Jubal (1956)

Cover, Criterion Collection

Someone has already called this western a cowboy soap opera, so I won’t take credit for that label, though it fits. Glenn Ford is fine in this handsome Cinemascope production shot against the Teton landscape of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (Ford was pretty much fine in anything.) 

Playing the title role of Jubal Troop, he’s a cowboy down on his luck who seems unable to escape being drawn into even worse luck. Though we know little to nothing of his back-story, a history of mischance and bad breaks is etched in his expression in scene after scene.

Plot. Found afoot and freezing by a ranchman (Ernest Borgnine), Ford is offered a job as a cowhand and is quickly promoted to foreman for his work ethic and dependability. Borgnine seems to be the first person who has ever liked and trusted him, and a strong bond builds between them.

This development rubs another of the hands (Rod Steiger) the wrong way, who takes an Iago-like dislike to Ford from the start and makes no secret of it. Even more problematic is Borgnine’s unhappy wife (Valerie French), who quickly makes seductive moves on Ford, further angering Steiger, who’s been having an adulterous affair with her already.

Glenn Ford as Jubal

Though one senses a hesitancy in him, Ford resists her advances out of loyalty to Borgnine, who suspects nothing. Ford seems not to lack a sense of decency, but lonely cowboy that he is, you wonder whether he might act differently under other circumstances.

Long story short, Steiger finally turns Borgnine against Ford, and in the misunderstanding and confusion that follow, Borgnine is killed. Matters are not resolved until a posse pursues Ford and finds him at yet another death scene, where the truth of Steiger’s villainy is finally revealed.

The Man From the Alamo, 1953

This is another of those 1950s westerns with a hero who wrongly becomes a social outcast. Glenn Ford plays the role this time. Defending the Alamo, he’s a married man who draws lots with several others like himself for one of them to go look to the welfare of their families. His departure is misinterpreted as an act of cowardice, and the rest of the film portrays his attempts to recover his good name.

Plot. Discovering that he’s too late to save anyone’s family or household, including his own, he is told by a Mexican boy (Marc Cavell) that the villains were not Mexican soldiers. They were a gang of gringo guerillas.

But coming into a town, in search of someone to take in the orphaned Cavell, Ford is identified by a lieutenant in Sam Houston’s service (Hugh O’Brian) as a deserter from the Alamo. The townsfolk, including a one-armed Chill Wills, throw him in jail where he happens to share a cell with one of the gang that killed his family (Neville Brand).

Orders arrive for the women and children to evacuate the town, leaving only the able-bodied men behind to defend it. They are, however, more interested in lynching Ford. When the gang engineers a jailbreak for Brand, Ford goes along with them, though none of them trusts him either.

Chill Wills, Hugh O'Brian

The rest of the film follows the wagon train of women and children under escort of O’Brian and his troops. Transporting the bank’s deposits in one of the wagons, they become a target for the gang who plan an ambush. Ford foils the plan by warning the approaching wagon train with a gunshot, but he ends up at the bottom of a cliff, as good as dead.

Cavell, traveling with the town’s schoolteacher (Julie Adams) retrieves Ford. She, with the help of Wills, brings him back to life. The wagon train proceeds without further problem until O’Brian and his men receive orders to report for duty elsewhere. His family is on one of the wagons, and at first he refuses to leave them—which would make him a deserter like Ford, and for the same reason. How the tables turn.

He finally agrees to leave Ford in command of the wagon train. With rifles in the hands of all the women and a revolver in Wills’ one good hand, they not only repel the gang. They wipe them out completely. Ford dispatches the gang’s leader (Victor Jory) in a fierce fistfight on the brink of a precipitous waterfall.

Now exonerated, Ford heads for San Jacinto, where he will join the fight for Texas independence. As he leaves, Cavell assures Adams that Ford will be back some day, which seems to please her.

Texas (1941)

Not long after her role in Stagecoach (1939), actress Claire Trevor teamed up with newcomers William Holden and Glenn Ford for this serio-comic western. Claiming to be a history lesson, it is set in 1866 at the time of the first cattle drive from Texas to the railhead in Abilene, Kansas.

Holden and Ford were at the absolute beginnings of their careers in 1941, and they look it. Ford was 25 and Holden just 23. They play two drifters, broke and unwelcome in Kansas where we first find them, brought before a judge for stealing a pig.

Plot. Events are set in motion when Holden (fresh from his role in the fight movie Golden Boy) agrees to a boxing match with a muscled railway worker. The fight goes 40 rounds and eventually erupts in a melee involving the crowd of wagering spectators.

A week later, the two trail buddies show up in Texas, having crossed Indian Territory without seeing another living soul. They watch, admiring from afar, as a gang of bandits holds up a stagecoach and makes off with a bundle of money. Clever young men, they then rob the robbers. With a sheriff’s posse soon in pursuit, they split up.

William Holden and Glenn Ford, publicity photo for Texas

Also separated from his horse, Holden hijacks a wagon carrying Claire Trevor. In a long comical ride, she is thrown about the back of the wagon, skirts and petticoats flying. Flash forward, and Ford arrives at the very cattle ranch owned by Trevor’s father, where he quickly becomes a top hand.

Holden gets work on another ranch, where the hands turn out to be the gang of bandits he and Ford robbed earlier. Turns out they’re also a nasty bunch of cattle rustlers, and Holden finds he’s been hand-picked by their boss to join the gang. Not to be under-supplied with villains, the film also has a scheming cattle buyer (George Bancroft) and a crafty dentist played by Edgar Buchanan, whose comic delivery was surely inspired by W. C. Fields.

As if the plot were not complicated enough, Holden and Ford are reunited, and each takes a shine to Trevor. The more forward of the two cowboys, Holden has her quickly headed in the direction of the altar.

Bancroft offers to buy the Texas cattle and drive them to Kansas, but Ford persuades the ranchers they’ll make more money if they drive them there themselves. When they put together a herd of several thousand steers and head north, the villains plan to intercept them, steal the herd, and deliver it to Abilene.

But Holden has yet another scheme, this time to take advantage of Bancroft. In the end, an exchange or two of gunfire, a chase across rooftops, and a settling of scores leaves Holden dead and Ford riding off together with Trevor.

The Man From Colorado (1948)

This late 1940s western is suspicious evidence of commies at work in Hollywood. After serving as soldiers in the cavalry, Civil War veterans in this story find their gold prospecting claims lost to a big mining corporation. The owner is a hard-nosed capitalist, protected by the law, who agrees to let them work for him—but at slave wages. Several of the men angrily turn outlaw.

Caught in the middle are two men, both former Army officers, one a colonel (Glenn Ford) and the other a captain (William Holden). Ford has agreed to serve his hometown as a federal judge, and he appoints Holden as federal marshal. In another western, justice would eventually prevail and the rights of working men who had served their country would be honored.

But there’s a problem. Ford’s mental health has been compromised by his war years. In the opening scene, we see him ignore a white flag of surrender and order the bombardment of 100 Confederate soldiers. From the demented look on his face, we know he’s gone off the deep end.

Glenn Ford, Plunder of the Sun (1953)

Plot. Long friends, Ford and Holden each have their eye on the fetching Ellen Drew at war’s end. Gallant and agreeable, Holden gracefully steps aside when she decides to marry Ford. But a rift slowly develops between the two men as Ford becomes gradually more unhinged.

When the miners bring their grievances to court, Ford acting as judge, upholds the letter of the law, which favors the mining corporation. Matters escalate as two men once under Ford’s command take a gold shipment in a holdup, and one of them is captured and hanged.

A gang then forms around the surviving robber, Jericho (played by James Millican, the lawman and hero of last week’s Rimfire). They stage another armed robbery directly from the mining company’s vault, which results in the death of a company guard. The company owner, Big Ed Carter (Ray Collins), is unsatisfied by Ford’s failure to protect his interests.

Determined to see men hang, Ford strings up Jericho’s young brother, then attempts to execute several other miners, who are rescued by the gang even as the nooses are around their necks. Convinced that Ford is now off his rocker, Holden tries to contain him. But Ford sees Holden’s efforts as the betrayal of a man who secretly wants to take away his wife. He throws Holden in jail.

Edgar Buchanan, McClintock! (1963)

By now Drew has found her husband’s diary, into which he’s been pouring his tormented thoughts. With the help of the town doctor (Edgar Buchanan), they spring Holden from jail, and in their flight from town Holden takes a slug in the shoulder from the enraged Ford.

All converge on a mining camp, which Ford’s men set on fire. Ford, Holden, Jericho, and Drew meet in the street as flames rage around them. When it’s all over, Ford and Jericho have been dispatched by a collapsing building, and in a brief final scene, Holden is off to Washington to get justice for the miners, while Drew is part of the crowd of well-wishers.

Ray Collins, Citizen Kane (1941)

Themes. This is an entertaining and well-acted film, with several exciting action sequences. The post-war theme of combat soldiers returning to uncertain civilian lives is prominent, and the portrayal of big business indifferent to their welfare is another. “They’re veterans,” Carter complains, “so they can get away with anything.”

In defense of the men, Holden argues that they did not get a fair break. He blames Carter for making outlaws of them by his own greed and lack of concern for the working class. You can feel the attention of the HUAC harking westward at the sound of movie dialogue of this caliber. And it’s probably not a surprise that screenwriter Ben Maddow came to be one of the Hollywood blacklisted in the 1950s.

Another dimension of the story, unusual for a 1940s western, is the treatment of combat-related psychological disorders. Ford’s character seems to have lost all regard for human life. His condition is not what we’d recognize today as PTSD. He seems simply to have gone over to the dark side, and we’re led to believe that the war has made of him a cold-blooded murderer. Whether that’s rooted in any understanding of the psychological impact of actual combat is hard to say.

Simi Valley today (CC) King of Hearts

Wrapping up. While set entirely in Colorado, the film was shot in southern California, on ranches in Simi Valley and Chatsworth. It lacks the raw beauty of the Rockies as a backdrop, but the warm Technicolor does a lot to compensate for that. It’s a little odd seeing the usually amiable Glenn Ford in a villain’s role, but he musters a steely look in some scenes that is pretty convincing.

The Man From Colorado is currently available at amazon and netflix. Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies is the much-appreciated enterprise of Todd Mason over at Sweet Freedom.

Source: imdb.com

Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons

Coming up: Emma Ghent Curtis, The Fate of a Fool (1888)

Cowboy (1958)

This is a curious mix of a western. Based on a fictitious cowboy memoir, it’s got a good script with an uncredited, blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo. One lead role was played by a cowboy movie veteran, Glenn Ford. The other by Jack Lemmon, an otherwise gifted comic actor who in this film was, alas, a round peg in a square hole.

Cowboy is a trail-drive western that starts out a romantic comedy and then veers off into anti-romantic realism. Glenn Ford is a larger-than-life trail boss who’s just arrived in Chicago with a herd of cattle and a crew of noisy trailhands.

Lemmon plays supposedly real-life Frank Harris, who persuades Ford to take him on as one of the outfit. I say “supposedly,” as there’s little evidence that Harris ever did such a thing. In an age of Oprah-endorsed phony memoirs, this should have a ring of familiarity.

The irony is that what Harris invented (or stole) was pretty close to accurate, and the film defies many Hollywood conventions by attempting to honor that accuracy. The trailhands are not just tough but callously indifferent to each other’s welfare.

When one of them gets into trouble in a Mexican cantina, no one is willing to go help him. Determined to go to the rescue alone, Harris is stopped by the trail boss who gets rough and slings a crow bar at him. Better to lose one man than two, he argues. He’s got a herd of cattle to worry about.

Meanwhile, death on the trail is arbitrary – one man dies after some foolishness with a rattlesnake. A former lawman tells of turning in his badge after killing two drunk boys who had playfully jumped him in a dark alley. He later becomes despondent, kills a cousin after a couple drinks in a bar and then hangs himself.

Indians are observed in passing, on the move like refugees. One cowboy tells another not to worry about a calf struggling to keep up with the herd. “Leave it for the coyotes,” he says.