Hombre (1967)

Based on Elmore Leonard’s 1961 novel of the same name (reviewed here recently), this film offers an interesting example of adaptation. The basic plot is unchanged, but the screenwriters have introduced and substituted different characters. The result is a rather different story.

Plot. Leonard’s novel revisits the central situation in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). An assortment of stagecoach passengers gets into trouble while crossing a stretch of perilous desert terrain. Instead of a wanted man (John Wayne) who joins them, the pivotal character is a white man raised by Indians (Paul Newman). Instead of undergoing attacks by hostiles, the coach is held up by a gang of thieves.

Leonard's novel

The gang takes a hostage, the wife of an Indian agent, but Newman kills one of them, and a stolen bag of money is retrieved. Set afoot in the desert with little in the way of food and water, the passengers must reach safety before the gang finds them again to reclaim the money—and either leave them to die or kill them outright.

Characters. Newman’s character, John Russell, besides being twice the age of the 21-year-old created by Leonard, seems very close to the man we find in the novel. He is single-mindedly focused on survival—his own. What the others do, whether they stick with him or not, is their own business. Expressing nothing but cold, calm determination, he seems never roused to an emotion.

Glossay of frontier fiction: I, J(ignus fatuus – jerk-line)

Below is a list of mostly forgotten terms, people, and the occasional song, drawn from a reading of frontier fiction, 1880-1915. Each week a new list, progressing through the alphabet, “from A to Izzard.”

ignus fatuus = will-o’-the-wisp; a phosphorescent light that appears in marsh lands. “At the time he was following that ignis fatuus, Holy Grail, pillar of cloud and pillar of fire, which was to him his Duty.” A. B. Ward, The Sage Brush Parson.

I’m a Chinaman = derogatory reference to Chinese, expressing surprise and disbelief. “‘I’m a Chinaman,’ says Billy, ‘if it ain’t a kid!” Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville.

I’m a Mexican = derogatory reference to Mexicans, expressing surprise and disbelief. “I’m a Mexican if this yere Sal don’t come wanderin’ in, a-cryin’ an’ a-mournin’ powerful.” Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville.

Man with imperial

imperial = small part of a beard growing below the lower lip. “The snapping black eyes, with the straight brows almost meeting over the nose, suggested Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and Flemister shaved to fit the part, with curling mustaches and a dagger-pointed imperial.” Francis Lynde, The Taming of Red Butte Western.

in bond = a term applied to the status of merchandise admitted provisionally to a country without payment of duty, to be kept in a bonded warehouse or for shipment to another point where duties will be imposed. “She gave final and minute orders to tailors and dressmakers, instructed them to send the trousseaux in bond directly to Great Falls, Montana.” Gertrude Atherton, Perch of the Devil.

in high feather = in good spirits. “The tireless little animal followed him along the fence rails for perhaps a hundred yards, seeing him off the premises and advising him not to return, then went back in high feather to his task.” Charles G. D. Roberts, The Backwoodsmen.

“In the Baggage Coach Ahead” = a sentimental song popular at the turn of the last century, written in 1896 by African American composer Gussie L. Davis (1863-1899). “For nine months I have heard nothing but ‘The Baggage Coach Ahead’ and ‘She is My Baby’s Mother.’” Willa Cather, The Troll Garden.

in the sulks = unhappy. “But he was divided between his impulse to send the trio on a double-quick about their business and the doubt as to what effect it would have on the tribe if they were sent back to it in the sulks.” Marah Ellis Ryan, Told in the Hills.

John Reese, They Don’t Shoot Cowards (1973)

In a John Reese western, nothing is likely to be what it seems. Despite a wide, well-traveled trail across the genre’s terrain, you can expect Reese to take you someplace you haven’t been before. Try guessing what this novel is about from the title, the cover art, and the cover copy (“Cahoon had a killer’s reputation and a yellow streak down his back”), and you’ll be maybe 10% right.

Characters. The premise of the novel is actually not so unusual. A man has acquired a reputation as a gunman, but has nothing of the required constitution or skill. Honker Cahoon’s is the story of an ordinary drifter cowhand trying to keep from attracting trouble. The problem is his frighteningly scarred face and a peculiar disorder—like a form of Tourrettes. When terrified, he explodes in angry outbursts so threatening that even the meanest men are intimidated.

And Reese gives his condition a further twist. Cahoon loses his hearing during these episodes and has no idea what he is saying. He lives in fear that someday he will meet a real gunman who decides to draw on him.

1974 edition

He is befriended early in the novel by a 14-year-old runaway, claiming to be 18, whose name, Johnny Smith, sounds so fictional Cahoon calls him Beansie. Against his better judgment, Cahoon cannot resist entertaining the impressionable boy with tall tales of imagined confrontations with notorious gunmen. The two get a job in a bustling mining camp in the California Sierras, supplying slaughtered beef for Bill Shenker, the owner of a highly profitable tent saloon.

Trouble brews as the camp’s merchants hire a gunman, Dewey Score, to provide protection from a criminal element, and they grant him the authority to collect his own pay. Soon he is raising the price of his services and demanding a share of Shenker’s substantial profits. Thanks to young Beansie, who never misses a chance to brag about Cahoon’s assumed prowess with a gun, the two men are destined to confront each other.

Chino (1973)

Despite the raggedy and apparently pirated copy of this film currently showing on amazon, this movie shines through as a quiet gem. An Italian-French-Spanish production, shot in Spain, it is not your usual spaghetti western. Based on Lee Hoffman’s The Valdez Horses (reviewed here recently), it is faithful to the heartfelt spirit of that novel.

Characters. Cast as the title character, Chino Valdez, Charles Bronson delivers a persuasive and nuanced performance as a reclusive breeder and trainer of horses. His rough appearance, which can turn a scowl or a grimace into a chilling expression, suits the character of a gruff man who prefers the solitude of a lonely cabin on the open range.

When the youngster Jamie Wagner (played by 16-year-old Vincent Van Patten) shows up looking for work, Bronson at first seems to resent the intrusion. Eventually, a bond builds between them, and the boy becomes a trusted companion.

Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland

Romance. The half-sister of a business partner (Bronson’s real-life wife, Jill Ireland) is next to intrude. As she asks him to choose and train a horse for her, he ridicules her for intending to ride sidesaddle. Unaccustomed to western riding, she strikes him as a poor horsewoman, and he has a good laugh.

The tables turn when she finds him taking a bath and, refusing to look away, observes suggestively that he has not only the personality of a horse but the appearance of one. Before long he is courting her, and as they happen to witness Bronson’s stallion mounting a mare, they yield to nature’s urging as well. Very Euro.

Julia Robb, Del Norte

This dark western novella from Texas writer Julia Robb begins appropriately with the gravestone of a murdered man. The stone leans against an interior wall of a saloon, the Del Norte of the story’s title, owned and operated by a Mexican woman, Magdalena Chapas. We’re in a dusty garrison town in West Texas. The year is 1870.

Characters. Robb gives us an ensemble of characters, several men and women who have fetched up on this isolated outpost. The battlefield carnage of the Civil War is recent history for two of the men, who share a memory of deprivation and disgrace in a POW camp in far-off Elmira, New York. Thomas, a decorated Union officer, bears wounds to both body and spirit. Wade is a doctor, a consumptive, and unable to practice his profession because of injuries to his hands.

One sentence journal, Jan 12 – 18

The Birds

Time marches on . . .

1/12, Sunday. Thanks to Lynda, who had the grit to spend an eternity on the phone to a technical support center somewhere on the globe, the new Roku is now set up, and switching it on is like arriving at the ticket counter of a multiplex and discovering that a thousand movies are playing.

1/13, Monday. So it turns out again that I’m a poor diagnoser of my own ailments, since a doctor at Urgent Care says what I have is not carpal tunnel, but something more like tennis elbow.

1/14, Tuesday. Pigeons flock to a house on the corner where a retired gentleman lives with a Basset Hound and throws out snacks for the birds, who hang out all day like they’re waiting to audition for a remake of a Hitchcock movie.

1/15, Wednesday. After waiting a week and a half and then spending another hour in the waiting room to see a specialist who takes all of two minutes to send me to another specialist, who can’t see me for another 2 weeks or more, I’m thinking, I’m going to get a lot of reading done before this is over.

1/16, Thursday. Good grief, I wake up in the middle of the night realizing that I have been dreaming of composing one-sentence journal entries, and I’m wondering, is this such a good idea?

1/17, Friday. A bump under my chair in the middle of an episode of “Justified” on the TV, the dog giving me a startled look, and I check usgs.gov later to discover a 3.0 seismic disturbance over in Yucca Valley.

1/18, Saturday. Koan for the week: Don’t search for the truth, simply stop having opinions, and I’m thinking if that were generally put into practice, 95% of what’s on the Internet would disappear.

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Image credit: Ron Scheer

Coming up: Julia Robb, Del Norte

Glossary of frontier fiction: H(hide hair and horns – hurroar)

Below is a list of mostly forgotten terms, people, and the occasional song, drawn from a reading of frontier fiction, 1880–1915. Each week a new list, progressing through the alphabet, “from A to Izzard.”

hide hair and horns = completely. “You rec’lect what he said in them Civic League talks o’ his: said these politicians had stole the road, hide, hair an’ horns.” Francis Lynde, The Grafters.

Emma D.E.N. Southworth, c1860

Hidden Hand, The = a wildly popular novel set in antebellum South by best-selling author Emma D.E.N. Southworth (1819-1899), originally serialized in the New York Ledger from 1859 to 1883, with numerous stage productions. “I’ve seen ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘The Hidden Hand,’ but ‘Ten Nights in a Bar-room’s’ finer than them.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

high banker = a logger’s term for a pretentious person. “All the blasted high-bankers between this and the booms of hell can’t hang us up.” A. M. Chisholm, The Boss of Wind River.

High Tippy Bob Royal = a very important person; a show off. “He’s a regular High Tippy Bob Royal! That’s what I told Mart Young yesterday.” A. B. Ward, The Sage Brush Parson.

high wine = a distillate containing a high percentage of alcohol. “His poor stomach kept trying to crawl out of his body in its desperate strife to escape Wilmore’s decoction of high-wine.” Frederic Remington, John Ermine of the Yellowstone.

high-ball = a railway man’s hand signal to set a train in motion. “‘Nobody in sight,’ said the brakeman wearily. ‘Might as well high-ball, Charley.’” W. C. Tuttle, Thicker Than Water.

High-Five = an American trick-taking card game derived from Pitch, also known as Double Pedro or Cinch. “Beside the stove Scully’s son Johnnie was playing High-Five with an old farmer who had whiskers both gray and sandy.” Stephen Crane, “The Blue Hotel.”

highbinder = a thug, corrupt politician. “On his way through Chinatown he had noticed Stratton entering the house of a certain merchant and highbinder.” Ada Woodruff Anderson, The Heart of the Red Firs.

highstrikes = hysterics. “If you don’t get us out of this quick I’ll have high-strikes.” Gertrude Atherton, Perch of the Devil.