Wed 20 Oct 2010
Archived Western Movie Review: THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN (1953).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[12] Comments
THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN. Warner Brothers, 1953. Randolph Scott, Patrice Wymore, Dick Wesson, Philip Carey, Lina Romay, Roy Roberts, Alan Hale Jr. Director: Felix E. Feist.
This elegantly staged western is busy, stylish and full of pizzazz. That the plot, based on an unknown piece of southern Californian history, makes no sense whatsoever doesn’t seem to make much difference, or at least it didn’t to me.
Randolph Scott is working undercover in this one, trying to infiltrate a gang of California revolutionists, Southern style, who are intent on capturing all the water rights surrounding the burgeoning burg of Los Angeles.
Is he a schoolteacher (replacing Patrice Wymore, who is supposed to be marrying army officer Philip Carey), or is he a renegade, wanted for murdering a fellow officer in a duel?
We (the viewer) know, as if anyone as dedicated to duty as Randolph Scott could be anything but a hero and a gentleman. The action (and the laughs, courtesy Hale & Wesson) is fast and furious, from the opening scene onward — including a modicum of romance (and a rowdy row between the two ladies).
There is a neat twist in the tale as well, making this movie more than worthy of your attention. (If this is a B-western, it is a better B.)
[UPDATE] 10-20-10. Do I remember this one? Only vaguely. But my review was positive enough that it convinced that I ought to own a copy of it on DVD.
Easily done. There’s one available that also contains Thunder Over the Plains (Warner, 1953) and Riding Shotgun (Warner, 1954), both also with Randolph Scott.
I should have it in my hands in four or five days.
October 21st, 2010 at 10:21 am
According to my note in Brian Garfield’s WESTERN FILMS, I viewed this movie in 1986 and liked it also. Garfield is a very tough critic of westerns however and called it “poor”. I have a copy of the same dvd that Steve ordered and will also be watching it again. There were other triple features of Randolph Scott films, all inexpensive. I would have to say that he is my favorite western film star.
October 21st, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I understand where Brian Garfield is coming from, but I agree with you, Walker, that he’s awfully hard on some very entertaining films.
But all things considered, I’d rather read a book like his than one that gushes over everything.
October 21st, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Never liked it.
October 22nd, 2010 at 12:58 am
Truth is this is raised above B level western solely by Scott’s presence, but it is still entertaining, though I can see Garfield’s problems with it (hackneyed plot devices and awfully set bound for a western of the period). Though the McGuffin is different, it’s the same plot as SPRINGFIELD RIFLE and a few dozen others.
But for me sheer professionalism and a more than capable cast raised it above the minor squabbles and Scott’s presence alone makes it worthwhile.
There is a weight and quality about Scott’s films and his screen persona that marks them as unique, even when, as here, the material is only adequate.
It may be a joke in Mel Brooks BLAZING SADDLES when the whole town removes their hats whenever Scott’s name is invoked, but for western fans it is true. Within, what would seem at first glance to be a fairly narrow variation on the sort of characters William S. Hart pioneered in silent westerns, Scott managed some subtle and careful variations with a great deal of depth. Laconic he might be, but there was something almost Shakesperian suggested beneath that benign surface.
Overall I would put Scott’s westerns, those of Joel McCrea, Gary Cooper’s, John Ford’s, and James Stewart’s films with Anthony Mann as the best westerns ever made. They are the films I think of when I think of good westerns, and Scott’s presence was such he could even raise the level of a western with Mae West or Gypsy Rose Lee much less a solid minor A western like this.
I wonder if this was the same crooked water deal still going on in CHINATOWN?
October 22nd, 2010 at 5:26 am
Yes, Randolph Scott was the type of actor who could raise the mediocre western film up to a higher level just by the strength of his persona. He knew how to wear the rough and dusty clothes and ride horses just about better than anyone else. Thanks to dvds it is now possible to build up your own movie library of favorite actors and films. I just about have all of Scott’s westerns and like him even more than my favorite B-western stars like Harry Carey, Buck Jones and George O’Brien.
October 22nd, 2010 at 11:36 am
Even some of Scott’s B films, the Zane Grey films he did replacing Gary Cooper, THE CARIBOO TRAIL, and even some second feature or Saturday Matinee A westerns in the forties show that incredible screen presence.
Maybe his most under-rated western is Allan Dwan’s 1939 FRONTIER MARSHALL (remade and overshadowed by Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE — both based on Stuart Lake’s Wyatt Earp bio). Scott as Wyatt Earp and Cesar Romero as Doc Holliday are both fine in the film, and it does have one historical connection missing from the Ford version; Eddie Foy Jr. plays a vaudevillian stuck in Tombstone for the famous gunfight — which is exactly what happened to his famous father.
Surprisingly many scenes from the Ford film are scene for scene recreations of this earlier one.
October 22nd, 2010 at 4:22 pm
For some reason, and I don’t know why, my review of RIDE LONESOME from December 2008 has gotten a lot of hits this week. It’s one that Scott did with Burt Kennedy (screenwriter) and Budd Boetticher (director).
Maybe the movie has been playing on one of cable channels, Encore Westerns, perhaps. In any case, it’s nice to know that we’re not the only ones who watch Randolph Scott movies.
October 22nd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
This seems as good a place as any to tell (or possibly re tell) my favorite Scott story.
As you probably know, blue pages are the daily changes actors are given to the original script they were given at the beginning of the film — little bits of dialogue and changes of scenes, and it some cases major revisions and last minute radical changes.
Anyway Scott was working on one of his fifties films (I don’t know which) and as usual arrived early in the morning and headed for make up, but on the way he was stopped by a new producer who handed him that mornings blue pages.
Scott took the pages, looked at them, and turned around, got in his car and went home. The frustrated director screamed at the producer: “Don’t ever give Scott blue pages of morning! He goes home to study them. Give them to him when he’s leaving anyway!”
For some reason that has always sort of summed up Randolph Scott to me — an actor who did things his way whatever the rest of the world was thinking or doing. It comes across on screen as part of that presence — like the great silent actors he could convey more with an eyebrow, a look, or a twist of the lip than most actors could with twenty pages of dialogue.
As someone said of another actor once, he had a great face for reading things into.
October 23rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
Steve, RIDE LONESOME was on Turner a few days ago as part of the Critic’s Choice Series and was selected by New York Times critic A. O. Scott
October 24th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Steve,
Nothing sends readers to my film site like a screening on Turner.
The Joseph H. Lewis six-film night sent more people to the Lewis article in two days than usually read it in a month.
This is a good review of THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN! It’s a fun movie.
April 14th, 2015 at 6:17 am
I like this film. When Randolph Scott and Harry Carey are in the saloon, there is a barbershop quartet singing “Some Sunday Morning.” Does anyone know their names?
April 14th, 2015 at 12:17 pm
Unfortunately no source I’ve come across seems to say. Anyone else?