Mon 11 Apr 2016
A Western Movie Review by David Vineyard: WYOMING (1940).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[11] Comments
WYOMING. MGM, 1940. Wallace Beery, Ann Rutherford, Marjorie Main, Leo Carrillo, Bobs Watson, Joseph Calleia, Lee Bowman, Paul Kelly, Henry Travers, Addison Richards, Chill Wills, Richard Alexander. Screenplay: Jack Jevine (his story) and Hugo Butler. Director: Richard Thorpe.
When outlaws Reb Harkness (Wallace Beery) and partner Pete (Leo Carrillo) hold up a train in Missouri and find the cavalry waiting for them they decided it is time to move on, complicated by the fact Pete gets greedy and steals the money and horse, leaving Reb afoot and being hunted.
Luckily for Reb he meets Dave Kincaid (Addison Richards), a rebel soldier returning home to his ranch in Wyoming, and the two team up with Reb planning to head out for California as soon as he can steal Kincaid’s horse, which he finally does not far from Kincaid’s ranch in Wyoming. But when he hears gunshots, he returns only to find Kincaid murdered by men stealing from his ranch. The dying man extracts a promise from Reb that he will see to his children, Lucy (Ann Rutherford) and Jimmy (Bobs Watson), thus plunging Reb into a range war between the small ranchers, evil John Buckley (Joseph Calleia), and George Armstrong Custer (Paul Kelly) and the 7th Cavalry.
Whether you like this or not will likely depend on your tolerance for Beery in full ham as a not-so-bad but not-quite-good-yet-badman, a role he played in most films, varying between being semi-reformed (The Champ), not reformed at all (Treasure Island), and a backstabbing bastard (China Seas). Of course being a Beery film, there is the inevitable crying child (Bobs Watson, who could cry on cue as well as any moppet in Hollywood if not quite in the Jackie Cooper or Jackie Coogan class) to moisten Beery’s leery eye and the inevitable tough masculine woman for him to romance, here Marjorie Main as female blacksmith Mehetabel.
Shot on location in Wyoming near Jackson Hole, the film is good to look at, and moves at a crisp pace with more than enough to keep you watching. Rutherford has a romance with Sgt. Connelly (Lee Bowman) of the 7th, Henry Travers is a meek cowardly sheriff with a crush on Mehetabel. Chill Wills is her no good layabout but loyal brother, Richard Alexander Buckley’s backshooting henchman Gus, and Paul Kelly a somewhat bemused Custer, who knows Buckley is a no good crook and has no compunction about using Reb, a good badman. to solve his problems in the territory.
Meanwhile an apologetic Pete has shown up having thrown away the stolen money out of guilt — and because it was Confederate — with promises to save his dear friends life. Like Beery’s, Carrillo’s mugging is kept to a minimum as well.
There is no lack of shooting and fast riding, the big gunfight between Reb and Buckley and henchman Gus suspensefully played off camera, and there is an exciting Indian raid on the Kincaid ranch during a party at night with Reb riding to the rescue and the defenders driven into the open as the ranch house burns just as Custer arrives.
No surprises here. The Beery/Watson business isn’t overdone so it doesn’t really have time to grate too much, the scenes with Main show the two could have made a decent screen team, the Rutherford/Bowman romance is just enough for plot development without ever really getting in the way of the flow of the action, and Travers comedy relief is kept within bounds.
A lot of familiar faces like Dick Curtis, Clem Bevans, Donald MacBride, Chief Thundercloud, and Glenn Strange are among the cast, and the film never asks much more of you than that you go along for the ride, the movie ending with Bowman out of the army and tied up with Rutherford, Beery serenading Main on his unharmonious harmonica, and Custer riding off to the the Little Big Horn to put down a small Indian problem assuring us he won’t be around to arrest Reb or send him back to Missouri for the trial the Code insists be mentioned in the screenplay.
All in all, a good hard-riding, hard-shooting, and only occasionally cloyingly hard-crying Western enhanced even in black and white by the genuine Wyoming exteriors, and more restrained Beery, Carrillo, and Main than usual.
April 11th, 2016 at 3:37 pm
Joseph Calleia is always worth watching, and Beery often fun. As for Bobs Watson, the high point of DODGE CITY is when he gets dragged to death by runaway horses. My only regret is that they used a double.
April 11th, 2016 at 6:05 pm
Wyoming is the title of a near top draw western with Wild Bill Elliot. Produced in 1947, with a stellar supporting cast, John Carroll, Virginia Grey, Albert Dekker, Maria Ouspenskaya,and a not at all inadequate Vera Hruba Ralston. it deals with the settlement of that state as depicted in Shane, but from an opposing point of view. Well worth the time to track down. Joe Kane directed with his usual intelligence and energy.
April 11th, 2016 at 8:07 pm
Barry,
“a not at all inadequate Vera Hruba Ralston.”
Higher praise for her acting I’ve never heard. LOL
April 11th, 2016 at 10:01 pm
I wish I had a review of this 1947 WYOMING in the hopper, but I don’t. The best I can do is THE REDHEAD FROM WYOMING, coming up next.
April 11th, 2016 at 10:03 pm
I have a very low tolerance level for both Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main, particularly the latter. Put them in the same film together, and I tell you, David, you’ve got a lot more persuading to do.
April 12th, 2016 at 2:50 pm
Dan, Barry,
Agree on all counts. The Elliot is not only one of his better Westerns, but like several he did with Kane in that period just a damn good Western period. Someone really ought to do a solid piece on Elliot’s adult Western output. Not only some damn good movies, but he matures into a really interesting leading man within his limits as an actor. A couple from that period I would compare favorably with some of the films McCrea and Scott were doing in the same era.
Yes, the high point of DODGE CITY is Watson dragged to his death. My main disappointment with this one was that a stray bullet or arrow didn’t get him. A truly annoying child actor, but a hell of an accomplished screen crier. Thank God they never teamed him with Margaret O’Brien over at MGM, the floods would have been Biblical.
Steve,
I don’t disagree on Beery or Main. I much preferred him in the silent era before he picked up all the schitck he uses in most of his talkie films. He’s quite good as Challenger in LOST WORLD or King Richard in ROBIN HOOD. My favorite talkie role of his is as the backstabbing murderous villain in CHINA SEAS with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I really think it is his best talkie role.
But here the film moves fast enough that a lot of the Beery and Main mugging is cut to a minimum and they actually have a couple of effective scenes of awkward courting that work in context.
I have to wonder about what it was like on set with this one though. Beery and Main were two of the most peculiar actors in Hollywood, both extremely difficult and downright strange. She spent hours talking to her dead husband and he was known to steal everything off the set that wasn’t nailed down. Must have been a fun shoot.
April 12th, 2016 at 3:27 pm
The high point of DODGE CITY for me is the spectacular saloon brawl, footage from which was used in many Western movies and TV shows for years afterwards.
April 12th, 2016 at 3:42 pm
Gary,
Agree, that famous saloon brawl was still being used in television well into the 1960’s. Dan and I were being facetious because Bobs Watson is such an annoying child actor.
That said his career high is ON BORROWED TIME with Lionel Barrymore and Sir Cecil Hardwicke, so again I’m inconsistent because I love that film.
For anyone still having trouble placing him, he is Pee Wee in BOYS TOWN, where once again he plays a tragic weeping child.
He died in 1999 and I was surprised to see that he appeared in many films and television series throughout his career, even a semi regular on LOU GRANT as the paper’s foreign editor, his last appearance as a judge in a 1993 Perry Mason movie.
April 12th, 2016 at 4:26 pm
Dave,
Of course I was aware you & Dan were being facetious re Bobs of the Sobs. It was just that the mention of DODGE CITY got me thinking about the film and recalling what element of it impressed me the most.
Interesting that Watson’s career continued after his childhood. Apparently he acted under the name “Robert Watson” as an adult.
April 28th, 2016 at 8:22 pm
#9:
As an adult actor, Bobs Watson retained his boyhood nickname.
In adulthood, he became an ordained minister, with occasional “moonlighting” in character roles in movies and TV, including recurring roles on a couple of series (Lou Grant was one).
In Ron Howard’s first theatrical feature, Grand Theft Auto, Reverend Bobs Watson played the preacher who marries the eloping leads – and that’s how he’s billed in the credits.
June 13th, 2016 at 12:50 am
Mike, thanks for the correction. Once again, “info” online had it wrong.