The Wild Bunch (1969)

Preview audiences reportedly were roused by such strong reactions to this film that many left the theater in protest. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch immediately won a reputation for its graphic violence. Because of or in spite of that, it quickly found a place on most western fans’ top 10 list. Over 40 years later, it remains a powerful and absorbing story.

Plot. Part of the impact of the story is its simplicity. Without a lot of twists and turns, it follows a gang of thieves led by William Holden from a failed railroad robbery to a successful one and then on to their deaths. In a parallel subplot, they are followed into Mexico, where most of the story takes place, by a raggedy group of hired guns, led by Robert Ryan.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s 1913 or thereabouts, and Mexican federal troops are fighting a losing battle against revolutionaries led by Pancho Villa. Holden and his gang (Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Jaime Sanchez) agree with a Mexican general to steal a shipment of arms from a train just north of the border. The train is guarded by a contingent of U.S. soldiers.

William Holden

A half hour in the middle of the film is a hold-your-breath portrayal of the train robbery and an escape with the guns across the border, Ryan and the troopers in hot pursuit. The sequence is beautifully shot and edited, with moments of both nail-biting suspense and comedy.

Character. With over two hours at its disposal, the film has time to thoroughly explore its characters, and it does. We first see the members of the gang disguised as cavalrymen. In Mexico, they gradually shed the uniforms and dress as very different individuals. From a distance you can tell them apart by the hat each has found to wear.

William Holden is especially strong as Pike Bishop (wasn’t there a famous Bishop Pike in the 1960s?), a man of easy stature who happens to be an outlaw. By the way he carries himself, you can see he has the intelligence and the experience to command this group of men. He seldom needs to raise his voice, but when he does, it keeps them in line.

Without question, he is the most admirable man in the film. His leadership of the gang is both firm and fair. When Johnson and Oates want to cut Sanchez’s share of the take, because he’s young and Mexican, Holden sets them straight. The deal was equal shares for everybody, period.

Robert Ryan

By comparison, Harrigan the railroad man (Albert Dekker), is a cheap bastard who hires Ryan to bring in Holden’s gang, but hamstrings him with the support of incompetents. The townsfolk are a pious bunch of temperance advocates. The U.S. Army troops are no more than unseasoned and disorganized young recruits. The Mexican general is a drunken, womanizing despot, and his men are no better.

Sympathy, where there is any in the film, goes to the poor villagers who are at the mercy of the Mexican federales. And we are meant to sympathize with Ryan. He and Holden are former partners in crime. Saddled with an impossible job, Ryan is threatened with being sent back to Yuma prison if he fails. From the look on his face, we know that his respect for Holden gives him feelings that are more than mixed.

Evil. Peckinpah’s wild bunch is not so much wild as they are simply day-by-day survivors in a dark and amoral world. In the opening scenes, a gathering of small boys and girls watches with fascination as two scorpions are being tormented by a swarm of ants. Far from being sweetly innocent, they’re shown as happily participating in human cruelty. 

The Horse Soldiers, 1959

John Ford gave western fans a version of the Civil War in this film starring John Wayne and William Holden. At two hours, it’s an entertaining film without being over-ambitious. And without exactly doing justice to the subject, it manages to tell its story in a way that does not discredit either the Union or the Confederacy.

You realize watching it that there have been few movies about the Civil War since Gone with the Wind (1939). While the U.S. Army fighting Indians was for a long time standard fare on the screen, seeing those same soldiers shooting at other white Americans is something else again.

Ford chose wisely when he picked the novel The Horse Soldiers by Harold Sinclair (1907-1966). The book was based on Grierson’s Raid in 1863, during which 17,000 Union troops traveled from Tennessee across Mississippi to Union-held Baton Rouge doing damage to Confederate infrastructure.

Plot. There are three engagements in the film, one as a trainful of armed men attempts to defend the town of Newton’s Station. A charge down the main street into withering gunfire leaves many casualties. A makeshift hospital is organized to tend to the wounded, with the help of a local doctor. Meanwhile, the Union soldiers’ destruction of the town’s rail line is sobering in its thoroughness.

Willian Holden and Constance Towers

Following that, the boys of a military academy attempt a courageous though foolhardy attack on the Union troops. It’s a relief when the soldiers react in disbelief and then make a quick retreat before any lives are lost. Finally, at the end of the film, an outnumbered contingent of Confederate soldiers attempts gamely to prevent the Union troops from crossing a bridge.

Most of the conflict in the film, however, is between the colonel (John Wayne) and an Army surgeon (William Holden). They are at cross-purposes from the first scene in which they meet. Wayne was a civil engineer for the railroad before the war; Holden was a graduate of West Point. Just about everything separates them, from class to temperament.

Amplifying the conflict is Constance Towers as a Southern belle, who happens to overhear Wayne’s plans to strike across enemy territory to Baton Rouge. To keep her from telling anyone what she knows, Wayne is forced to take her and her maid along. Her presence is a constant source of irritation to him.

Before all is said and done, she begins to have a change of heart about him. She seems sorry to see him go as she and Holden stay behind with the wounded, to be overtaken by the Confederate troops who are on their trail. Glad to be finally rid of her, Wayne makes a courteous but not unhurried exit. There’s no kissing.

Escape From Fort Bravo, 1953

There’s a great story, spectacular photography, and some real suspense in this Fifties western filmed in Death Valley, California. The year is 1863 and the Fort Bravo of the title is an Army stockade in the Arizona desert. It’s being used as a prison camp for captured Confederate soldiers.

Plot. William Holden is captain of the fort's troop and second in command. We first see him riding in with an escaped prisoner, who is on foot and at the end of a rope. Holden is a cold man and carries out his duties with a machine-like authority. Besides enduring the contempt of the prisoners, he has Mescalero Indians to worry about. They burn supply wagons and torture the drivers before leaving them to die under the desert sun.

Holden’s reserve begins to melt when Eleanor Parker arrives at the fort to attend the wedding of the Colonel’s daughter. Little does he know that she’s there to help a Confederate captain (John Forsythe) make an escape. Parker does some heavy flirting with Holden, who in a matter of days begins putting the pressure on her to marry him. But when she disappears with Forsythe and two other prisoners, Holden discovers he’s been fooled.

Eleanor Parker, John Forsythe

The escaped prisoners don’t get far. Holden and a lieutenant catch up with them, and all head back to the fort. But before long, they are surrounded by more Mescaleros than you can count. Pinned down in a shallow depression, they withstand wave after wave of attacks by the Indians.

The prisoners are given arms, and fight side by side with Holden. But they can dodge arrows only for so long, as one by one the casualties accumulate. Eventually, the cavalry shows up to rescue them, and Forsythe’s character dies, leaving Holden and Parker to patch up.

Four stars. Cinematographer Robert Surtees gets credit for the fine look of this widescreen film shot in Ansco Color. The location photography is pretty breathtaking. The exterior scenes shot on the sound stage, however, are not much of a match. A fistfight in what looks like an amusement park water feature rings particularly false.

Director John Sturges, in an impressive Hollywood career, would go on to make some western classics, including Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) and The Magnificent Seven (1960). His work here is thoroughly professional, especially in the action sequences.

William Demerast, John Forsythe, and William Campbell

Holden and Parker are good together, especially in the earlier scenes as the chemistry begins to work between them. The script, however, is too often soapy and clichéd. You begin to hear the lines coming before someone speaks them.

In supporting roles are William Campbell and William Demarest as Confederate soldiers who escape with Forsythe. Campbell had a long career, mostly in TV, with a one-season series Cannonball (1958-59) in which he played a long-haul truck driver. Demerast was Uncle Charley in 215 episodes of the TV series My Three Sons (1965-1972). John Forsythe would go on to star in several TV series much better suited to his suavely polished persona, including Bachelor Father (1957-1962), Charlie’s Angels (1976-1981), and Dynasty (1981-1989).

Escape From Fort Bravo is currently available at netflix and amazon. For more of Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies, head on over to Todd Mason’s blog.

Coming up: Old West glossary, no. 38

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)