Mon 11 Apr 2016
A Western Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: THE REDHEAD FROM WYOMING (1953).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[13] Comments
THE REDHEAD FROM WYOMING. Universal International, 1953. Maureen O’Hara, Alex Nicol, William Bishop, Robert Strauss, Alexander Scourby, Palmer Lee, Jack Kelly, Jeanne Cooper, Dennis Weaver, Stacy Harris. Director: Lee Sholem.
For the first twenty minutes or so, I thought that The Redhead from Wyoming was going to be a much better movie than it ultimately turned out to be. There was something particularly dynamic about Maureen O’Hara’s screen presence, including her brightly colored clothes that gave me reason to think that this Universal International release might be something of a minor forgotten gem.
Sadly, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Although it’s not without its charms, the movie is simply just another lackluster 1950s Western that ends up playing it on the safe side. The result being that the movie is likely to languish in relative obscurity.
In many ways, the plot is less a cohesive whole than a mishmash of tropes. Range war between the local cattle baron and homesteaders (check); drifter with a tragic past turned lawman (check); the flamboyant female saloon proprietress with a dark past and heart of gold (check); the power mad villain who wants to catapult himself into the governorship (check). You get the picture and can fill in the blanks from there.
What makes The Redhead from Wyoming somewhat interesting is the rather overt proto-feminist messaging. O’Hara portrays Kate Maxwell, a strong-willed saloon owner caught between three powerful men: Sheriff Stan Blaine (Alex Nicol), cattle baron Reece Duncan (Alexander Scourby), and local power broker Jim Averell (William Bishop). What these three men don’t realize is that Kate has more than good looks. She’s got brains and she’s willing to use them. She’s pretty handy with a gun too. Sadly, the supporting cast, let alone the lifeless male characters and plot, doesn’t do her character justice.
April 12th, 2016 at 4:18 am
Do I detect a Theme here? Is April “Wyoming Month” at this site?
At any rate, Universal made some fine westerns in the 1950s and I LOVE the lurid Technicolor that was used in those days, but you can’t expect much from the director of SUPERMAN & THE MOLE MEN.
April 12th, 2016 at 10:39 am
Maureen needed a leading man in this thing.
April 12th, 2016 at 12:32 pm
I enjoyed this movie – mildly. It is pleasant.
And who can resist O’Hara’s multi-colored hat? Seen in still #2.
The film shows Lee Sholem’s consistent interest in non-violence. The good guys come up with a non-violent scheme to defeat the bad guys.
Also: the film shows touches of Sholem’s positive interest in religion. O’Hara mentions preachers and Christmas.
Roll’Em Sholem, as he was known in Hollywood, made quite a few Warner TV Westerns. His best episodes:
The Long Search on Cheyenne
Trial by Conscience on Cheyenne
The Imposter on Cheyenne
School for Cowards on Bronco
The Bandit on Lawman
My brief take on Sholem is apparently one of the few things ever written about him:
http://mikegrost.com/sholem.htm
April 12th, 2016 at 12:47 pm
Despite the genre snobbery in the above comment, Superman and The Mole Man has an explicit, literal anti-lynching theme right in the McCarthy Era.
April 12th, 2016 at 1:41 pm
Did Lee Sholem write these things? Otherwise, no reason to attribute themes ala Hitch and Ford to a guy with very few credits.
April 12th, 2016 at 1:44 pm
And I do mean film rather than television, which in his time was even more mechanical. This guy brought low budget products in on time, he was not a philosopher king.
April 12th, 2016 at 3:10 pm
Forgot to add that I enjoyed this review.
Thank you!
April 12th, 2016 at 3:28 pm
Barry,
You hit the problem with the film right on the head — the leading men. Several studios tried Westerns with female leads in this period and almost all of them suffer from the same problem, the leading men simply can’t compete with actresses like Maureen O’Hara (she fared much better with Brian Keith, a much stronger actor) or Barbara Stanwyck (who fared better because she made more and more varied Westerns with better directors and scripts too and even when overmatched better leading men than Alex Nicol an actor of extremely limited appeal best suited to whining psychotics).
Alex Nicol is good as a weak bad guy or second lead, but he’s no leading man for an actress as strong on screen as O’Hara. Actually this might have fared better to cast William Bishop against type, at least that would have been interesting. This one is a singularly dull Western though.
Studios always had this problem with strong female leads. There was a tendency to put them on screen against actors who just could not match them resulting in romantic situations that were hard to buy. It might work with say a Bette Davis and George Brent because despite his limits he has a solid screen presence she could bounce off of without knocking him off the screen entirely, but too often the result was like this one where any romantic element was so ridiculous as to sabotage the film completely.
Here I kept expecting O’Hara to shoot Nichol and try to reform Bishop as the only way to salvage the film.
I agree too I don’t think you can attribute too much auteur theory about a Lee Sholem film. My impression of his work is that he directed what was on the page and the better the script the better the film. That isn’t to say there are no marks of a Sholem film, almost any competent director eventually develops themes that appear in his work.
The screenplay is credited to Polly James and Herb Meadow. Meadow had a long list of credits, but James, who also wrote the story here, only has sixteen credits, and all but three of them Westerns, only one a major film (MRS. PARKINGTON), and most television including episodes of GENE AUTRY’S CHAMPION, THE ADVENTURES OF JIM BOWIE, and SUGARFOOT. I would be willing to guess Meadow was brought in to do what he could with a mediocre screenplay, since she did one other film in this period, THE RAIDERS, and then goes mostly to television.
I suspect the lack of violence was part of an attempt to lure more women to Western movies with a strong female lead and a more story oriented film, but whatever the studio was thinking it fails here.
With the exception of Stanwyck though most female lead Westerns are like this. Even Jane Russell’s bust couldn’t save THE OUTLAW with her cast opposite Jack Beutel despite the presence of Walter Huston and Thomas Mitchell.
No matter who the director is he has to have something to work with, and it is hard to do much with Alex Nicol as your hero.
April 12th, 2016 at 4:25 pm
David,
Even if there is no John Wayne or Clark Gable, there certainly might have been Dennis O’Keefe, Barry Sullivan, John Payne, MacDonald Carey, Sterling Hayden, or anyone else actually alive at the time.
April 12th, 2016 at 5:44 pm
Alex Nicol was a good supporting actor, as in RED BALL EXPRESS with Jeff Chandler as the lead. If you had reversed the roles in that film, it would not have worked
April 12th, 2016 at 9:23 pm
Barry,
I agree, but all the actors you mention were stronger leads than Alex Nichol. Payne was her leading man in some good films, so was Macdonald Carey, and for that matter Paul Henried.
Jonathan,
Nichol was a competent enough actor, just not a good leading man. He’s damn good in THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, but not someone you would cast as an equal to Maureen O’Hara on the big screen.
April 12th, 2016 at 10:06 pm
Dan, Comment #1
I don’t think there’s enough to say about Wyoming to spend a whole month in tribute to, but one day, absolutely.
April 13th, 2016 at 4:04 pm
Steve, I found 8 or 10 movies with “Wyoming” in the title….Funny thing though: They were all Westerns.