Westerns

[mrsl]

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I saw Three Violent People years ago when I was very young and have to admit I loved the scene where Heston wakes up and literally turns Anne B. upside down thinking she took his money. Tom Tryon only made a few movies in his time, but they were all A-List ones. I was so sorry when he quit acting to devote his time to writing, but I guess after the success he had with The Other, he couldn't help himself. I know he wrote a couple more best sellers, but don't recall the names. I saw Three Violent People during my 'crush' stage, when all an actor needed was a handsome face and a nice body which both Heston and Tryon had in spades. Tryon basically left movies quite soon, but stayed busy on T.V. for years. He also had his own cowboy weekly series - John Slaughter, but when he started writing, he disappeared from the celebrity scene. Even as a successful writer, he was rarely seen at premiers and such.

[movieman1957]

April:

If you want a crisp little "B" to catch you might try "The Lone Gun." It stars George Montgomery and Dorothy Malone. It is streaming on Netflix.

Montgomery meets up with Frank Faylen on the road into town. When they get there Montgomery is drafted to become sheriff, reluctantly, as is soon drawn into investigating a murder and a cattle rustling operation. It's a fairly routine story that I thought was pretty well done.

As a set of brothers you'll find Neville Brand and Robert Wilke. Playing Malone's brother is Skip Homeier. Some other familiar faces are on board. At only 75 minutes it moves along and I think the cast does a nice job.

[MissGoddess]

I've seen that one, thanks, Chris. I like Dorothy in most anything. George is so so. Neville is always fun to watch.

[moira finnie]

As a set of brothers you'll find Neville Brand and Robert Wilke.

Man. What could the mother of these two have been like? Hope Emerson in her Caged mode? Blanche Yurka in her mad Madame DeFarge character?

[MissGoddess]

As a set of brothers you'll find Neville Brand and Robert Wilke.

Man. What could the mother of these two have been like? Hope Emerson in her Caged mode? Blanche Yurka in her mad Madame DeFarge character?

And their uncle was Walter Brennan in My Darling Clementine (or Support Your Local Sheriff).

[moira finnie]

Ha! Walter Brennan was so mean in My Darling Clementine--he might have been a relation of Brand & Wilke! And I love your new avatar, Miss G.

[MissGoddess]

thank you!
hope you aren't buried alive in the snow...i have never seen it snow this hard before. i stupidly came to work but i am going back home before i get trapped!

[JackFavell]

Be careful out there, April. Let us know when you get back home safely. It's really coming down hard! I didn't think we were going to get much of anything.

[MissGoddess]

Be careful out there, April. Let us know when you get back home safely. It's really coming down hard! I didn't think we were going to get much of anything.

i feel like such an idiot since 80% of the office has called in, even guys who live closer in than me!

[JackFavell]

I didn't think we were supposed to get any real snow here. But there it is, so thick you can barely see through it. It IS beautiful though. it's like being inside a snow globe or a big white down blanket. I swear I've seen flakes an inch and half across, floating like feathers down to the ground.

[MissGoddess]

I didn't think we were supposed to get any real snow here. But there it is, so thick you can barely see through it. It IS beautiful though. it's like being inside a snow globe or a big white down blanket. I swear I've seen flakes an inch and half across, floating like feathers down to the ground.

You're so poetic, Wendy. I'm afraid the words that I would use to describe this would turn the air from white to blue.

[JackFavell]

HA! It must be a real horror movie, after coming from the islands!

[moira finnie]

We actually will not be receiving our daily dose of snow today--though after midnight we are getting a few more inches. I think it is mainly coastal communities that are getting pounded with this storm. Please stay safe.

[kingrat]

Joe MacDonald’s cinematography for Warlock (1959, dir. Edward Dmytryk) is magnificent. His black-and-white credits include My Darling Clementine, Viva Zapata, and “The Last Leaf,” and his color credits include Bigger Than Life and House of Bamboo, among many more. For Warlock, MacDonald employs a somewhat muted palette, but with touches of other colors. Each shot looks like a painting with its balance of color. This is much more difficult—and much more rewarding—than deciding to make everything brown or everything green or everything steel-blue. Set designer, costume designer, director, and cinematographer all work together to make this happen.

If I unkindly found Dmytryk’s direction of his previous film, The Young Lions, a little bland, here the direction seems unobtrusively right, with a quietly effective use of Cinemascope. (There isn’t much difference between bland and unobtrusively right—this is what working in an accepted classical style is like—and yet there is.)

Gee, and I haven’t even mentioned the story, the characters, and the acting, all of which occasioned a great discussion in these parts back in 2009. Of course toward the end there’s a showdown in the streets of town, but three showdowns, each one leading to the next inexorably? Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, and Richard Widmark tear into their parts, and our view of the characters keeps changing, just as Fonda told the townspeople it would.

Spoilers: Fonda’s reaction to the death of Quinn is for me the high point of the film. I can understand that this may seem excessive to some, but I like the Viking funeral, as it were, that Fonda gives him. Quinn’s love for Fonda has grown dark and twisted, and only after Quinn’s death can Fonda acknowledge and accept everything that was good and bad in their relationship, which has been the center of both men’s lives for years.

Thanks to everyone who brought Warlock to my attention. It's as compelling as you said it was.

[kingrat]

Pulling together top the lists for the 40s and 50s reminded me that I owned some DVDs, unwatched, with possible candidates, so I saw these two Westerns set and partly filmed in Oregon: Canyon Passage (1946, dir. Jacques Tourneur) and Bend of the River (1953, dir. Anthony Mann). Location photography is a big plus for both movies.

The first half hour of Canyon Passage has some lovely fluid camera movements in Dana Andrews’ room and outside in the rainy town of Portland, which is getting overpopulated with one thousand now living there. Susan Hayward is perhaps not the most believable frontier damsel, but she’s an enjoyable star, and she makes a good match for Dana Andrews. If I didn’t love it quite so much as ChiO does, it’s still a good film, with Ward Bond a menacing bad guy, Brian Donlevy not a bad guy but a Zachary Scott weakling, and Hoagy Carmichael as a troubadour (the Greek chorus, as ChiO said).

Bend of the River would be one of my very favorite Anthony Mann movies if James Stewart didn’t suddenly become a superhero who can wipe out a dozen or two opponents by himself. That aside, Bend of the River offers a variety of villains, all with different reasons for their actions, and part of the suspense is waiting to see if Arthur Kennedy will turn bad and if James Stewart will, too. Stewart saves Kennedy from being hanged, and both men share a background as Missouri/Kansas raiders. Can a man change? Julie (then billed as Julia) Adams is drawn to both men, and there’s even a possibility that she might go bad. Jay C. Flippen, often cast as a villain, is her righteous, but not self-righteous, father.

Also on the minus side is the kind of humor given to Stepin Fetchit, though this is a minor aspect of a solid film. Stewart and Kennedy are like two sides of a coin, and both make the most of their characters. They are also well matched in The Man from Laramie. Rock Hudson plays a handsome gambler, and this appearance was a big boost to his career. Julie Adams is pretty and she can act, so it’s too bad she didn’t have a bigger career in the movies.

Bend of the River focuses on the delivery of food to a new settlement. Along with the issues of morality, greed, and power, there’s a very basic question of survival.