Western movie themes

A change of pace today at BITS—a baker’s dozen of western movie and TV themes. Click through on any of the titles and give a listen at YouTube. Feel free to mention any you would add to the list.

High Noon, Tex Ritter

The Magnificent Seven

3:10 to Yuma, Frankie Laine

Rio Lobo

My Darling Clementine

Red River

The Hanging Tree

The Lone Ranger

Have Gun Will Travel

Gunfight at the OK Corral, Frankie Laine

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

El Dorado

For this week’s posting of Overlooked Movies and TV, click on over to Todd Mason’s blog, Sweet Freedom.

Tweet

Image credit:

High Noon poster, Wikipedia

Coming up: TBD

B. M. Bower, Jean of the Lazy A (1915)

Jean and Lite

This was B. M. Bower’s 15th novel, and like her The Phantom Herd a year later, it draws on her knowledge of the movie business. Sixteen-year-old Jean Douglas, the title character, is a no-nonsense daughter of a Montana rancher, Aleck Douglas, who in the opening chapters is wrongly found guilty of murder and sent to prison. With the help of a ranch hand, Lite Avery, she spends the rest of the novel finding the real killer.

Help also comes in the form of a movie company from Hollywood, which hires her as the stunt double for the leading lady of an action-packed western. Able to ride, rope, and shoot with ease, Jean also contributes ideas for making the film more realistic. Before long she is dreaming up scenarios for a Perils-of-Pauline style serial, with herself in the starring role.

The Invaders (1912)

Francis Ford, 1919

Here is another Thomas Ince production (see the recent BITS review of his 1919 film with William S. Hart, Wagon Tracks). A short, 40-minute western, The Invaders tells a familiar story of U.S. Cavalry vs. Indians on the frontier.

The film is notable for its direction by Francis Ford, elder brother of John Ford. While active behind the camera during the silent era, with 177 directing credits, Francis worked chiefly as a film actor in Hollywood. IMDb lists a phenomenal total of nearly 500 on-screen appearances in mostly uncredited roles during 1909 – 1953.

Plot. The story concerns the breaking of a treaty with the Sioux, who are promised that settlers will be prevented from entering their lands. Trouble quickly ensues as a party of surveyors arrives to take topographical measurements for a transcontinental railway.

In a parallel plot thread, we learn that the Sioux chief’s daughter, Sky Star (Ann Little), is being courted by a member of the tribe, who attempts to trade for her with a gift of horses. Her father is happy with the deal, but she is not. Before long, one of the surveyors, who spies her in his scope, takes an amorous interest in her.

The Luck of Roaring Camp (1917)

Bret Harte

Based on a story by Bret Harte, this short silent film tells of prospectors in a California mining settlement, who adopt the infant son of a woman who has died in childbirth. They take the boy’s arrival as a turn in their luck, which has not been good, and they welcome him with a shower of gifts.

Three years later, according to the film, a vengeful “half-breed” attempts to kidnap the boy but is stopped by a gambler, Oakhurst (Ivan Christy). Seeing the gambler being held at gunpoint, one of the miners shoots the villainous abductor. 

Rescuing the boy, they find him playing with gold nuggets he has discovered on the ground around him—the camp’s luck now unexpectedly improved. (Harte ends the story more melodramatically with a flood that takes the boy’s life—the camp’s luck turned instead for the worst.)

What to look for. The clip of the film below includes the gift-giving scene, as the prospectors comically drop items in a hat, including spurs and a pint of whiskey. The following scene is shot in snow-covered woods along a stream where the men are placer mining. 

Director Floyd France makes the most visually of the location, contrasting the vertical lines of the trees with the diagonal flow of the stream and his actors’ movements over and across downhill slopes.  A product of Thomas Edison’s film production company, the movie is striking for its use of snow, a notable difference from the sunbaked and dusty images coming from studios in California.

With quick cross-cutting, the story follows several threads of action: (1) Oakhurst’s walk through the woods, turning suspensefully at times when he seems to hear something, (2) the miners working in the stream, (2) the boy being stalked by the kidnapper. With intercutting from several different angles, the editing produces a good deal of tense excitement.

Wrapping up. The Luck of Roaring Camp had been produced once before by the Thomas Edison film company in 1910, directed by Edwin S. Porter, who is best remembered for his early film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), often considered the first western. For more Overlooked movies and TV, click over to Todd Mason’s blog, Sweet Freedom.

 Tweet

Further reading/listening:

Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

Read

Listen

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons

Coming up: TBD

Ruth Roland, The Sheriff of Stone Gulch (1913)

Ruth Roland

Ruth Roland (1892-1937), along with Pearl White, was the queen of the early movie serials. She came from a show business family, and had been a child vaudeville performer when she began a movie career at Kalem Studios in 1909. Over the following two decades, she appeared in more than 200 films and was especially good in westerns and comedies.

In 1915 she had the lead role in a 14-episode adventure serial titled The Red Circle (a birthmark, on the hand of the heroine, noticeable only in times of stress and excitement, forces her to steal, leading to multiple complications and intrigue). After the success of this series, she formed her own production company, making six more multi-episode serials that also proved to be moneymakers. She continued in the movie business until 1930, when she made the first of two talkies before retiring from the screen.

In the following one-reeler, she plays the sweetheart of a man (Pat Hartigan) wrongly involved in a robbery. Her father (Vincente Howard) is the sheriff of the film’s title, and her sweetheart—with a little help from her—has to act fast to clear himself of the crime.

B. M. Bower, The Phantom Herd (1916)

Novels about the early days of western movies are few and far between. B. M. Bower more than makes up for that in this story of a Hollywood filmmaker, much like William S. Hart (see this week’s BITS review of his Wagon Tracks).

In Bower’s novel, director Luck Lindsay wants to make a film about the real West of the open range days, not the shoot-em-up “bunk” currently being released to the public. As Luck explains:

            For film purposes, the West consists of one part beautiful maiden in distress, three parts bandit, and two parts hero. Mix these to taste with plenty of swift action and gun-smoke, and serve with bandits all dead or handcuffed and beautiful maiden and hero in lover’s embrace on top. That’s your West, boys – And how well I know it!

Scenes, he complains, are shot on cheaply built sets and in scenery no grander than nearby Griffith Park.

Plot. Luck has a script for a feature-length film about real cowboys herding cattle and invites the cowhands from the Flying U ranch in Montana to be his cast, but the studio turns down his script and puts them all to work on another western instead, which they trash by making a farce of it. Thoroughly enjoyed by the usually jaded viewers in the studio screening room, there’s little doubt it will be a moneymaker with the public.

William S. Hart, Wagon Tracks (1919)

Thomas Ince. When he came to Los Angeles from New York in 1911, Thomas Ince (1882-1924) was a 29-year-old actor and aspiring filmmaker. He was hired on by the Bison Life Motion Picture Company to make one-reeler westerns. The Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West show was wintering in Venice, California, when he arrived. Ince hired them, and in one stroke had himself an entire stock company. Next he acquired an acreage in the Santa Monica Mountains for shooting pictures.

Production expanded to the making of two-reelers, the first of them War on the Plains (1912). In Ince’s hands, the scope of the western expanded as well. He wanted to portray the drama of westward expansion and in particular its impact on the native populations. He had empathy for what he saw as the tragedy of the red man. It was an attitude he would share with William S. Hart, a fellow actor he had known in New York.

William S. Hart. In 1914 actor William S. Hart (1864-1946) joined Ince’s company to make westerns of his own. By this time, the market was already becoming glutted with westerns, and Ince had lost interest in them. But he let Hart make two two-reelers, The Bargain (1914) and On the Night Stage (1915). Both did well at the box office, and at the age of 40 Hart began a career as a cowboy actor in the movies.

Hart is often given credit for bringing a depth of new realism to the western. But film historian Jon Tuska argues that Hart’s western setting is little more than a backdrop for a morality drama. We get an example of that in his feature-length film Wagon Tracks, released in 1919.

The Big Trees (1952)

Kirk Douglas once said, “I've made a career of playing sons of bitches.” The role he plays in this western is one of them.

Plot. Here he plays a lumberman in 1900 who takes advantage of a new federal law that permits him to legally jump timber claims in California. There he has his eye on the old growth giant redwoods. And nothing stands in his way but a religious community of Quakers, who regard themselves as stewards and protectors of the trees.

Spokesperson for the community is one of the faithful, a woman (Eve Miller) who attempts to persuade Douglas to harvest as much of the forest as he wants but to save the beloved sequoias. He is in no mood to make a deal until he has to fend off the schemes of determined competitors, and only then does he reluctantly come around.

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