Wed 13 Jun 2018
A Western Double Bill Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE (1956) / FIVE GUNS TO TOMBSTONE (1960).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[9] Comments
THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE. MGM, 1956. Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, Broderick Crawford, Russ Tamblyn, Leif Erickson, John Dehner, Noah Beery Jr. Written by Frank D. Gilroy and Russell Rouse from an original teleplay (The Last Notch, 1954) by Gilroy. Directed by Russell Rouse.
FIVE GUNS TO TOMBSTONE. United Artists, 1960. James Brown, John Wilder, Walter Coy, Robert Karnes, Della Sharman, Willis Bouchey. Written by Richard Schayer and Jack DeWitt, from an original screenplay (Gun Belt, 1953) by Arthur E. Orloff.
Two films I happened to watch back-to-back, and they go me to thinking….
The Fastest Gun Alive was based on an early television drama, and it has the pared-down self-importance of that time. Where Shane mythologized the clichés of the Western, this seeks to codify them, with Glenn Ford as the eponymous pistolero, trying to resist his addiction to firearms until called on to save his community.
According to the story, if anyone is known as a fast gun, every other gunfighter in the known universe will come after him, and they will meet on Main Street with guns holstered for a fair fight. Pure bosh of course, conveyed with a great deal of talk, but MGM saw fit to stretch the thing out by ringing in Russ Tamblyn for an acrobatic and completely extraneous dance number. There’s also the usual nod to High Noon, with the townsmen cowering for safety (and more talk) in a church as they hide from fast-gun Broderick Crawford and his back-up group.
On the plus side, Director Russell Rouse opens it out well, Glenn Ford delivers a fine performance, and there are a lot of familiar B-Western faces around. Best of all, there’s John Dehner in a very well-written part as Brod’s lieutenant owl-hoot. This, with Man of the West, puts Dehner at the top of my list as Best of the 2nd-String Bad Guys.
Five Guns to Tombstone, on the other hand, boasts no self-importance at all, and the players will be familiar only to the most devoted of B-Western fans. Directed by that veteran hack Edward L. Cahn (The She Creature, It: The Terror from Beyond Space) it moves with an uncomplicated simplicity that celebrates, rather than solidifies, the familiar paces of its story.
The story? Ah yes. Something about another ex-gunfighter (James Brown) trying to get along peaceable-like until his outlaw brother drags him into a Wells Fargo robbery fraught with treachery and sudden endings. No memorable acting here, but everyone is more than competent, and the parts only require as much depth as a strip of celluloid – that and the ability to ride, fight and shoot convincingly. And speaking of shooting: In this movie, everybody, good guys and bad, pull out their irons at the first sign of trouble and go in shooting.
Five Guns is hardly memorable, but as I watched it zip through its allotted time, after listening to Fastest Gun talk its way along, it was like a breath of fresh and simple Western air. Not a great western, maybe not even a very good one, but I found it refreshing.
June 14th, 2018 at 3:15 am
Give John Dehner points for his prescient Freudinism. Knows that Crawford needs to be the title role cuz he couldn’t satisfy his wife. Maybe had the same trait there also.
June 14th, 2018 at 6:43 am
John Dehner was an actor I knew first from radio. He was the star of two excellent radio shows, Have Gun, Will Travel and Frontier Gentleman. Only later on did I realize that he was a guest star in almost every tv series that aired in the 50s and 60s.
Celebrating Broderick Crawford week: He was in movies reviewed in two of the last three posts on this blog, both westerns,
June 14th, 2018 at 8:19 am
I saw Crawford in an episode of Highway Patrol yesterday. 10-4.
June 14th, 2018 at 1:16 pm
I enjoyed that program when I was young. Crawford’s size and that voice of his really made it stand out for me.
June 14th, 2018 at 2:35 pm
Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford also appeared together in Fritz Lang’s HUMAN DESIRE (1954)
June 14th, 2018 at 5:18 pm
The whole “threaten the fastest gun” motif perhaps comes from “The Gunfighter” (Henry KIng). It shows up in a lot of Westerns.
I like Edward l. Cahn. Admittedly this Western is bland – although the wedding ride at the end is nice, IIRC. But Cahn and star James Brown did better in their crime drama “Police Dog Story” (1961), a good movie by any standard. Cahn’s films are often quite personal, once you get used to his approaches.
“Gun Belt” (Ray Nazarro, 1953), the original film is dull, dull, dull, wasting a good cast and color film.
Fritz Lang and HUMAN DESIRE stand tall as cinema by a master.
June 14th, 2018 at 5:22 pm
Why Wikipedia cannot be entirely trusted. In the article relating to The fastest Gun Alive Ford’s quick draw is described as something that came back to haunt him in the service, but he was in service some dozen years prior to the production. As in, during the war.
June 14th, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Highway Patrol sometimes benefits from its location photography of California. It can be like going back in a time machine and seeing the buildings and roads of the 1950’s.
June 24th, 2018 at 4:20 pm
THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE is one of those fifties Westerns that has almost nothing to do with the actual Old West and everything to do with the psychological, political, and social conditions of the period it was made in, not set in.
That isn’t a knock, just a fact.
The trope of the fast draw haunted by young men out to make a name for myself began with Bob Ford and Jack McCall backshooting Jesse James and Hickok, and is absolute hogwash. My great grandfather was a lesser known gunfighter and no one was stupid enough to prod him. These men were deadly professionals and young kids were no more on the prod to better them than most would be to try and out play Labron James on the basketball court.
When these men met, as John Wesley Hardin and Hickok did, it was usually with a wary respect.
FASTEST GUN is an entertaining film, but like HIGH NOON it is about the 1950s, not the 1880s.