Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

This well-meaning film has not weathered well. John Ford may have thought it an interesting challenge to make a courtroom drama, but the results are awkward. It wants to tell a story, set in the military, about race and racial prejudice. And that’s honorable enough, but instead of one story it tells two, and one muddies the effect of the other.

Plot. Sgt. Rutledge (Woody Strode), a respected officer in the Ninth Cavalry, is seen leaving the scene of a rape and double murder. The victims are an officer and his daughter. Finally apprehended, the suspect is brought before a court martial. There his guilt or innocence is argued by his counsel (Jeffrey Hunter) and the prosecutor (Carleton Young). Attempting to maintain order and assure a fair trial is Col. Fosgate (Willis Bouchey), president of the court martial panel. That’s one story.

The other story, revealed in the testimony of witnesses, concerns events preceding and following the arrest. Strode has been friends with the commander’s daughter, teaching her how to jump horses. The officers’ wives, a small flock of clucking hens led by Col. Fosgate’s wife (Billie Burke), naturally disapprove of this.

After the murders, the doctor called to examine the bodies observes that it was the work of a “degenerate.” It is noted that a gold chain the rape victim was known to wear has been torn from her neck. An examination of her dead father’s gun reveals that two shots were fired.

Woody Strode, Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers

Strode is found at an isolated railway station, where he and a traveler (Constance Towers) have been under attack by a small band of renegade Apaches. During that attack, he has saved her life. It is also revealed that he has sustained a gunshot wound in his side. 

She objects when Strode is taken prisoner by Hunter and a small company of black troops who arrive some time later. As they return to the fort, they attempt to intercept the band of Apaches who have been burning ranches. Strode is allowed to ride without being handcuffed, and when the troops are attacked by the Apaches, he is permitted to carry a rifle.

Given the opportunity to escape in the confusion, he remains with his troops and, under his command, they take a stand in a firefight with the Indians, who finally retreat. To one and all he is a hero. The men sing a song to him, “Captain Buffalo.”

The two stories finally converge in the last scenes, as Strode testifies that the Ninth Cavalry has been his home and his freedom. He has proved that he’s not “a swamp runnin’ nigger.” Facing the court, he says with pride and a quiet dignity, “I’m a man.”

Endings are hard, and this one is harder than most. A gold chain and a coat with initials taken from the body of an Indian are presented as evidence by Hunter. They are plausibly challenged by the prosecutor. Then, like a Perry Mason mystery, the guilty party finally confesses on the witness stand with an implausible display of melodrama. Strode’s Sgt. Rutledge is thus exonerated.

Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers

Romance. Strode’s character is at the center of a film bearing his name, but Strode gets only fourth billing, after Hunter, Towers, and (oddly) Billie Burke. Stapled onto both of the film’s stories is a romance between Hunter and Towers. They meet on the train that delivers her to the railway station where she first encounters Strode, and Hunter falls in love with her at first sight.

Meeting up again at Strode’s arrest, the two become more acquainted. She testifies at the court martial, and when Hunter wins his case, he stops her before she leaves, to tell her she’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. This wins him a big kiss as several black troops march by with sly grins. That’s the extent of the romantic subplot.

The True Story of Jesse James (1957)

Watching this Nicholas Ray film about Jesse James, you can see Rebel Without a Cause coming around the corner. Jesse and his brother Frank were, of course, rebels with a cause, but Ray portrays them as a couple of misunderstood boys from next door.

The film actually hews fairly close to the story of Jesse (Robert Wagner) and Frank (Jeffrey Hunter). The James family were Southern sympathizers living in Missouri during the Civil War.

During that war, the population of Missouri was torn between Union and Confederate supporters. Even though Missouri had been admitted to the Union as a slave state, it tried to remain outside the conflict by remaining “neutral.”

Still, it provided material aid and sent troops to each side. Guerilla gangs sprang up, attacking Union troops. Frank and then Jesse joined them, and a continued state of civil animosity continued long after Lee’s surrender. It had been neighbor against neighbor and remained so, as we see in the film.

When the war was done, Jesse and James seem to have resumed the lives they had lived outside the law. According to the film, they take to robbing banks to “liberate” Yankee money and get themselves back on their feet financially. The film portrays Jesse as bringing the gang together for their first bank job, but history suggests that Younger and his brothers had been operating already on their own before teaming up with the Jameses.

Myth vs history. While the film simplifies and no doubt misrepresents the formation of the James-Younger gang, much is uncertain from history, and what is known is too complicated for a 90-minute movie. But there’s at least an attempt to provide coherence without venturing too far from the facts.

The Proud Ones (1956)

Robert Ryan was a helluva actor. He was especially good at portrayals of tormented men able to fly into a murderous rage. Howard Hughes put him opposite cool, unflappable Robert Mitchum in noir classics like Crossfire (1947) and The Racket (1951). He’s also good as a rogue cop in On Dangerous Ground (1952).

Here he plays a marshal in a western town, tormented again, this time by an incident he didn’t handle well in the past. He “ran away” after shooting down a man everyone believed was unarmed. Now, as chance would have it, the man’s son (Jeffrey Hunter) has shown up in town, and it’s not clear what the young man’s intentions are.

The town seems to be somewhere in Kansas in the early days of the cattle drives. The first bunches of trail cowboys are arriving, and business is already booming. Prices on consumer goods are doubling, and a big new saloon opens up with tables for gambling. The owner, Barrett (Robert Middleton) is a smiling but tough businessman and keeps a few goons on the payroll to intimidate anyone who gives him trouble.

Virginia Mayo is the feminine presence, the keeper of a hostelry. You get the idea from the staff and some asides that not so recently they were all working as prostitutes. Serving up steak and potatoes is apparently more lucrative.

Mayo is Ryan’s sweetheart, and early in the film he somewhat indirectly pops the question. Looks like she’s been waiting a long time for it. But the ring he’s bought her has to go back to the jeweler because it’s too small, which could be a bad sign. Soon after, in an exchange of gunfire in Barrett’s saloon, the marshal sustains a head wound that causes his vision to go haywire at inopportune moments. Luckily he finds a nearby frontier ophthalmologist who seems to have an uncommon knowledge of optic medicine. But the symptoms persist.

Fast forward. So that’s the set-up. And when we get to the last reel, Jeffrey Hunter has signed on as deputy, having overcome his distrust of Ryan. One of Barrett’s goons has been shot dead trying to kill Ryan. And when an altercation over some cheating at Barrett’s saloon ends in the demise of a customer, the marshal tosses three of the employees into jail.

Alas, a deputy (Walter Brennan) is killed during a daring jailbreak, and there’s a final shootout in a hay barn. The voice of reason (as women usually are in westerns), Mayo wants Ryan to come to his senses and get out of harm’s way. But he tells her, “I’m not a coward. A man can’t live a lifetime being ashamed.”