The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959)

History remembers Bat Masterson as a buffalo hunter, U S. marshal, and Army scout, gambler, gunfighter, frontier lawman, and in later years as a newspaper columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph. The movies and TV remember him somewhat differently, though this western with Joel McCrea as Bat actually works in some factual details from his years in the Old West. Still, the difference between the two Bats is well represented by photos of both. You just have to look at their hats (see below).

The Gunfight at Dodge City parallels Bat’s time in the infamous cow town of the same name, during the years 1877 – 1879. There he joined a brother, Ed Masterson, who was town marshal.

Plot. The movie takes those few details and spins a story that casts Bat as a reluctant champion of justice against a corrupt sheriff (Don Haggerty) and his gang of deputized thugs, who run Dodge City and kill anyone who interferes with them. 

Joel McCrea as Bat Masterson

McCrea partners with the widow (Nancy Gates) of an uncooperative saloon owner the gang has removed from among the living. Reopening the saloon, he hires on the town doctor (John McIntire) as a card dealer, happy to have some diversion from patching up cowboys with accidental gunshot wounds from the weekly Saturday night hurrah in the streets.

Running as a reform candidate against Haggerty for county sheriff, Ed Masterson (Harry Lauter) is shot dead by an unknown assailant, and McCrea is persuaded to take his place on the ticket. Elected by a grateful citizenry, he gets unruly cowboys in line by cracking heads with his gun barrel and threatening to shoot anyone who still wants to run riot. His method brings to mind the brand of law enforcement usually associated with Wyatt Earp.

Bat Masterson as himself, 1879

As the story unfolds, complications multiply, none of them having to do with historical facts, though they would suffice. Bat was not all that careful about the company he kept or how he used public office.

Romance. With a nod to legend, if not history, the film begins with a flashback to a shooting in which Bat kills an Army sergeant who draws on him in a dispute over a girl. And the screenwriters quickly establish him as good with a gun and a ladies man. Besides the attractive widow and business partner in Dodge City, Bat enjoys the company of a preacher’s daughter (Julie Adams). Betrothed to Bat’s brother, Ed, before he is killed, she is understandably taken aback by Bat’s attentions. She admits to being afraid of him.

Long story short, Gates finally makes known what’s long been obvious to us—Bat has stolen her heart. Unable to keep him from his final gun duel with Haggerty, she hears him deliver the usual reason why a western hero does not run from a gunfight. Not running, McCrea tells her, is the difference between a rabbit and a man. By this time they have locked lips and, when it’s the other man who dies, McCrea is surrounded again by grateful citizens, and he gets his new sweetheart, too.

Joel McCrea, Nancy Gates

Wrapping up. The film was shot in Cinemascope and Technicolor, and was handsomely produced using Melody Ranch as a stand-in for Dodge City. Working in a variety of genres including film noir and sci-fi, director Joseph M. Newman is also remembered for another Joel McCrea western, Fort Massacre (1958), as well as The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Pony Soldier, and Red Skies of Montana, all of them in 1952.

John McIntire is particularly enjoyable in the film as the town doctor and friend of Bat. In 1959 he had already appeared as a continuing character in TV’s cop drama, Naked City. In a screen career that included roles in many westerns, he continued on TV for long runs of Wagon Train (1959 – 1965) and The Virginian (1967 – 1970). 

The screenwriters were Martin Goldsmith (Fort Massacre) and Dan Ullman, whose numerous writing credits for film and TV included many westerns, such as Good Day For a Hanging (1959), reviewed here a while ago.

The Gunfight at Dodge City is currently available online at youtube, and on DVD at amazon and Barnes&Noble. For more Overlooked movies and TV, click over to Todd Mason’s blog, Sweet Freedom.

Tweet

Further reading:

BITS review of Richard Wheeler’s Masterson

Image credits:

Photo of Bat Masterson, Wikimedia Commons

Joel McRae as Bat Masterson, mgm.com

Coming up: Carol Buchanan, Gold Under Ice

Fort Massacre (1958)

Joel McCrae plays a twisted cavalry officer in this dark 1950s western. Not used to seeing McCrae play an anti-hero, I was surprised that he’s so convincing in the role. A sergeant and the highest-ranking officer after a deadly encounter with Apaches, he takes command of what’s left of a platoon.

Orders are to join up with the main column of company troops, but besides bloodthirsty Apaches intent on doing damage to them, he has to deal with the open hostility of his own men. They regard him as dangerously overtaken by his hatred of the Apaches, who were the cause of his wife and children’s deaths.

Plot. The men and horses are in desert country, and their first need is water. One of McCrae’s men (John Russell) and an Indian scout (Anthony Caruso) find a waterhole, but it’s already occupied by a war party of 50 Apaches. Over the objections of his men, McCrae leads them in an attack to seize the waterhole, which wipes out the Apaches and takes out a few of his own.

Two soldiers join them, having escaped a massacre of another company, which brings their number to eleven. Then they come upon a trader and his unpleasant wife, who do business in furs and contraband with the natives. Their single customer refuses to be taken captive and dispatches the platoon’s scout before escaping, which brings the number down to ten.

Trusting that more Apaches are in hot pursuit, they overnight at a fort-like pueblo ruin. “Fort Massacre,” one of the men mutters. Inside, they find an old, English-speaking Piute and his granddaughter, who have taken shelter.

As the Apache band arrives, McCrae and his men go into hiding. The Piutes manage to convince the Apaches that the white men have gone. They are about to leave when McCrae, unable to resist his murderous urges, opens fire. It’s another massacre, and all of the soldiers are killed as well, except for himself and Russell.

The Piute, a Christianized Indian by his own account, is appalled by McCrae’s actions and says he’s off to the fort to tell the Army the truth of what happened. Russell has remained indifferent to McCrae’s command throughout the film, but he draws the line here when McCrae raises his rifle to kill the old Piute. McCrae gets a fatal round from Russell instead.

Stranger on Horseback (1955)

The French may not make westerns, but this western by French-born director Jacques Tourneur shows a bit of Gallic sensibility. Shot in all of 18 days in Mexico and Arizona, it features fine performances by Joel McCrae and John McIntire. It also captures the desert West in warmly muted Ansco Color, a process developed by Agfa in Germany.

The script was based on an early story by Louis L’Amour. While the rest of the characters are chiefly recognizable genre stereotypes, McCrae’s circuit judge Richard Thorne is something of an original. He’s so original that his job has to be explained at the beginning of the film.

Unlike the dark, mysterious presence of a central character like Sam Elliott’s frontiersman in L'Amour's The Quick and the Dead, McCrae is squarely on the sunny side of law and due process. We first see him riding his horse while reading a law book. Arriving in town, he is business-like and resolute in carrying out his duties, even if it means inquiring into a killing by the son of a local cattle baron.

John McIntire is the crusty, blustering ranch owner, who also owns the town. Rather than the two-dimensional heavy often portrayed in westerns, McIntire is more complex. He’s an intelligent man, and his offer of hospitality is genuine. He also recognizes McCrae’s judge as someone not easily intimidated, whose strength comes from the force of the law he represents, not the six-gun.

Kevin McCarthy is the arrogant and over-confident son of the powerful McIntire, never wiping the lop-sided sneer from his face. But it’s a niece, played by the Czech-born actress Miroslava, who has McIntire’s real admiration. Fearless and good with a gun, she rides an uncertain line between loyalty to the family and her growing respect for the handsome circuit judge.

Saguaro (CC) Bernard Gagnon

Its story told in little more than an hour, Stranger on Horseback is no B-western. It deftly manages a large cast of characters, including a garrulous Southern lawyer (John Carradine), a second woman (Nancy Gates), her gunsmith father, and the town banker. Republic Pictures veteran and comic actor Emmett Lynn plays a wonderful town drunk, and Emile Meyer is enjoyable as the town marshal, glad to help McCrae take on McIntire and his henchmen.

The film is interesting for its lack of violence. Advocating rule by law, as it does, physical conflict and gunfire seldom result in more than a bloody nose or broken windows. In one scene, a cowboy asking for trouble gets tossed by McCrae into a horse trough. When a gun is drawn, it’s to fire a warning shot or to persuade a reluctant law-breaker to go directly to jail.

The obligatory shoot out comes at the climax of the film as McIntire and his men apprehend McCrae, who is escorting murder suspect McCarthy to the next town for a jury trial. By now McCarthy has caused the death of another man, and Miroslava has switched her allegiance to McCrae.

Instead of resolving the confrontation with a bloodbath, the story has McIntire call the gun battle to a halt and permit his son to face justice in a court of law. And the film ends not with a kiss, a ride into the sunset, or even the killing of the villain McCarthy. In the moments before the last fade out, McCrae enters a courtroom and opens the trial of “the people vs. Tom Brannerman.” We never discover the trial’s outcome. The film’s point about law and order has been made.

The original negatives of this film were lost, we are told, and the version currently available on DVD was restored by the British Film Institute. It can be found at amazon and netflix. Tuesday's Overlooked Films is the much-appreciated enterprise of todd Mason over at Sweet Freedom.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Coming up: Women writers and the early western

Buffalo Bill (1944)

This western biopic is a happy mixture of historical fact and Hollywood formula. It is faithful to enough of William F. Cody’s life story to surprise you. But the complexities of the man and his times have been trimmed to fit into a tidy plot meant to suit its 1940s audience.

Characters. Cowboy actor Joel McCrea plays the man himself. Bill already has his credentials as buffalo hunter and Army scout when he first appears, like the Lone Ranger, to rescue the passengers of a stagecoach under attack by Indians. There, as the dust settles, he is introduced to Louisa Frederici (Maureen O’Hara), a senator’s daughter who takes an instant liking to him.

In short order we meet the effusive Ned Buntline (Thomas Mitchell), Indian chief Yellow Hand (Anthony Quinn), Sgt. Chips McGraw (Edgar Buchanan), and Dawn Starlight (Linda Darnell). She is an Indian woman who speaks fluent English, has excellent cursive penmanship, and somehow has a job teaching white children at the fort.

While the whites in the film are almost universally of the opinion that the only good Indian is a dead one, Buffalo Bill could teach a course in diversity. “Indians are good people if you leave them alone,” he asserts. Louisa gets into the spirit and tries to befriend Dawn Starlight by playing dress-up, but her cross-cultural efforts fall flat. 

Plot. Alas, the War Department and the politicians don’t take Bill’s advice. Promises are broken and the Cheyenne and Sioux organize a full-scale pushback. Before long, Bill is scouting for the cavalry and engaged in a furious and epic battle. On foot and fighting mano-a-mano in the flowing waters of a river, he kills Yellow Hand. Dawn Starlight also meets an untimely end.

Now married to Louisa and already a father, Bill gets pushback on the home front as well. She wants a stay-at-home husband, not someone who chases Indians for the Army. They split up, and she goes back East. They are reunited, but only briefly, when he learns that their first-born is dying of diphtheria.

Invited to Washington to receive a Congressional Medal for his services to the Army, Bill uses the opportunity to voice his complaints about War Department policies on the frontier. He takes on the financiers and profiteers and, before you know it, is being swift-boated in the press and getting boos in public. He quickly descends to playing a caricature of himself on a wooden horse in an amusement arcade.

There Louisa finds him and rescues him from ignominy, and his old friend Ned Buntline gives him the idea of a Wild West show. If the East will not go to the West, he says, bring the West to the East. There follows a montage of riders under a circus tent, entertaining audiences including Queen Victoria and a grinning Teddy Roosevelt exclaiming, “Bully!” Meanwhile, impresario Bill turns gray and ages before our eyes. And a voice-over narrator celebrates his show’s message of freedom, adventure, and fair play. In the final shot, Bill salutes the crowd and rides off into history.

Four Faces West (1948)

This is the film based on Eugene Manlove Rhodes’ novel Pasó Por Aquí, first published in 1926. In that novel, a young man robs a storekeeper and while on the run finds a Mexican family dying of diphtheria in an isolated cabin. He nurses them back to health and is found there by Pat Garrett.

The film is an interesting example of how a story that originates in print is bent to fit the expectations of a Hollywood audience. You can begin with the title. It morphs from Spanish to English, and it’s not even an attempt at translation. Meanwhile, Four Faces West is a generic title that doesn’t fit the story. There are several possible combinations of four characters in the film, and they’re all heading south, not west.

The hero. Made today, the film would star a younger actor as the central character, Ross McEwen. Which would be a lot closer to what Rhodes had in mind. His McEwen has a young man’s impulsiveness and high-risk resourcefulness. He robs the storekeeper because he needs the money, but he throws it all away when the posse is about to nab him. That he has the moral integrity to stop and help this sick family has to come as a surprise.

Joel McCrae’s portrayal is more in keeping with a 1940s Hollywood cowboy stereotype. At 43, McCrae plays him as a sincere guy, down on his luck. He robs a bank to get a $2000 “loan” to send to his father. We are to recognize him as a basically good man driven to a desperate act. Later, when he wins money playing cards, he wants to begin repaying the “loan.”

The film’s outcome depends on whether he stops running from the law and turns himself in. This would prove that he’s not a coward and not a criminal. In Rhodes story, on the other hand, he’s already proven this by giving up his run for the border to save the Mexican family.

He has no further debt to pay society, and Pat Garrett as the moral center in the story, recognizes this. While the film ends with Garrett (Charles Bickford) taking McEwen into custody, the original story ends with the two men gathering firewood together and not acknowledging each other’s true identity. A nurse from the East learns that this is the way of the West.

Romance. Hollywood likes a love story, and the writers have injected one here. The nurse Jay (called Fay in the movie) who appears only at the beginning and end of Rhodes novel, becomes a central character in the screen version. She is played by Frances Dee, Joel McCrae’s wife in real life. Bitten by a rattlesnake before jumping on a train bound for El Paso, McEwen is treated by Fay. And the screenwriters have them travel to Alamogordo together.

Along the way, she gets to like him but begins to suspect that he is the man wanted for bank robbery. There’s a big reward out for his capture, dead or alive. In true Hollywood style, his attraction to her keeps him from hurrying on to safety in Mexico. He stops for a time in Alamogordo, but Pat Garrett and the rest of the posse eventually track him there.

The Virginian (1946)

I wrote last time about Bill Pullman’s remake of The Virginian for TV in 2000. This is a look back at a previous version with all-around cowboy actor Joel McCrae as the Virginian and Sonny Tufts as his friend Steve. Conceived as a colorful family picture, with elements of light-hearted comedy and a few dark shadowy elements, the film has hardly a hint of historical accuracy. Medicine Bow, in 1880s Wyoming territory, which Wister describes as no better than squalid, appears here with all the generic splendor of your standard back-lot street of western storefronts.

Pullman’s version of Medicine Bow is closer to reality – a haphazard and raw scattering of wooden structures with lots of space between them. There are few signs of life, unlike the bustling frontier towns frequently found in 1940s and 50s Hollywood westerns. The realism stops there, however, as the open areas are grass-covered rather than rutted and dusty or ankle-deep in mud.

Wister created an even more sordid picture in the novel – with the added detail of trash-strewn areas where residents and cowboys tossed away their empty tin cans and other refuse. He also describes a communal wash-up stand outside the town’s eating establishment, where a single towel is provided each day. It is filthy with use long before the day is well started. Men in the flop-house hotel sleep two to a bed – while beds last. The narrator has to make do with sleeping on the counter of a general store, and counts himself lucky.