Thu 25 Jun 2009
A Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE GUN HAWK (1963).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[7] Comments
THE GUN HAWK. Allied Artists, 1963. Rory Calhoun, Rod Cameron. Ruta Lee, Rod Lauren, Morgan Woodward, Robert J. Wilke, John Litel , Lane Bradford. Director: Edward Ludwig.
Over the years, Monogram, the 1930s and 40s Poverty Row motion picture company, morphed into Allied Artists, and by the time of The Gun Hawk they were making B-westerns in color, but they were still very much B-westerns.
This has the usual stigmata of the genre: bad script, bad acting, low budget … but it’s lifted out of the ordinary by Rory Calhoun’s ghoulish portrayal of a dying gunman determined to go out on his own terms.
He’s counseled by veteran good-guy Rod Cameron and hounded by veteran bad-guy Robert Wilke, but this is basically Calhoun’s show, and he makes for fascinating viewing as he prowls about the screen, obviously dead from the moment he walked on; such a finely honed performance, one really wishes there were a decent movie somewhere around.
The Gun Hawk also offers a small part from an actor who specialized in them, Lane Bradford. Bradford came on in the waning days of Republic serials and series westerns, and he never did anything especially noteworthy. (Well, he did try to blow up the planet while dressed in purple sequins for Zombies of the Stratophere, which was something of an anomaly.)
But in the days when the once mighty outlaw gang had dwindled down to two or three henchmen for reasons of economy, he could always be seen somewhere in the background, looking formidably evil with his lantern jaw and broken nose, and getting punched out by Rocky Lane or Whip Wilson.
Here he has a good time bullying the town drunk till Calhoun steps up, and it’s nice to see Bradford, after all these years, still dealing out his brand of special nothingness.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Rory was probably a better actor than he generally got credit for. Check out a good little 1954 George Sherman film Dawn at Socorro with Piper Laurie, David Brian, Edgar Buchnan, Alex Nicol, and Lee Van Cleef where he is a gunfighter trying to reform, but Brian won’t let him. He’s very good in it.
Probably his best A pics were as Betty Grable’s boy friend in How To Marry a Millionaire and the pilot who falls for Susan Hayward’s Jane Froman in With A Song in My Heart (the one with the famous dance scene where Hayward pops out of her low cut gown that somehow got past the censors and editors — and even made it onto the small screen).
Rory had to be a fair actor — he played Bill Longely as a hero in the series The Texan, an act of fictionalized history that is hard to credit evrn in a genre that made a hero of Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:04 am
When I was searching for some posters and lobby cards to add as images to Dan’s review, I was surprised to see how many westerns Rory Calhoun made in the early to mid-1950s, most of which I’ve never seen. I don’t even recognize the titles of many of them.
But THE TEXAN, the TV western he did for a couple of years toward the end of the 50s, that I do remember. That show, GUNSMOKE, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, and THE RESTLESS GUN were all my favorites.
We didn’t get an ABC-affiliated channel back then, so I missed out on MAVERICK and quite a few other series.
I don’t remember that scene in WITH A SONG IN MY HEART. I’ll have to look for it, and with sharper eyes next time!
I called Calhoun “perfectly cast” in my review of RIVER OF NO RETURN. See https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=903
You’re right, David. He was a better actor than he’s remembered for. It’s hard to believe that his first movie was in 1944 — an uncredited part in Carmen Miranda’s SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS, when he was still known as Frank McCown.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Steve, the infamous topless scene in With a Song in My Heart is during a big stage production of the title song with Hayward in a strapless ball gown. When her partner steps over her dress he briefly pulls it down revealing one of her breasts. It’s quick, you’ll have to slo mo to catch it. but it’s clear, and once you have seen it you can even catch it at normal speed. To give Hayward full credit she never even blinks.
No comment on myself or other middle aged men trying to catch a peek of a long dead star naked. Hey, we’re guys. It goes with the male pattern baldness.
Rory was more famous for his life than his acting, but one of those actors who could and did carry a film. Like you I was a big fan of The Texan and Restless Gun, I just knew too much about Bill Longley to buy the story.
There is an interesting story about Longley that is probably not true, but worth a mention. Longley was a big kid in post Civil War Texas, and killed a number of black policemen. Captured, tried, and convicted he was sentenced to be hanged — by a lawman who happened to be a relative.
A persistent rumor always held that Longley’s hanging was staged and he was actually smuggled out of the country. Longley supposedly went to South America and went into the cattle business. Now the next part could be checked, I haven’t — but supposedly among the passengers who died on the Lusitania was a Mr. William Longley, cattleman, of Argentina.
As I said, can’t testify to this one. I did get the story from Clair Huffaker, a damn good writer of westerns in books and on the big screen, but that’s only a good source, not proof, and he was only presenting it as a rumor himself.
Make a hell of a movie or book though.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Dan, David, and Steve, good stuff. I learned only after I had driven past Giddings, Texas, a few months ago that Bill Longley was buried there, and his grave is identified with a state historical marker. According to reports, DNA tests a few years ago disproved the legend that Longley had escaped his just desserts. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/06/13/national/main296377.shtml Longley and another bad ’un from Reconstruction-era Texas, Cullen Baker, are greatly romanticized in Louis L’Amour’s THE FIRST FAST DRAW. I used to get Lane Bradford confused with another cowboy actor with a big jaw, Brad Johnson from ANNIE OAKLEY.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
The older you get, the more you realize there is for you to learn. When I was watching THE TEXAN in the late 1950s, I had no idea that Bill Longley was a real person. His name meant nothing to me. I just enjoyed the shows.
Here it is 50 years later, I hadn’t thought about the program in all that time, and only know am I learning what I probably should have known then, but didn’t.
A tip of my sombrero to you, David and Fred. Thanks!
June 26th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Steve
I don’t know about Fred, but I grew up around this stuff, and in college did some oral history interviews for a professor interested in the post Civil War era so I got a lot of these tales from older people who had been children when some of it happened. Longley and Baker were local legends, but not as well known outside of Texas.
The crossover with that period can be startling. I’ve eaten many a hamburger in the cafe that was once the saloon where Sam Bass was finally tracked down by the Rangers (they used to touch up the blood stain on the floor with red paint), and Mexican food across the street from the place Ben Thompson was killed. Can’t count the number of times I’ve driven past Billy the Kid’s grave in New Mexico (didn’t they finally prove he was in that one too — I know they did Jesse James). The Goodnight-Loving and Chisholm trail crossed downtown in the town I grew up in, and here in Oklahoma my mother-in-law grew up next door to Bill Tilghman’s house.
I imagine its the same in most of the country, though most of us may not realize how much history is around us. I remember in college one professor discussing a infamous hanging of forty four Union sympathizers in the town where I grew up. Even though there were at least three other students in the class from the same town, I was the only one who knew the big tree near the ninth hole of the town golf course was the infamous hanging tree — even though it has a historical marker. Even stranger there is a state highway literally paved with gold (it assayed out so poorly it paid more to use it as gravel) and many of the people living off of it don’t know the story.
But there is no real reason anyone outside of Texas would know Longley’s name. He was mostly a local hell raiser and minor bad boy — no John Wesley Hardin or Sam Bass.
November 14th, 2010 at 1:04 am
Its a pity that with most of th e westerns that Rory Calhoun was in are not being released as like John Wayne.
I have heard of Bill Longley, Sam Bass , Wes Hardin, Frank Leslie, Jesse James , Frank James, Cole Younger. and I live outside the USA