Fifty Years of Film in 50 Weeks, #28: Yellow Sky, 1948

Yellow Sky, 1948

Director: William A. Wellman
Writers: Screenplay by Lamar Trotti from a story by W.R. Burnett.
Cinematographer: Joe MacDonald
Producer: Lamar Trotti for 20th Century Fox
Starring: Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark; Robert Arthur, John Russell, Harry Morgan, James Barton, Charles Kemper.

Why I chose it
Three reasons: 1) It's a Western (a neglected genre in my blog series so far); 2) a Western directed by the great William Wellman; and 3) a Western directed by William Wellman starring Gregory Peck. Peck is an actor whose filmography has remained largely unseen by me...and I'm not sure why. But he's a giant of the classic era and I need to see more of him.

Where and when Yellow Sky is set

'No-spoiler' plot overview 'Stretch' Dawson (Gregory Peck) leads a gang of Western bank robbers in the post-Civil War Southwest. After a robbery they escape the pursuing cavalry only to run into a stretch of desert that nearly desiccates them. But then they come upon a ghost mining town inhabited by "Mike" (Anne Baxter), a young woman who has a fondness for brandishing a gun, and her grandfather. It turns out that there is gold in them thar hills, and Stretch manages to gain the trust of the local pair and arranges a deal to get a share of the gold if he can find it. Meanwhile, rifts develop among the men as greed gains its hold. 'Dude' (Richard Widmark) hatches a plot to claim all the gold, and a series of confrontations ensue.

Stretch (Peck) taking charge of a Wild West bank robbery.
William Gould is uncredited as the bank teller here.

Walking across Death Valley with no water is pretty rough
on one's features, as seen here in Robert Arthur's character "Bull Run"

Production Background
Director William Wellman was known for his rugged individualism both in front and behind the camera. Affectionately known as "Wild Bill", this WWI veteran didn't hesitate to execute dangerous stunts for himself and his cast and crew in the interests of splashing tales of masculinity-tested on screen. He was known for Wings, a silent classic about WWI fliers, and boundary-pushing pre-codes such as Safe in Hell, The Public Enemy, and Night Nurse, just to name a few. He also directed comedies (Nothing Sacred) and dramas (A Star is Born) before getting into Westerns with The Ox-Bow Incident, which I reviewed here. A couple of years ago on this blog, I had intended to publish a series of posts discussing Wellman's films, but sadly only managed one so far: it's here. 

William Wellman as a young man

Yellow Sky was the only time Wellman worked with Gregory Peck. Peck was not completely new to the Western genre; he had already starred in the Western Duel in the Sun, in which he played an unsavory type. He went on to make several more in the late 1940s and for much of the remainder of his career, off and on. His dark, lean, and rugged good looks served him well here.

Stretch (Peck) looking a bit peaked. "You smell!, Mike tells him.

Here Stretch is shaved and cleaned up.

 
While the cinematography by Joe MacDonald may not reach the iconographic height of a John Ford film (MacDonald had been employed by Ford to shoot My Darling Clementine in 1946), the locations were well used here: the scene in the desert was filmed in the Death Valley salt flats and other scenes in the Lone Pine rock formations of California, adding a grounded realism to a plot that largely develops on an intellectual rather than narrative level. And MacDonald made terrific use of black-and-white.

Preparing to ride into the desert.

The rugged beauty of the Wild West, captured by Joe MacDonald's camera.

Some other notable film-related events in 1948 (from Filmsite.org):

• The Supreme Court ruled that the "Big Five" movie studios had to end their monopolization of the industry. They were forced to divest themselves from theater chains by selling them off. Block booking, the system by which an exhibitor was forced to buy a whole line of films from a studio, was also deemed illegal by a court decision that legislated the separation of the production and exhibition functions of the film industry. This marked the beginning of the end of the studio system, and was partially responsible for a major slump in the movie business by all the studios in the late 1940s.
  
• Maverick film producer, aviator, and eccentric wealthy industrialist Howard Hughes purchased RKO Studios for a reported $8.8 million. Hughes led RKO during a long period of decline until the mid-1950s.
  
• In the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi (as Count Dracula) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (as The Wolf Man) portrayed their iconic horror characters for the last time on-screen in a feature film. It was Lugosi's second and final time as Count Dracula, following the original 1931 film.
  
• Director Alfred Hitchcock's first Technicolored feature film was the experimental thriller Rope (1948), the first of four films with James Stewart. The film was notable for its seamless intercutting of long 10-minute takes, creating the appearance of the film's action occurring all in real-time.

My Random Observations

• This was an entertaining movie all around. That's why it struck me as incredibly odd that for most of the running time there was no musical underscore. Composer Alfred Newman got the credit for the music, but I kept thinking that this must have been an easy assignment for him. There was some music at the beginning and then near the end, but its significant absence was disconcerting to me. As it was a deliberate choice, perhaps the silence was meant to symbolize the lack of life in the desert and then the ghost town? 
• Gregory Peck is a compelling Western hero. He not only convinced as a rough opportunist, but his subtle transformation and internal struggle as he found his moral center was well portrayed. 
• In the early part of the film I was feeling echoes of Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), in which the gang implodes over greed; it became clear after a bit that this narrative was going in a different direction and Peck was going to emerge victorious through the violence that his compatriots initiate.

Real Western men take off their shirts when working, as demonstrated
by 'Lengthy' (John Russell) and Stretch (Peck).

The gang's negotiations with bedridden Grandpa are a bit tense.

• I'm becoming a fan of Anne Baxter. Before my classic film obsession began, I only knew her as the exotic, emotional Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments. In this one her role as "Mike" couldn't have been more different. Extremely young and projecting innocence despite her exterior thick skin, you'd be hard pressed to recognize her as the same actress. (Of course, she had powerhouse performances as Eve in All About Eve and had just come off her Oscar-winning performance in The Razor's Edge). As a bonus, she had great chemistry with Gregory Peck.

Spunky "Mike," as played by a very young and sweet-looking Anne
Baxter, doesn't take prisoners.

Yep, there is a romance developing here.

• Richard Widmark was also very good, although he didn't impress me much as I felt his performance was a close cousin to the various somewhat unhinged villains he'd made his specialty to that point; his wild grins and laughter grated a bit for that reason. (See my post about his villain Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death here; this one was made just a year before Yellow Sky).

Widmark as "Dude" flashes his impish, insidious smile.

• While I had an idea of where this would lead in the end, the script of the last couple of scenes surprised me. And to keep the spoilers at bay, I won't say any more! 

Where to Watch
A DVD is available from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. It can be streamed with a subscription to one of a few streaming services: check here.

Further Reading
Fellow blogger Caftan Woman wrote a terrific review of the film here.

William Wellman - Part 1: Four early films

William Wellman and friend (IMDb)

My love for the Harvard Film Archive* just gets stronger and stronger. Exhibit A: Their current William Wellman retrospective.  Wellman is one of those Hollywood directors that lacks the name recognition of a Hitchcock, John Ford, Frank Capra and the like.  But his talent produced some of the best and/or most entertaining films made in Hollywood over four decades, including a film I wrote about last year, The Ox-Bow Incident.  And, as I discovered, he's a native of my current town, Brookline, Massachusetts, and for that alone, this retrospective grabbed my attention.  [Go here for the full list of films in the retrospective.]

Sadly, I can't attend all the screenings, despite my efforts to look for ways to camp out on the grass at Harvard Yard(!)  But, in the first ten days of the series, I got to four of his early films.  This post is simply my appreciation for Wellman's craft as shown in these films, all of which were first-time viewings for me.  In a later post, I'll write about some of his later films.

First, some facts--and/or legends--about William Wellman:

• He was born in Brookline but attended high school in Newton, Mass., down the road, where he apparently got expelled for dropping a stink-bomb on the principal's head.
• He played professional ice hockey.
• He became a fighter pilot in WWI.
• He piloted his airplane onto the grounds of Pickfair (the Douglas Fairbanks-Mary Pickford Hollywood estate) when given a casual invitation to "drop by" after Fairbanks saw him play in a hockey match.
• He got his start as an actor in films in the silent era, due to his connection with Fairbanks, but quickly became much more interested in directing.
• He directed Fairbanks' son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in Love is a Racket (1932).
• For his escapades before and during his film career, he earned the nickname "Wild Bill" Wellman.  The picture above tells it all, doesn't it?!
• His film Wings was the first, in 1928, to win what is now known as the 'Best Picture' Oscar.
• His 1931 film The Public Enemy made a star of James Cagney and helped propel Jean Harlow out of obscurity.
• He directed the first-ever version of A Star is Born (1937).
• His directing style was wide-ranging, with an emphasis on action and movement, as well as on realistic settings.  His pre-code output in the early 30s was the greatest of his career. 

Battle scenes in Wings (IMDb)

Wings (Paramount, 1927 -- silent).

This is the first film in history to win the best picture Oscar. It tells the story of two friends in small town America who become fighter pilots in WWI. Their friendship is strengthened, but also is their rivalry, which stems from their love for the same woman back home.  There are heroic scenes aplenty, and some moments of tragedy.

The Wellman touch:  It's part action/war flick and part melodrama.  Wellman clearly put his flying expertise into this--the action shots were made by mounting cameras on actual airplanes and capturing real planes, carrying the real stars (!), flying up and down and over in the great skies. The film obviously was a huge success and played in some cinemas continually for over a year.

l-r: Charles Rogers, Clara  Bow,
Richard Arlen (HFA)

What impressed me:  The star power in this film is top caliber for the day, and oh my, the stars were stunningly gorgeous.  Richard Arlen and Jobyna Ralston in particular, but also Charles (Buddy) Rogers and Clara Bow, the 'IT' girl of the day, who unfortunately had a tendency to overplay in this one. Gary Cooper makes a brief appearance, but he would shortly eclipse all these stars in the popularity department.  Even El Brendel, as the comic relief, looked good here(!).

It's no secret that the action sequences are jaw-dropping, but seeing them on the big screen elicited gasps from me, and others, on more than one occasion.  The scope of the battlefield scenes reminds us that the silent era did not necessarily skimp on craft or quality compared to the sound era--directors like Wellman made the most of what was available to them, and often dreamed big.  Watch below for one of the big aerial scenes.

Beggars of Life (Paramount, 1928-silent).  

Richard Arlen again was the star in this one, but rather than a war story, this film shows the adventures of two young down-on-their-luck vagrants, the other being silent legend Louise Brooks.  The two fall in love while trying to run from the law, and get entangled with a dangerous gang.  This film was recently restored and released on Kino Lorber.

The Wellman touch:  Silent film melodrama works well when the emotions of the film's characters, the backbone of the film, are done justice by the choices the actors and director make.  The best directors work with the glory of the 'faces' they had back then to draw us in.  Wellman was terrific at this, using powerful close-ups in key moments.  But true to form, he also kept the pace moving quickly, with action sequences in this case on and around moving trains.

Louise Brooks sees Richard Arlen's character for the first time

What impressed me:  This film is a perfect demonstration of how great silent cinematic melodrama, like opera, often focuses on no more than three central characters confronting life-altering circumstances or choices.  Regardless of how realistic the scenarios are, the art is in us finding the universal feelings of the human condition and losing ourselves in the experience.  

Wellman was able to get his actors to be the best they could be: Louise Brooks, both androgynous and stunning, and Richard Arlen, handsome, virile, and yet sensitive. And for the "villain" Wallace Beery, an oafish presence in most of his films, but here his talent is inarguable.  There is a scene toward the end of the movie where his character goes through a change of heart.  With only pantomime and facial expression - Beery is so so good. I gained a new respect for Beery as an actor. 

Wallace Beery in Beggars of Life 

Beau Geste (Paramount, 1939)

The British colonial adventure novel, Beau Geste, by Percival Christopher Wren, was filmed so many times that a parody in 1977 was called The Last Remake of Beau Geste (note to self - I need to watch that sometime.) The basic story is that of the three Geste brothers, Beau, John, and Digby; they join the foreign legion and have to defend a fort in the Sahara under attack by Arabs.  In the meantime, one of them, unknown to the others, has stolen a jewel from his adoptive mother in order to protect her from scandal and bankruptcy.  Adventures ensue.  This particular film was the first 'talking' version, coming 13 years after the highly successful silent version starring Ronald Colman.

Robert Preston, Gary Cooper, and Ray Milland as the
Geste brothers, in civilian dress. (photo from HFA).

The brothers in their uniforms (IMDb)

The Wellman touch:  Here Wellman again used his love of realistic locales, and arranged for the filming of this in real sand dunes in 'Buttercup Valley' California, near the Arizona border, the same location as the 1926 film.  As usual he put his actors through the rugged treatment, but they all gained respect for him, as, according to Preston, on an off night in a Mexican border town, a character came to their table and reminded Wellman he served as his airplane mechanic in the war (from Majestic Hollywood: The Greatest Films of 1939, by Mark Vieira).

Brian Donlevy (from allposterimages.com)

What impressed me:  I was pretty sure I had not seen this version going in, but when it started, it looked so familiar I began to question if I indeed had seen it. It turns out, it was the silent version I had seen, but this one adhered so closely to the that the deja vu feeling was strong and understandable.  Despite being familiar with the story, I particularly loved the commitment and zest that Brian Donlevy put into his role as the sadistic commander of the troops at the fort.  He deservedly won the Oscar for supporting actor as a result.  Apparently, he was not popular on the set, having immersed himself a bit too deeply as Sgt. Markoff.

At the beginning, the camera pans over the fort, where men are stationed one per lookout point, across the top. It is creepy, in that all of the men are staring out at us, but we realize with horror that every face is that of a dead man, killed in action, but propped up to look like he is at his post.  This was also a choice made by the director of the 1926 version, Herbert Brenon.

Overall, the film won't be on my favorites list, but it is worth seeing if you're a fan of Wellman's, or any of the actors.

Nothing Sacred (Selznick International Pictures, 1937)

As a classic 'screwball comedy', starring Carole Lombard, the screwball queen, Nothing Sacred was a departure for Wellman. In this depression-era genre, typically a dizzy female heroine involves her male companions in a farcical situation that allows them to play off one another in an early Hollywood 'battle of the sexes'.  In this one, Lombard is Hazel Flagg, a young woman in a small Vermont town who is presumably dying of radium poisoning. A down-on-his-luck New York City reporter Wally Cook, played by Fredric March, sees an angle to exploit, and brings Hazel to the big city to be a one-woman human interest story, to impress his beleagured boss, played by Walter Connolly.  Little do they know, and Hazel isn't about to reveal, that she's just been declared healthy.  And, of course, as she tries harder to conceal this fact, she and Wally fall in love.  This 'battle of the sexes' becomes a real battle, when the two don boxing gloves and literally duke it out for several minutes near the end of the film!

The Wellman touch:  The pace of the film was perfect, with the farcical situations gaining momentum without the action ever rising to the level of the maniacal. There were many scenes in which the actors were placed in a perfectly symmetrical position, and I consciously appreciated the image composition while I was enjoying the performances.  

Fredric March and Carole Lombard (Wikipedia)

What impressed me:  While Lombard is dependably wonderful, I was surprised by how well Fredric March pulled off his role. I consider him as mostly a serious actor - think The Best Years of Our Lives, The Barretts of Wimple Street.  Come to think of it, he played in two other comedies that I've seen: I Married a Witch, and Design for Living, so perhaps not as much a stretch as I originally thought.  However, I learned that the role was written for John Barrymore, but at this point in his career, his alcoholism prevented him from getting the part.

It was a little jarring to see a 1930s screwball comedy in color, but once I settled into this, I could appreciate the top production values accorded the film, as was common for Selznick, including the music by Oscar Levant and the screenplay by Ben Hecht. Also, with Lombard's reddish hair, I kept thinking about the similarities between her and Lucille Ball, who idolized Lombard as a comedienne.  You can see how Ball adopted some of Lombard's facial expressions and kinetic acting style in her Lucy Ricardo character.  

Stay tuned for more of my Wellman experience, in the next couple of months.

*Sad note: The HFA lost programmer David Pendleton, this past week.  RIP David.  I enjoyed hearing him offer his tremendous insights introducing films over the last several years.  Here is a recent appreciation by critic Ty Burr.

Western Movie Summer Part 2: THE OX-BOW INCIDENT & WHEN THE DALTONS RODE

This installment of #WesternMovieSummer finds me in the early 1940s for two contrasting films, one considered a classic and the other not so much.  The two pictures are filmed in black and white and that's about where the similarities end.  I've already had a moment or two this past week of feeling overwhelmed as the vastness of this genre has been driven home to me -- apparently 30% of movies made in the Hollywood studio era were westerns -- but, undeterred, I'm soldiering on, watching and enjoying a fascinating sampling of the genre.

THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943)

This is the "classic" of the two, directed by William Wellman, and starring Henry Fonda, by then a major star of 20th Century Fox, and with Dana Andrews in a small but critical role.  It's entirely fiction, based on the 1940 novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, of the same name, and packs a depressing and spare story into 81 minutes.  It twists our guts as an entirely unromanticized tale of brutality, making the viewing experience more educational than entertaining.  Fonda is nothing like his noble 'YOUNG MR. LINCOLN' character or even his Frank James in JESSE JAMES.  For those who like their Westerns tackling head-on the ugly reality of much of society who pushed forward into lawless unsettled territories, this one won't disappoint. As discussed by Prof. Slotkin in his Western Movie course, the film's key subject, lynching of a small band of settlers accused of cattle rustling and murder, would have been understood by contemporary audiences as a parable for the rampant practice of lynching of African Americans, still prevalent at the time.

Anthony Quinn, Dana Andrews, and Francis Ford as the victims, Frank Conroy at right as Major Tetley

Further driving this point home, the most heroic character of the film, the one most willing to stand up in opposition to the lynching, is an African American character, Sparks.  Ironically, and sadly, the actor Leigh Whipper, went uncredited in the film.  His career was quite long and eventful, and he is cited as having been the first African-American actor to join the Actor's Equity Association.

Leigh Whipper as "Sparks." Image from diva-harrington.com

Despite the bleak tone, the story and characters are well drawn, the direction is tense, and the message is timeless.  I especially appreciated Andrews here, as a desperate man caught in the web of hate.  Secondary character Harry Davenport is excellent, as is young Harry Morgan and Anthony Quinn, who's oily but attractive. The film does not waste time setting the atmosphere --  in the very first scene, as Fonda and friend Morgan ride into town, the view of the town shows very little life:

Also early on, we understand the nature of Fonda's character as a man who, while not necessarily criminal, is not someone we'd admire. Within the first few minutes Fonda downs several whiskeys, gets into a fistfight as a result of a minor insult, gets knocked out cold, and when coming to has to rush out of the bar to throw up.  The close-ups and medium shots do not flatter him.  Because he's Henry Fonda we expect him to act the hero, but he lets us down a few times during the film.  He does emerge at the end, however, as a somewhat changed man.

Henry Fonda not looking his best.

Those familiar with the novel or the film will surely point to the many societal lessons and psychological depths embedded in it. For me, it was a potent reminder that even in the relatively early years of Hollywood, Westerns were not all romanticized visions or rousing action melodramas, and that the studio system could buck the expected societal values and critique them.

WHEN THE DALTONS RODE (1940)
In sharp contrast is this minor but entertaining western, made in 1940 for Universal Studios.  At the helm was George Marshall, a talented director who scored brilliantly with DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939) and is also known for the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake noir THE BLUE DAHLIA.  The film chronicles the heyday of the real-life 'Dalton gang' of brothers, who, in the James & Younger gang mode, terrorized stagecoaches, trains and banks in the early 1890s in and around Kansas until they met their end, not unlike many other outlaws of the era, in a grand shoot-out.  The film, of course, greatly fictionalizes the story, and in the tradition of the JESSE JAMES movie, tries hard to keep our sympathies on the side of this gang of murderers by giving them a sympathetic, loving matriarch, a law-abiding hero/friend in protagonist Randolph Scott, and a justification for their turning outlaw in the greedy, unscrupulous land-grubbing capitalists who make life tough for them.

I found a sharp contrast between the subject matter and the tone of the film, set up from the beginning in the onscreen narration which does not mince words about the lawless and brutal nature of the Daltons, but is accompanied by the most upbeat and jaunty music imaginable. Introduced early on the brothers, portrayed by Broderick Crawford, Brian Donlevy, Frank Albertson & Stuart Erwin, are shown to be a rowdy bunch of good-hearted pranksters who are out to have a good time and celebrate their Ma's birthday.  Crawford as 'Bob' Dalton, is even the local sheriff and is engaged to the lovely telegraph operator Kay Francis.  Even when it's made clear that the gang has succumbed to the life of crime, and the body count rises, the film seems to want to make it clear that they are just a short redemptive act away from returning to the right side of the law.  The men of the town are shown to be largely a group of buffoons, in which the Daltons are clearly part.  Andy Devine plays his usual dupe for comic effect on many occasions.  The only smart characters are Scott's Tod Jackson, Francis, and George Bancroft as the businessman/villain.  And very unlike THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, this town is filled with folk:

The last fifteen minutes of the film, though, are somewhat grim, as the brothers find themselves ambushed, and there is a prolonged shoot-out in which there is little music, only shots fired repeatedly in an intense sequence, until every last gang member is dead (this would not be a spoiler considering the real-life end for this gang, captured in some morbid photos that can be found online).  Ironically the youngest of the brothers, Emmett Dalton, is shown as being killed, but in real life he lived to write an autobiography on which the film is supposedly based.

The brothers being photographed with their Ma (played by Mary Gordon) . 

While there are no social critiques of note here, and the film exists primarily to entertain those looking for a pseudo-historical romp, it is a fun watch, with daring stunts and colorful characters.  The cast seems to be having a grand time.  Kay Francis, on the way down from her career high as elegant pre-code 'woman of the world' roles, is still stunning and compelling as the love interest.  As a film capitalizing on the success of JESSE JAMES and the depression-era audiences who would expect to root for the common man against evil capitalists, it's an example of studio-era Hollywood fare very much of its time.

Kay Francis and Randolph Scott "meet cute" at the cow pen