Wed 6 Jan 2016
A Western Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA (1949).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[18] Comments
THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA. Columbia Pictures, 1949. Randolph Scott, George Macready, Louise Allbritton, John Ireland, Virginia Huston, Charles Kemper, Noah Beery Jr., Dona Drake , Robert Barrat, Lee Patrick. Director: Gordon Douglas.
Suffice it to say, there’s nothing new under the Western skies in The Doolins of Oklahoma. Starring Randolph Scott as real life outlaw Bill Doolin, this docudrama/Western has its moments, but is an overall average movie that begins and ends pretty much as you would expect it to.
What makes it worth a look, particularly for those with fond memories of this type of movie that they certainly don’t make anymore, is the presence of co-star George Macready as the U.S. Marshal on Doolin’s trail. Character actors John Ireland and Noah Beery (Jr.) feature prominently as members of Doolin’s gang. Scott, not yet the star of films directed by Andre De Toth and Budd Boetticher, portrays Doolin as a man who wants nothing more than to leave his criminal past behind him and start a new life working the land as a farmer.
Problem is: Scott’s Doolin is just too darn nice. One can hardly imagine him as a bank robber or the leader of The Wild Bunch, let alone a killer. As far as Doolin’s wife, as portrayed in the film by Virginia Huston, she hasn’t a clue. She’s nice and pretty, but that’s about as far as it goes. Still, if you happen to like Scott as a Western star – and I very much do – he’s not all bad here and does his best with the rather mediocre script.
There’s some dry humor, genuine pathos, and wit here, all delivered in Scott’s distinguished Southern gentleman’s accent. It’s just not enough to make this movie particularly memorable.
January 7th, 2016 at 12:12 am
Long before Andre DeToth and Budd Boetticher, Randolph Scott worked for Fritz Lang, Henry Hathaway, Mark Sandrich, King Vidor, John Cromwell, Michael Curtiz, Rouben Mamoulian and Allan Dwan. All of these people were fairly successful, far more so than Andre or Budd who seem to have made their mark after the fact in articles relative to the auteur theory. I submit, Randolph Scott was the auteur of their films that featured him.
January 7th, 2016 at 5:24 am
Gordon Douglas’ punchy direction helps out here, as do Beery, Ireland & Scott, but there’s not much they can do with it. And somehow I never trust George Macready.
Virginia Huston played Jane in TARZAN’S PERIL, but most movie buffs remember her as the one woman who doesn’t double-cross Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST.
January 7th, 2016 at 7:57 am
I’m with Barry all the way about Randolph Scott. I’ve seen a couple thousand western movies and he’s my favorite. But I also know what Jonathan is talking about.
The west was settled by hard, violent, and tough men. They were not too nice. I just saw BROKEN LANCE again starring Spencer Tracy and he represents the typical old time western rancher. Hard boiled as hell and even when dead, he stays in the saddle.
January 7th, 2016 at 8:16 am
I’m a big Randolph Scott fan, and this movie might even be one of the reasons. I still remember seeing this one at the drive-in with my parents long, long ago.
January 7th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
In my youth I knew who Randolph Scott was and I enjoyed his films, but I don’t remember that I saw many of them at the time. I suppose I gravitated to other actors or just what was available at the Saturday matinees. We sometimes saw films years after they were released. I didn’t care.
My connection to him was our names. He was “Randolph Scott” and I was “Randolph Cox.” People continually called me “Randolph Scott” and would then apologize. It hasn’t happened for a long time.
January 7th, 2016 at 1:47 pm
Even if I haven’t seen a Randolph Scott film for years I can still remember his voice.
January 7th, 2016 at 4:39 pm
Walker, my favorite movie in the “tough-old-westerner” niche is GUNMAN’S WALK.
I think I mentioned somewhere else that Randolph Scott was stuck playing some really dull types until he hooked up with producer Harry Joe Brown, who put a tougher, more complex edge on his characters.
January 7th, 2016 at 5:45 pm
Randolph Scott, in many ways, was at his best in the 1930s and early 1940s when he was just beginning and then again in the mid-to-late 1950s through the tail end of his career. At the beginning, he benefitted from a freewheeling, carefree persona that played well in the type of films he was in. Then in the Boetticher films produced by Brown he got to portray a stoic, worldweary type.
January 7th, 2016 at 6:32 pm
I should point out that Bill Doolin, was known as the “Good Outlaw” and one of the best liked men in the West by other outlaws, the public, and by the authorities who hunted him and dealt with him. He seems to have genuinely been a nice man and the lawman Bill Tilghman, then one of Judge Parker’s Indian Territory marshals out of Fort Smith Arkansas and later Sheriff of Lincoln County Okalahoma, who hunted him down was one of his best friends (much different that the hyped friendship between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid since Garrett considered Billy a mad dog and killed him like one).
While details may not be all that accurate the overall pursuit of Doolin and his character as shown is accurate as written and played by Scott. He was by all contemporary accounts a really nice fellow who happened to be an outlaw.
As for the tough old Westerner business they were much more varied men than what you might expect. My Ranger gunfighter great grandfather was a loving father and family man who took care of his mother and sisters most of his adult life and was doted on by three grand daughters, this despite being quite feared though respected by his enemies. He is far more the norm than the kind of burned out near sociopaths of many Western films. That type existed, but generally died young whether good or bad.
What we see in Westerns is the Classics Illustrated version of the old West diluted through Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour plus Hollywood movies. Neither the grim and gritty McCABE AND MRS MILLER nor the straight shooter riding off in the sunset is quite true. What is missing in most Westerns is the humor. Read Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Owen Wister to see what I mean. That is the real Old West as most people experienced it only a bit exaggerated for effect.
The real West is represented in a handful of books like TRUE GRIT, LITTLE BIG MAN, DARLIN’ BILL, THE LAST HUNT, Frederick Manfred’s books, A.B. Guthrie, MONTE WALSH, ELMER KELTON, Willa Cather, Frank Norris, Conrad Richter, Mari Sandoz, Dorothy Johnson even some of the Hopalong Cassidy saga save there is much more violence than most cowboys saw. John Ford and Howard Hawks are accurate, Sam Peckinpah was before THE WILD BUNCH, Wellman,just about everyone else is making it up or making modern chamber drama in Western drag. Tarantino isn’t even trying for historical accuracy as in DJANGO UNCHAINED in which he has gunfighters common in the old West before the Civil War.
I love Randolph Scott, but most of his Westerns aren’t anymore true to history than anyone else. Like most Westerns they are modern dramas set in the Old West and barely about history at all. They may be how we see the West, and Scott and McCrea were certainly accurate in their persona in many films.
The average Western has the same relationship to history the average science fiction movie has to science.
And many of the early Westerns with the fancy clothes and saddles, the boyish cowboys, the archaic language and manners, the broad humor, the kinds of films made not just by Hart, but by Mix, Harry Carey, Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, and others, were far more accurate than later grown up Westerns because they were made by men who had lived the life, seen the real thing, and because the people making them were often as not actual Westerners.
The plots may not have been realistic, but the elements in them you would reject today as theatrical and childish are far more accurate than the sociopathic nonsense we see in Spaghetti Westerns or many adult Westerns that came along as more realistic. A hot house drama like LEFT HANDED GUN had no relationship whatsoever to the real West or the actual Billy the Kid or Pat Garrett.
Frankly realism doesn’t do that well at the box-office when it comes to the West. I am perfectly happy with the form we have, I just know too much to imagine its realism. It’s what we choose to believe is real.
January 7th, 2016 at 6:53 pm
Thumbs way up, David — for a fine and insightful essay.
January 7th, 2016 at 10:44 pm
A couple of thoughts.
I know that Doolin was supposed to have something of a Robin Hood image, but from what else I’ve read about him, he was as much a killer as the other members of gangs he led or hung out with. Is this not so?
You are quite right, David, in saying that the older the western, the closer it is probably is to the real West. I’ve always thought so too, and it’s good to know that I’m not alone in that thought.
I also think that if you were somehow to disguise the faces of the players and convert all the films to black and white, say, you could still easily tell what year a western was made within a five year range either way.
I guess that’s three thoughts. I hope that’s OK.
January 8th, 2016 at 12:02 am
Doolin was an outlaw and a killer, but by all accounts not a sociopath. He was not in a class with the James Brothers when it came to murder and mayhem though he may have been the infamous sixth man never identified in the Coffeyville Kansas Raid where all the Daltons but Emmett died. Emmett would never say if it was him.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes wrote fondly of Doolin who was in part the model for the good bad man in PASO POR AQUI (filmed as FOUR FACES WEST with Joel McCrea) and for THE TRUSTY KNAVES which I think is dedicated to him.
Scott also crossed Doolin’s path in RETURN OF THE BADMEN where Scott’s character is sort of a mix of Heck Thomas and Bill Tilghman. Doolin also features in the bio pic of Tilghman with Sam Elliot.
Most of these films feature the famous Battle of Ingalls where 14 Federal marshals surrounded Doolin and his gang in an epic shootout which was also dramatized in the series STORY OF THE CENTURY with Jim Davis.
I’ll go one farther than you Steve and say you could also take away sound and any of the lead actors and still hit within five years of when most Westerns were filmed.
January 8th, 2016 at 11:52 am
The film’s a bit disjointed, but how often do you get to see Andy Devine get shot to death?
January 8th, 2016 at 2:40 pm
John, Andy Devine was in a movie called WHEN THE DALTONS RODE. I’ve not seen it, but could this be the one you’re thinking of?
January 8th, 2016 at 1:41 pm
Andy Devine, shot to death? Not in this film.
January 8th, 2016 at 7:22 pm
Devine is a killer, Johnny the Deuce, saved from a mob trying to hang him in SAINT JOHNSON with Walter Huston and Harry Carey. You don’t see that often in a movie either.
January 8th, 2016 at 7:55 pm
Saint Johnson is, of course, Wyatt Earp by another name, in Law and Order.
January 8th, 2016 at 11:02 pm
Barry,
Interesting thing, W.R. Burnett changed the names in his book because Earp’s wife was still alive when he wrote it, but Johnny the Deuce was an actual historical figure who the Earp’s saved from a lynch mob. He is even mentioned in Costner’s WYATT EARP.