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 Professionals (1966)

This popular film from the mid-1960s put together three big stars along with Woody Strode as a kind of A-Team sent into Mexico to retrieve a kidnapped wife. Lee Marvin, an artillery expert, leads the group. Burt Lancaster is a dynamiter. At one time, both fought with the revolutionary forces (there were several, Villa, Zapata, and others). Both have become disillusioned and a bit cynical.

Robert Ryan is the horse wrangler, and Woody Strode is skilled at archery. All these actors have lengthy western credits. Writer-director Richard Brooks was better known for dramas like Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. The following year, he’d hit a homerun with In Cold Blood. But he seems right at home with this western adventure.

The structure of this film is almost exactly like Garden of Evil (1954), reviewed here. There’s a perilous journey by a small group of men who perform a mission and then return to safety with a band of adversaries in hot pursuit. A woman joins them, but this time only on the return trip.

Like that movie, most of the action takes place outdoors – about 95%. This time, it’s the arid terrain of northern Mexico, where it’s hot in the day and cold at night. There are desert, rocks, sand, and slot canyons. A movie like this makes the frontier town settings of a film like The Proud Ones, reviewed here last time, hardly qualify as westerns.

The film was, in fact, not shot in Mexico but in Death Valley and Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.