The Doolins of Oklahoma

As has been generally observed, John Ford was making adult westerns long before the release of the high profile 'adult western' High Noon, and he was doing it under the radar of 99% of the critics of his day.

While no Ford, Gordon Douglas directed lots of highly watchable films that likewise never got their due in their time. Doolins is one of these. As a well-known director for hire, Douglas once credited the existence of his entire oeuvre to having a family to feed.

--Fair enough, and a pretty bravely self-deprecating and self-aware attitude in a town of pretentious auteur-wannabes. I'd offer the opinion that Douglas was the average intelligent man making films for his peers. Because of that, his films remain worth a sit-through. (His Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye rivals Walsh's White Heat in energy and noir viciousness as a late Cagney vehicle.)

This is the best Randolph Scott western after the Boetticher films. Place it alongside other fine non-Ford westerns of the era, including Angel and the badman, Winchester 73 and Yellow Sky. It's definitely worth a watch.

Bill Doolin was an outlaw operating in Oklahoma territory in the 1890s who was captured in 1896 by a devoted lawman named Bill Tilghman who had spent four years doggedly pursuing him. Doolin escaped from prison but was eventually shot down by a U.S. Marshal named Heck Thomas. In THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA (1949), Doolin is played as something of a "good" outlaw by Randolph Scott. He's tall, handsome, polite to civilians, and blessed with a remarkable degree of self-control. He even goes straight at one point and marries a pretty, loving farm girl (Virginia Huston) and starts up a working farm. But, unfortunately, he gets pulled back into the outlaw life. As directed by Gordon Douglas, the film offers several bursts of exciting, well-staged western action, including lots of chases on horseback and some amazing feats of horsemanship. Scott is doubled in the long shots, but he does his own furious riding in medium-shot. Most of the chase scenes appear to have been shot in the familiar rocky terrain around Lone Pine, California, at the foot of the Sierras, a dramatic landscape perfect for such scenes, even if it looks nothing like Oklahoma.

Western buffs will enjoy the way the film incorporates other historical western figures, including a couple who had later movies of their own. At the beginning we see the Dalton gang carry out the famed disastrous raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, a fiasco that only Doolin survives because his horse went lame at the last minute (which matches the account of the raid supplied in the book, "Bill Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier," by Floyd Miller). The Dalton gang, of course, has been the subject of many westerns. Later in the film, after Doolin has recruited various gang members, they all adopt the habit of hiding out between jobs in the wide open town of Ingalls, where one of the gang, Bitter Creek (John Ireland), has a girlfriend. She is called Rose of Cimarron and is played in a mature, elegant fashion by Louise Allbritton (SON OF Dracula). One of the characters we meet in Ingalls is a spunky little two-fisted, sharp-shootin' teenage cowgirl named Cattle Annie who wants to join the gang and is well-played by Dona Drake (who was 35 at the time!). A later western, ROSE OF CIMARRON (1952), starred Mala Powers in the title role and I remember her as quite a fiery display of dark-eyed female outlawry. In 1980, there was a film called CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES, which starred Amanda Plummer as Cattle Annie, Burt Lancaster as Bill Doolin, and Rod Steiger as Bill Tilghman.

There's a U.S. Marshal in this film named Sam Hughes who pursues Doolin for nearly all of the film's 90 minutes. He appears to be based on Tilghman. Why the name change when Marshal Heck Thomas is left intact, I can't say. Hughes is played by George Macready and Thomas is played by Robert Barrat. Tilghman, one of the most daring of western lawmen, was played by name in only two films I know of, the aforementioned CATTLE ANNIE and the TV movie, YOU KNOW MY NAME (1999), which starred Sam Elliott. The book I mentioned, "Bill Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier," by Floyd Miller (Doubleday, 1968), is highly recommended if you want to read a vivid account of a real western lawman's exciting career. As for this movie, I would urge you not to expect the most accurate portrayal of events, but to take it as a piece of solid, well-crafted western entertainment, with an above-average cast and an attention to details normally left out of studio westerns.

Riding on the Wrong Side of the Law, Randolph Scott Plays a Gang Member, Bank Robber On the Run.

The Violence is Cutting Edge with Plenty of Gun-Battles and some Brutal Fisticuffs.

In Act II Scott Tries to Get Married and Settle Down.

But HIs Past and Marshal George Macready with His Relentless Posse will Have None of it.

Action-Packed with High-Contrast Cinematography Filled with Guns Blazing and Hoses at a Gallop.

It's an Energetic Entry in the Genre and the Tone Foreshadows the New Decades Dedication to Make the Western More Adult.

Not Quite Up-There with the Films Scott did with Budd Boetticher but it is an Above Average Movie.

With Help from a Good Supporting Cast....

Macready (who also surprisingly does voice-over) John Ireland, Noah Beery Jr., Jock Mahoney, and Virginia Huston.

A Big Production that Climaxes with a Massive Horse Herd Stampede.

If it has a Weakness its the Comedy Relief of Charles Kemper and Dona Drake.

The Film Pulls Few Punches and One Gets the Sense that the Approach here was to Ratchet Things Up a Notch and it Shows.

You Will Find Some Stuff You Won't See in Any Other Randolph Scott Westerns.

A Must-See for Western Fans and for All Others....

Worth a Watch.

A year after hunting down Bill Doolin in Return of the Badmen, Randolph Scott makes a rare appearance on the wrong side of the law as the same notorious outlaw in The Doolins of Oklahoma. The writers pay only passing attantion to the facts in this solid programmer efficiently directed by Gordon Douglas, and Scott makes a hugely sympathetic hero, who is tricked back into a life of crime by his old gang after going straight with preacher's daughter Virginia Huston.

The big switch in THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA is that GEORGE MACREADY is on the side of the law as a U.S. Marshall, while RANDOLPH SCOTT strays far from the heroic cowboy image he played in so many previous westerns.

He's a hunted man, a fugitive wanted for murder during the era of the Dalton Brothers--and rightly concerned about his survival. As Bill Doolin, he forms his own gang of robbers. On the lam from some pursuers, he enters a church during service and meets a family of church-goers, falling in love with the deacon's daughter. Soon he has a farm, is married to the young lady (VIRGINIA HOUSTON) and wants to go straight and put the past behind him. That is, until his old friends from the Doolin gang show up in town and have other ideas.

When his wife learns his real identity, he rides off to rejoin the gang after a talk with her deacon father (GRIFF BARNETT). The western takes a darker turn, the action gets grittier, and the gang members--including NOAH BEERY, JR., JOHN IRELAND and JOCK MAHONEY--have a little more to do, including some energetic fight scenes well directed by Gordon Douglas.

With a good background score by George Duning, it's a better than average western with Scott in fine form as the ambiguous anti-hero.