But that intense devotion meant that a lot of inaccurate claims arose over the years that followed. And if you study Scott, that’s the first thing that catches your eye. It’s common to say that he never made a bad Western. (You’ll see it repeated across the internet — or you’ll see the variation: “Even a bad Randolph Scott Western is still worth watching.”) Oh, poo. In the ’50s alone, there are a couple that are unwatchable (Tall Man Riding, Santa Fe) and several more that are merely unbearable (The Stranger Wore a Gun, Westbound). Fans sometimes posture that the films he made at Columbia — where he had an associate producer credit — are superior to the ones he made at Warner Bros.; if he had greater input, the argument goes, surely the films should be better. Again, not necessarily; of the six films Scott did with director Andre de Toth, for example, the Warners films easily eclipse the Columbia entries. Other assertions? You’ll hear it suggested that his serious films are worthier than his frivolous ones — sometimes merely by virtue of their being more serious. And Scott’s darker films are indeed some of his best, but there’s a tendency to discount the films that “only” attempt to entertain, and that’s unfortunate. There’s a lot to be said for a Western that wants no more than to be blithe and diverting, and succeeds — and a star whose sense of joy is contagious.
And finally, because Scott concluded his film career — with one exception — with a string of collaborations with director Budd Boetticher, those films are exalted to almost mythic proportions; after all, there's something lovely about believing your hero went out not just on a high, but on a heavenly high. You see folks insist that Scott was “waiting all his life” for Boetticher; they cast Boetticher as God allowing Moses a glimpse of the Promised Land. You can love the Boetticher films all you like (and I love quite a few), but I see a disturbing trend to devalue the films that preceded Boetticher's arrival to elevate the ones that followed. But in truth, a whole lot of Scott's earlier films paved the way for the Boetticher collaborations, both thematically and visually, and the best of them deserve proper consideration — just as the more problematic Boettichers shouldn’t be overpraised because of their pedigree. (Ride Lonesome, one of the most celebrated Scott-Boetticher collaborations, seems to me one of the more unfortunate, as I’ll discuss below.)
So let’s take a fresh look at Randolph Scott’s films of the ’50s. Because his run of films with de Toth extended from 1951 to 1955, and his partnership with Boetticher from 1956 to 1960 — and they were his two most frequent collaborators in the ‘50s — I’m using the “ordinal decade”: i.e., from 1951 to 1960. Scott starred in two dozen Westerns during that time. Let’s check out the 10 best. But prepare yourself: we’re in Western territory. Sacred cows will be slaughtered.
10. Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend (1957): Scott’s only Fifties film shot in black and white. Filming was completed in 1955, but Warner Bros. held up its release for two years once his contract expired, then buried it at the bottom of a double bill. If it didn’t fall so late in Scott’s repertoire, it would probably be better liked. Premiering in 1957, at a time when history records that Scott was doing more serious — i.e., better — work, it’s largely overlooked, if not minimized and politely mocked. But taken on its own terms, it’s a delight: devoutly silly and unabashedly entertaining. It’s got a plot that practically became a Scott staple — a town has lost its soul, and it falls to him to inspire the citizens to reclaim it — but it makes its point more convincingly than better films (e.g., Decision at Sundown). Unlike every other Scott film of this era, it’s more comedy than drama — but the opening scenes take the time to set up a sound scenario. Newly mustered out of the cavalry, Captain Buck Devlin (Scott), Sergeant John Maitland (James Garner) and Private Wilbur Clegg (Gordon Jones) are making their way to the home of Devlin’s brother, who’s gathered families in the hope of forging a new community. But they arrive just after the families have been attacked by a band of indigenous warriors, and Devlin’s brother has been killed in the skirmish because the gunpowder he purchased at a trading post in Medicine Bend has proven useless. Devlin convinces his two comrades to make their way to Medicine Bend — both to purchase supplies to get the town back on its feet, and to find out who’s selling defective merchandise. But along the way, while taking a dip in a lake, their clothes and money and horses are stolen — and their only assistance comes from a community of Quakers, who can offer attire, but little else. And with that offer on the table, we cut to the town of Medicine Bend, where a trio of newly attired Quakers are making their arrival — determined to learn more about the recent spate of robberies by remaining in disguise (which, to them, means sprinkling any and all conversations with “thee” and “thou”). And the film instantly reinvents itself as a buddy comedy-cum-caper. It’s an abrupt tonal change, but Scott, Garner (in his first filmed screen performance) and Jones (in arguably his best screen performance) enjoy such rapport, you’re disinclined to carp. As they hunt for clues while effecting lives of piety and abstinence, they convince as friends with complementary personalities: Scott, the level-headed leader who never deviates from the mission: Garner, the would-be womanizer forced into a life of celibacy; and Jones, the rotund sidekick for whom exchanging whiskey for buttermilk feels like corporal punishment. Despite the tongue-in-check aspect to their play-acting, there remains a clear undercurrent of danger and mystery. The three are aided by a marvelous supporting cast, and a script that understands how to freshen familiar tropes. Name a crowd-pleasing scene, and this film’s got it — and manages it well. It’s got the hero who comes to town in disguise, and the “good woman” who sees right through him. (Here the good woman is Angie Dickinson — in her first credited screen appearance — who’s already cultivated the deductive skills that will make her a formidable policewoman. Although she presents with a demure demeanor, she doesn’t fall into the role of the dutiful maiden. “I’m coming with you,” she informs Scott, when his disguise is blown, and he has to save his friends. “Oh no, you’re not,” he insists: “You’re gonna stay here where you belong.” And the minute he exits, she follows.) It’s got the “bad woman” who has a change of heart in the final reel, helping the good guy escape when the sheriff’s on his tail. (The actress is Dani Crayne, who spent only eight years in Hollywood, but makes a memorable impression here — flirting with Garner, playing cat-and-mouse with Jones and putting over a swell saloon turn called “Kiss Me Quick.”) There’s the religious zealot — the leader of the local Quaker community (the always welcome Robert Warwick) — who preaches non-violence, but has no compunction about butting a few heads when his newfound friends are literally about to lose theirs. And there’s the climactic showdown between the hero and villain (here, James Craig, the man who runs the town by driving everyone else out of business), where an entire mercantile store is destroyed in the ensuing melee: its contents used as weapons or shields and eventually reduced to bric-a-brac. (Craig tries to bring the fight to a close by reaching for a scythe — a gesture befitting the grim reaper of the story — and is promptly impaled on it.) You couldn’t claim that director Richard L. Bare has any particular sense of style or grace or ingenuity, but he’s a solid craftsman who keeps the story flowing smoothly, and you’re never bored. As for the dialogue, it’s not always the subtlest: “Oh no, something’s the matter with the ammunition,” Devlin’s brother wails at the top of the film when his gun won’t fire, in case we couldn’t figure that out for ourselves. But clearly, scenarists John Tucker Battle and D.D. Beauchamp — who never did any more big movies that I know of — needed to get the message across clearly, because it’s that one crucial point that sets the film on its journey. And as Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend reminds us at regular intervals, it’s not so bad being gently taken by the hand, especially when the company is this inviting.
9. Comanche Station (1960): There’s enough of 1959’s Ride Lonesome in Comanche Station for the later film to qualify as a remake. If you took 7 Men From Now, The Tall T and Ride Lonesome — all Budd Kennedy screenplays — poured them into a jug and shook vigorously, then ran them through a strainer, you’d get Comanche Station. The film invites so much déjà vu, you might start to question your sanity — or at the very least, marvel at Kennedy’s chutzpah. But there’s too much that’s pleasing about the film to dismiss it for cribbing almost compulsively from its predecessors. If a lot of the plot points are borrowed from Ride Lonesome, part of what makes Comanche Station both appealing and forgivable is that it keeps correcting them. Ride Lonesome was hobbled by frequent lapses in logic; they clearly didn’t annoy anyone enough to address them while the film was in production, but at some point, you have to imagine that Kennedy was bothered or shamed by the shoddiness of the story-telling, and set out to show that he could do better. The treatment of the indigenous population is far better here than in the earlier film. In Ride Lonesome, their aggressions seemed unmotivated, and their tactics preposterous. Here, it’s clear that their attacks are retaliation for violence perpetuated against them by ignorant and arrogant white men. Those retaliations are better planned, and make for better action sequences. (Kennedy doesn’t fall prey, as he did in the earlier film, to that hoary device of native warriors riding in circles around a group of white travelers, allowing the latter to pick them off one by one — not how the “circle formation” was intended.) The tagalong outlaws that Kennedy carries over from 7 Men From Now to Ride Lonesome to Comanche Station — who figure that, at the end of the adventure, they'll claim the prize for themselves — are given a huge upgrade. In Ride Lonesome, the villains are told they'll be granted amnesty if they bring in the killer with the price on his head, so they plot to kill bounty hunter Randolph Scott sometime before he reaches his destination, turn in the criminal themselves and win amnesty. But are they so aggressively stupid not to realize that any possibility of amnesty will be negated once they kill a man to earn it? Again, Kennedy takes pains in Comanche Station to address and fix their motivations. And although all three solo Kennedy screenplays feature a group of horny men objectifying the sole woman, at least Boetticher here doesn't encourage the audience to salivate along with the outlaws. When Karen Steele in Ride Lonesome brushes and shakes out her hair, arching her back to accentuate her tight-fitting top (all while the outlaws watch and drool), the chauvinism on display is tough to watch. In Comanche Station, Nancy Gates — the requisite object of desire — gets to maintain a little modesty; when it's time for her evening ablutions, Kennedy permits her to withdraw to a private spot. Comanche Station is the story of a man who rescues a woman kidnapped by Comanches, and how — as he escorts her home — he’s joined by three outlaws who aim to claim the reward money for themselves. But through the course of the film’s brief 73 minutes, you learn so much about these characters: their needs, their goals, their weaknesses. You learn about the forces that motivate them, and the events that have damaged them. Sometimes you glean insights through monologues of uncommon beauty, as when the two younger outlaws (Skip Homeier and Richard Rust) are conversing before sleep, and Rust wonders about something his late father impressed upon him, about “making good”: a term he doesn’t fully understand, but that exerts a moral pull on him he can’t seem to shake. And sometimes the revelations are more elliptical, only coming together when a half-dozen clues have been dropped. When the head outlaw (Claude Akins) baits Gates, wondering how a woman might show her gratitude to the man who rescued her, Scott attacks him. "Wasn’t necessary to do that for my sake," Gates insists, almost imperiously. "I didn’t," Scott responds firmly, and it's not until later — when Rush tells her the little he knows about Scott — that we understand what motivated him. Like Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station proceeds under the presumption that traveling on horseback through ravishing locations is endlessly fascinating, as Westerns had been asserting for decades. (Charles Lawton was the cinematographer, and the Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, CA, have rarely looked so lovely.) But the frequent journeys in Comanche Station operate with a logic that eludes a host of similar films, because they’re the means by which the characters open up to each other. The bonds forged through traveling — and the sense of serenity that the surroundings invite — become part of the storytelling; without them, these characters would never relax enough to let down their guard. Comanche Station is a beautiful miniature — at times more of a tone poem than a narrative, with characters you grow fond of, and violence you can’t easily shake off.
8. Sugarfoot (1951): Former Confederate officer Jackson Redan decides to take his family name and aristocratic manner and forge a new life for himself in Prescott, Arizona. But he doesn’t land in Prescott — or at least, not exactly; he steps down a rabbit hole into his own version of Wonderland. The people he meets there are just as foreign to him as the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat are to Alice. Scenarist Russell Hughes did the adaptation of the novel by Clarence Budington Kelland; it’s a book with colorful characters that lend themselves to the screen, and Hughes knows exactly what to keep and what to discard. Whole exchanges are lifted verbatim from the book (or at least, condensed into something that allows the film to come in at a reasonable running time), and the casting is inspired. S.Z. Sakall — at his most ingratiating — is Jewish merchant Don Miguel (so named because his Spanish is better than his English): “a rather grotesque, stout little man in a waistcoat too big for him” with a “thick, guttural but friendly voice”; Robert Warwick — at his most gracious yet imperious — is J.C. Crane, “a man of character, a man of standing, for he was proprietor of the most opulent saloon and gambling hall in the territory.” From these two, Redan quickly learns where he stands in the town’s pecking order; as Crane informs him (in a scene right out of the book), “You come from a class of men who are accustomed to take it for granted that they are better than other men. That might be a very good thing to be back where you came from. It is not a good thing to be here.” And so the film follows the efforts of Redan (whom the town nicknames Sugarfoot, gently mocking his refined air) to adapt to life in the Wild West, where he’ll have to rely on his wits and his gumption, and to cultivate a tougher, coarser hide. He has the good fortune to latch onto a new friend (the delectable Arthur Honeycutt, as a character named Fly-Up-the-Creek Jones, because of how often he casts himself into the water panning for gold). But no one grabs Redan’s attention like saloon singer Reva Cairn, who exposes his high-born biases and internalized misogyny. Reva may work as an entertainer (and Sammy Cahn and Ray Heindorf gift her a great song, “Oh, He Looked Like He Might Buy Wine”), but no one gets to define her — or more to the point, deride her — because of how she chooses to earn a living. And if she’s looking for a man, she’s not in search of one who’ll protect and pamper her (the only way Sugarfoot understands how to treat a woman), but rather an equal partner. (At times the novel, published in 1942, seems to be anticipating the second wave of feminism.) She refuses to be anything other than what she is. “I can hate as well as a man,” she cautions Redan, “and I would hate more dangerously than a man.” As Reva, Adele Jergens is a revelation. Best remembered for her noir appearances — as golddiggers and strippers and scantily-clad gals in search of a good time — here she drapes herself in a fitted bodice, cage crinoline and floor-skimming wide skirt and manages to retain her audacity and autonomy without ever seeming anachronistic. She’s a forward-thinking female with a gumption rarely afforded women of the post-Civil War era (in particular, if they’re playing the love interest of the lead). When Redan refuses to accept her money for a venture he’s desperate to finance (suggesting patronizingly she hold onto it for their firstborn son), she goes behind his back and gives it to the man she knows he’ll turn to first for a loan. When he discovers her ruse, she refuses to apologize: “You’re offended because I’ve done something that injures your vanity as a man. As a Redan of Alabama.” Instead, she offers him a glimpse into their lives together: “When I cannot reason with you, nor plead with you, nor cajole you, Sugarfoot, I shall trick you.” And he’s scandalized — and utterly captivated, as are we. Sugarfoot is about Redan learning to hone his daring and cunning and become a man who can succeed in the Wild West, and part of the understated message of both the book and the film is that Reva — more than anyone — teaches him the tenets of survival. At one point, she advises him what their marriage will be like — “I’ll wheedle and I’ll twist and I’ll get what I want from you” — and we understand that Sugarfoot is learning from her how to wheedle and twist to get what he wants in the world. She’s the perfect instructor. Director Edwin Marin did a host of Westerns for Scott, but none remotely as pleasing or enchanting as this one. The film is marred only by an ending that fades to black much too quickly. (Hughes needed to deviate from the novel to effect a full-out happy ending, but he seems to have devised no suitable substitute.) But the rest is delectable fun: a nearly forgotten fable in the Scott canon. And it features one of his most subtly satiric performances — essentially parodying himself, or at least the man of breeding he’d been playing for decades. Did any soldier ever emerge from a war with his posture and articulation quite so intact? (Max Steiner did the score, and the main theme might sound familiar: with lyrics added, it became the title tune for the 1957 TV series of the same name.)
7. A Lawless Street (1955): The opening credits appear over a stationary shot of a western town — a crane shot, letting us see the buildings on either side, but mostly a wide and empty street. As the credits roll, we spy in the distance a lone figure approaching on horseback. Is it Randolph Scott, out protecting the town? No: as he grows near enough for us to make out his features, it’s definitely not Scott. It’s someone we don’t know — someone so surly looking, we can almost feel the evil in the air. The camera flips to his point of view, as he surveys the town, then pans past building after building until it reaches a bearded man, the only one who has seen this stranger’s approach. We catch the bearded man from behind as — clearly alarmed — he rushes 20 or 30 feet to the local hotel, warning a woman in the kitchen that a gunslinger has come to town, “looking meaner than ever” — then she grabs the top of her broom and knocks on the ceiling. We cut to the room above, holding on a tight shot of a man seated, putting on cowboy boots, his upper torso unseen. He hears her signal and stamps three times to let her know the message has been received. We still haven’t identified this man either, mind you — but we see him go about his morning routine: his outstretched arm tearing a page off the calendar, then his torso crossing the room to reach for his holster — then moving to the bed and grabbing the gun he keeps under his pillow at night. As he crosses to the back of the room, the camera — holding stationary — finally allows us to see his face: this is indeed Randolph Scott. He reaches for and dons a few articles of clothing — a vest, a bandana, a cowboy hat — then opens a nearby drawer. A POV shot reveals its contents, among them a faded photo of a pretty lady he’s tucked away, which he pauses to stare at — then the camera returns to the other side of the room, watching as he pulls a badge out of the drawer, closes it and heads out the door. Making his way down the stairs, he heads into the kitchen, smiling and relaxing just long enough to flirt with the elderly woman who cooks his meals, which you can tell is a daily ritual. He seems in good spirits, but his act proves unsustainable; he’s drawn to the window to survey the streets and to listen to the sound of the “snarling beast” he’s sworn to protect. “This town is like a wild animal in chains," he cautions her: "It doesn't fight back right away. It just lies there... waiting for a chance to pounce on you.” We’re a mere five minutes into A Lawless Street, and already both the town and its marshal (Calem Ware: great name) have been characterized, contrasted and entwined. A Lawless Street is about the power a town holds over a man, and about the power he wields over it — the two of them forever wrestling for control — and director Joseph H. Lewis, cinematographer Ray Rennahan and editor Gene Havlick give the town an identity not merely defined by the people who inhabit it, but that exists quite on its own. The long tracking shots, fast pans, and quick, tight edits make it a sort of unseen enemy. Ware thinks he’s battling a town poised between law and order on one side and chaos and confusion on the other, but he’s not fully aware that there are important men guiding Medicine Bend towards its own destruction — men who are ruthless and wealthy enough to bend the town to their will. Angry criminals and hired killers are forever coming after Ware — there are shootouts and knife fights and barroom brawls (exquisitely staged and executed), all of them carried out with the express aim of seeing Ware carried off in a pine box. Lewis populates A Lawless Street with a charismatic cast who attack their roles with relish. John Emery is the entrepreneur who owns the local saloon, and Warner Anderson is the mayor, and they’re cold-hearted and unsparing — but they conduct their business so discreetly that no one imagines just how dirty their hands are. Emery gets off on hiring killers to take Ware out and betting on his chances of survival; Anderson is busy cuckolding the rancher who first hired Ware to tame the town. And in the midst of all this, in a seemingly unrelated plot, who walks back into Ware’s life but that women in the photo: songstress Tally Dickenson (Angela Lansbury), hired by Anderson to perform a one-night engagement in town. These two seemingly unrelated plots — Ware’s efforts to tame the beast, and his reunion with a lost love — intertwine midway through in an extraordinary moment: the culmination of a barroom brawl between Ware and the son of the man who came to town during the opening credits. At its climax, it spills out into the street, mere feet in front of Tally, who left Ware years earlier because she couldn’t live with a man so obsessed with placing his life in danger. And now that violence stops her dead in her tracks and shakes her to the core. Lansbury proves an unlikely but effective audience surrogate. Although screenwriter Kenneth Gamet intends to have Tally come around to Ware’s way of thinking (she’s given one of those conventional “I understand now about the job you have to do” speeches at the end), that’s not how Lewis and Rennahan shoot the film. They make it clear how the town’s penchant for violence appears to an outsider, and help us see Ware’s behavior less as brave and more as obsessive. A Lawless Street refuses to romanticize Ware or the job he’s doing in Medicine Bend; Lansbury helps us see that he’s hellbent on pursuing a path towards his own destruction — and that something has to change. The film runs roughly 75 minutes, and the first 45 are as good as anything Scott did in the ’50s — and the last 30 minutes are enough of a disappointment to drag it down to #7. Although there are a few sharp scenes left, once Ware is waylaid and lawlessness consumes the town, there are poorly-staged montages that look like they’re waiting for someone to burst into song and make sense of them; a few scenes that lead nowhere; and some unforgivably foolish pieces of staging. (Lewis and Rennahan can’t find the visual equivalent for a town having descended into chaos that they bring to a town on the verge of it.) Even Paul Sawtell’s score starts to sound like strident clown music; it’s supposed to represent Medicine Bend’s descent into madness, but it just sounds like the circus is coming to town. But those first 45 minutes are luscious, and there are scattered pleasures thereafter. A Lawless Street takes its mission as seriously as Ware takes his.
6. Decision at Sundown (1957): A story about a man unable to part with his illusions, and a town that’s lost its soul. He can heal the town, but they can’t heal him. One of the best of the Scott/Boetticher films, it’s generally considered among the weakest; in some circles, you might say it’s got three strikes against it. Burt Kennedy — the screenwriter considered by many as invaluable to the Scott/Boetticher collaborations — wrote four of the films, and made uncredited contributions to a fifth; this is one of two in which he had no involvement, so for fans of his indelible cadence and design, this script by Charles Lang comes as a disappointment. Unlike many of the Boetticher-Scott films — shot largely on location, and making the most of those settings — Decision at Sundown is mostly relegated to studio sets, and a whole lot of interiors: not where Boetticher is at his most distinctive. And finally, it's the darkest performance Scott gives in the '50s. Even in films where he's a man on a mission — even a bloody mission — you can usually count on a little levity, or some generosity of spirit, or at least a touch of romance or a sense of triumph by the end. Scott in this film is unrelenting — and in fact, unrelentingly wrong — and for some, that’s a turn off. Those are three issues that, for some, drag the film down; I confess I don’t have an issue with any. Lang is not the talent that Kennedy is, but his dialogue is strong, his pacing solid, and his ideas fresh — if not as fresh as Kennedy's at the time, certainly fresher than the Kennedy of two years hence. Boetticher's skill — indoor or outdoor — is undeniable. If studio shoots aren't where he particular shines, his work is still head and shoulders above that of most of his contemporaries. (And besides, sometimes it’s more exciting to see a gifted artist challenged — even if they stumble on occasion — than to see them repeat the same setups they can direct in their sleep.) And Decision at Sundown boasts — unquestionably — one of Scott’s most impressive performances; at times, you can see him stretching beyond where he’s comfortable — or capable of going — but you admire the effort nonetheless. His fury is unyielding and unforgiving, but it never grows tiresome. And that said, Decision at Sundown isn’t perfect — not by a longshot. The screenplay gets a little preachy at times, and Scott‘s refusal to listen to reason may be in character, but it's — in plotting terms — a pretty tacky delaying tactic. There are performances that are lackluster or too broad, as if Boetticher was too distracted to pay them much mind. As the couple whose wedding Scott interrupts near the start of the film, Karen Steele is weak and John Carroll — the man Scott comes to Sundown to seek revenge on — is worse; it seems unlikely that Carroll has the qualities (either magnetic or misanthropic) that would allow him to come to a town and remake it in his image. But no one does more damage than Vaughn Taylor, as the barber who moonlights as the town drunk. He seem intent on pulling focus every chance he gets; even during the long, dramatic exit of the villain through a hotel lobby near the climax of the film, Taylor is still hamming it up. (When Scott — after some staggeringly good acting — succumbs to a similar drunk bit at the end, you start to wonder if onscreen alcoholism is contagious.) And yet the film has so many vital and incidental pleasures, it's easy to overlook its faults. If the bride and groom are pale, their counterparts — the groom’s mistress and the town doctor — are not. In particular, Carroll’s mistress Ruby (played by Valerie French) has just the right mix of willfulness and arrogance; for someone deliberately kept in the shadows, her sense of autonomy is impressive. (You’ve got to love a screenplay that lets you get to know the mistress better than you know the bride-to-be. You’ve also got to love a lady who places a feather in her hair to match the shaft brace on her horse and buggy.) Noah Beery, Jr. makes a terrific sidekick — supportive when he can be, and confrontational when he needs to be — and Andrew Duggan is a good, tough, crooked sheriff. And the pacing is well-nigh perfect, especially for a piece where Scott is trapped in one location for most of the film. As people approach him — to kill him, to bribe him or to reason with him — you learn more about his reasons for being there, and you watch them try to cut through his misconceptions; he’s impassive and unbending, but you never feel like you’re trapped in an endless loop of exchanges. The staging is stationary by design, but the screenplay is not. In the end, the film makes a strong statement about the power of love to leave a man not just distraught, but deluded — aggressively deluded, to the point where there’s little chance he’ll regain his reason. It’s a downer of a film that leaves you uplifted by the effort that went into it: a talented crew stretching beyond their comfort zone, creating a flawed film that’s also challenging and uncompromising. How are you gonna knock it?
5. Thunder Over the Plains (1953): We’re in Post-Bellum Texas (one of two Southern states that still hasn’t rejoined the Union), where carpetbaggers have overrun the region and impoverished the residents. Charles McGraw is a rebel leader with a touch of Robin Hood in him — desperate to fight for his people’s survival — and Randolph Scott is the army captain who — despite being a Texan himself, and sympathetic to McGraw’s cause — is charged with bringing him in. Second-billed Lee Barker, who had taken over headlining the Tarzan series in 1949, is tossed in as an irritant and a rival: a newly-transferred officer placed under Scott’s command, who takes perverse pleasure in ignoring his orders and making a play for his wife (Phyllis Kirk). But let’s be clear: the central relationship isn’t between Scott and Barker, nor — for that matter — between Scott and Kirk. It’s between Scott and McCraw, two principled men who would be fighting on the same side if the army weren’t so hyper-focused on law and order at the expense of fairness and compassion. Scott’s captain is a man forced to do work he finds ethically offensive — he’s torn between duty and decency — and Thunder Over the Plains invites the kind of subtle acting at which Scott excels; although his character is required by rank to keep his feelings in check, you still see emotions run across his face with resolute clarity (while he barely moves a muscle): compassion, rage, jealousy, stoicism, resolve and regret. Scott is fortunate to be playing opposite McGraw, whose good looks allow him to slip easily into a somewhat underwritten role: that of a man demonized by others for doing what’s right, trying to preserve and restore the dignity of his community. Fifteen years younger than Scott, he has the same rugged charm and intensity: they’re two peas in a pod, and Scott seeing himself in McGraw is one of the beautifully unstressed aspects of the plot. Just past the midway mark, a murder in town has been pinned on McCraw, and Scott rides out after him. Spotting McGraw in a wooded area, he gingerly pursues him on foot. Each vying for the upper hand, they make their way through glades and dells, pushing aside branches and crouching behind trees — and as they drift in and out of shadow, director Andre de Toth and cinematographer Bert Glennon catch them in long shots and close-ups and POVs. During two minutes of riveting silence, they circle each other, both literally and metaphorically, and the result is almost hallucinatory. (De Toth shows his talent for finding beauty in suspense.) Finally, McGraw gets the drop on Scott, and they agreed to a compromise: Scott can arrest him if he agrees to let his men go. Scott consents, and they flash mutual smiles that are more affecting (and arguably more affectionate) than anything else in the film. Thunder Over the Plans is a movie about unplanned friendships and uneasy alliances. It’s about male camaraderie, contrasting two sets of men: Scott and McGraw, who should be at each other’s throats, but have each other‘s backs; and two carpetbaggers who have successfully joined forces, tax commissioner Joseph Standish (Elisha Cook Jr.) and cotton broker H.L. Balfour (Hugh Sanders) — each of whom would literally sacrifice the other if it served their purposes. It’s in this depiction of a town where crooked men behind the scenes are calling the shots, demonizing citizens in order to steal what’s theirs — while leaving law enforcement to hunt down the noble and oppressed — that the story shines. And it’s in the filming of the skirmishes and battles that grow out of those conflicts that de Toth does his most striking work, giving them the foreboding, tense, chilling look of noir. Screenwriter Russell Hughes manages to keep a mountain of plot neatly in motion; aside from some closing narration that totally breaks the mood, only one element fails to measure up: the subplot with Scott’s new officer Barker. Perhaps Hughes he felt that the odds weren’t sufficiently stacked against Scott; perhaps he thought the subject of adultery — or at least the threat of it — would help balance all the business dealings. But everything with Barker feels half-baked; he doesn’t seem to exist except to be a thorn in Scott’s side. To Barker and Kirk’s credit, their scenes together — in which they bond over their shared background — are carefully played. But are they necessary? There’s a whole lot of plot in Thunder Over the Plains, but the film boils down to a battle between two decent men and two greedy ones. The bits with Barker feel like a distraction. (They’re clearly the scenes that interest de Toth the least; in a few, Kirk is badly lit and filmed.) Ironically, Scott’s The Man Behind the Gun, an inferior film (and one far less concerned with convincing character dynamics) has a more nuanced and complex take on the relationship between Scott and his romantic rival.
4. 7 Men From Now (1956): A title song is crooned over the opening credits, and you’ll want to press pause once it’s done — because it would be a shame to miss the first few scenes of the film while you’re waiting for your ears to stop bleeding. But after that, you’re golden. 7 Men From Now was originally intended as a vehicle for John Wayne, produced by his company Batjac, but Wayne got wooed by John Ford to make The Searchers instead, and went out searching for a replacement for himself. Joel McCrea and Robert Preston were considered, Gary Cooper turned the role down, then Wayne gave the project to Warner Bros. upon hearing that Robert Mitchum was interested. Finally, it made its way to Randolph Scott, the first in a series of films with Boetticher that got his juices flowing, and allowed him to end his career on a creative high. Here, Scott is Ben Stride, former sheriff of Silver Springs, tracking down seven men responsible for a robbery in a Wells Fargo office, during which they made off with $20,000 in gold. Happening upon a hapless couple making their way west, Annie and John Greer (whose wagon is mired in mud), he helps them out, then agrees to accompany them west as far as Flora Vista, AZ. (John’s method of imploring Stride for help is gratifyingly frank, in terms of admitting to his own limitations: “Oh, Mr. Stride, I don’t know exactly how to say this, but — well, if there’s another mud hole like that in Arizona, we’ll get stuck in it and — well, I feel a whole lot better if you’d ride along with us.” He doesn’t have any compunction about copping to his own helplessness; it’s kind of refreshing and undeniably appealing.) When Lee Marvin — as Bill Masters, an outlaw with a penchant for verbal provocation and sadism — decides to tag along, determined to get his hands on the gold once Scott has exacted his vengeance, you have your core cast: four complex characters whose interactions always intrigue and occasionally crackle. 7 Men From Now boasts a good story with some meat on its bones; the way it keeps raising the stakes is shrewd, and the ways that clues are quietly laid — in anticipation of a big payoff later — is expert. The location shooting is impressive, and the issues it raises — e.g., is vengeance a salve for grief? — remain resonant. Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin, in their second film together, complement each other beautifully, but the surprise is Gail Russell and Walter Reed as the married travelers. I think it’s safe to say that if they don’t pitch their roles perfectly, the movie never gets off the ground. They convince you that the bond between them is at once constant and fragile; theirs is a love that’s genuine but strained — and how long it’s been strained, neither is willing to say or show. Reed is careful never to play John as man of mystery, but when a key aspect of the story is revealed and John is at the heart of it, it makes perfect sense from the way Reed has tossed away key lines. And Russell is, as ever, a revelation. An actress whose insecurities led her to alcoholism — and to an early demise — she often seemed on the verge of breaking down, even as she desperately held it all together. Here she so buries her self-doubt that there’s something almost disturbingly sanguine about her, an earthiness that somehow feels ethereal. Her eyes are forever darting, searching for something intangible, while Reed’s are forever flickering in unease or fear. They’re beautifully paired. There are minor peccadilloes along the way: for one, the way Scott’s backstory comes out while he’s standing guard — and the others are inside eating and talking about him — is a little stagy. (Kennedy will find a smoother way of unveiling Scott’s backstory by the time we get to Comanche Station.) But really the only thing that weakens 7 Men From Now — a blisteringly good film, mind you — can pretty much be distilled from one short exchange, when Annie grills Stride about her husband — “Do you think I love him any less because of the way he is?” — and he responds, “Yes, ma’am.” It rings a little false. It’s there that you can spy the film’s origins. The later John Wayne films — at least, a good number of them — worked under the presumption that if you weren’t Wayne, or like him, you were less of a man. Scott was too generous and modest a performer to ever make a statement like that, and those are the only points he has trouble pulling off. Wayne could be brusque because as he saw it, his masculinity didn’t allow for pleasantries; Scott was a gentleman first and foremost, even when he was wracked with guilt or a desire for vengeance. It would be easy and charitable to say that 7 Men From Now explores notions of masculinity, but it doesn’t; instead, it sings the praises of a very specific type of masculinity that it insists is more appealing to women, and ultimately better than the others. And that, of course, is the sort of masculinity that John Wayne glorified, where he was not only the toughest hombre, but the most desirable. This isn’t what Randolph Scott portrays at all, and that disparity between the film’s definition of masculinity and the very clear one that Scott brings to the screen is jarring at times. It weakens key moments: rendering them unconvincing (the kiss between Scott and Russell that she initiates, her determination to go to him at the end) or underwhelming (her husband’s decision to sacrifice himself, which both the screenwriter and Masters condone as him being more of a man than either had given him credit for). The film postures that John Greer has something to prove, but do we really believe that? Or is it the film’s attempt to adopt a definition of masculinity that both Reed and Scott’s performances prompt us to reject? No matter: the story crackles, the acting impresses, and Scott seems like a man with a mission, both in terms of the character he’s playing and all that he as an actor intends to prove. Famed French theoretician André Bazin once praised Scott in this film for showing a “sublime lack of expression” with “never a facial gesture, never the shadow of a thought or a feeling"; one would like to presume that Bazin didn’t have his glasses on that day, because Scott is acting his ass off.
3. Hangman’s Knot (1952): A group of men — all armed with rifles — are seated among boulders in what appears to be some sort of mountainous region. Scott appears, whistles, and each of them jumps to attention — the camera pausing to focus on four of them, each effecting a different posture or attitude. Then Scott waves them into position with a broad sweep of his hand, and they assume their designated spots: crouching, lying in wait. As Scott crosses to them, you catch sight of a strath below, and you realize these men are plotting an ambush (for whom, you can’t venture a guess). The camera doesn’t follow Scott; instead, it pauses with the valley front and center, and the credits start to roll. Within a generation, it will become standard to include a cold open before the title sequence (today, title sequences are pretty much passé). It wasn’t nearly so common in 1952, and you sense right away that someone is working to the full extent of their imagination. You wouldn’t necessarily guess that a writer/director is running the show, but when the credits reveal that one man (Roy Huggins) is handling both tasks, you’re unsurprised. Huggins is a formidable figure, although his best-remembered work was done for television. (He created 77 Sunset Strip, Maverick and The Fugitive, among others. He also wrote one of my favorite film noirs, I Love Trouble, although its star has only been in the ascendant for a decade or so.) Huggins was a prolific writer with only three directing credits to his name, and Hangman’s Knots is one of them — the first, in fact. Blacklisted at the time, he so impressed Scott and producer Harry Brown with his screenplay that they invited him to direct, and arranged that he be credited under his real name. (The film was a financial success.) If the film lacks the finesse that a veteran helmer would’ve brought to it, Huggins’ insights more than compensate for his inexperience, and he's buoyed by a cinematographer (Charles Lawton) and a second-unit director and stuntman (famed stuntman-turned-director Yakima Canutt and his son Tap, respectively) who were among the best in the business. Scott and his men, as it turns out, are Confederate soldiers who — in the opening scene — attack a group of Nevada volunteers transporting gold, mistaking them for a Union Army wagon train; learning only then that the war has been over for a month, they decide — in what seems like not only a reasonable but fair decision at the time — to keep the gold, to help rebuild their homes and lives, and those of their loved ones. Eventually, pursued by what they believe to be a posse, they wind up holed up in a way station, having taken the father and daughter who run the station hostage — as well as a man and woman whose stagecoach they commandeered. But we don’t hit the way station till nearly 30 minutes in. Before that comes an ambush and a shootout, a confrontation that turns deadly, a tense and amusing caper, and a stagecoach chase where the second unit really gets to show off. Near the end, the way station will be set on fire, only to be doused by a thunderstorm that threatens to take everyone down. Huggins bookends his film with great action scenes. But in between, it’s all character beats, as Scott has to convince the nurse he’s abducted (Donna Reed) to care for one of his wounded men; to quench the thirst that his orneriest soldier (Lee Marvin) has developed for that nurse; to earn the trust of the way station agents (Clem Bevans and Jeanette Nolan); and to determine a way out, with the unlikely assistance of the man he’s abducted (Richard Denning), who has already proven to be untrustworthy. And that’s just for starters. There’s hardly a moment when Scott isn’t focal, because there’s too much for him to look after; even though the war is over, he still takes responsibility for his troop, and because the war is over, he takes responsibility for everyone else. Lee Marvin lacks the flamboyance of his character in 7 Men From Now, but he’s no less complex for being less theatrical. Here he’s a former soldier unsure what his role is — and what the new rules are — and failing at every turn. You don’t know what to make of him. Has the war turned him into a sociopath who can’t find his way back to the man he was? Or did the war unleash the killer that always lay underneath? He’s a study in dysfunction: disturbing when his hunger for Reed leads him to clumsily assault her; poignant when his initial impulse to impress her involves emasculating her fiancé. (He suffers from the same misguided definition of masculinity as most of the characters in 7 Men From Now. Scott, mercifully, does not.) For all the bravura character beats, the film does hit a few snags in the action department. The fist fight between Scott and Marvin is poorly executed, and the final set-piece during the thunderstorm lacks the clarity you crave. But this is a powerful movie about a band of soldiers who make a fatal mistake, then have to claw their way back, and in the end, it’s an admission that finding your way back from the battlefield — and living with the blood you’ve spilled in the name of honor and duty — is well nigh impossible. It asks questions that are typically taken for granted in films of this sort. Basic things. How easy is it to kill a man in combat? How exactly does wartime ease one’s conscience — and how challenging is it to claim your first victim? And after soldiers have engaged in slaughter for years, how do they rebuild trust — and not just among ordinary citizens who refuse to forgive them for the lives they’ve taken. How do they rebuild trust among themselves? When they’re no longer defined by their enlisted ranks, when their most heinous acts are no longer justifiable as “survival tactics,” are they more likely to be bound by their shared experience, or torn apart by their differing views on decency and morality? Not all the characters survive Hangman’s Knot, but those that do emerge deeply changed. You’re left with a sense that you didn’t get to know them as well as you wanted — yet you got to know them well.
2. Riding Shotgun (1954): An original. Scott is the star, but the film is told from the point of view of the town that wrongfully accuses him of murder. Scott’s stagecoach guard, Larry Delong, is a good guy bent on revenge who gets trapped in a town that’s convinced he’s a criminal, and every move he makes grows subject to misinterpretation. Everything is explored from multiple perspectives, both verbal and visual, and what results is a rich and amusing portrait of a town whipped into a frenzy. Early on, an angry woman comes after Scott, and as he tries to calm her down, she slumps to the ground. Shortly after, a boy grabs a slingshot and hits him in the head with a stone; Scott instinctively reaches for his gun before sizing up the situation and holstering it. Two harmless incidents — but as the townspeople describe what they witnessed to those who’ve only just arrived on the scene, it’s a whole different story: “He knocked poor Mrs. Pardee down on the street and drew on the Norris kid a little while ago. Plain near shot him in cold blood.” And any number of readings are possible. Did some of the townspeople misinterpret what they saw? Perhaps. Do they believe they’re helping round up a man they believe to be a criminal by framing the story as they do? Possibly. Or are they merely satisfying a human urge to plant themselves in the middle of a narrative and control it? Who can say? Scott narrates throughout, but his voice-overs don’t feel superfluous or obtrusive. Far from it. They’re the very point of the piece: they keep supplying us with yet another frame of reference. Delong is shrewd, but too stubborn to listen to reason; he goes over everything in his own mind a dozen times, but ignores the few sensible words that come from others. Early on, he has a better read on the town than they do on him, but as the situation grows increasingly tense, he too falls prey to false assumptions, and we’re startled to realize that we’ve been left without a reliable narrator. As Scott holes up in a seedy cantina, and the townsfolk plot how to get to him, their movements — and the angles used to capture them — make you feel like you’re watching a ballet from multiple seats in the house. (De Toth was the director, and Bert Glennon the cinematographer.) Sometimes, as when character actors Joe Sawyer and Richard Garrick engage in a tight two-shot, while you spy — between then, moving away from the camera — a group of men heading to the armory, it’s like you’ve been rewarded with a center orchestra seat. At other times — in a POV shot of a sniper waiting on the roof of the nearby building, for example — it’s like you’ve been planted in the second balcony; you can’t spot the faces, but the formations tell you everything you need to know. Sometimes the townsfolk move en masse, at times their activities crisscross, and on occasion de Toth and Glennon give you carefully choreographed chaos. As more and more citizens emerge from their homes, there’s not one who doesn’t seem meticulously developed — in the way they dress, in the way they sound, in the way they react. De Toth reused at least a dozen actors from his House of Wax and Crime Wave of the previous year, many in small supporting roles and bit parts, and this clearly contributed to the sense of the town feeling not merely well-populated but well-characterized. De Toth, screenwriter Thomas Blackburn, the uncredited costumer and the actors themselves share an impressive understanding of these characters and the roles they play in the town — which aren’t necessarily the roles they play in the story. An elderly matriarch is quick to chastise two woman half her age; they’re watching events unfold with relish, and she’s appalled by their lack of decorum. (“It’s disgraceful. They shouldn’t be allowed on the streets.”) As the town’s self-imposed doyenne, she’s there to pass judgment on improper behavior — but no sooner has she shamed the young women into returning home than she turns on the town elder and — without missing a beat — abandons all pretense of propriety: “What are they waiting for? They should hang him. There’s no question about it. They should hang him, and get it over with.” The town has a real presence, and not just a menacing one. It’s got its eccentrics, its pariahs — it’s even got elements of the macabre (here, twin girls out of a ghost story). And it’s got the foreigner who’s treated without an ounce of respect, even by Blackburn, who makes him the brunt of his own joke. In the way de Toth arranges his actors by height and stance and comportment, there’s deliberate stylization (at time, you might think of classic poses from Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo), but that artificiality doesn’t make the story any less compelling. It feels like you’re seeing a fable unfold, or perhaps a tragedy. (You have no idea which turn the story-line will ultimately take.) And because you’ve been afforded so many perspectives and tonal shifts, when the films dissolves into a broad bit of physical comedy at the end — as the outlaws Scott has been chasing try to ride out of town, but because Scott has cut the cinches on their saddles, they all slide off their horses — it’s not a mood-killer, but laugh-out-loud funny. And exactly the release you need. Riding Shotgun is a tour-de-force: an underrated work that represents the high point of de Toth’s work with Scott.
1. The Tall T (1957): We’ll get to the movie in a minute. But first we have to lavish praise on Maureen O’Sullivan. As Doretta Mims, the newly-married daughter of a rich copper mine owner, she’s a mousy sort; folks keep commenting how homely she is, although O’Sullivan — even seen through a funhouse mirror — would never pass for homely. But she makes you understand what it is they’re seeing; her lack of self-worth has left her insecure, withdrawn. People underrate her looks because she holds herself in such low esteem. Raised by a father who wanted a son and treated her as an afterthought and an annoyance, life has not been kind to Doretta, but on this particular day, it’s downright cruel. She and her new husband are taken hostage when some outlaws mistake their honeymoon rig for the mail coach. And then her husband — who married her for her money and is confident her father will pay to keep his daughter safe — works out a scheme to secure his own freedom. The stagecoach driver has been shot and killed; her own husband has run out on her. Her only ally now is a man who hitched a ride on the coach: a rancher named Pat Brennan (Scott) with whom she’s barely interacted, other than to confide their mutual terror. But he’s her only way through, so although he gives her instructions that are well outside her comfort zone — to trifle with the youngest of the kidnappers, so that Brennan can get the jump on him; to fire off six rounds of a pistol, to create the illusion that they’re out of ammunition — she carries them out. And she does it well — and what’s more, she knows she does. And her feeling of accomplishment is so unfamiliar that it consumes her, and she unloads on the only man within earshot, Brennan, with newfound assertiveness: “For two days you’ve been telling me what to do and what not to do. Well, no more!” It’s easy to imagine that that’s the boldest statement of independence that Doretta Mims has made in her life. Being held hostage — then facilitating her own escape — has changed her; Brennan has helped her discover confidence and courage that her father denied her. And she emerges with a sense of self that she was never allowed to acquire or cultivate. Whereas so many Westerns — especially those of the post-war era — diminish or objectify women, here’s one about a woman’s awakening. And not a sexual awakening, but rather a realization that her worth isn’t predicated on anyone’s opinion of her. That she answers only to herself. It doesn’t even appear the creators realized it at the time, but they fashioned a feminist film about the evolution of a female character through the men who attempt to rob her, use her or save her. And that’s something that is not in the source material, but that Kennedy and Boetticher found in the telling of the film. And by casting an actress who had distanced herself from Hollywood over the previous decade (O’Sullivan played Jane in four Tarzan movies, then made only sporadic film appearances after), who wasn’t nearly as well known at that point as most of her contemporaries, you end up with a character whose motivations can’t be easily read, and whose potential for growth can’t be fully anticipated. So everything about her comes as a glorious surprise. And now, a few words about the film. Burt Kennedy adapted a short story by Elmore Leonard, and the majority of Leonard — including huge scenes lifted straight from the book, word for word — is up on the screen. Kennedy includes a lengthy prologue, dramatizing events we only hear described after the fact in prose, and tweaks the ending, to allow the villain a more satisfying sendoff. And in addition to expanding the role of Doretta Mims considerably, he also broadens and humanizes the ringleader of the gang, Frank Usher. It’s a masterful adaptation. Leonard writes about steeling yourself for the unpredictability of life and about the resilience of the human spirit, and Kennedy finds ways to expand and better delineate his themes. You never know what a day will bring. Kennedy — channeling Leonard impeccably — impresses that upon us from the start, when we’re set down at a way station with a father and son keeping watch, and the son spies a rider in the distance. The father grabs his shotgun, fearing the worst — but it turns out to be their friend Pat Brennan. In this kind of territory — and in this kind of film — expectations are frequently thwarted. Letting down your guard is foolish. And yet you do it anyway, because some days it seems nothing can get you down. When things are going your way — as Brennan feels as the movie begins, when he trades quips with his pal Ed (Arthur Honeycutt), then goes hunting for a bull to purchase for the ranch he’s building — there’s the opportunity for foolishness and fun. And when things stop going your way — well, that’s when you’d better be able to think fast on your feet. Because life can turn on a dime; one minute you’re riding a bull on a bet, and the next you’ve lost your horse and are forced to walk for miles before your friend offers you a lift. And before you have a chance to blink, you’re being held hostage, and your kidnappers are only interested in discussing when and how they’re going to kill you. “You know it’s gonna happen to you?” Usher asks Brennan midway through the film. “I think so,” Brennan replies. “You’re scared?” Usher wonders, and Brennan confesses, “Yeah.” Scott practically snarls it — it’s both an admission and a threat. And an empty threat, because he knows he has no cards, but he can’t help himself. And Usher admires that (Richard Boone is tremendous at giving his outlaw warmth and depth and hunger) — and Brennan starts to see a way forward. In Kennedy’s hands, The Tall T becomes in part the story of a very strange, one-sided bromance; Brennan has what his captor wants. Usher dreams of settling down with a place of his own, like Brennan is doing — he just hasn’t been able to make that leap from where he is to where he hopes to be. So he keeps Brennan around, because talking with him — even under such forced and extraordinary circumstances — beats talking to the two young lunkheads he travels with. The Tall T, on screen, retains all the qualities that distinguish the short story while expanding its dimensions and outlook. (It allows Scott a full range of colors — carefree, reckless, shrewd, brave, ingratiating, intense — and he makes the most of them.) And at the end of the ordeal, when Scott and O’Sullivan climb their way to freedom, and she’s grown secure enough to hold onto his shoulder, and he’s feeling frisky enough to throw his arm around her waist, a simple moment fairly bursts with joy. You never know what a day will bring: the horrors that might emerge, or the resulting epiphanies that might arise. But it’s that eternal hope of something better that speaks to the spirit of the Wild West, and to the promise of the American dream.
Want more Classic Hollywood? If so, I take an expansive look at the career of one of my favorite Classic Hollywood directors, the sadly forgotten William Dieterle, here. I take a look here at all the films Errol Flynn did for Warner Bros. between 1935 to 1950: from his first starring role in Captain Blood to the termination of his contract after Rocky Mountain. I delve into one of Hollywood’s most extraordinary actresses, Margaret Sullavan, and her 16 films here. I serve up The 10 Best Screwball Comedies, and The 25 Best Film Noirs, and some of the titles are sure to surprise you. My other essays are all about TV, past and present, but if you take to TV as much as film, there's an index of the more than 100 TV essays I've written; you might see something you like, be it a drama series or a sitcom or one of my “best of” lists.
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