THE GREAT JESSE JAMES RAID. Lippert Pictures, 1953. Willard Parker, Barbara Payton, Tom Neal, Wallace Ford, Jim Bannon, James Anderson, Richard Cutting, Barbara Woodell. Director: Reginald Le Borg.

   This movie comes as the first of six in a DVD boxed set titled “Legendary Outlaws,” so it will be easy to find, if you don’t have it and you decide to go looking. Others in the set are: Renegade Girl, Return of Jesse James, Gunfire, Dalton Gang, and I Shot Billy the Kid.

   I figure that Jesse James and Billy the Kid were the two men who appeared the most often in B-western motion pictures. I don’t know which one’s the more popular, if that’s the right word, but my money’s on Billy the Kid. (I suspect that maybe you could find out on IMDB, if you wanted to, but I … What the heck. There are 80 movies with Jesse James in them, and 86 with Billy the Kid. So I win!)

   Getting back to film at hand, though, Willard Parker does not make a particularly convincing Jesse James. He’s too tall, too handsome, and too blond too, for that matter.

   There’s no way around it. For someone who had the starring role in Tales of the Texas Rangers on TV for three years (1955-1958), he’s too stalwart, too strong, and simply too honest to play the role of a villain as if he meant it.

   Strike one.

   Another flaw in this film is that the ending is given away right at the beginning, when “cowardly” Bob Ford, played by Jim Bannon, comes calling one night at Mr. Howard’s house, where Jesse, his wife and son are living under assumed names. (See above.) One last job, is the deal, and Jesse falls for it. When he leaves, his wife begs him not to go, but of course he does.

   Strike two.

   Even though Willard Parker was decent enough as an actor, he never got the roles that would have made him a star. Not enough flair, not enough stage presence. When the real star of your western movie is Wallace Ford, playing a grizzled old-timer brought along for his skills with dynamite, sort of an Edgar Buchanan type but without the evil glint that sometimes appeared in the latter’s eye, why then, you know your budget for the film was far too low.

   Well, I’ll go ahead and say it. Strike three.

   Some pluses, though. Tom Neal (of Detour fame) is a nasty piece of work, and Barbara Payton (maybe the Lindsay Lohan of her day, if not even worse) is quite a dish. (She and Tom Neal may have been living together at the time.)

   But why Kate is brought along to the gold mine Jesse’s crew is working their way into, is a good question. There is no raid, per se, by the way, but things do get complicated. Not in any way that makes a lot of sense, but then again, the film is in color, and the dancing girls are nice.

THE LAST OUTLAW. RKO, 1936. Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson, Tom Tyler, Henry B. Walthall, Margaret Callahan. Director: Christy Cabanne. Shown at Cinecon 27, Hollywood CA, September 1993.

   One of the sleeper hits of the convention. Harry Carey (Sr.) is released from prison after serving a thirty-five year sentence for bank robbery.

   Carey is initially bewildered by the world he finds outside but soon discovers that crime hasn’t changed all that much. In an unlikely alliance with the lawman who had sent him to prison and with a new, younger friend (Hoot Gibson), Carey dons his pistols, saddles up and goes after the varmints who’ve done him wrong.

   A great shoot-out at a canyon cabin is the perfect conclusion to this delightful, touching portrait of men living by an older code that shows up the inadequacy of the new order.

   This was a remake of a 1919 silent that starred Carey, and was written and directed by John Ford. Harry Carey, Jr. had planned to attend the showing, but illness forced him to cancel his appearance.

Editorial Comment:   This movie was released on video cassette, but it has not appeared as a commercial DVD, to my knowledge.

A MAN CALLED SLEDGE. Columbia Pictures, 1970. James Garner, Dennis Weaver, Claude Akins, John Marley, Laura Antonelli, Wayde Preston. Producer: Dino de Laurentiis. Directors: Vic Morrow (also co-screenwriter) & Giorgio Gentili (the latter uncredited).

   What were they thinking? A spaghetti western filmed in Spain starring three of the most likable guys in American TV at the time as despicable villains? No way. There’s no chance in the world that these fellows could have pulled it off, and they don’t.

   From the title alone, you might think that this bit of tomfoolery was meant to be a spoof, but as the movie goes on it will gradually sink in, as if against your will, that they were deadly serious about this. Filmed in beautiful knock-your-eyes-out Technicolor, the movie itself is a shake-your-head-in-wonderment deadly bore.

   All except for a few moments around the two-thirds mark, that is, when Luther Sledge and his gang manage to steal $300,000 in gold from a well-fortified prison from the inside out. The rest of the movie is filled with action, all right, but of the uninspired gratuitous kind, of which other spaghetti westerns are equally filled. Try to imagine James Garner with a truly evil glint in his eye, and you can’t.

   Henry Fonda could have done this. James Garner is essentially just too nice. In Sledge, he only succeeds in looking (and acting) dumb. Why would he need the money (to be split numerous ways) when his steady girl friend Ria (Laura Antonelli) begs him not to go through with his plan? She wants him (heaven knows why), not the money.

   The plan which does not turn out well in the end, as you might expect, but what you will not expect is how dull-witted (if not feeble-minded) the gents are who pull off this heist are, only to let the proceeds slip through their fingers again so easily. (Which of course is the whole point, and points, I will concede, we will accept however we obtain them.)

   While the scenery and the colors are absolutely wonderful, you do have to ignore all of the fancy camera positions and shooting angles whenever the actors get on stage, as they are prone to do. All the camera shots do is call attention to themselves, and why the movie had to be redubbed back into English is beyond me.

PostScript: It is my contention that you can take any western and by watching it, but totally ignoring who the actors are, place it in the right decade, whether it be the 1920s, 30, 40s and all the way up. The themes, the settings, the clothes, the hair styles, the atmosphere — the idea of what a western was supposed to be changed decade by decade — and reflected that decade exactly.

   This is neither the time nor place to develop this thesis further, but I will, someday.

THE LAW OF THE 45’s. Normandy Pictures, 1935. Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams (Tucson ‘Two-Gun’ Smith), Molly O’Day, Al St. John (Stoney Martin), Ted Adams, Lafe McKee, Fred Burns. Screenplay: Robert Emmett Tansey, based on the novel by William Colt MacDonald (Law of the Forty-Fives, Covici Friede, 1933). Director: John P. McCarthy.

   To start off, to put off the inevitable and to put it bluntly, there is absolutely no reason anyone should watch this Bottom of the Barrel B-Western movie except for historical reasons.

   To wit: although not officially part of the canon, and even though only two of them show up, and one of them has the wrong name, this is the first of the “Three Mesquiteers” movies, of which there were 51 more to come, beginning in 1936 and ending in 1943.

   Although many players played the three cowboys over the years, the ones I remember most are Robert Livingston as Stony Brooke, Ray Corrigan as Tucson Smith, and Max Terhune as Lullaby Joslin. You may have your own favorite threesome, but as much as I liked Bob Steele as a cowboy star (Tucson Smith in the last 13 of them), the ones above were mine.

   Some movies with a running time of 57 minutes have so much crammed into them that each and every scene has a crucial part of the story line in it. Not so with Law of the .45’s. It is the longest 57 minutes I can remember sitting through since grad school. The acting is a mixture of old-fashioned silent movie stars trying to figure out what the microphone is doing there, with pauses for emphasis that you could plow an 18-wheeler through, while other of the players seem to have taken nicely to the new technology, speaking in normal tones and normal rhythms.

   Story: a crooked lawyer is apparently behind the gang of outlaws terrorizing the valley where Tucson and Stoney are bringing their herd of cattle, and the latter agree to work for Joan Hayden (Molly O’Day) and her father (Lafe McKee) to bring peace and justice back to the land again.

   Other than that, there is little but cowboys riding here and there in the hills, ranches being burned to the ground and cattle stampeding (as cattle are wont to do) — all very exciting, or it would be if you care for watching cowboys riding here and there in the hills, sometimes at very high speeds. There is also a group of singing wranglers, unnamed as a group or individually in the movie’s credits, but their identities can be found on the know-all IMDB page for the film.

   As for Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, he gets to grimace and squint a lot, but on the other hand, he also gets the girl.

THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK. Paramount Pictures, 1950. John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Dennis O’Keefe, Eduardo Noriega, Thomas Gomez, Fred Clark, Frank Faylen, Grandon Rhodes, Walter Reed. Screenplay: Geoffrey Homes & Lewis R. Foster, based on a story by Jeff Arnold. Director: Lewis R. Foster.

   The time is 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, and Texas Ranger Todd Croydon (John Payne) is more than a little curious when the man he rescues from the Confederate army at the request of Governor Lubbock (Grandon Rhodes) of Texas proves to be Yankee spy Whitney Randolph (Dennis O’Keefe).

   The governor hasn’t turned traitor. O’Keefe is spying on Mexico not Texas. Someone is building an army on the border and O’Keefe has evidence it is part of plot by Napoleon III of France to seize Mexico and wrest it from President Benito Juarez’s fledgling democracy.

   Croydon agrees to escort Randolph to Mexico, and once they arrive they learn the plot is more dire than they suspected. Basil Danzeeger (Fred Clark), claiming to be an agent of Juarez, has convinced the charismatic El Captain, the Hawk (Thomas Gomez) to raise and army to invade Texas, vulnerable as the Civil War rages.

   What El Captain doesn’t know and must be convinced of is that Danzeeger is really an agent of Napoleon III and Maximillian, so Croydon agrees to spy on Danzeeger while Randolph infiltrates El Captain’s troops.

   And to complicate things Croydon finds himself falling for Clark’s beautiful wife Madeline (Rhonda Fleming) a French agent who has been smuggling arms into Mexico, and Danzeeger’s right hand man Red Hyatt (Frank Faylen) thinks he remembers Croydon’s face — as he should since Croydon once shot him during a bank robbery.

   Lewis R. Foster and John Payne teamed for several good tough films in this era including El Paso, Crosswinds, and Captain China, and this tough little A western is a good example.

   The script, co-written by mystery writer Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring) is smart and tough with a dash of international intrigue added to the usual western mix, and Payne and O’Keefe make a good team, the taciturn man of action and the glib fast talking but equally brave secret agent. A running gag about O’Keefe’s uncanny luck at cards and dice and losing his boots actually ties into the plot.

   Payne and O’Keefe teamed in at least one other western from the same era, Passage West (1951). Foster is best remembered for writing the original story for Frank Capra’s classic Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, for which he won an Oscar.

   The highlights of the film occur when the captured Payne is tied between two wild mustangs, a la Byron’s Mazeppa, to be torn apart as they run wild, and the fiery confrontation on a burning mountain between Danzeeger, Croydon, and El Captain in the finale. James Wong Howe’s legendary touch as the cinematographer is another bonus.

   You can download the comic book adaptation of this here under Movie Westerns for free along with a free CBR (comic book reader).

   A minor A western with a solid cast and better than usual screenplay, The Eagle and the Hawk will hold your attention, and remind you how many of these solid entertainments Hollywood used to turn out seemingly without effort.

   Payne is tough and romantic, O’Keefe cool and slick, Fleming beautiful and passionate, Gomez dangerous but noble, Clark and Faylen treacherous and sadistic — a fairly stock cast, but done with intelligence by sure hands it all adds up to an entertaining oater with a touch of something more, and a tough literate screenplay adds to the film’s bonuses, as does James Wong Howe’s cinematography.

  MAN IN THE SADDLE.   Columbia, 1951. Randolph Scott, Joan Leslie, Ellen Drew, Alexander Knox, Richard Rober, John Russell, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams. Screenplay: Kenneth Gamet, based on the novel by Ernest Haycox. Director: Andre de Toth.

  ERNEST HAYCOX – Man in the Saddle.   Little Brown, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including Dell #120, pb, mapback edition, 1946 (shown); Dell #618, pb, 1956; Signet, pb, 1972; Pinnacle, pb, 1988.

   Four years after Ramrod (reviewed here ), director Andre de Toth did it again. Columbia’s Man in the Saddle (1951) is based very closely on the 1938 book of the same name by Ernest Haycox, but it seems more like a re-telling of the earlier film, and equally noirish despite the Technicolor.

   This time, Joan Leslie is the woman looking to escape a shiftless father by marrying a cattle baron (played with chilling detachment by Alexander Knox) though everyone knows she loves small-rancher Randolph Scott, a circumstance that leads to Range War and the shoot-outs, bar-fights, stampedes, chases, et al. repeated from the earlier film.

   Haycox’s novel is an easy read, even if his prose lacks the punch of Luke Short’s and he really doesn’t invest the action scenes with much energy. He’s very good, though, at conveying the growing tension of an eminent shoot-out, or the suspense of a forthcoming ambush, and in these bits the book really comes alive.

   Writer Kenneth Gamet adapted this to the screen, and he managed a few interesting wrinkles while staying close to the book, streamlining the action and bringing some of the minor characters into better focus, particularly John Russell as a socially-challenged outcast, contrasted against Richard Rober as a genial killer.

   There’s also an interesting twist at the end as two antagonists resolve their conflict, only to find themselves trapped in their clichéd roles as Good Guy and Bad Guy. In all, an interesting variation on the earlier film, and fun all by itself.

   Someone also pointed out another common theme in these films: both Ramrod and this one, they say, carry sexual connotations. Being young and innocent, I wouldn’t know about that, but it’s an interesting thought.

YUMA. Made for TV movie: ABC, 02 March 1971. Clint Walker, Barry Sullivan, Kathryn Hays, Edgar Buchanan, Morgan Woodward, Peter Mark Richman, Bruce Glover, Miguel Alejandro. Producer: Aaron Spelling. Director: Ted Post.

   The ending of this movie, to begin wrong end to, shows Marshal Dave Harmon (Clint Walker), widowed hotel owner Julie Williams (Kathryn Hays), and Andreas, the young Mexican boy befriended by the marshal (Miguel Alejandro), all frolicking together down at the local swimming hole.

   This incongruous bit of byplay illustrates more than anything else in this well done made-for-TV movie that it was also the pilot for a series that was never picked up. No movie meant for theaters would end in such a fashion!

   The beginning is much, much better, showing as it does Marshal Harmon’s first entrance into to the frontier town of Yuma, Arizona, as he makes his way on horseback through a crowded maze of cowpokes on horses, full-team wagons, one horse buggies, women in bonnets and petticoats and arms full of purchases – the busiest western street I can remember seeing in a long long time.

   Only to be met by a stagecoach emptied of its passengers, and driven and overturned by two drunken cowboys. Confronted by the town’s new marshal, one of the two brother shoots and dies, the other is brought to the town’s run-down jail, unused since the previous officer of the law was sent skedaddling.

   Turns out (you knew?) that a third brother is the owner of a huge herd of cattle being brought to town. It also turns out that he is not likely to take too kindly to his one brother’s death.

   Things get worse, however. The second brother is secretly released during the night while the marshal is asleep, then shot in the back as he tries to make his escape.

   There is much more, which I won’t go into, but the action is very nearly non-stop, and it’s also a pretty good mystery to boot. Clint Walker’s character is as tall as the man playing him, and he has some back story that would have been gone into, if there had been more to the series than this busted pilot.

   Kathryn Hays, later a longtime star of As the World Turns (for nearly 40 years), has little to do but look pretty, but once she realizes that the new marshal is the real thing, taciturn but tough and not a man to back down, ever, she is also as supportive as she can be.

   Let me tell you how much I enjoyed watching this. The print on the DVD I have is just enough out of focus that I would have turned it off within the first two minutes if I hadn’t been caught up in the story as much as I was.

RAMROD. United Artists, 1947. Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Don DeFore, Donald Crisp, Preston Foster, Arleen Whelan. Charles Ruggles, Lloyd Bridges. Screenplay: Jack Moffitt, Graham Baker & Cecile Kramer, based on the novel by Luke Short. Director: Andre de Toth.

LUKE SHORT – Ramrod. Macmillan, hardcover, 1943. Paperback reprints include: Popular Library 114, 1946; Popular Library 792, 1953; Bantam, 1977; Dell, 1992.

   Ramrod (UA, 1947) was the second noir Western, following RKO’s Pursued into release by two months, and it’s an all-around faster-moving thing, filled with shoot-outs, bar-fights, stampedes and chases, yet still dark and moody enough to rank solidly in the noir class.

   In conjunction with watching this, I took a look at the 1943 novel on which it’s based. Luke Short (real name Frederick Glidden) deals out his tale with a punchy prose style and generally fast pace, though he sometimes gets bogged down in details he ought to just ride around.

   What pulls the book out of the ordinary though, is his feel for character and how it shapes the plot. Ramrod starts up with a face-off between two ranchers motivated/manipulated by a woman who wants to get out of the fate her father has planned for her.

   When the face-off falls through, she falls back on the help of a disgraced cowboy trying to redeem himself — the eponymous Ramrod of the outfit — leading to Range War and the shoot-outs, bar-fights, stampedes, chases, et al.

   Three writers adapted this into a movie that stays remarkably close to the book, even down to details and dialogue, but it took a director like Andre de Toth to turn it into something really special. De Toth shows a feel for character equal to Short’s, but he evokes it visually; as the cowboy seeking redemption, Joel McCrea seems to be always climbing something (stairs, hillsides, porches…) as the perfect visual metaphor for his quest.

   Veronica Lake’ s cowgirl-fatale is photographed in sharp-focus, emphasizing her hard-edged drive, while the lesser characters — Preston Foster’s ruthless rancher, Charlie Ruggles’ well-meaning father and especially Don DeFore as McCrae’ s shifty partner — all come across surprisingly real. De Toth also has a flair for brutality suited to noir and a feel for pace perfect for the Western, a combination you just can’t beat.

LAND BEYOND THE LAW. Warner Brothers, 1937. Dick Foran, Linda Perry, Wayne Morris, Harry Woods, Irene Franklin, Frank Orth, Cy Kendall. Director: B. Reeves Eason.

   Walker Martin sent me an email yesterday morning, suggesting that I give you all a heads up on TCM’s lineup of B-Western movies they were going to show all afternoon, all oaters with “Law” in their titles.

   Of course I didn’t see his email until just before the first movie started, but I did get it in time to make sure my tape machine was properly set up and the cable box was set to the right channel. This is the first of the four.

   Plot synopsis: Cowpoke “Chip” Douglas (Dick Foran) is persuaded to become sheriff when his father is killed by rustlers. Complicating matters before his father’s death was the fact that Douglas was riding for the man (Cy Kendall) who’s secretly responsible for all of the gunplay and violence in the area. (Not that it’s much of a secret.)

   Dick Foran is billed as “The Singing Cowboy,” and indeed the chunky, jovial-looking actor has a voice like Nelson Eddy. No wimpy Roy or Gene is he. The opening scene, with the ranch hands riding into town singing like a grand chorus a song that might have been written by Sigmund Romberg, is a sight to be seen, and something even more spectacular to hear.

   This movie is pure horse operetta, through and through. And as thoroughly enjoyable, too, with plenty of plot, lots of action, and a spanking scene to boot!”

COUNT THREE AND PRAY. Columbia, 1955. Van Heflin, Joanne Woodward, Phil Carey, Raymond Burr, Allison Hayes, Myron Healey, Nancy Kulp, Jean Willes. Screenwriter: Herb Meadows. Director: George Sherman.

   In all likelihood, this is Joanne Woodward’s least known motion picture. I may be wrong about that, but it is for a fact her first.

   Before doing Count Three and Pray, she’d been on Broadway and she’d been on television, doing episodes of highly regarded series such as The United States Steel Hour, Alcoa Playhouse and Studio One.

   It was on Broadway that she first met a fellow actor named Paul Newman; both were understudies for a run of “Picnic,” where they got along well, or so I’ve read.

   I’ve categorized this movie as a western, but I’m not sure that it is, exactly, even though director George Sherman had directed tons of westerns, starting as far back as 1937. It does take place in the post-War South, that’s definite, but how far west Van Heflin’s rural home town is, the one he returns to, I’m not sure.

   Van Heflin plays Luke Fargo, a veteran of the war and a man with a new goal in life. It seems that he fought for the North, a choice his former neighbors do not take kindly to when he returns. Before he left, he was also something of a hell-raiser. Now his only desire is to become the town’s preacher.

   But the church has been destroyed, and the parsonage next door in bad shape and has been taken over and is lived in by a young orphan girl named Lissy (Miss Woodward), a true tomboy who wants nothing to do with Luke Fargo. As if she has any choice.

   Running the town is a storekeeper named Yancey Huggins (Raymond Burr, in fine villainous form). Allison Hayes (later to become the “50 Foot Woman”) plays the daughter of one of the town’s former aristocrats, and you know how old Southern aristocrats fared after the War. Many of them had to make their lives over, in any way they could.

   (It should be noted that the female star with Van Heflin in the still from the movie is Allison Hayes. It’s been difficult to find any contemporaneous publicity material which includes Joanne Woodward, which illustrates, I believe, how totally unknown she was to moviegoers at the time.)

   As for Van Heflin, he plays weary and perhaps sorely misguided but determined very well, but Joanne Woodward is even better, as she brings an entirely unexpected light to his life – and to this movie as well.

   Even this early in her career her Broadway training is very noticeable. She moves around the set with polished ease, makes it clear what she’s thinking without saying a word, and when she does speak she does so clearly and projects to the last seat in the balcony – and in the meantime, she is a ray of sunshine whenever she is on the screen. It is extremely clear that she would not be doing many more westerns in her movie-making career.

   Two years later, she won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Three Faces of Eve (1957).