Westerns 1

Slotkin, R. (1992). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. A masterwork about the representation of the history of the American West in fictional books and films.

Wright, W. (1975). Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western. Our second through fifth classes illustrate Wright’s four basic Western plots.

Lenihan, J. H. (1980). Showdown: Confronting Modern America in the Western Film.

Weddle, D. (1994). “If They Move . . . Shoot ‘Em!”: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah.

Coyne, M. (1997). The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western.

Wills, G. (1999). John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity. Not a traditional biography; more about Wayne’s image than the man himself.

McBride, J. (2001). Searching for John Ford: A Life. The definitive Ford biography.

Kitses, J. (2007). Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood. 2^nd ed. In addition to Ford and Eastwood, Kitses discusses the Westerns of Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone.

Glenn Frankel has written two interesting books about the history of two of our films:

Frankel, G. (2013). The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend.

Frankel, G. (2017). High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic.

Four of our films are the subject of short paperbacks in the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series:

Bunscombe, E. (1992). Stagecoach.

Bunscombe, E. (2000). The Searchers.

Countryman, E., & von Heussen-Countryman, E. (1999). Shane.

Drummond, P. (1997). High Noon.

March 6–Stagecoach

Westerns

America’s first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), was a Western. Between 1926 and 1967, 25% of all movies were Westerns, more than any other genre. Over 4000 Westerns have been made during the sound era.

John Ford (1894-1973)

Born John Martin Feeney near Portland, Maine, the youngest of 11 children. His parents were Irish immigrants. His father was a tavern owner. As a child, he valued toughness. As a high school fullback, he was nicknamed “Bull” Feeney. However, he was also artistic. He drew landscapes, some copied from photographs and paintings of the West by Frederick Remington.

In 1914, he dropped out of art studies at U. of Maine and moved to Hollywood to join his elder brother Frank (“Francis Ford”), an established actor and director of silent films. Both brothers used the name “Ford” because “Feeney” sounded Irish and they feared discrimination against Irish-Americans. He worked as actor, a stuntman, and assistant director to Frank. The first feature he directed was The Tornado (1917). During the silent era, he directed many serials and low-budget Westerns, 16 of which starred Harry Carey.

While the exact number of films directed by Ford is unknown, one source puts it at 147 feature films, 54 of which were Westerns. Many of his non-Westerns have an Irish theme.

Ford’s behavior on the set was autocratic. He insulted and bullied his actors, and sometimes used deception to achieve the performances he wanted. In spite of this, he had a “stock company” of loyal friends who appeared in many of his films and called him “Pappy.” They included John Wayne, Ward Bond, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr., etc. Most of these actors owed their careers to Ford.

Ford was unhappily married and had poor relationships with his two children. He had many affairs, but as a Catholic, never sought a divorce. When not filming, he spent most of his time with pals on his yacht, the Araner. Ford was a heavy consumer of alcohol, although he was usually able to control his drinking when filming.

Prior to World War II, Ford was a New Deal Democrat. His “populist quartet” of films included Stagecoach (1939), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

John Wayne (1907-1979)

Born Marion Morrison in Iowa, his family moved to Glendale, CA when he was 8. His high school friends included Bob and Bill Bradbury, whose father, Robert N. Bradbury, was a prolific director of “B”-Westerns. Bob Bradbury became a “B”-western star under the name Bob Steele.

John Ford noticed Wayne while he was working in Hollywood as a prop man, and gave him small parts in two films. Director Raoul Walsh cast him as the lead in The Big Trail (1930). It was filmed on location using an expensive wide screen process and it lost a lot of money. As a result, the studios declined to make big budget Westerns for nine years.

Wayne spent the 1930s making “B”-Westerns, learning his craft. Among his mentors were Harry Carey and Yakima Canutt. Twelve of these films were directed by Robert N. Bradbury.

Yakima Canutt (1895-1986)

Canutt was a former rodeo performer who became an extra in silent Westerns. He is credited with largely inventing the profession of movie stuntman. He made hundreds of Westerns, and after retiring from stunt work, became a second-unit director of action scenes. Some of his more impressive stunts are visible during the Indian attack in Stagecoach.

Monument Valley

Located in southern Utah, near the border with Arizona, Monument Valley is a 5 square mile cluster of sandstone buttes, reaching as much as 1000 feet above the valley floor. The valley is named for their resemblance to tombstones. The land is owned by the Navajo Nation. Stagecoach was the first of seven Ford Westerns that were partially filmed in Monument Valley.

The film

Ford considered his films to be illustrations of American history, and his Westerns to represent the history of the American frontier. The American national character was said to have been forged through confrontation with hardships faced in the wilderness, including battles with Native Americans. Some critics refer to this as the “frontier myth.”

Stagecoach was his first sound Western, and his first Western in 13 years. It was based on a short story, “Stage to Lordsburg,” by Ernest Haycox, published in Colliers magazine in 1937. The Haycox story is about a stagecoach trip from Tonto, in southern Arizona, to Lordsburg, in southern New Mexico (far from Monument Valley).

Ford and screenwriter Dudley Nichols expanded Haycox’s story, making several important changes. Two passengers, the banker Gatewood and Doc Boone, were added to the cast. The birth of a baby was included, presumably to increase the appeal of the story to women.

Ford had difficulty getting the film financed with the cast he wanted (“ordinary people”). It was budgeted as a “B”-picture at about $550,000. Color photography was out of the question. Ford was paid $50,000; Claire Trevor, $15,000; and John Wayne $3700.

Visual style

Ford has a great eye for shot composition, especially of outdoor scenes, perhaps due to his background as an artist. He was also a master at the filming of action scenes.

Ford uses the placement of actors within the frame to tell his story, i.e., the lunch seating arrangement. He makes frequent use of reaction shots—closeups of characters reacting to the statements and actions of others.

The film contains examples of expressionist photography by director of photography Bert Glennon—deep focus shots with high contrast lighting, which anticipate the visual style of film noir in the 1940s. When they first appear, Geronimo and his men are photographed from a low angle to emphasize their threat to the stagecoach passengers.

The Plot(s)

Stagecoach contains at least three plot threads worthy of discussion:

The revenge plot—Ringo vs. the Plummers.
The role of Native Americans as the primary threat to the stagecoach passengers.
Social interaction among the passengers illustrating class conflicts.

The first two of these will be discussed later in the course.

Stagecoach exemplifies the group jeopardy (“Ship of Fools”) plot. A group of strangers are brought together in close proximity under difficult and dangerous circumstances. Their character is tested. Some succeed and become leaders, while others fail and are embarrassed or killed.

Throughout the film, the passengers form coalitions based on social class, often in pairs that are isolated by the camera. Ford identified strongly with the underdog and the film can be seen as an attack on the establishment. The chart below (from Gary Wills) shows the social status of the passengers at the beginning of the journey. By the end of the film, their esteem in the eyes of the audience is completely reversed. The social outcasts are capable and heroic. The upper class people are shown to be snobs, criminals, and/or people who are helpless to deal with emergencies.

Social status of Stagecoach passengers

	Character	At beginning	At end

1	Gatewood (Berton Churchill)	Banker; pillar of community	Thief
2	Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt)	Army officer’s wife	Helpless
3	Hatfield (John Carradine)	Gentleman; gambler	Past revealed
4	Peacock (Donald Meek)	Whiskey “drummer”	Shows surprising courage
5	Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell)	Drunk; driven from town	Redeemed through his actions
6	Dallas (Claire Trevor)	Prostitute; driven from town	Heroine
7	Ringo Kid (John Wayne)	Escaped convict	Hero

Western movies often reflect events taking place at the time they were produced. Some authors see Stagecoach as a film about the Great Depression, viewed from the hindsight of ten years after the 1929 stock market crash. Gatewood is the primary villain, speaking pro-banking and anti-regulatory cliches that are heard even today, almost 80 years later. Ringo and Dallas represent young people who have endured the hardships of the 1930s but now face a brighter future (albeit in Mexico!).

Aftermath

The film was well-received by both critics and audiences and made over $1 million in the first year. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. It won two: Thomas Mitchell (Doc Boone) for Best Supporting Actor and Best Musical Score. The major categories were swept by Gone With the Wind.

March 13–Shane

The Johnson County War

Shane was set in the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming. They used telephoto lenses so the mountains would be visible and in focus. Director of photography Loyal Griggs received the 1953 Academy Award for best color cinematography. The film is set during the Johnson County War, which took place between 1889 to 1893.

The Johnson Country War was a conflict between several large cattle companies and many settlers over land and water rights. Although its history is contested, there is general agreement that the cattle ranchers harassed and persecuted the settlers, accusing them of cattle rustling and hanging some of them. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) hired about 50 mercenaries from Texas, gave them a list of Johnson County settlers to be assassinated, and offered a bounty for each man killed.

The farmers organized in their defense and there was a bloody standoff in which many of the fighters on both sides were killed. While some of the mercenaries were arrested, the WSGA had the support of the governor of Wyoming and US President Benjamin Harrison and all charges were dropped. Some of the farmers who survived the war were assassinated later.

Shane differs from historical reality in two important ways:

Scale: The conflict involved dozens of cattle ranchers and hundreds of settlers. The film presents a fictional version involving one rancher and about a dozen settlers.
The outcome.

Many other Western novels and films are based loosely on the Johnson County War. The Virginian (1902) by Owen Wister, the first best-selling novel set in the West, took the side of the ranchers. The most accurate retelling of the Johnson County War is Michael Cimino’s film Heaven’s Gate (1980).

Will Wright—Sixguns and Society

We typically define a Western as a film that is set in the Western U. S. between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20^th century. While some Westerns claim to be realistic or based on real events, in general, the characters, settings and props of Western movies differ a great deal from historical reality.

Wright’s hypothesis is that, since Westerns are not about the real West, they reflect attitudes that were prevalent in American culture at the time the films were produced. For example, Stagecoach is said to present John Ford’s 1939 opinions about the causes of the Depression and his optimism that the worst was over. This thesis, that the plots of Western films reflect contemporary events, is the theme of historian Richard Slotkin’s award-winning book, Gunfighter Nation (1992).

Wright is a practitioner of structural anthropology, which attempts to understand a culture in part by analyzing the myths contained in its folk tales and stories. These myths both reflect and influence patterns of thought by members of the society. Myths are described by listing a set of functions, or plot developments, which are common to a particular group of stories, i.e., “the hero fights the villains.”

In his study, Wright identified all the Westerns that grossed $4 million or more released between 1930 and 1972. He found that their plots could be grouped into four categories:

Classical plot (24 films)
Vengeance variation (9 films)
Transition theme (3 films)
Professional plot (18 films)

The prevalence of these plots varies with date of the films’ release, although there is some overlap. In general, the classical plot came first, followed by the vengeance variation, etc. Shane is an example of the classical plot. The list of functions describing the classical plot is described in a handout passed out in class.

George Stevens (1904-1975)

Stevens was a successful Hollywood producer and director, known for his comedies. After his World War II experiences, his films became more dramatic and serious. He won the Academy Award for best director twice: A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956). He was nominated for Shane (1953) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). Shane was his only Western.

Shane went way over schedule and over budget. Stevens shot 363,000 feet of film; the completed film contained only 10,600 feet.

Alan Ladd (1913-1964)

Ladd was a successful leading man in the 1940s and early 1950s, His career was handicapped by his short stature—5’6” according to the studios—which he was sensitive about. He co-starred with Veronica Lake (5’1”) four times. Directors worked around the problem using creative camera angles and editing, or by having him stand on boxes. His popularity dropped sharply in the late 1950s. He died at age 51 of an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol.

Jean Arthur (1900-1991)

Arthur, known for her comedies, was in her fifties, eight years older than Van Heflin and 13 years older than Ladd. She did the film as a favor to Stevens, but she hated it, especially her wardrobe, and the fact that Stevens urged her to look old and tired. She retired after completing the film.

Jack Palance (1919-2006)

Palance was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor (as was child actor Brandon de Wilde). He was given considerable input into the costume and mannerisms of his character, and his portrayal became a template for subsequent Western villains.

Screenplay

The film was based on the 1949 novel Shane by Jack Schaefer. The screenplay was written by A. B. Guthrie, a Western historian and novelist. The filmmakers did not make major changes to the story; however, Schaefer’s Shane wore black and was said to be a former Confederate officer.

Shane in Historical Context

Big budget Westerns of the first generation (up to 1950) were usually about the westward expansion of the U. S., and dealth with such challenges as the hardships of wilderness living, Native American resistance, and the need to establish law and order in Western towns. They are often said to be the source of the “frontier myth,” that America is a land of unlimited opportunity for strong, ambitious men. But the post-war era was a time of growing anxiety and pessimism, as relected in the popularity of film noir. Beginning in the 1950s, Westerns were produced that seem related to conflicts over foreign policy and domestic political issues, i.e., civil rights.

Shane is sometimes said to reflect concerns over America’s role in the post-war world, specifically the controversy over isolationism vs. interventionism. To what extent should the U. S. military intervene in places like Korea, Vietnam, or (covertly) in Iran or Guatemala? Should we become “the world’s policeman?”

Shane gives us a clear conflict between good (the settlers) and evil (the rancher). The hero wants to avoid trouble if possible, but ultimately finds that he must resort to violence to save the community. Thus the plot favors intervention, the policy favored by political conservatives and the military. Typically, in these films, women argue for a peaceful solution to the conflict, but their point of view is shown to be unrealistic. The “correct” solution is never negotiation. The answer is always “a good man with a gun.”

The classical hero, or ”There never was a man like Shane.”

Shane is shot from Joey’s point of view, as if Stevens were giving moral instruction to its young audience. The classical hero represents the ideal of chivalry associated with the knights of the roundtable. Shane is the only character who never acts from self-centered motives. He sacrifices himself—maybe literally, since he may have died—for the good of the community. Stevens dresses him in white, rather than Schaefer’s black costume.

In the real world, the Johnson County settlers were murdered by gunmen hired by the wealthy ranchers. Shane argues for intervention into the lives of others, but it does so by creating an arguably unrealistic hero who brings about an outcome that did not, and perhaps could not, happen in the real world.

Violence

When Stevens returned from World War II, he was offended by Western gunfights in which no one seemed to be seriously hurt, and he set out to correct that. The sound of gunfire was amplified on the soundtrack. Actors Elisha Cook, Jr., and Jack Palance wore harnesses and were snapped back onto concealed mattresses when they were shot.

Aftermath

Shane was both a critical and commercial success. It received six Academy Award nominations, including best picture, director, and two supporting actor nominations. Loyal Griggs was the only winner for his cinematography.

There have been several unacknowledged remakes of Shane, the best known being George Miller’s Mad Max 2 (aka, The Road Warrior) (1981) and Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (1985).

March 20–The Searchers

Cynthia Ann Parker (1825-1871)

In 1836, Comanches raided the Parker homestead in East Texas, killing the adult males. Cynthia Ann Parker, 9 years old, was abducted along with four others. Her uncle, James Parker, a backwoodsman and Indian-hater, searched for his relatives for 8 years, finding (or determining the fate of) all but Cynthia Ann.

Cynthia Ann was found in 1860 (24 years later) at the Pease River Massacre, an incident in which Texas Rangers raided a Comanche camp when all the fighting-aged males were gone and killed the women and children. Cynthia Ann was spared because they noticed she was white.

In effect, she was kidnapped a second time. She had been married to a Comanche chief, had two sons and an infant daughter. She was returned to another uncle, Isaac Parker. After a period of disorientation, she settled into the unhappy life of a prisoner. Her daughter died after a few years, and she died about 10 years later.

Alan Le May (1899-1964)

Alan Le May was a successful Western novelist and screenwriter. During a period of unemployment, he researched the Parker case, along with several other child abductions. The result was a novel loosely based on Cynthia Ann’s story. It was serialized by the Saturday Evening Post in 1954 under the title “The Avenging Texans,” and published in 1955 as The Searchers.

John Ford and his screenwriter, Frank Nugent, made some additional changes, with the result that the film departs significantly from real events.

John Ford (1894-1973)

In 1939, Ford made Stagecoach, his first Western with sound, the first one shot in Monument Valley, and the first starring John Wayne. Here is a list of Ford’s sound Westerns.

Stagecoach (1939)

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) [“Eastern Western”]

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Fort Apache (1948)

Three Godfathers (1948)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Wagon Master (1950)

Rio Grande (1950)

The Searchers (1956)

The Horse Soldiers (1959)

Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

Two Rode Together (1961)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

How the West Was Won (1962) [Co-director]

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

My Darling Clementine is Ford’s version of the gunfight at the O K. Corral, in which Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday fought the Clantons. The Cavalry trilogy—Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande—are said to represent Ford’s attitudes toward the military (very supportive) and American foreign policy (very conservative). The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a story of the passing of the Old West, is generally considered to be his last great Western.

Ford received four Oscars for best director: The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). None of these were Westerns.

Ford had a distinguished record during World War II. He was a Commander in the US Navy, and headed the photographic unit for the Office of Strategic Service (which eventually became the CIA). He directed award-winning documentaries about the war. While filming one of them, The Battle of Midway, he was wounded and received a Purple Heart.

After the war, his politics shifted to the Right. During the time of the Communist scare, he initially opposed the Hollywood blacklist. However, after the blacklist was established, he joined the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an organization devoted to exposing suspected Communists, whose presidents included his close friends John Wayne and Ward Bond. He continued to make war documentaries for the military during the Korean and Vietnam wars, but they were poorly received.

Ironically, his Westerns became more complex in their attitudes toward Native Americans and African Americans. In my opinion, it is a mistake to claim that Ford’s films became more liberal; it may be more accurate to say that they became more pessimistic.

The film

The Searchers was Ford’s fifth film shot in Monument Valley; there were seven in all. It was filmed in VistaVision, said to be “motion picture high fidelity,” which produced, for its time, an unusually sharp and clear image.

Several scholars have claimed that Westerns are often attempts to deal with social and political concerns at the time the film was produced. To understand the underlying message of many films about Native Americans—pro or con—it is sometimes helpful to substitute black for red. That is, these films can be seen as comments about the African-American struggle for civil rights.

Although Ford steadfastly refused to clarify his intentions when making this (or any other) film, it is usually interpreted today as a critique of white racism. Evidence of Ethan’s racism is abundant throughout the film. One bit of evidence that this was Ford’s intention is that he and Nugent altered Le May’s novel by making Martin one-eighth Cherokee, enabling Ethan’s verbal abuse of Martin. Interestingly, The Searchers is anti-racist without being pro-Indian.

It is also clear that Ford intended to suggest that Ethan and his sister-in-law Martha were in love. Some commentators have suggested that Ethan knew or suspected that Debbie was his daughter. However, I can find no clear evidence for this claim.

The 1956 audience and most contemporary film critics did not recognize that the film was about the harmful effects of prejudice on the individual who holds such views (and did not notice the cues suggesting a relationship between Ethan and Martha). Maybe they weren’t expecting such complexity from a Ford-Wayne collaboration, or they simply didn’t have the cognitive category “racist” as applied to Native Americans.

There was also the tricky matter of getting John Wayne, a known racist, to play the role of a racist in a film that condemns racism. Some of Wayne’s comments about the film suggest that he didn’t fully “get it,” in the sense that he felt that hating Indians was normal and acceptable.

The Searchers was a financial success; it was among the 20 top-grossing films of 1956. But it was not a critical success and received only two Academy Award nominations, for editing and musical score.

It did not achieve classic status until the 1970s, when it received favorable attention from the next generation of directors, including Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and others. In 2008, it was named #1 on the American Film Institute’s critics’ poll of the all-time greatest Westerns. In 2012, it was ranked #7 on Sight and Sound‘s international film critics’ poll of the greatest films of all time.

March 27–High Noon

Wright (1975)–Sixguns and Society (continued)

In the Classical plot, an outsider who is a skilled fighter enters a community and discovers that the community is helpless against much stronger villains. He initially avoids involvement in the conflict, but is drawn in when a friend is endangered. He intervenes and uses violence to defeats the villains, then rides away. His motives are presented as completely altruistic.

The vengeance variation

In the Vengeance Variation, the hero has a personal motive. The villains harm him as well, and society is unable to protect him. His quest for revenge takes him outside the society, either to improve his fighting ability or to chase down the villains. Wright also makes the awkward claim that the hero both gives up his revenge and fights and defeats the villains. This inconsistency is handled by having the hero change his mind, or by having some external event force the hero to confront the villains after he has given up his revenge.

The hero is or was a member of the society.
The villains do harm to the hero and the society.
The society is unable to punish the villains.
The hero seeks vengeance.
The hero goes outside of the society.
The hero is revealed to have a special ability.
The society recognizes a difference between themselves and the hero; the hero is given a special status.
A representative of the society asks the hero to give up his revenge.
The hero gives up his revenge.
The hero fights the villains.
The hero defeats the villains.
The hero gives up his special status.
The hero enters the society.

Both Stagecoach and The Searchers are examples of the Vengeance plot. It represents the beginning of a steady deterioration of the relationship between the hero and the society, which continues with theTransition Theme.

The Transition Theme

The Transition is between the first two plots (Classical and Vengeance) and the Professionals plot, in which the heroes are outside the society both at the beginning and the end. It explains how they got outside the society. The society drove them away. This is an inversion of the Classical plot: The hero begins in a position inside the society and winds up outside it. Sometimes he must fight the society as well as the villains.

A possible weakness in Wright’s analysis is that there are only three films in this category, and he does not outline the plot. His rejoinder is that these three films (Broken Arrow, High Noon and Johnny Guitar) were influential, and there were other transitional films that didn’t meet his criterion for inclusion in the study, $4 million at the box office.

Wright and other scholars claim that Western films are often attempts to deal with social and political concerns at the time the film was produced. In our previous three films, we had to infer what these concerns were. With High Noon, we don’t have to guess because the screenwriter, Carl Foreman, has stated explicitly what he had in mind.

Stanley Kramer (1913-2001)

Kramer was born in New York to a Jewish family. He worked his way up in Hollywood in the 1930s as a writer and an editor. Between 1948 (So This is New York) and 1954 (The Caine Mutiny), he produced 17 low to medium budget but prestigious “message” pictures. Six of them were written by Carl Foreman, a partner in his production company. Three were directed by Fred Zinnemann.

After 1954, he formed an independent production company and began directing as well as producing. He had a string of four successive high prestige films, all of which lost money: The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He continued to direct until 1980.

Carl Foreman (1914-1984)

Foreman was born in Chicago, also to a left-wing Jewish family. He started out in Hollywood in the 1930s by doing rewrites of B movies. During World War II, he wrote scripts for government documentaries. He became a friend and partner of Kramer in 1948.

Fred Zinnemann (1907-1997)

Born in Vienna, Zinnemann learned his craft at UFA (Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft), a successful German film studio that specialized in expressionism. He was one of several Jewish directors who emigrated to Hollywood after Hitler came to power. Others included Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Otto Preminger and Edgar G. Ulmer. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust.

He was an assistant to documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty. He broke into directing with B films in the 1940s. His breakthrough came with The Search (1948). He won Academy Awards as best director for From Here to Eternity (1953) and A Man For All Seasons (1966).

Gary Cooper (1901-1961)

He was born Frank Cooper in Helena, Montana to a well-to-do family. His father was on the Montana Supreme Court. His mother took him to England to study in private schools. He disappointed his family by moving to Hollywood, where he worked as an extra and stunt rider in silent westerns.

His first important screen role was as The Virginian (1929). About half his films were Westerns. He also made adventure and war films. His first Academy Award was for Sergeant York (1941). He also appeared in several successful “screwball” comedies, i.e., Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941) and Ball of Fire (1941).

His politics were conservative. He was a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance and testified as a friendly witness to HUAC in 1947. However, he was not militant and maintained friendships with people with whom he disagreed politically.

He partnered with Kramer, Foreman and Zinnemann because at age 50, his career was stagnant, and he liked the script. He accepted half his usual fee in exchange for a percentage of the profits, which turned out to be a good deal. After winning his second best actor award, he continued making films until he died of cancer just after his 60^th birthday.

The Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist

Many Americans, including a substantial number of actors, writers and directors, joined the Communist Party (CP) during the Depression. They identified with causes such as unionization, civil rights and peace, and affiliated with the CP because it was the most liberal of the organized parties at that time. They were not spies, nor did they advocate overthrow of the US government. The Soviet Union was our ally in World War II. It was only after the war that CP membership was retroactively redefined as disloyalty to the US.

The right held a fairly unsophisticated theory of media influence. They exaggerated the number of Hollywood films that contained liberal messages and overestimated the effect of such films on public attitudes.

House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC)

At the HUAC hearings, people were called before the Committee and asked whether they had ever been a member of the CP. If they said “yes,” they were asked to name the names of other party members, placing them in a lose/lose situation. If they refused to testify, they could go to jail. If they did name names, they betrayed their friends, and might be blacklisted anyway.

HUAC began to hold hearings investigating alleged Communist influence on films in 1947. This resulted in the prosecution and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten—ten writers and directors who refused to testify. There was a second wave of hearings in 1951. These were separate from the investigations of alleged Communists in the State Department by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI).

HUAC was encouraged to investigate Communists in the film industry by a conservative group, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA), which included actors John Wayne, Ward Bond, Gary Cooper, Ronald Reagan; directors John Ford, Cecil B. DeMille; gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, etc. There was also a liberal group, the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA), which included actors Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson; and directors John Huston, Billy Wilder. The CFA broke up due to internal disagreements after the Hollywood Ten refused to testify.

HUAC’s motive was not really to get the names of former CP members, most of whom were already known to them. The naming process was intended to humiliate the witness and sow discord within the liberal community. HUAC may also have been motivated by anti-Semitism, since many of the witnesses and most Hollywood studio owners were Jews. Their primary goal was probably to eliminate liberals from positions of influence in Hollywood.

The Blacklist

The blacklist was a list of hundreds of actors, directors and writers that the studios and TV networks refused to hire because they had been associated with the CP or other liberal organizations. The secrecy of the blacklist created an atmosphere of paranoia. Its primary effect was to remove many talented writers, directors and actors from the film industry.

To demonstrate that they were not liberals, the studios promised HUAC that they would eliminate films with social messages. The only acceptable “problem films” were those dealing with crime, provided that they advocated “law and order” solutions. Film historians have suggested that some Westerns involving Native Americans were disguised attempts to comment on race relations between Caucasian and African Americans, which at the time was forbidden by the studios.

Foreman and Kramer

Carl Foreman and his wife Estelle joined the CP when they moved to Hollywood in the 1930s. They left in 1939, when Hitler and Stalin signed their nonaggression treaty. During the first wave of HUAC hearings, he was an unknown, but between 1947 and 1951, he had become famous enough for HUAC to go after.

Foreman received a subpoena while working on the High Noon script. When he told Kramer, Kramer hired a lawyer to buy him out of the company. In his testimony, Foreman refused to name names, even though he knew it would expose him to blacklisting and possible prosecution. It was a tragic breakup of the relationship between two close friends. Foreman felt that Kramer had betrayed him, and that together, they might have broken the blacklist. (That was almost certainly unrealistic.) Kramer argued that if he had continued to partner with Foreman, his own career would have been jeopardized. They never spoke again.

According to Foreman. he had the idea for turning High Noon into a metaphor for blacklisting before he was subpoenaed. Sheriff Will Kane represents the individual under threat of blacklisting. The Wilson gang are HUAC. The townspeople are the Hollywood establishment, who betray their colleagues out self-interest and moral cowardice. Henderson’s speech, delivered by Thomas Mitchell, is said to represent Kramer. Henderson (Kramer) wants Kane (Foreman) out of town because he is bad for business.

After High Noon, Foreman tried to form his own production company with his settlement money, and with the help of investor friends including Gary Cooper. However, the MPA intervened and talked Foreman’s financial backers out of it. In interviews, John Wayne took personal credit for driving Foreman out of Hollywood.

Foreman moved to England, where he wrote several screenplays using aliases. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) screenplay was co-written by Foreman and Michael Wilson, another blacklisted writer living in England. Screen credit went to the book’s author Pierre Boule, who did not speak English. It won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay.

Foreman was eventually able to write, produce and direct films under his own name, including The Key (1958), The Mouse That Roared (1959), The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Victors (1963) and Born Free (1966).

The film

It is unlikely that 1952 audiences interpreted the High Noon as an attack on the Hollywood blacklist. The film is open to a variety of interpretations. Zinnemann, whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust, claimed that the Miller gang represented fascism and the townspeople were German citizens who failed to respond to the threat posed by Hitler. One could just as easily imagine a conservative thinking that Kane represents Senator McCarthy, while the Miller gang represents the threat of Communism. The plot is generic enough that one can substitute any threat about which the public is alleged to be complacent.

In 1970s vigilante pictures such as Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974), the public is accused of being soft on crime. The ending of Dirty Harry quotes High Noon, as Harry (Clint Eastwood) drops his badge on the ground.

Some other members of the cast and crew were blacklisted, including actors Lloyd Bridges and Howard Chamberlain, and director of photography Floyd Crosby. Crosby was the father of musician David Crosby.

Cooper and Grace Kelly, who played husband and wife, were aged 50 and 21 at the time of shooting. Lon Chaney, Jr., who played Cooper’s retired predecessor and mentor, was aged 45.

High Noon was a critical and commercial success. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture, actor, director and screenplay. It was the favorite to win best picture, but the MPA initiated a lobbying campaign to deny it the award. It won four Oscars: Best editing (Elmo Williams), best musical score (Dimitri Tiomkin), best song (sung by Tex Ritter), and best actor (Gary Cooper). The three liberals—Kramer, Foreman and Zinnemann—got the bird.

John Wayne said High Noon was the most un-American film he had ever seen, and misremembered Kane as having ground his badge into the dirt with his heel. He thought Kane was a coward for asking for help. He and director Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo (1959) in part as an answer to High Noon. In it, Wayne refuses help from the townspeople.

April 3–The Professionals

Wright—Sixguns and Society (continued)

As we move through the four basic Western plots, the heroes of the films become gradually more alienated from the society.

The professionals

The heroes are professionals.
The heroes undertake a job.
The villains are very strong.
The society is ineffective, incapable of defending itself.
The job involves the heroes in a fight.
The heroes all have special abilities and a special status.
The heroes form a group for the job.
The heroes as a group share respect, affection and loyalty.
The heroes as a group are independent of society.
The heroes fight the villains.
The heroes defeat the villains.
The heroes stay (or die) together.

The Professionals plot can be summarized by three points:

Money (points 1, 2 and 4 above): The heroes are not defending social values such as justice or public welfare; they are fighting for themselves, for money.
Group (5, 6, 7): They form a group, usually of 3 or more. Often there is a division of labor, with each man having a specialty.
Independence (7, 8, 9): The heroes are independent of society both at the beginning and end of the story.

The Larger Context

According to Wright, the movement from the Classical to the Professional plot coincides with a cultural change in postwar America—the gradual shift from a market to a managed economy. In a market economy, individual ability and effort is required for success. In a managed economy the main actors are corporations rather than individuals. Managed economies make greater use of technology and require centralized (top-down) planning. Teamwork is valued, and the individual is expected to find satisfaction through identification with the organization.

The Mexican Revolution

The Professionals is set during the Mexican Revolution, which took place between 1910 and 1920, and is not to be confused with the Mexican Wars for Independence from Spain (in the 1820s), and later France (in the 1860s). What follows is a simplified summary of a complex series of events.

Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico from 1876-1911, was an autocratic dictator who was supported by U. S. business interests. His re-election in 1910, in what was widely viewed as a rigged election, led to a political crisis and a civil war. Revolutionary groups, headed by leaders such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, took control of the country, handing the leadership over to Diaz’s opponent, Francisco Madera.

However, Madera, a wealthy landowner, was perceived as betraying the revolution by opposing policies such as land reform. He was assassinated, and leadership passed to General Victoriano Huerta. The civil war resumed. The film is set in 1916, when the Mexican Revolution had degenerated into a seemingly endless cycle of violence, but before the revolutionaries were defeated.

Eventually, both Villa and Zapata were assassinated. Power was consolidated under the conservative government of Venustiano Carranza, who was also supported by U.S. business interests. About 1.5 million Mexicans, out of a population of 15 million, died in the war, and in the end, very little change occurred.

Richard Brooks (1912-1992)

Brooks was born Reuben Sax in Philadelphia to Jewish immigrants from Russia. He began his career as a journalist, working for newspapers and radio. He learned the basics of filmmaking during World War II working for the Marine Corps film unit.

He published his first novel, The Brick Foxhole, in 1946. It was made into the 1947 film noir Crossfire. In the book, a group of American soldiers kill a stranger because he is gay. In the film, the victim was changed to a Jew. Crossfire was criticized by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a prime example of Communist influence in Hollywood, since its producer (Adrian Scott) and director (Edward Dmytryk) were two of the Hollywood Ten, and the notion that American soldiers might be anti-Semitic was seen as an insult to the military and the country.

Brooks began his Hollywood career as a screenwriter specializing in films noir. He and John Huston made uncredited contributions to the screenplay of The Killers (1946). He followed with screenplays of Brute Force (1947) and Key Largo (1948).

His first opportunity to direct was Crisis (1950). His successes with The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) gave him enough clout to start an independent film company. His later films included Elmer Gantry (1960), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), Lord Jim (1965) and In Cold Blood (1967). He was nominated for eight Academy Awards as either screenwriter or director, and he won for the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof screenplay.

Burt Lancaster (1913-1994)

Lancaster began as a circus performer in the 1930s, part of the acrobat duo, Lang and Cravat. He gave it up due to injury, but did a lot of his own stunts in his films. His first film role was The Killers (1946), followed by a number of films noir and action pictures, but he gradually turned to more serious roles. He was nominated as best actor four times and won the Academy Award for Elmer Gantry (1960). He starred in many other Westerns, including Vera Cruz (1954), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Valdez is Coming (1971) and Ulzana’s Raid (1972).

Lee Marvin (1924-1987)

Marvin spent the 1950s and early 1960s playing gangsters (The Big Heat, 1953) and outlaws (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962), and as a cop on the TV series M-Squad (1957-60). His breakthrough came when he won a surprising best actor Academy Award for the Western comedy Cat Ballou (1965). From that point on, he played leads in adventure films (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) and occasional more serious dramas (Ship of Fools, 1965). His other important Western was Monte Walsh (1970), which co-starred Jack Palance.

Robert Ryan (1909-1973)

Ryan probably starred in more films noir than any other actor, almost always as a villain. He specialized in playing bigots (as in Crossfire) and brutal cops, which was ironic because he was one of the most liberal actors in Hollywood. His Westerns included The Naked Spur (1952) and The Wild Bunch (1969).

Woody Strode (1914-1994)

Strode’s parents were both multiracial (part Native American, part African American), allowing him to take either role. He was a football star at UCLA in a backfield that included Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington. He and Washington were the first black players in the NFL, breaking in together with the Los Angeles Rams in 1946, while Robinson was the first black player in major league baseball in 1947.

He played bit parts, mostly in Westerns, until John Ford cast him in the title role of Sergeant Rutledge (1960), about a black cavalry officer falsely accused of the rape and murder of a white woman. He was also in several Italian Westerns, including Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

Jack Palance (1919-2006)

No other American actor played a greater number and variety of villains than Jack Palance. He played Toriano, an Apache chief, in Arrowhead (1953), arguably the most anti-Indian film made by Hollywood after World War II. He was nominated as best supporting actor for Sudden Fear (1952) and Shane (1953), and finally won for City Slickers (1991), a comedy in which he poked fun at his image.

Claudia Cardinale (1938 – )

Cardinale was one of Italy’s most popular actresses in the 1960s, playing leading roles in films by directors such as Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone. Her other noteworthy Western was Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

The Professionals in Historical Context

Any time Western heroes cross the border into Mexico, you might look for a message about the U.S. foreign policy of intervening in the affairs of other countries.

The Professionals can be contrasted with an earlier film,The Magnificent Seven (1960). In it, Americans intervene to protect helpless Mexican peasants against an evil warlord, who is not identified either with the government or a revolutionary group. Although they undertake the job for money, they gradually identify with the peasants’ cause, and some of them give their lives for it. This film is a model of what U. S. intervention should be, as it was sold to the American public by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.

The Professionals, however, were hired by an American millionaire capitalist who owned railroads in both the U. S. and Mexico and was clearly on the side of the Mexican government. This more accurately reflects the role America’s military has actually played since World War II.

At the time of the film (1966), almost all Americans were preoccupied with the Vietnam War. The film can be seen as a metaphor for U. S. involvement in Vietnam. Richard Brooks, a committed liberal, was probably two years ahead of the rest of the population in opposing the Vietnam War.

The Professionals starts out as a standard captivity/rescue film. The key moment in the film occurs when Rico and Dolworth see Maria climb into bed with Raza. As Dolworth says, “Amigo, we’ve been had!” From this, two things followed:

The premises behind their mission were false. It was not Raza but Grant who really kidnapped Maria (and they had just kidnapped her a second time).

They were fighting for the wrong side. By the end of the journey, they concluded that their sympathies were with Raza and the Mexican peasant class rather than American capitalists such as Grant.

By 1966, liberals such as Brooks had drawn both of those conclusions about the Vietnam War.

Aftermath

The character of Jesus Raza was probably modeled after Pancho Villa and/or Emiliano Zapata. “La raza,” which translates as “the people,” was the term used by Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers—who were in the news in 1966—to refer to themselves.

The film was financially successful. It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best direction and screenplay (Brooks) and best cinematography (Conrad Hall). As noted in class, it is unfortunate that Maurice Jarre was not nominated for his musical score.

April 10–Ride the High Country

Ride the High Country is an homage not only to the old West but also to old Westerns.

B Westerns

The double feature was a product of the 1930s, and B (low budget) movies were common from 1930 to 1960. Neighborhood theatres were often unable to afford quality (big budget) films, so they promoted quantity. A night’s entertainment might include a newsreel, cartoon, serial episode and two films.

B pictures were defined primarily by production cost—in the 1940s, about $200,000 or less. Half the films by the major studios, and nearly all by the independent studios, were B pictures.

Westerns comprised the majority of B pictures in the 1930s, and a plurality in the 1940s. They could be made cheaply and were characterized by short running times (about 60 min), formulaic (sometimes incoherent) plots, use of stock footage, and songs and comedy as fillers. They were usually shot in rural areas of Southern CA and did not look particularly “western.”

Among the lead actors, Tom Mix and Buck Jones starred in 200-300 movies, but most of them were silent. Ken Maynard and Bob Steele were probably the most prolific Western heros of the 1930s and 1940s. John Wayne starred in about 40 B Westerns before doing Stagecoach in 1939.

After World War II, the quality of B Westerns improved. They were typically 90 min long, shot in color on location (usually in AZ or NM), and had coherent and sometimes interesting plots.

The two actors who starred in the most B Westerns from 1946 to 1962 were Randolph Scott (40 films) and Joel McCrae (27 films). McCrae and Scott had similar careers. Scott made over 100 films, McCrae over 90. Up to WWII, they made films in a variety of genres, including A Westerns. After WWII, they made B Westerns exclusively.

Joel McCrae (1905-1990)

Joel McCrae (his real name) was born in CA to a middle class family. Like many others, he started in films in the 1920s as a stunt man and extra. His career peaked in the early 1940s, when he starred in Foreign Correspondent (1940, directed by Alfred Hitchcock) and several hit comedies, i.e., Sullivan’s Travels, 1941, The More the Merrier, 1943. He appeared in several A Westerns, including Wells Fargo (1937), Union Pacific (1939) and The Virginian (1946).

Randolph Scott (1898-1987)

Born George Randolph Scott to a wealthy family in VA, and raised in Charlotte, NC. He got a head start on his film career because his father was a friend of billionaire film producer Howard Hughes. Overall about 60 of his 100 plus films were Westerns. His breakthrough was The Last of the Mohicans (1936). He was also in Jesse James (1939) and Virginia City (1940).

Scott also appeared in many comedies, musicals and other adventure stories. For 12 years, he and Cary Grant shared a beach house in Malibu known as “Bachelor Hall,” a site of frequent parties.

During the early 1950s, he was voted among the top 10 film stars as measured by box office appeal. Between 1956 and 1960, he starred in seven critically acclaimed low budget Westerns (the “Ranown cycle”) directed by Budd Boetticher.

Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984)

Sam Peckinpah came from a successful Northern CA family. His one grandfather was the founder of the Peckinpah Lumber Co. in Coarsegold, near Fresno, in the High Sierra mountain range (“the high country”). The other, Denver Church, was a U. S. Congressman. His father was a lawyer and a Superior Court judge.

Sam’s problems began in childhood. His mother suffered from psychsomatic illnesses and demanded a lot of attention from other family members. He spent summers and weekends riding, hunting and fishing at the family’s ranch, but since he was smaller than other family members and interested in reading, he was under pressure to prove his masculinity. His pattern of heavy drinking began in high school.

After the end of WWII, he served in the Marines in China, where he witnessed a lot of brutality. While at Cal State—Fresno, he become interested in theatre, first as an actor, then a director. He earned a Master’s degree in theatre at the University of Southern CA. He was an assistant to director Don Siegel on five films, including Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

He was a screenwriter and then a director of several TV Western series, including Gunsmoke, Have Gun, Will Travel and The Rifleman. He created a TV series, The Westerner, starring Brian Keith, which was critically praised but cancelled after 13 episodes. While working in TV, he began a lifelong pattern of clashing with producers, who he felt were always dumbing down his scripts and cutting his budgets.

An opportunity came when Brian Keith requested him as his director for The Deadly Companions. He took the job in order to break into films, even though he disliked the script. He had no input into the screenplay or the final cut, and did not consider it “his” film.

Peckinpah’s films were as follows (the Westerns are italicized):

The Deadly Companions (1961)

Ride the High Country (1962)

Major Dundee (1965)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

Straw Dogs (1971)

Junior Bonner (1971)

The Getaway (1972)

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

The Killer Elite (1975)

Cross of Iron (1977)

Convoy (1978)

The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Peckinpah is the second best-known Western director after John Ford. He was similar to Ford in several ways:

Ability to direct intuitvely, without much preparation.
Lifelong abuse of alcohol (and in Sam’s case, drugs).
Verbal abuse of cast and crew on the set. Those who survived this treament became very loyal.
A “stock company”: Warren Oates, L. Q. Jones, James Coburn, Ben Johnson, Strother Martin, R. G. Armstrong, John Davis Chandler, Bo Hopkins, Dub Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, etc.
Refusal to talk seriously about his films with critics and interviewers.

The biggest difference from Ford was Sam’s lifelong hatred of authority. His disagreements with studio executives seriously hampered his career.

Sam’s only significant acting role was in Monte Hellman’s Italian Western, China 9, Liberty 27 (1978).

In 1979, Sam and Warren Oates (Henry) bought 700 acres of land and built a cabin in the high country of Montana. They didn’t get much chance to use it. Oates died of a heart attack in 1982 at age 53. Sam also died of heart failure in 1984 at age 59. Heavy drinking probably played a role in both of their early deaths.

The film

Sam was asked to direct “Guns in the Afternoon” by producer Richard Lyons, who had already signed contracts with MGM and the two co-stars. He liked the basic plot (with one important exception), but completely rewrote the dialogue.

The story is set in the early 20^th century. Two aging gunfighters who had played an important role in bringing law and order to the West, were trying to make a living in a world that no longer needed them. It is an example of the Western sub-genre about the passing of the Old West, which includes John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Monte Walsh (1970).

Sam was pleased with his two co-stars because of the parallels between the actors and the characters they played. He felt that Western fans would remember their previous performances while watching the film. It was originally planned that Scott and McCrae would play the opposite parts; they exchanged roles by mutual agreement. They flipped a coin for first billing. Both agreed that this would be their last film. Scott kept that promise but McCrae did not.

The film was shot in 28 days for $850,000, which was very cheap for the times. Much of it was filmed in the High Sierras near where Peckinpah grew up.

Peckinpah made one important structural change to the plot: In the original script, Westrum (Scott) died in the final shootout and Judd (McCrae) survived. I think this was a wise decision. It avoids the convention of the “villain” dying at the end. It adds an additional plot element, since Westrum must now decide whether to return the money.

While Judd is the nominal “hero” of the film, in reality, is not so clear. Judd was such a rigid upholder of law and order that he might have left Elsa with the Hammonds. Westrum was more pragmatic; he violated the letter of the law in order to rescue her.

The character of Steve Judd was based on Peckinpah’s father, who died suddenly shortly before the film was made. “All I want is to enter my house justified,” was one of his father’s favorite sayings.

According to L. Q. Jones (Sylvus), one of the psychological “games” Peckinpah played during the shooting of the film was to encourage hostility between his co-stars and the Hammond brothers. The five actors who played the Hammonds were asked to live, eat and drink together. Sam falsely told McCrae and Scott that “the Hammonds” thought the gestures they were using in the film resembled those of gay men.

In this film, we can see the origins of Peckinpah’s shooting style. He shot a lot of film and put it together in the editing room. The final shootout contained over 150 camera setups, with each event shot from several angles. The final result featured frequent rapid crosscutting. This technique, plus slow motion, was used more extensively in later films such as The Wild Bunch.

Aftermath

When the film was shown to MGM president Joseph Vogel, he said it was “the worst film that’s ever been perpetrated on the American public” and threatened not to release it. It was released as the bottom half of a double feature with The Tartars, an Italian-Yugoslavian co-production. Its current level of recognition is due to the influence of film critics and the success of Peckinpah’s later films.

Thinking Slowly

A blog about social science and politics

Westerns 1

American Western Films 1 (Spring 2018) Class ID: 2302

Articles available on the internet:

And videos:

Suggestions for further reading:

March 6–Stagecoach

March 13–Shane

March 20–The Searchers

March 27–High Noon

April 3–The Professionals

April 10–Ride the High Country