Sun 9 Nov 2014
A Western Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: CARSON CITY (1952).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[17] Comments
CARSON CITY. Warner Brothers, 1952. Randolph Scott, Lucille Norman, Raymond Massey, Richard Webb, James Millican, Larry Keating, George Cleveland, Don Beddoe. Director: André De Toth.
Carson City is a good, albeit not great, Western starring Randolph Scott. Directed by Andre de Toth, whose The Stranger Wore a Gun I reviewed here, the film benefits from a solid, if standard, plot and the presence of a sinister-looking Raymond Massey as the main villain.
Unfortunately, there just isn’t all that much in the way of outstanding cinematography or in-depth character development. That, and the fact that at times it feels as if Scott is merely going through the motions, makes Carson City less entertaining than it might have been.
That said, the plot is easy enough to follow. Scott portrays Jeff Kincaid, an adventurer and an engineer who is tasked with building a railroad between Carson City and Virginia City, both in Nevada.
Unfortunately, the good townsfolk of Carson City are divided on the wisdom of constructing a rail line through their small city. Local newspaper owner, Zeke Mitchell (Don Beddoe) is strongly opposed. His daughter, Susan (Lucille Norman) seems more ambivalent. Susan also figures in some family drama: Kincaid’s half-brother, Alan (Richard Webb), has romantic feelings for her, feelings that aren’t reciprocated.
But as it turns out the real drama in this movie isn’t so much about the railroad. It’s about bandits, particularly a group called the Champagne Bandits, so named for their propensity to serve their victims bubbly. Leading these gourmand outlaws is no other than the character portrayed by Raymond Massey, Jack Davis. It’s really Massey, more than Scott, who makes this film worth watching. Massey, who like Scott served during the First World War (some historical trivia), is quite good in this film. One only wishes that the final showdown between Scott and Massey’s characters wasn’t so brief.
While Carson City isn’t nearly among the best Western movies from the 1950s, it’s not the worst either. It’s just somewhere in the vast middle or maybe just slightly better than average.
November 9th, 2014 at 1:28 pm
The railroad element is significant historically. The descendants of the anti-rail group today protest progress and convenience in their own fearful and paranoid way.
November 9th, 2014 at 1:34 pm
The sequence depicting trapped miners, and a shirtless Randolph Scott — who looks great at his age, or any age, is first class. I like Massey but do not agree at all that he is either particularly effective or the champagne bandit concept worthwhile. Charles Ruggles was initially signed for that part but was replaced because he seemed more sophisticated. No one could be effective in this, Scott is the only reason to see the film, and that is good enough for me.
November 9th, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Of course, it should be that Massey seemed more sophisticated.
November 9th, 2014 at 6:03 pm
I’m a big fan of Carson City too.
Films about large scale construction and engineering projects are often fascinating. And Carson City really goes to town on this.
Carson City has a rich use of color. It shows what can be done with the color Western.
Detailed notes at my Andre de Toth article:
http://mikegrost.com/detoth.htm
November 9th, 2014 at 6:23 pm
Thanks for the link, Mike. I haven’t seen this movie yet, but with Randolph Scott and Raymond Massey both in it, I’ve been planning to. Your article on the visual aspects of the film, including the color scheme, is the tipping point that will get me over the brink.
November 9th, 2014 at 6:25 pm
There is a big interest today in “Lab Lit”: fiction about science, technology or medicine in contemporary or historical settings.
It’s a sort of parallel genre to science fiction.
Carson City is a great example of Lab Lit.
November 9th, 2014 at 9:00 pm
Lucille Norman is something of an odd choice as heroine all things considered, but she is quite good. I agree with Barry that it is Scott’s film though I liked Massey better.
This isn’t top Scott, but not far from it either and it has a good deal of interesting background. The building the railroad plot has been around since John Ford’s silent THE IRON HORSE.
I thought the ‘Champagne Bandits’ sounded more like something from THE WILD WILD WEST than a Randolph Scott movie.
November 9th, 2014 at 9:33 pm
Coincidentally I’d just asked Jon who Lucille Norman was, and he didn’t know either. I had to look her up. Seems that she was primarily a singer who was in a total of six movies, the first two uncredited from the early 40s. She also appeared on TV three times, two of them being the Red Skelton show. CARSON CITY seems to be the only movie in which she had a leading role. An odd choice, indeed.
November 10th, 2014 at 12:51 am
Lucille Norman was under contract to WB and had just completed what amounts to the leading female part in Painting The Clouds With Sunshine, a remake of Gold Digger of 1933. Virginia Mayo is first billed along with Dennis Morgan, but when you actually see the film, Mayo is in support, and quite effective, and Morgan has less to do than Gene Nelson. In any case, for a moment someone thought they had something in Norman. The were probably right, but it did not work out.
November 10th, 2014 at 7:46 am
The Wikipedia has a long article on Lucille Norman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_Norman
She was a well-known singer on the radio. Also made records, stage shows, concerts.
She does a good job in Carson City.
November 10th, 2014 at 9:06 am
Mike
Thanks for the Wikipedia link for Lucille Norman. One line caught my eye.
“Her most memorable roles as a singer came through her national radio appearances. Foremost were her appearances on The Railroad Hour, with show host Gordon MacRae. The Railroad Hour was a weekly half-hour anthology series featuring condensed versions of hit Broadway shows. One of his most frequent guest artists, Norman made 73 appearance (some as summer hostess while MacRae was on vacation) on the show between 1948 and 1954.”
Being a long time Old Time Radio fan and collector, I should have known that, but THE RAILROAD HOUR is one program I don’t remember ever listening to. In any case, I never made the connection between the Lucille Norman in CARSON CITY and Lucille Norman the singer. She seems to have been very well known at the time.
November 10th, 2014 at 8:10 am
I’ve ben keeping a list of my favorite science fiction films.
It also has a section on favorite “Lab lit”: films about science and technology:
http://mikegrost.com/sffilm.htm#Technology
Scroll down (or search) to find Carson City.
It’s in the section marked “Builders” about big construction projects.
One can be sure the list is missing some very good films I haven’t seen.
November 10th, 2014 at 9:11 am
Mike
“Lab lit” is a term I have never heard before, but the theme of course is a common one. Thanks for the link to the list you’ve made, so far. A very interesting collection of movies and TV shows!
November 10th, 2014 at 9:26 am
Steve,
There is a blog called LabLit. It maintains lists of books & film:
http://www.lablit.com/the_list
Clearly there is tremendous interest in science & tech in today’s culture.
I’ll preach to the choir here: Carson City shows how rich and inclusive the Western genre is. Westerns are just chock full of interesting material, including science, medicine and engineering. Folks who dismiss Westerns are missing out on far more than they know.
November 10th, 2014 at 9:38 am
Carson City has always been one of my favorite non-Burt-Kennedy Scott films; as a B-western buff, I appreciate the fact that it’s basically a big-budgeted version of the type of film Bill Elliott or Roy Rogers would have done at Republic in the early 1940s; the locations are good, the character conflicts are lightly but surely drawn, and the action scenes are plentiful and well-staged. The supporting cast is also large and colorful, standouts being Mickey Simpson as a belligerent railcrew member, William Haade–usually a thug–as Scott’s loyal and intelligent mining-engineer sidekick, Larry Keating (later George Burns’ and then Alan Young’s television next-door neighbor) as Scott’s somewhat pompous banker backer, Don Beddoe as the thoughtful newspaperman, and James Millican as Massey’s sourly murderous henchman (Massey tells him, “It’d be a great social asset to me if you’d learn how to smile).
November 10th, 2014 at 10:21 am
I like this film a lot and I see from my notes that I liked CARSON CITY even more than SANTE FE(1951), also starring Randolph Scott.
November 10th, 2014 at 3:50 pm
Massey and the whole Champagne Bandit idea is played tongue in cheek part of the time and deadly serious the rest with Massey seeming to enjoy getting to play charming rather than dour or fanatic.
The disparate elements of this film shouldn’t blend as well as they do since it swings from fairly serious historical story, to tongue in cheek, to more standard western, but Scott holds it all together beautifully, and as pointed out above he is impressive for his age with his shirt off not looking all that much different from his athletic second lead in MY FAVORITE WIFE.