Sun 21 Nov 2010
Western Movie Review: THE ARIZONIAN (1935).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[4] Comments
THE ARIZONIAN. RKO Radio Pictures, 1935. Richard Dix, Margot Grahame, Preston Foster, Louis Calhern, James Bush, J. Farrell MacDonald, Willie Best, Etta McDaniel. Director: Charles Vidor.
The ruggedly handsome Richard Dix, the actor whose voice you could recognize at a hundred paces, maybe even a thousand, was – and I’d never realized it until watching The Arizonian a couple of evenings ago – an occasional but fairly popular western star in the 1930s and 40s.
He was the star of Cimarron (1931) for example; he was in this movie, of course; and he played Wild Bill Hickok in Badlands of Dakota (1941) and Wyatt Earp in Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die (1942).
But unless you can tell me otherwise, most of his films were B-movies, where I think his good looks and great voice were underutilized, if not wasted. Regarding his voice, and I promise I won’t bring it up again, his career in the movies in the 1920s was extensive, and in the silents, all he had was his looks and (in my opinion) some acting ability.
Dix plays Clay Tallant in The Arizonian, the Good Guy who comes to town, a town run by a crooked sheriff – there is a marshal (J. Farrell MacDonald), but he (the marshal) lasts about a minute and a half in terms of on-screen time.
Clay is tempted into staying on by the beauty of singer Kitty Rivers (Margot Grahame), not realizing that his brother, already in town, is deeply in love with her. Brought in by the sheriff (crooked, if you recall, and played to perfection by a nicely supercilious Louis Calhern) is notorious outlaw Tex Randolph (Preston Foster), who soon changes sides when he sees who he’s been brought into town to kill.
All the right ingredients for a pretty good western, and a beautifully photographed one to boot, but that’s all it is, pretty good. There’s a noticeable lack of continuity between scenes — or jumps in the story line, to make myself clearer — that I found annoying. Not a matter serious enough to stop watching, but nonetheless … annoying.
There is a terrific shootout at the corral at the end of town, though, one with few survivors left standing, and one which made me bring the back of my right hand to my forehead with enough force behind it to make me say Duh. Mostly to myself, but now you know too.
November 22nd, 2010 at 7:24 am
There was a lot of borrowing from the Earp story to make up the plot of this one.
You’re right about Dix, who finished his career in the superior “B” WHISTLER series. As a leading man, his slow delivery got kind of dull at times, but in the right vehicle he was well worth watching.
November 23rd, 2010 at 10:08 pm
[…] the 1930s version of Perry Mason to a T: Richard Dix, whose most recent (and only other) film to be reviewed on this blog was The Arizonian, a western in which (as you may recall) he played a Good Guy who comes to town to […]
November 25th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
For what it’s worth, THE ARIZONIAN was remade in 1939 as MARSHAL OF MESA CITY, starring George O’Brien in the Dix role and Henry Brandon in the Foster role. I consider MARSHAL to be one of the two or three best B Westerns O’Brien made for RKO and chose it to represent that series when I persuaded George to be the Guest of Honor at the 1979 Cinecon.
As Dan pointed out, THE ARIZONIAN (and its remake as well) owes a great deal to the Wyatt Earp story — specifically, to Stuart Lake’s fanciful 1931 biography, WYATT EARP, FRONTIER MARSHAL. Both films include scenes taken from that book, which had been “officially” adapted to the screen in 1934 as FRONTIER MARSHAL (which, coincidentally, also starred O’Brien).
November 25th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
It took me a while to make the Wyatt Earp connection, but as the last paragraph in my review suggests, I finally did. The story of the OK Corral has obviously fascinated movie makers for a long time.
Thanks, Ed, for pointing out the MARSHAL OF MESA CITY remake, which I’ve read about on IMDB since writing this review, but having never seen it, I hesitated to bring it up on my own.
George O’Brien has become one of my favorite western movie stars, and I envy you your chance to meet him. He would have been 80 when you got him to be the Guest at the ’79 Cinecon. Glad he got the chance to feel appreciated, I’m sure!