Bend of the River (1952)

This James Stewart and Anthony Mann western makes an interesting comparison with Meek’s Cutoff, reviewed here last week. There are many of the same elements, including a wagon train, a hired scout, Indians, and the vast unsettled terrain of Oregon.

This Oregon is a good deal more picturesque, with forests, a distant snow-covered mountain peak, and a navigable river. Like Meek, Stewart plays a man with something of a past, though he rarely speaks of it. He’s run with border raiders in Missouri and Kansas during the Civil War, the scars on his neck evidence of an encounter with vigilantes.

It’s hard to believe likable James Stewart as a former bad man. While he is always an enjoyable screen presence, this is a role more for Clint Eastwood or Sam Elliott. Actually, it’s a role for Arthur Kennedy, who is also in the film as another former bad man. We first meet him, about to be elevated at the end of a rope, and Stewart saves him without asking any questions.

Plot. The two men team up and are joined later by a third man, a gambler played handsomely by Rock Hudson. The wagon train is harassed by Shoshone, who are dispatched one by one, 1950s style, by gun and knife. The travelers are received warmly by the folks in Portland, who give them a big send-off as they head upriver by steamboat to a valley where they intend to settle.

The warm welcome quickly disappears with the discovery of gold in the vicinity. Portland turns into sin city, and the settlers’ supplier reneges on a deal to ship them cattle and food for the winter. Stewart, Kennedy, and Hudson seize the goods and set out on a long trek, first by boat and then overland, blazing a trail over a mountain pass.

They are pursued first by the supplier and his henchmen, who come to an unhappy end in a fierce firefight. Then several hired hands mutiny, and with Kennedy taking charge, there’s a change of plans. He heads the wagons instead for a mining camp, where big money has been promised for delivery of the settlers’ food and cattle.

Left behind but undaunted, Stewart pursues them, and during a shootout in the midst of a river crossing, he struggles fiercely with Kennedy, finally overpowering him and sending his body down the river. Stewart’s past becomes known, and he’s recognized as a changed man. The supply train arrives at the settlement, where Stewart gets a big thank you for his efforts and the affection of Laura whose respect he has won.

 

Mount Hood, Sandy River, Oregon

Genre conventions. Indians in this film are menacing figures, plain and simple. There’s no debate about how to deal with them. It’s kill or be killed. Bad men are the same. Many bite the dust during the film, and their deaths are treated like ball players who have fouled out of the game. We see them fall dead, and for all we know they are left where they fall.

Filmed on location in Oregon, this color film makes the most of being outdoors. There are grand vistas, and steamboat lovers will enjoy the footage of river travel. Four-horse teams exert impressive effort as they pull wagons up to mountain snowlines, where beyond them distant valleys and ranges can be seen. The music track is correspondingly grand.

Though blacks are seldom seen in westerns, this one has the dubious presence of Stepin Fetchit, who does his usual slow-witted routine, as assistant to the ship’s captain. You can imagine a mid-century audience chuckling at his coon antics and you can cringe with embarrassment.

Women are present to add a grace note of femininity. Julia Adams, in fact, is grace under pressure. Wounded by an Indian arrow to the throat, she hardly pales under the primitive conditions of frontier health care. The traditional alcoholic doctor removes the arrow and prescribes a month of bed rest, during which she gets to liking city life and takes a job as a cashier in a gambling den. Instead of taking a shine to the likes of Stewart, she shows additional bad judgment by getting chummy with Kennedy.

The Last Sunset (1961)

Start with two men in a Texas town, facing off at sunset for a gun duel. Then imagine a story about both of them that leads up to it. This one involves a cattle drive, the soon-to-be widow of the cattle owner, and a teenage charmer of a daughter. The cattle drive has Indians, bad weather, Mexican vaqueros, and three brigands with human trafficking in mind. It’s a full house.

Writers. This one was written by Dalton Trumbo, after his return to credited work, which followed over a decade of uncredited screenplays as a blacklisted Hollywood writer. The story is based loosely on a novel Sundown at Crazy Horse (1957) by Vechel Howard Rigsby.

A reading of the synopsis of the novel (found here) reveals some interesting differences. The film sets the story in Mexico, with the end of the trail on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, a far cry from the Texas-to-Wyoming trek in Howard’s novel.

Of the two men who meet at sundown in Rigsby’s novel, one is a gunman with a modified firearm to accommodate the lack of a trigger finger. A kind of Billy the Kid, he’s a devil-may-care sort, ready to sing and joke. The other man, dressed in black, is a sheriff with a warrant for the killing of his kid brother.

Smitten by the ranch owner’s wife and two young children, both men declare a temporary truce and agree to help drive the cattle to market. And so events are set in motion. 

The film. The filmmakers dress the gunman in black, slick back his hair, and give the role to Kirk Douglas. All ten fingers are intact. The man with the warrant is played by stalwart and dependable Rock Hudson. The victim of the killing, we learn, was the husband of his sister, and there were further consequences. Grief-stricken, she hanged herself.

The ranch owner’s wife is the gorgeously blonde Dorothy Malone, and her two young children have morphed into the pretty and headstrong Carol Lynley. Douglas and Malone have some history, we learn. They were teenage sweethearts. Meanwhile, her daughter, about to turn sixteen, falls head over heels for Douglas herself.

Hudson also takes a tumble. As soon as the ranch owner (Joseph Cotten) has met an untimely end during a dispute in a taverna, Hudson offers a soft shoulder to the not-very-grieving widow. Rescuing her and her daughter from three hired hands (Jack Elam, Neville Brand, James Westmoreland), who try to abduct them, Rock wins her heart.

The alliance between Douglas and Rock remains an uneasy one. Like a card game, each plays his trump cards and seems to hold the advantage for a while. When Douglas shoots an Indian, Rock saves the day by trading away cattle instead of taking on casualties in a firefight. Finding Rock and his horse sinking into quicksand, Douglas rides off at first, only to return with a rope to drag him out. We lose the horse, though.