The Sundowners

Despite having everything in its favor, "The Sundowners," with great cast, good story, gorgeous scenery, is still slow and tame.

No tension is ever present. I think how it will finally end is obvious rather early, but you will want to see it through, if only to test your judgment.

Robert Sterling, a good-looking and talented actor, is not someone I had associated with Westerns, but he rides like a cowboy and seems absolutely real.

Robert Preston has done everything, and I mean everything: He is probably still best known for "Professor Harold Hill" in "The Music Man" but he also was the wagon master in "How the West Was Won," and seemed right at home brandishing a whip and heading 'em up.

Chill Wills can't do much wrong. (The ad campaign for him to win an Oscar for his role in "The Alamo" was a major exception, but maybe we can't blame him for that.) His character here is an example of great writing and he, as always, pulls it off perfectly.

Cathy Downs is probably best known for the title role in the moronically a-historical "My Darling Clementine" (it is one my most disliked pieces of history twisting on film), and she died terribly young, 26 years after this film. She was a lovely and capable actress, and her character too was different and an example of good writing.

Her character was the wife of the one played by Jack Elam, who had a different role for him. You might want to watch "The Sundowners" just to see Jack Elam in this unusual part, and to see how talented an actor he was.

John Litel was a veteran performer, and always so believable, whether on horseback or as Thomas Jefferson or as the boss of the Secret Service. He is one of my favorite character actors -- which means one of my favorite actors.

That writing, by the way, was by veteran Alan LeMay (known here as Alan Le May), perhaps best known for "The Searchers."

God bless 'em, but Westerns on the Web has this available at YouTube and you should be quick to grab a chance to watch. At no time will you be on the edge of your seat, but you will admire the more than capable cast especially against some of the best scenery Texas has.

Peaceful rancher Robert Sterling is on the losing side of a range war with his ruthless neighbors, that is until notorious outlaw Robert Preston shows up out of the blue to level the playing field. Soon he begins to go too far, feeding a growing sense of unease in Sterling, especially when his son begins to idolize the wily criminal.

The Sundowners is a tightly-paced, gritty, and surprisingly tough little picture with a great performance by Preston. Here, he comes across as an evil version of Shane, that is until the real nature of the rancher and the outlaw's relationship is revealed. Most movie guides and video boxes spoil the surprise!

Rounding out the cast is Chill Wills, Jack Elam, and the debut of John Drew Barrymore, who became more famous for his offspring than his acting.

This was an exceptional western in it's day. Filmed on location, in Technicolor no less, with top B-list stars Robert Sterling, the bland good-guy type and Robert Preston, the evil bad-man brother with good support by Cathy Downs, John Barrymore Jr., Chill Wills, John Litel among others including Jack Elam. After viewing this again after a long while, it's obvious that the more "adult" aspects of the story were eliminated or toned down so drastically that the drama was just too tame by todays' standards, but they had the "Code" in those days. It also appears as if the studio (Eagle-Lion)may have also edited some scenes down to fit a particular running time (approx. 83 minutes). It makes no sense to spend the money they did on this film and then cut it to it's running time. If this film had a couple of the Alan Bates, Susannha York, John Hurt scenes from "The Shout" written into this "re-make" it would be more explosive and make more sense. I would also explore and expand the strong-willed father, weak son sheriff sub-plot a little more. Yes it's watchable still as is, but when we bring back the Western some day, let's re-make this one early on.

It's entirely possible that the VHS that I watched of this film was badly edited because the film seemed to begin in the middle.

The Cloud Brothers, Robert Sterling and John Drew Barrymore, have settled in some country where there's a nice range war in progress. They've got both big cattle baron John Litel and a group of smaller ranchers against them. All they want to do is be left alone, but neither group will allow that.

A third brother, Robert Preston, arrives on the scene. He's a noted outlaw named Kid Wichita and he really ratchets up the violence quotient. That also includes killing the sheriff who is Litel's son and Jack Elam who's married to Cathy Downs who he's taking a fancy to.

This is a nice cast and John Drew Barrymore certainly showed he had the potential to be an earlier version of James Dean. The heritage of that name proved too much for that man though.

One of the more ambitious undertakings from Eagle-Lion Studios. But The Sundowners was flawed in the execution.

The Robert Mitchum/Deborah Kerr Sundowners was far better.

RELEASED IN 1950 and directed by George Templeton, "The Sundowners" is a Western taking place in the Texas panhandle where honest rancher Tom Cloud (Robert Sterling) and his teenage brother (John Drew Barrymore) are having a difficult time with dubious Sheriff Elmer Gall (Don Haggerty) and some rustlers. When supposed outlaw Kid Wichita (Robert Preston) comes back to town, however, he starts cleaning up the county, which earns the ire of the sheriff and the rustlers. Chill Wills plays a kindly neighbor while John Litel appears as the sheriff's father, who's (apparently) unaware of his son's questionable activities.

NOTE: This shouldn't be confused with the 1960 movie of the same name about Australian sheep drovers starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr.

While "The Sundowners" is a small, obscure Western, it's one of my favorites because of its interesting characters, engaging writing and palpable realism. As far as the latter goes, it was actually shot in the Texas panhandle, rather than Arizona or Southern Cal like too many old Westerns.

Someone criticized the movie on the grounds that he "had a hard time figuring who was good and who was bad," which illustrates another element of realism: The characters have shades of grey rather than being wholly black or white. Even the main protagonist, Tom Cloud, who represents wisdom and goodness, reveals an imprudent side, which I'm not going to give away. Of course the people involved in the rustling ring are definitely shady, albeit secretly. The father of the ringleader, however, isn't corrupt and didn't know what his son was doing, although he might have suspected and turned a blind eye.

Kid Wichita, however, is somewhere in between black and white, mainly due to his dubious past and the leery way Tom regards his return. Wichita amusingly says a few times: "From Amarillo to Gee Whit, nobody never proved a thing on me - 'cept twice," which means he committed at least two actual crimes in the past and obviously more.

In the current events of the movie, though, I didn't see Wichita do anything wrong. All he does is help rid the county of a rustling ring. There are several references to Wichita murdering someone but, actually, he caught the individual scheming and didn't shoot until the guy went for his gun. That's not murder; it's self-defense. The same thing happens in another situation. Personally, I was all for Wichita cleaning up the county of the rustling trash. Maybe Wichita deserves to die for his past sins, but not for anything he does in this movie.

Kid Wichita, by the way, is an excellent example of a classic antihero before antiheroes came into vogue with Leone's (overrated) spaghetti Westerns in the mid-60s. Wichita is a bold gunslinger who oozes confidence and la Joie de vivre (French for "the joy of living"), not to mention recognizes and fearlessly confronts true corruption (evil), which is usually hidden. The boy (Barrymore) naturally starts to look up to Wichita and emulates him. This brings to mind the best succinct line: "Why sure!"

Jack Elam is featured in a peripheral role as an unloving husband in one of his first films at the age of 29 (during shooting). Most people understandably view Elam as a likable human-looking gargoyle so it's interesting to see him as a relatively good-looking young man. On the female front Cathy Downs (the titular character in 1946' "My Darling Clementine") has a pretty meaty part as Elam's hot redhead wife, who naturally looks for romance elsewhere.

THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 23 minutes and was shot in the Texas panhandle (Palo Duro Canyon State Park and ranches near Canyon, Stinnett and Amarillo) with studio work done at Universal Studios, CA. WRITER: Alan LeMay.

GRADE: A