The Toll Gate

William S. Hart was a huge star in the early days of cinema, and The Toll Gate was one of his self-produced, self-written starrers. He plays a bad guy with a heart of gold who stumbles across a widow and her young son as he is pursued by the sheriff's posse. Sure as shootin' he reforms! I would love to hear what 'Master Richard Headrick', who played the three year old child, has to say (if anything) about his role in this and a number of other 20s features. According to IMDB he's still alive--at least at the date of this writing!

In a western cave, white William S. Hart (as Black Deering), leader of the outlaw Raiders, feels the law crashing in on his gang's crime spree. Fellow bandit Joseph Singleton (as Tom Jordan) thinks Mr. Hart is chicken, and goads his rival and the gang into one more heist. Of course, as Hart feared, things go all wrong. Later, on the lam from both Jordan and the law, Hart hides out with lonely white Anna Q. Nilsson (as Mary Brown). Ms. Nilsson is living alone with son Richard Headrick (as "The Little Feller"), since the disappearance of her husband…

"The Toll Gate" delivers the expected Hart western elements; however, they do not coalesce. It's a little unpleasant to start off with Hart disarmed by his gang's "mutiny", but nice to see him tough it out. Watch for a pivotal scene wherein Hart opens Nilsson's Bible: in it, he reads the verse "By their fruits ye shall know them" and locates a photograph which reveals something important about the film. The "by their fruits" theme is completely illogical if you think about the photograph. Also, Hart's cabin revelation is rather foolishly timed; obviously, it should have been made some minutes later (relating it more to Singleton's threat).

****** The Toll Gate (4/15/20) Lambert Hillyer ~ William S. Hart, Anna Q. Nilsson, Joseph Singleton

Toll Gate, The (1920)

*** (out of 4)

Outlaw Black Deering (William S. Hart) wants to retire after his gang's latest robbery but they convince him to go after one more score. His partner ends up selling him out for the reward money and Deering swears vengeance no matter how long it takes. He manages to escape from the posse and ends up on a small farm where he saves the life of a young boy and becomes apart of his mother's life. Soon Deering wants to start life fresh with them but his past is close behind. If you've seen any of Hart's Westerns made before THE TOLL GATE then you're going to be thinking that this is a remake of about three dozen of them. In all seriousness, if you've seen one Hart picture then you basically get the same story one film to the next but it says a lot about the persona of Hart that he managed to make each film so fresh and exciting even when it offers up nothing new. At 70-minutes the film never gets boring as we're treated to some nice drama as well as a couple very good action scenes. The opening scenes of the men trying to rob the train were pretty exciting and the ending with Hart trying to track down the man who set him up also offers some nice tension. The majority of the film features the same old story of Hart being a very bad man who falls for a woman who then makes him want to change his ways. At least in this film his character goes through a transformation where the viewer can at least understand and see why he would want to change his ways. There are several cute scenes between the little boy and Hart that really make the film stand out. The boy never got to know his real father so he looks forward to having a new dad in his life and this here makes for some very good moments. Hart fits the role with ease as by this time he could do this type of role in his sleep. He's benefited from a very strong supporting cast including Anna Q. Nilsson as the mother and Richard Headrick as the kid. Tom Jordan does a very good job playing the snake who turns Hart in. The film also benefits from some authentic scenery that really helps build up an atmosphere of being in the Old West. While the story is something we've seen before, the film is a good example of how you can bring fresh life to an old tale and with Hart's performance you walk away satisfied.

The idea that westerns were all sweetness and light until the 50s and 60s falls apart when you examine the work of William S. Hart in the 1910s and early 1920s. He aimed for a general realism in his films and often played antiheroes who weren't above thievery, murder, and even rape before they discovered redemption in the second or third act. Of course, these films are also old-fashioned in their sense of old-fashioned religiosity and (usually but not always) passive heroines, but their grittier nature does make them ripe for critical re-evaluation, at least in my opinion.

The Toll Gate (1920) is a fine film, an ideal entryway into Hart's oeuvre. While there's nothing earthshaking from a technical point of view, its morally conflicted protagonist, a bandit leader constantly struggling to abandon the vagabond's life only to be pulled back by economic necessity or the allure of vengeance upon the man who betrayed him to the law, makes the story fascinating. Hart can be wooden at times, but for the most part, he is a restrained but powerful actor. Equaling him is the leading lady Anna Q. Nilsson, who, though stuck in a rather passive role, puts a great deal of subtlety into her character.

Worthwhile viewing and deserves rediscovery.

This has become one of my favorite movies and certainly one of the best westerns I have ever seen. Having a soft spot for the genre (westerns are, or were, since they are no longer made very often, morality plays that too often have been denigrated by critics with intellectual pretensions), I purchased the DVD, sight unseen, because I had read enough about William S. Hart's work (much of which he wrote and directed) to pique my interest and thought I should have at least one of his films in my video collection.

I must admit that I approached the actual viewing with some trepidation. My previous experiences with silent cinema "classics" had left me feeling let down. Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera, Griffith's Birth of a Nation and Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro were fine, but not nearly as good as their reputations would lead one to expect. They were either too long, or too theatrical, or both.

The Toll Gate, however, emerged as a pleasant surprise.

It is a story told in a simple and straightforward manner. Black Deering (played by Hart), leader of a notoriously successful outlaw gang, thinks the time has come for group to disband, before its luck runs out. He is, however, opposed by his chief lieutenant, Jordan, who goads them all into one last holdup by promising great wealth but leads them into a trap in which he is complicit. Everyone is killed except Deering, who is taken prisoner. When his captors recognize him as the man who once saved a number of soldiers and settlers by warning an outpost of an impending Indian attack, they allow him to escape. Free, he tries to find honest work but is snubbed and ridiculed and ultimately must rob again to survive. Soon, he is pursued not only by the sheriff's posse but also by Jordan (now prospering from the reward money he has collected) and his henchmen. His flight leads him to a remote cabin inhabited by a single mother and her little son. After some initial misgivings, they take him into their hearts. Deering sees a chance for a new life but, with the posse and Jordan closing in, realizes that this may not be possible.

Hart was the first great western star and the first to inject realism into the genre. As one of the pioneers of movie-making, he created many of the characters and situations that have become cliché in westerns for more than ninety years. What keeps his movies interesting, however, was his ability to go beyond the cliché (perhaps his imitators did not go far enough) so that the material appears fresh and innovative, even now. Three such instances in The Toll Gate illustrate this:

1) In one scene, his character shoots into a crowd in an attempt to kill Jordan, and kills a bystander instead. A subsequent close-up shows that he is clearly frustrated. The frustration, however, comes not from the fact that he has gunned down a man who had hitherto caused him no harm but that he missed his intended target.

2) In another, as he flees from the posse, his "borrowed" horse steps into a gopher hole and breaks a leg. Hart pulls out his gun to put the animal out of its misery but, before pulling the trigger, gives his head a sad, loving pat, as if to say farewell to an old friend.

3) And finally, after he has strangled Jordan and thrown his body over a cliff, he returns to retrieve his guns and spots his adversary's pistol lying on the ground nearby. He steps forward and gives it a swift kick before mounting his horse. It is a simple gesture but it underscores the deep loathing he feels for the man who betrayed him and his comrades.

And I love the title, The Toll Gate. It is allegorical in its implication that a man cannot begin a new life until he has paid for the sins of his old one. Deering's payment comes in the form of sacrifice. Today's more sophisticated audiences may not buy into that sentiment entirely but it can still work on you if you let it.

Viewers who like their videos in pristine condition will undoubtedly object to the DVD's picture quality, especially the badly deteriorated final reel. I don't mind at all. That a copy of this 1920 movie even exists at all is a miracle since prints of so many other silent movies have been lost. If you bear that in mind and look upon the film as a piece of history, its visual flaws are not that difficult to accept.

William S. Hart was born in 1870 in New York but grew up in the Minnesota and Wisconsin where he learned to speak Sioux and Indian sign language. He counted Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson among his friends and collected Remington paintings, so his knowledge of the West was first-hand. If his vision seems overly romanticized by today's standards, it is nevertheless rooted far closer to reality than the spaghetti westerns of the '60s and '70s and the revisionist works that followed. Both the star and his films are overdue for re-evaluation.