun of seeing who shows up in the cast. I didn’t look at the back of the DVD box, so didn’t know who was in it save for Randolph Scott and Esther Ralston. Imagine my surprise at what a rich cast the movie offers.

The Hayden and Colby families have been feuding and killing each other for years, with no let up. The meanest of the Colbys (Noah Berry) kills one of the Haydens in cold blood, and is sentenced to 15 years in jail.

His daughter Ellen (Esther Ralston) hates all the Haydens as well. That is, until she meets Lynn Hayden (Randolph Scott), not knowing he’s a Hayden. Their feelings for each other grow stronger, to the chagrin of the Colby family. The Haydens are more accepting of her and want the feud to be over.

On the Colby side is Noah Berry and Jack LaRue. Nasty, nasty men.

On the Hayden side is Barton MacLane, Buster Crabbe, Gail Patrick and Fuzzy Knight. They all get a credit card as they are introduced. At the 34-minute mark the youngest of the Colbys has her first scene, five-year-old Shirley Temple. She doesn’t get a credit card, but in only a few years she would be one of the biggest stars of the 1930s. Why the Colbys are so mean, they even take a pot shot at Temple while she’s outside playing!

This was filmed one year before the Production Code was enforced, so there’s some scenes that would not have been approved a year later. Randolph Scott first spies Esther Ralston as she’s taking a nude swim. The camera is kept at a discreet distance when he first spots her, but he rides closer to get a better look. Way to go, Randy!

When Noah Berry finds out his daughter is in love with a Colby he takes a whip to her and his face transforms into an ugly visage of hatred. That scene no doubt gave some 1933 youngsters a few nightmares.

Director Henry Hathaway was a master at outdoor adventure movies, and “To the Last Man” is no exception. No backlots here, this was filmed entirely on location at Big Bear Lake, California. Beautiful countryside, and a fitting backdrop to this engaging tale of feuding families.

Randolph Scott was born for these kinds of western roles. Esther Ralston makes a most fetching barefoot heroine. She was the leading lady in one of my favorite silent films, “Old Ironsides” (1926), a thrilling tale of the U.S. Constitution and its campaign against the Barbary Pirates. Anyone who thinks silent movies are dull should see “Old Ironsides.”

“To the Last Man” is exceptionally well photographed, has a splendid supporting cast and a pair of very likeable lead performances. There are far worst ways to spend 70 minutes.

Rating for “To the Last Man”: Three stars.

Ride the High Country

“Ride the High Country” (1962) is one of the greatest westerns ever made, which means it’s also one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s a glorious film that works on many levels, and is arguably director Sam Peckinpah’s best film.

Peckinpah is one of those directors I’ve always admired more than liked. “The Wild Bunch” (1969) is an undoubted masterpiece, but it’s not an easy film to sit though. “Major Dundee” (1965) has some marvelous visuals, but a disjointed narrative, even in the restored version which recently came out on DVD.

A maverick personality, in the best and worst senses, Peckinpah was in many ways his own worst enemy. But that was the future.

“Ride the High Country” is a beautifully elegiac film, teaming two legendary stars, Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott for the first and only time. This film gives Scott a wonderful final screen appearance that ranks up there with the final films of John Wayne in “The Shootist” (1976) and Humphrey Bogart in “The Harder They Fall” (1956) as worthy screen goodbyes.

Joel McCrea plays Steve Judd, an ex-lawman who is hired to transport gold from the mines. Needing help, he runs into his old partner Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) to help him. Gil brings along his partner Heck (Ron Starr, don’t know what ever happened to him) to help. It’s established early on that while Gil and Steve are friends, there’s some tenseness there. Judd is a straight shooter, interested in living a dignified, honest life while Gil has more than a touch of larceny in him. Indeed, he and Heck plan to steal the gold for themselves and make off with it.

On their way to the mines they stop off at a ranch owned by a fundamentalist, Bible thumping rancher (R.G. Armstrong) whose daughter Elsa (Mariette Hartley, in her film debut) is itching to get clear of the ranch. She leaves the ranch and asks the three to escort her to the gold camp where her fiancé Billy Hammond (James Drury) is mining with his brothers.

The Hammond brothers are pure Peckinpah, dirty and grimy and with the morals of alley cats. They’re played by later Peckinpah favorites Warren Oates and L.Q. Jones. The mining camp is a dinghy, depressing place, but a touch of beauty and grace emerges during Billy and Elsa’s wedding. On their wedding night, Billy gets drunk and passes out and the Hammond brothers decide to take his place in the wedding bed. Her screams bring Steve, Gil and Heck to her rescue, and after a tense stand-off they elect to bring her back with them, along with the latest gold shipment.

The next day the Hammond brothers take after them to bring Elsa back. Gil and Heck steal the gold but Judd stops them, and ties them up. He tries to make his way back through the high country with prisoners in tow and the Hammond brothers right on his trail, with blood lust in their hearts and guns drawn ready to kill.

Like “The Wild Bunch,” “Ride the High Country” deals with western men whose time has passed. The west they’ve known is gone, replaced by a town teeming with automobiles, a Chinese restaurant, and a carnival featuring a race between a camel and a horse. Judd is ordered to clear the streets by the local police, who are dressed like the Keystone Cops.

Judd’s time is over but he’s determined to live the rest of his life with the dignity he’s always possessed. As such, Steve Judd is the perfect role for Joel McCrea.

McCrea was a Hollywood anomaly, a good, decent man. Married to actress Frances Dee for more than 50 years, he lived a quiet life with his family entirely devoid of scandal or rumor. He starred in all kinds of movies in the 1930s and 1940s, including some of Preston Sturges’ best-loved films, but after World War II he made almost exclusively westerns. When not making movies, he was a working rancher, and, as such, was an authentic cowboy.

His career paralleled co-star Randolph Scott’s in a few ways. Like McCrea, Scott appeared in everything from comedies to musicals, to westerns to melodramas in the 1930 and 1940s but after World War II he made nothing but westerns. They both liked making westerns, they knew their fans liked them in westerns, and since both actors were consistent money makers, why rock the boat?

Beginning in 1955 with “Seven Men From Now”, Randolph Scott made a series of tight, B westerns directed by Budd Boetticher that are marvels of tightness, speed, action and Freudian overtones. Check out “The Tall T” (1957) sometime if you ever get the chance.

“Ride the High Country” is the perfect screen coda for them. Their time has come but Steve and Gil, like McCrea and Scott, are going to go out in a blaze of glory. Composer George Bassman contributes a lovely theme which is a perfect complement to the autumnal aspects of the story.

There’s a terrific shoot out scene in the rocks where no music is played, but the lonely sound of the wind makes for an equally effective soundtrack. The final shoot out at the ranch is one of the most melancholy, yet satisfying, in all westerns. Steve’s final words with Gil are poetic in their simplicity and are matched by the haunting final image.

McCrea made three or four cameo in later films and one final film “Mustang Country” (1976). Scott decided to call it quits. A shrewd businessman, he invested wisely and retired a wealthy man. But their films still play and connect with audiences who respond to the values their characters espoused. We will never see their likes again.

Rating for “Ride the High Country”: Four stars.

The Spoilers (1942), Useless Three Stooges Trivia

With a cast of headed by Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott and John Wayne, a bevy of great character actors and sterling production design, Universal Pictures’ production of “The Spoilers” (1942) can’t help but fail to entertain. This story of gold miners in Nome, Alaska circa 1900 is hugely entertaining, cramming comedy, romance and action, including one of the movies’ longest fist fights, in a brisk 87-minute running time.

“The Spoilers” has long been a favorite of the movies. Based on a novel by adventure writer Rex Beach, it’s been filmed many times, several times in the silent era, in 1930 with Gary Cooper, and again by Universal in 1955 with Anne Baxter, Rory Calhoun and Jeff Chandler.

There’s no great psychological shadings to the characters here, or elaborate back stories (thank God), just a lusty, brawling tale of early Alaska, where a glamorous saloon hostess (Marlene Dietrich) loves one of the miners (John Wayne) while fending off the advances of the new Gold Commissioner (Randolph Scott) who wants the gold for himself and other unscrupulous men who use the cover of the law to steal the earnings of the miners.

I’ve always loved the production design of this movie. Nome is recreated in all its grimy, muddy streeted glory, where a man gets killed in a gunfight and lands in the mad with a resounding plop. No running in the streets here, just trudging through the mud to cross the street is an ordeal in itself.

The saloon is a marvelous design too, with large spaces and plenty of room to stage the famous fistfight at the climax. Lasting almost five minutes, Wayne and Scott really go at it here, as the fight starts in Dietrich’s upstairs bedroom, moves onto the second floor balcony, makes its way down to the main floor and then outside the saloon finishing in the muddy streets. The fight is only ruined by an instance or two of camera undercranking, causing the fighters to move in fast motion.

Plus, there’s a honey of a steam engine that becomes part of the action-filled climax. Anytime trains are used as part of the action in a western earns extra points in my book.

What a supporting cast too, with each fame filled with familiar faces. There’s former Warner Bros. star Margaret Lindsay as a romantic rival for Wayne’s affections (she seems so nice and sweet, but looks can be deceiving); the sublime Harry Carey as Wayne’s partner; Richard Barthelmess as Dietrich’s employee, desperately in love with his boss; George Cleveland (the grandfather in the old “Lassie” TV show) and Russell Simpson as a couple of prospectors; Samuel S. Hinds (the father in “It’s a Wonderful Life”), as a seemingly honest judge but who is as crooked as they come; weasely Charles Halton; silent film star William Farnum (I believe he starred in one of the silent versions of “The Spoilers”), and perennial drunk Jack Norton. Norton has a drunk scene here too, but he’s only pretending to be drunk to help effect Wayne’s escape from jail. After seeing Norton play nothing but drunks in countless movies, it’s a pleasure to watch him in a heroic mode, even if it’s only a short scene.

The rousing score is by Universal staff composer Hans J. Salter, and anyone familiar with the Universal horror movies of the 1940s will recognize Salter’s style. It’s one of his best scores.

Director Ray Enright earned his stripes directing movies at Warner Bros. in the 1930s, a studio known for the pace of their movies. He learned his lessons well, as he moves the story at a speedy pace. However, there is some forced racial humor that contemporary audiences might find uncomfortable.

For action fans, “The Spoilers” is rousing entertainment.

Rating for “The Spoilers”: Three stars.

Useless Trivia Department: Kudos to Sony Pictures for finally treating The Three Stooges correctly. After years of thoughtlessly bunching up Stooge titles on VHS and DVD, they finally decided to do it right, re-mastering the Stooges shorts and releasing them in chronological order. The first volume came out several months ago, covering the years 1934-1936, and the shorts never looked better.

The other night I watched “Hoi Polloi” (1935), the first of their shorts where some well-meaning types attempt to turn the boys into gentlemen as part of an experiment.

What I found really interesting is their introductory scene, where the boys are on a street picking up garbage. It’s not the Columbia backlot, as would be expected on a short subject, but an expansive downtown somewhere in Los Angeles. A theater marquee is shown advertising Bing Crosby in “Mississippi” (1935). Now that is a Paramount movie and the Stooges made their shorts at Columbia. There was no way that Columbia studio head Harry Cohn would promote a rival’s product.

If you look at lots of old movies that have scenes with theater marquees, they always are showing the home studio product. So if “Hoi Polloi” was shot on the Columbia back lot, you can bet a theater marquee would be advertising a Columbia title. Apparently Columbia went to the expense of shooting on location for this short. Nothing earth shattering here, but I found that very interesting.