At the Bijou with Gobe: War Drums

Another trip to the movies, courtesy of Mr. Dale Goble...

WAR DRUMS (1957) Ben Johnson, Joan Taylor, Lex Barker.
Okay, somebody tell me why didn't Ben Johnson never become a leading western star? Damn. Here he loses the girl to a wild Injun, played by Tarzan. I guess he needed better scripts. The guy who wrote this also wrote the screenplay for THE BIG STEAL. This is not in that league. But it is interesting, in spite of my frustration about Ben Johnson.

Lex Barker is the Apache chief Mangas. He doesn't become Mangas Coloradas until late in the film, a clever plot device. He is the noble savage, and friends with Luke Fargo, a friendly trader who respects the Indians and their ways. (With screen names like Luke Fargo, no wonder Johnson never made it to the Bigs.) Enter trouble, in the guise of Riva, a Mexican maiden (?) played by Joan Taylor. She is rescued from captivity by evil Mexicanos into captivity by Mangas. Luke Fargo is smitten with her. He tries to buy her from Mangas, to make her his wife. She seems okay with the deal, but Mangas declines. Back in the Injun camp, Mangas declares that they will marry. Riva acquiesces only after Mangas agrees that she will be a fellow warrior and not a stay-at-home squaw. She learns to hunt and fight and wear a push-up bra. Everyone is happy but Luke Fargo, but he's too nice a guy to make a fuss.

Then some shit happens: Gold is discovered, the Civil War, nose-rubbing.  Mangas is captured by villainous bad guys, gets horse-whipped and gives up his peaceable ways. (Peaceable to everyone but the Mexicanos. It is always open season on Mexicanos for the Apache.) Mangas paints for war. (Did Apaches paint for war?) It's all a big misunderstanding, but people get killed, and so forth and so on. Luke Fargo, now a Captain of cavalry, rides out to do what he can. Big battle.

I wouldn't depend on this very heavily as a history lesson. It's not big on battle scenes either. The love story is semi-tragic but otherwise rather lame. Mangas wears his pants up to his armpits. Ben Johnson gets shafted again, but not by the Injuns. The scenery is good. Everyone wears clean, new clothes. It's in Technicolor. The horses are not named. The smoke signals are really badly done. No microphone booms or airplanes appear. Not awful.                                                                                -Gobe

The Woman of the Town

This 1944 flick starts in 1919 with Bat Masterson (Albert Dekker) working for the New York Morning Telegraph. A western novelist named Percy Walton prances in wanting the gun Bat used to tame Dodge City for his collection. Bat says he’s doesn’t have it, then slips into flashback to show us why not. Bat shoots a couple of bad guys dead in the first few minutes, which is cool, but overall this is more of a love story than a shoot-‘em-up. Too bad.

History is jumbled, of course. Bat comes to Dodge seeking his first newspaper job and is immediately drafted as sheriff. Brief mention is made of him once being a buffalo hunter and of the fight at Adobe Wells, and he says Wyatt Earp taught him to shoot straight and slow. But the rest is a lot of nonsense about loving and being loved by Dora Hand, part-time dance hall singer and part time Mother Theresa. Bat’s antagonist is King Kelly, a rich Texan who wears the silliest shirts this side of Roy Rogers. The best part of the story, in which Bat puts 20 wild cowboys in the slammer, is told in a 60-second action montage.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 6: The Big Stampede

We noted last time that John Wayne nearly lost out on the deal to remake old Ken Maynard westerns for Warner Brothers when they heard rumors of his drinking and womanizing. When Wayne heard this, he reportedly stormed into the Warner offices and said, “I know who told you I was drunk. I know who told you I chase broads. The man who told you that is a dirty liar. And you tell Harry Cohn if he says that about me once more in this town, I am going to knock his teeth so far back into his throat he will have to eat his meals with his neck.” Sounds like dialogue written for McLintock. Anyway, Wayne got the gig, receiving $1500 for each of six pictures. And he married socialite Josephine Saentz, whom he’d been dating for almost seven years.

The Big Stampede (1932) was a remake of the 1927 film Land Beyond the Law. Wayne’s co-stars for this one were Noah Beery and five thousand head of stampeding cattle. Wayne plays a deputy personally appointed by Territorial Governor Lew Wallace to bring the cattle-rustling killer of a New Mexico lawman to justice. He hangs around town pretending to be a drunk until recruiting a Mexican bandit and his vaqueros to help him catch Noah Beery. Refusing to go down without a fight, Beery stampedes the cattle and it’s up to the two Dukes (Wayne and his devil horse) to save the day.
In reviewing The Big Stampede, the Motion Picture Herald said, “John Wayne’s drawl and deliberate style of movement are fitted to effect a likeable picture, made-to-order for theaters that draw upon folk from and near the so-called open spaces.”

And now, courtesy of YouTube, here's the original trailer for this exciting oater:

At the Bijou with Gobe: Man with the Gun

Another fine film review from Dale Goble...

What we have here is Robert Mitchum and Jan Sterling supported by the usual suspects. Directed by Richard Wilson, with story and screenplay by N.B. Stone Jr. and Richard Wilson. The IMDb synopsis reads:
A stranger comes to town looking for his estranged wife. He finds her running the local girls. He also finds a town and sheriff afraid of their own shadow, scared of a landowner they never see who rules through his rowdy sidekicks. The stranger is a town tamer by trade, and he accepts a $500 commission to sort things out.

The estranged wife description spoils about fifteen minutes of suspense in the film, it's supposed to be a surprise, but not much of one. The storyline is routine, town hires gunman, stuff happens, the townspeople get cold feet, gunman refuses to be fired. The back story is another stock plot; the bitter exchanges with the estranged wife (Sterling) are routine, but, aw shucks, you just know they still love each other.
The difference in the film from all the others is in the method Clint Tollinger (Mitchum) uses in bringing justice to the town. I will let that part of the movie be a surprise for you. Karen Sharpe and John Lupton provide the clean cut young couple. Leo Gordon is the principle trouble maker, Claude Akins turns in a few minutes of grinning menace, Henry Hull, Emile Meyer, Ted de Corsi, and James Westerfield are the supporting players.

The synopsis says Nelly Bain (Jan Sterling) "runs the local girls," which is definitely not a contemporary description. The film is very careful to point out that Nellie's girls are dancers and nothing else. They work in the saloon but they live in Nelly's house and are chaperoned and there's no hanky panky and male visitors are restricted to the front porch. One of Nelly's "girls" is the uncredited 24 year-old Angie Dickenson in her third movie. Ms. Dickenson plays yet another saloon girl, with bestockinged legs displayed to advantage, practicing for RIO BRAVO four years later.

In Old Cheyenne

How old is Old? In the fantasy West of Republic Pictures, you never really know. In this one, released in 1941, everyone rides horses, carries six-shooters and wears Old West attire - everyone, that is except Roy Rogers, who sports a double-breasted suit and a little double-barreled necktie no real cowboy would be caught dead in. There are no automobiles, no telephones, no radios.

But as the film opens, on an Old West train, an attendant with a ballpark-style concessions tray is selling King Cigarettes. Each pack comes with a collector card featuring an actress, and a customer remarks that he wants the one with Lillian Russell in tights.

When we arrive in Cheyenne, everything is suitably Old Westy until the camera pans onto the theater, where the name of an actress is up in blinking lights. Two guys on the street offer the explanation. “Cheyenne’s the first city in the country to use electricity,” says one. “No flies on us,” is the reply.

Any truth to that? According to the official Cheyenne Light, Fuel & Power website…
It was in Wyoming where Edison, whose many inventions led to the creation of modern electricity, first came up with the idea for his “light in a bottle.” He was in Wyoming with a party of other scientists who had traveled across the rugged mountains and plains to see an eclipse. After returning home to his laboratory, Edison perfected the forerunner of today’s incandescent electric lamp. The city’s first electric streetlamps were erected in 1884. First in the country? Doubtful. But lighting up a theater marquee?

From there on, we’re back in the Old West. Roy abandons his suit for cowboy attire, and his shirt is remarkably free of flowers or rhinestones. He goes after (and gets) the town’s richest and baddest man, who is trying to drive the settlers out and blame it on harmless old Gabby Hayes. It ends with a good long Republic shootout, complete with the old roll-the-
burning-wagon-down-the-hill-into-the-house trick. Roy warbles only one song, and though it ain’t a cowboy tune, it’s a good one.

At the Bijou with Gobe: Fort Massacre.

A WORD FROM THE EDITOR: For the past several years Mr. Dale Goble and I have been contributors to the Old West APA (amateur press association) Owlhoot. (Other Owlhoot members who’ve popped onto the Almanack recently include Mr. James Reasoner, Mr. Bill Crider, Mr. Steve Kaye (aka Clay Burnham) and the head Owlhoot himself, Cap’n Bob Napier.) Anyway, I’ve long admired Dale’s movie reviews, and he’s kindly agreed to let me share a few with you. Thanks Gobe! Here’s the first:

It can't just be my bad memory. I have always assumed that I saw every movie made between 1955 and 1962. Lately, evidence is gathering that this might not be correct, because I sure don't remember seeing FORT MASSACRE. And I can't remember Joel McCrea ever being old--until RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY--or being anything but the white hat hero until TALES OF THE TEXAS RANGERS. Sorry, that last part just slipped out. I was joking. Erase, erase. Here we have Joel McCrea in a cavalry movie. He's older, and the luster seems to be a bit tarnished.

Here's what the tagline was:
THE WEST'S MOST SAVAGE STORY OF HATE, PRIDE AND CUNNING! (original print ad - all caps)
The poster reads "The West has never known a "Hero" like the killer who commanded "Fort Massacre." In 1958, the quotation marks around Hero wouldn't have raised any flags for me. Cavalry good, Injun bad. Here's the synopsis:
During the Indian Wars in the Southwest, a sergeant assumes command of a cavalry detachment after it is mauled in an Apache ambush that killed its captain and seriously wounded its lieutenant. The surviving troopers must reach either a larger cavalry column or a wagon train the column is to escort. But first they need water and the nearest water hole is in Apache hands....

Joel McCrea is the sergeant, Sgt. Vinson, a three striper who is both driven and unsure of himself, and who takes a lot more guff from his troopers that any sergeant since Joey Bishop. Vinson has, predictably, a rag-tag bunch of troopers, each with their own past and peculiarities. This is standard "Lost Patrol" stuff, but the individual histories are somewhat unique. Well, not all of the characters are totally clichéd. McCrea is supported by Forrest Tucker as Pvt. McGurney, John Russell as Pvt. Robert Travis, Denver Pyle as Pvt. Collins, and the usual cavalry ensemble. Anthony Caruso plays the faithful Paiute scout. The bad guys are the Apache. The campaign Sgt. Vinson is engaged in is pure fiction, there was never a large confrontation with the Apache. Susan Cabot gets third billing but doesn't appear much or do much. Russell gets fourth billing, but is actually the co-star. If you're a thirteen year-old or me, the ending is a little unexpected.

See, there's this here problem. Sgt. Vinson/Joel McCrea is the hero. Every kid born in the Forties knows that Joel McCrae is a cowboy hero. But some of the stuff he does here seems a little hard to understand, since he's the white hat and all, and it confuses a young teenager to try to figure it out. Remember, also, that these were the days that the Injuns were the bad guys, all bad, savages, they can't even speak'um good. So probably Sgt. Vinson is justified, I mean, he's got to be justified, he's trying to save his men and the wagon train and the column and the fort. The dumb Privates just don't understand the ways of the Injuns. Joel McCrea knows better, right?

The movie is more than I expected from a 1958 cavalry film, and required more attention than the usual boots-and-
saddles second feature. I would suggest that it's worth a watch if you run across it. I give it three guidons.

O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie... Please!

This is a great-looking movie poster. It’s the type that makes me want to see the film. But now that I’ve seen the movie, I’m thinking I was better off with the poster. It’s not a bad film, really. It’s just less than I expected from Johnny Mack Brown, and therefore a disappointment.

It starts off OK. It’s 1870, and there’s a gold rush… somewhere. Three frustrated prospectors see three of their luckier fellows strike gold, and decide to jump the claim. One of the “lucky” guys lives just long enough to reach Johnny and tell him the news. It seems one of the already-dead prospectors was Johnny’s brother. It's five minutes into the film and things are looking up. Johnny swears revenge! And then… proceeds to fool around for the next 55 minutes without doing much about it.

Actually, most of the fooling around is done by Fuzzy Knight (not to be confused with Fuzzy St. John), who provides comedy relief—enough comedy relief for at least six movies. This might have been okay if he were JMB’s sidekick. But he ain’t, and the two are rarely even on screen together. Seemed to me Fuzzy had more screen time than JMB. Heck, even the bad guys had more to do than Johnny.

The best scene takes place around the campfire, where Jimmy Wakely his Rough Riders (who serve no other purpose in the film) deliver some fine harmonies on the title tune. Then Fuzzy, a would-be bear hunter, picks up a squeeze box and sings a ditty called “The Bear Gave Me the Bird,” which certainly sounds like the same kind of bird we might give someone today. Was that expression in use in the Old West?

JMB is seen occasionally, smiling at everyone and being smiled at, until we reach the second best scene, a brief bust-up with two of the bad guys. Johnny seems to know they killed his brother, but still does nothing about it. Eventually, because time is running out in the movie, he chases them down, flings himself from his speeding Palomino and gets both their heads in armlocks. Then, instead of whupping holy hell out of them, he turns them meekly over to the sheriff. That’s it, except for a Looney Tunes finish with Fuzzy mugging in blackface.

Yikes! I gotta run plug my disc of bargain-basement Buster Crabbe Billy-the-Kids back into the DVD player.

A Zane Grey Fighting Double Feature

The Fighting Westerner is a good title for a cowboy flick. Trouble is, it ain’t one. Course, if they’d used its true Zane Grey title, “Golden Dreams,” it would have bombed. Even though this was made in 1935, it looks and feels about 15 minutes out of the silent era. A couple of silent movie veterans play the old folks, and haven’t quite gotten the hang of talkies. It’s a contemporary story about a mining engineer (Randolph Scott) and a mystery at a uranium mine. The only thing western about is that Randy wears cowboy duds and rides a horse. To emphasize this, he walks around the house a long time in his chaps. He eventually gets into a fistfight and may fire his pistol a time or two, but the film is really just a silly melodrama, complete with a guy in a black slouch hat and opera cape who slinks around like The Shadow.

Fighting Caravans (1931), another Grey tale, is much more fun. Turns out young Gary Cooper had more personality than old Gary Cooper. The real stars of the movie, though, are a couple of drunken scouts played by Tully Marshall (as Jim Bridger) and Ernest Torrence. This was sort of a sequel to the 1923 silent movie The Covered Wagon, which featured the same two scouts. Reminded me of The Big Trail, made a year earlier with young John Wayne, partly because both wear funny shirts. It seems The Big Trail was a rip-off remake of The Covered Wagon. Wheels within wheels.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 5: Ride Him, Cowboy.

After his escape from (or sacking by) Harry Cohn at Columbia, John Wayne landed a supporting role in boxing film for Paramount, then made another 12-chapter serial, The Hurricane Express, for Mascot. Wayne was under a non-exclusive contract which at the time paid $150 a week whether he worked or not. Since these serials normally took less than a month to film, it was a good deal, especially since the average American took home about $21 a week.

His agent then hooked him up with Warner Brothers. The studio wanted to remake several of their Ken Maynard silent westerns into sound films. The Maynard movies had been relatively high-budget, with great action sequences and lots of extras. Maynard had been a fine stunt man, with a signature trick of dropping under a galloping horse, hiding until his enemies thought him gone, then swinging up the other side into the saddle. Warners planned to build the remakes around these impressive action scenes, filling in with close-ups and dialogue scenes. Since Maynard was then under contract to another studio (and getting a little paunchy besides), Warners needed someone new.

The studio liked Wayne for the part, but he almost didn’t get the job because of his reputation as a drinker and skirt-chaser. Still, they signed him up and dressed him in outfits matching those Maynard had worn in the originals. They also teamed him with Duke, a double for Maynard’s famous horse Tarzan. The first picture filmed was Haunted Gold, with spooky elements, so they decided to start the series with the second film produced, the more traditional Ride Him, Cowboy.Ride Him, Cowboy (released in the UK as The Hawk) was a recycled version of Maynard’s 1926 film The Unknown Cavalier, based on a novel by Kenneth Perkins. The devil-horse Duke has been accused of murder, and Wayne saves him by proving he can be ridden. As Wayne sets out to catch the real killer (The Hawk), he’s framed as a murdering barn-burner and almost lynched.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 4: Two Fisted Law

Two Fisted Law (1932) was based on a William Colt MacDonald story. In this one McCoy is a rancher who gets cheated out his ranch and prospects for silver until he can settle accounts with the villains (one of whom is crooked sheriff Walter Brennan). Wayne plays one of McCoy’s ranch hands (that's him on the lobby card above, looking wistfully on as McCoy gets the girl). The most interesting thing about Wayne’s role is that he plays a character named Duke. In Wayne’s next western it’s the horse who’s called Duke. How the name came back to Wayne is another story.

Most discussions of this film (and Texas Cyclone) tell us that Wayne disliked Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn. But they don’t say why. The book The Young Duke by Howard Kazanjian and Chriss Enss offers an explanation. Cohn had signed Wayne to an exclusive five-picture contract, apparently intending to use him as the lead. One of the films was a romantic comedy called Men Are Like That with silent star Lara La Plante (The film is better known as Arizona). Unfortunately for Wayne, Cohn was in love with Miss La Plante. When rumors flew that Wayne was having an affair with his co-star, Cohn called him on the carpet. Wayne was in love with another woman (a young socialite) and denied the affair, but Cohn didn’t believe him. Cohn got his revenge by sticking Wayne with small supporting roles (including those in Texas Cyclone and Two Fisted Law) for the remainder of the contract. According to The Young Duke, Wayne’s final film for Cohn was The Drop Kick, playing a college football player who sells out his team (an insult to Wayne’s legacy as a USC football star). Great story, if true, but I can’t verify it. The Drop Kick was actually produced by Fox and released back in 1927, with Wayne as an unbilled extra. His only football drama for Columbia was Maker of Men, and I’ve found no other description of Wayne’s role.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 3: Texas Cyclone

Texas Cyclone (1932) was hardly John Wayne’s finest hour. But at least he didn’t have to play a corpse as in The Deceiver, or spend much of the movie in jail as in The Range Feud (both 1931). In the months since The Range Feud he’d had another small part in a football drama, appeared in two short subjects and starred as a carnival stunt pilot in the 12-chapter serial The Shadow of the Eagle. Now here he was back in a minor role in a B-Western, backing up Col. Tim McCoy. After snagging second billing behind Buck Jones in The Range Feud, he’s knocked down to fourth, and instead of playing the hero’s stepbrother, he’s merely one of several pals from Texas.

As the posters proclaim, Texas Cyclone belonged solely to McCoy. On the 1-sheet McCoy’s face is as big as King Kong’s, and on the 3-sheet he towers over the landscape like Paul Bunyan. John Wayne is just a name in the fine print. Wayne finally got his revenge in a foreign DVD release, where he’s the star.

As the story opens, McCoy wanders into a town where everyone seems to know him, mistaking him for a man five-years dead. Even the dead guy’s wife is fooled. The widow, of course, is losing her cattle to rustlers, so Tim calls in Wayne and his other Texas pards to help. Violence ensues, and there’s a big twist at the end to make everyone warm inside. Walter Brennan is on hand as the sheriff. Wayne reportedly didn’t like Tim McCoy, but I like him just fine. He always has a twinkle in his eye, and the way he shoots a pistol--by pointing the gun barrel straight up, then snapping his wrist forward as he fires--just has to make the bullets go faster.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 2: The Range Feud.

Following his appearance in The Big Trail, John Wayne had parts in four non-westerns, playing a college student, an architect, an army lieutenant in love with his commanding officer’s wife, and a corpse. His next western was The Range Feud (1931), a Buck Jones picture. You’ll notice he got second billing, nosing out Buck’s horse Silver.

Buck plays Sheriff Buck Gordon (funny how often his characters were named Buck). He’s forced to arrest his stepbrother Clint Turner (John Wayne) for murder, then scramble to save him from hanging. Clint, you see, is accused of killing his girlfriend’s father, who is himself accused of rustling. Clint had plenty of motive, because the young lovers were from feuding families and forbidden to see each other. Romeo and Juliet on the range. Wayne and Jones remained friends until Buck’s death in 1942.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 1: The Big Trail

This is where it all began. In the first five years of his film career, John Wayne appeared in 19 movies. 18 of those parts were unbilled. His third film, The Great K&A Bank Robbery, was a Tom Mix western, but Wayne was only an extra. Finally in 1930, in The Big Trail, he got his first leading role.
Legend has it director Raoul Walsh wanted Tom Mix or Gary Cooper for the part. When he couldn‘t get them, he settled for the relatively unknown 23-year-old Wayne. Wayne was paid only $75 a week, a move that allowed Walsh more money for production. The film eventually cost $4 million, and was released in the full bloom of the Great Depression. Ouch.

“The Most Important Picture Ever Produced” didn’t quite meet expectations. Had the film been a success, Wayne’s star might have risen right then. As it was, he was relegated to serials and B-pictures for nine more years until getting another big break in Stagecoach. The Big Trail was filmed in an early version of 70mm widescreen. Since most theaters didn’t have the equipment to play it, a 35mm was released at the same time. The widescreen version was unavailable to the home market until just last year. It’s a half hour longer, and reportedly pretty cool. Among the supposedly 20,000 other cast members were Ward Bond and Iron Eyes Cody.