The Lusty Men, 1952

There may be lusty men in the title of this rodeo western, but they’re no match for Susan Hayward, who more than weighs in for her own gender. She was a stormy presence in her roles on screen, both beautiful and independent. Here she coolly manages the attentions of two men, Robert Mitchum and Arthur Kennedy.

Hard to say how this script would have fared in other hands, but direction is by Nicholas Ray, who brings a psychological depth of character to his films. In company with his other notable films from the period—beginning with the noir romance They Live By Night (1949) and on through Rebel Without a Cause (1955)—this film has more in common with them than the typical western.

Plot. All the same, though set in the modern-day West, it starts out with western elements enough. Mitchum is a drifting rodeo cowboy, a past champion, who gets off the road after 18 years riding rough stock. Returning to his old home ranch, he finds it occupied by an old-timer ready to sell it for the right price to a young couple, Kennedy and Hayward.

Rodeo cowboys, Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, 1974

Kennedy gets Mitchum hired on at a nearby ranch, where he is foreman. Before long, Mitchum’s talk of rodeoing gets Kennedy eager to give it a try. With his winnings, he tells Hayward, they’ll be able to pay the asking price for the ranch a whole lot faster.

With coaching from Mitchum, Kennedy follows the circuit, and Hayward goes along for the ride. Soon the winnings begin to add up, and Kennedy is swept along by a rising wave of self-confidence. When he’s won enough to buy the ranch, he’s become addicted to the excitement and the glory. Ranch life no longer interests him.

Hayward’s patience with both men eventually runs out. When Mitchum puts the moves on her, she turns him down. It takes a fatal accident in the arena for Kennedy to see that giving his best years to the rodeo is not such a good idea after all.

Rodeo parade, Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, 1974

Noir. Shot in deep-focus black and white, with documentary-style footage of rodeo events, crowds, and parades, the film has a noir feel. Increasingly, scenes take place at night, and Ray lets the shadows reinforce the darkness that gathers around his characters.

Rodeo has its seamy side, and the film doesn’t sugarcoat that either. The “lusty” men who populate the background of the film are often seen drinking and gambling. Arthur Hunnicutt plays a washed-out rodeo cowboy full of rodeo stories and sporting the scars of a career that must have broken every bone in his body at least once. He gimps around, broke, relying on handouts from the men who remember his good old days.

Rodeo movies

I’m probably missing some, but there have been darn few movies about rodeo. Taking them one at a time, I’ll share what I can about the ones I’ve seen.

J. W. Coop (1971)

This film was written and directed by Cliff Robertson, who also plays the title character, a rough stock rider just released from serving nine years in prison. Coop has not only missed a big chunk of what might have been a prize-winning career in rodeo. He missed the 1960s, too. Walking confidently from prison in a fresh pair of Lee jeans and a black Stetson, he finds himself in a different America than the one he left.

He’s not long on the road before a peace-and-love hippie girl befriends him, introducing him to soy nuts and talk about the environment. (He’s already been stopped by a patrolman for the gross polluting old Hudson he’s driving). Hitching rides with truckers, he gets an ear full of right-wing politics and devotion to big-ticket consumer products.

Worse yet, rodeo itself has changed. Riders now “specialize” in their events, and the high-flyers literally fly their private planes between rodeos, to take in two and three a day. It’s become a big-money business. Coop gives it a shot anyway, never daunted by the odds, and we follow him on the circuit all over the Southwest.

The film was shot at actual small and regional rodeos, winding up at the National Finals in Oklahoma City. (This was before the move to Las Vegas.) Robertson got real rodeo cowboys to play themselves in the film, including Larry Mahan, who was then a World All-Around Rodeo Champion. Also Myrtis Dightman who was a Champion Afro-American Bull Rider (see above).

The rapid, telephoto montages of cowboys riding and being thrown, with a spirited music track, make rodeo seem all non-stop excitement. In reality, there are often long waits between rides, which are themselves hard to see well from the grandstand. You find yourself restlessly drifting toward the beer tent.

The movie is very much a product of its time, with Vietnam-era social comment that we also get in Easy Rider (1969), Zabriskie Point (1970), and M.A.S.H. (1970). Robertson is enjoyable as the easy-going, indomitable, small-town Texas rodeo cowboy going for the brass ring – all the way until the last reel, where reality finally catches up with him.

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.