The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

A frequent complaint about westerns is that there are few strong roles for women. Katie Elder, the title character of this John Wayne film would be an exception, except for the fact that she is dead. Her four sons, as the film begins, are gathering for her funeral. As they talk about her, we learn that she overcame all manner of adversities and obstacles and remained proud of her offspring, despite the fact that they have done little to deserve her high regard.

Wayne, the eldest, has a reputation as a gunslinger. One brother (Dean Martin), is a gambler and wanted for murder. The other two (Earl Holliman, Michael Anderson, Jr.) have yet to make a mark in the world, though Anderson refuses to get the college education his mother wanted for him and intends instead to follow in Wayne’s adventuring footsteps.

Rawhide (1951)

Here’s another Henry Hathaway film with Susan Hayward. Like Garden of Evil (1954) it was also filmed entirely on location, this time in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California.

This was one of Susan Hayward’s first big films. Glamorous and tough, she demonstrates again that she can hold her own in a roomful of men without being shrill, hysterical, or totally off-putting. Not given to warmth or smiles, she’s no ice queen either. She’s got time for a male who’s man enough for her, but it’s been a while since one of those came along. That’s the situation in Rawhide anyway.

Aristotle would have approved of the film’s structure. It takes place in 24 hours, and there’s a single setting, a remote relay station on the mail run between San Francisco and St. Louis. There’s an eastbound stage in the morning and a westbound stage at night. Young and handsome Tyrone Power and his grizzled boss (Edgar Buchanan) man the station, providing a cooked meal for passengers and crew, and a team of six fresh mules for the coach.

Hayward, in a hurry to get to St. Louis, is told she has to get off the stage because there is a band of escaped prisoners on the loose. They’ve already robbed one coach and killed the driver. Company rules require her to stay behind because she’s traveling with a small child. Before long, the escaped prisoners show up, and the three adults and child are taken hostage. The rest of the film is about how they get themselves out of this situation alive.

Garden of Evil (1954)

The more I watch old westerns, the more I appreciate that they were made for grownups. The kids in the audience were there to learn, not to be entertained. If they paid attention, they’d learn how adult men and women behaved, for better or worse. There was excitement at appropriate intervals – for the kid in everyone – but the meaning of what came in between was chiefly for the adults, and for kids to ponder.

Garden of Evil is maybe a strange name for a western. But given to a story of how greed, self-interest, and sexual desire get people into trouble, it is not far off the mark. The set-up is simple. A woman enlists the help of four men to rescue her husband, who is trapped in a gold mine deep in the mountains of Mexico.

The men have been set ashore indefinitely after their ship founders on its way to the gold fields of California. There’s Gary Cooper, a man of few words who reveals only that he’s been a sheriff. There’s a talkative gambler, played by Richard Widmark, who befriends him.

Tagging along is an impulsive and quick-tempered younger man played by Cameron Mitchell. Joining them is a tall, dark, and handsome hombre played by Mexican actor Victor Manuel Mendoza. He and Cooper converse in Spanish, and with your Spanglish you can easily follow along. (The ubiquitous Whit Bissell was apparently not available for this film.)

The woman (Susan Hayward) packs a pistol and means business. She is Anne Baxter’s counterpart all over again (see my review of Yellow Sky), better dressed but holding her own against a tag team of men. When the Mexican hombre secretly leaves marks along the trail to the gold mine, she gets rid of them. When the “youngster” makes a pass at her, she puts up a good fight.

Risk factors. A real test of everyone’s mettle comes early in the trip as they ride a narrow trail along the face of a cliff. It’s unnerving enough for someone with acrophobia like me, but they have to leap their horses across a place where the ledge has fallen away completely. That’s where I would have turned back. But nobody does.

The risk factor is ramped up by the presence of “hostiles,” referred to as Apaches in the film. There’s not much evidence that Apaches ventured this far into subtropical Mexico, so you may have trouble taking this as seriously as the film’s characters. But no one seems to have told the Apaches. They eventually show up anyway. And wearing Mohawk haircuts.

The DVD commentary notes that the original script, called The Fifth Rider, was set in Arizona. Then Darryl F. Zanuck decided that Mexico would make a more picturesque location for a widescreen western. The Apaches seem to have come along for the ride.