Thu 23 Oct 2014
A Western Review by Dan Stumpf: WARLOCK (Book and Film).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction , Western movies[5] Comments
OAKLEY HALL – Warlock. Viking, hardcover 1958. Bantam, paperback, 1959. University of Nebraska Press, softcover, 1980. New York Review of Books Classics, softcover, 2005
WARLOCK. Fox, 1959. Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, Wallace Ford, Tom Drake, Richard Arlen, Whit Bissel, Donald “Red†Barry and DeForest Kelley. Screenplay by Robert Alan Arthur. Directed by Edward Dmytryk.
I’ve been pleased to read a few truly great Westerns this year, and this was one of them, a Pulitzer nominee that can stand right up there with The Big Sky, The Last Hunt and The Stars in Their Courses as a great novel and a great Western.
Author Oakley Hall takes the basic elements from the Earp-in-Tombstone saga (events that have already become an American Iliad) and uses them to create his own Epic Ballad, much as John Ford did in My Darling Clementine.
But where Ford turned heroes into legends, Hall transmutes the legends into role-players, fictionalizing them to give himself the poetic license he needs. Thus Wyatt Earp becomes Clay Blaisdell, Doc Holiday is Tom Morgan, Ike Clanton turns into Abe McQuown—and Tombstone becomes Warlock.
What emerges is a complex, fast-moving and vivid drama-cum-folk-tale punctuated by shoot-outs, hold-ups, bar fights and lynch mobs, in which characters sometimes stand impressively against the tide and sometimes get swept along or even drowned by it. Hall has a nifty trick of showing how the players we admire most can be capable of cowardice and treachery, yet somehow never lose our esteem. And in all the complexity of character he never lets go of the narrative reins, keeping the tale moving nicely at all times. Hall can write actions scenes with the best of them, but it’s his feel for people and place that make the tale so memorable.
I saw the film shortly after reading the book, and I guess I’ll have to wait a couple years and see it again so I can judge Warlock the movie on its own terms. As it was, the story seemed too simple and too hurried, and the characters unconvincing or simply unappealing. Richard Widmark isn’t bad as the outclassed Deputy trying to do his duty, but I never got a feel for the character, and I’m not sure he did either. Henry Fonda, once a memorable Wyatt Earp, looks a bit podgy as Blaisdell, and Anthony Quinn plays Morgan/Holliday as a prissy mother hen — one critic called it “the most open depiction of homosexual love in the classic western.â€
The supporting players come off a bit better, including DeForest Kelley in the Curly Bill part, and Frank Gorshin (!) as Widmark’s hot-head kid brother, but again the film simplifies them into non-existence. Or at least it did to me, seeing it when I did. The film has its fans, and perhaps I’ll like it better a few years hence. Meanwhile, let me say again that the book is one that Western fans should treat themselves to.
October 23rd, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Kelly impressed me in this one too, though like you I was disappointed in Fonda and Quinn, and not sure Widmark caught the depth of the character, and his transition from cowboy on one side to sudden lawman was not as compelling as in the novel. I did think Malone was impressive and it was nice to see Drake in a rare role for him.
Interesting screenwriter and obviously director.
The book is one of the best westerns I’ve ever read, a novel and not merely a western, and a damn good one. As you pointed out, Dan, it compares well against Guthrie, Lott, Brown, as well as Manfred, Sandoz, and Dorothy Johnson’s short fiction.
Hall was a fine writer of everything from mainstream to thriller fiction. Of course he is best known for DOWNHILL RACER and THE CORPUS OF JOE BAILEY, but his other westerns were good novels as well including BADLANDS, THE ADELITA, CHILDREN OF THE SUN, APACHE, and THE COMING OF THE KID. Under his own name he wrote the thriller GAME OF EAGLES, and wrote five thrillers in the early fifties as Jason Manor.
Towards the end he concentrated on the westerns and five books featuring Ambrose Bierce (AMBROSE BIERCE AND THE QUEEN OF SPADES).
He was notable enough to have replaced Wallace Stegner as the dean of the West Coast writers.
For some reason he was never terribly easy to find in paperback other than the Bantam editions of WARLOCK and DOWNHILL RACER which were both bestsellers.
Hall was literate, intelligent, a good historian with a fine knowledge of the west, and a great storyteller. What he did with westerns only a handful of writers managed, and few with his skill.
October 24th, 2014 at 12:36 am
The film adaptation often suffers when compared to the book version. The problem is that the book usually is a lot longer and it might take you several hours to read. But the movie is far shorter and many plot developments have to be shortened or even deleted. The same with characters.
In this case the movie is only 2 hours long and much had to be cut and simplified. I believe if you watch the movie again a few years from now, you will find it to be a good western and a very interesting film.
The book and the movie are really two different things. I often watch a film adaptation right after reading the book in order to compare versions. The film almost always is not as good as the novel.
October 24th, 2014 at 3:12 am
Walker,
One of my pet things is to compare novels and the films made from them, and I often find the film superior to the novel. A good filmmaker can see a book in cinematic terms and bring it to life on screen. Or just ignore the book and make his own movie out of the title. Whatever the case, I’m always fascinated by the process of transmutation and its results.
In the case of WARLOCK, I was so moved by the book that I elected to suspend judgement on the film– Dmytryk was a director who had his moments– but we’ll see.
October 24th, 2014 at 1:46 pm
David or anyone
I bought Hall’s Ambrose Bierce books when I saw them out in paperback, but I’ve never read any. How are they, if anyone can say?
I didn’t think that anybody could catch the essence of Bierce’s character well enough for the books to be enjoyable, but on the other hand I didn’t realize at the time that it was the same Oakley Hall — whose first book came out in 1949, almost 50 years earlier!
October 24th, 2014 at 5:16 pm
Steve
The Bierce books are good and got some good reviews to even end up in paperback. I only read a few, but I was pleased with them though I would rather have seen Hall stick with writing his more literate westerns novels.
I don’t know anything of the Jason Manor books, the titles sound like a series though.