Wyatt Earp turns 165
Wyatt Earp, saloonkeeper, professional gambler, profligate, and alleged procurer of women, was for all his faults a great American hero.
Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, home of Monmouth College, the alma mater of our friend and colleague, the late James Stockdale. Living in Iowa he was repeatedly in trouble, principally for keeping a bawdy house. He served as deputy marshall in Wichita, Kansas, before joining his brother Jim in Dodge City. Wyatt, Jim, Virgil, and Morgan Earp landed in Tombstone, where their northern/unionist sympathies brought them into conflict with a group of cowboys nominally headed by the largely no-account Clantons and their respectable allies the McLaury brothers, who had the support of the town sheriff. The town was divided on the merits of the two parties, but in the famous gunfight near the OK Corral, Ike Clanton proved to be yellow and the others no match for the Earps and their homicidal dentist friend, Doc Holliday. The gunfight itself and Wyatt's vendetta against the men who shot his brothers is an old story, told to me many times by my father who as a boy sat on Wyatt Earp's kneee, and it will be retold as long as their are any real Americans left. As a child I adored Wyatt Earp, but a lifetime of reading has made me sadder and wiser without, however, entirely deadening my admiration for a man who generally avoided violent confrontation and never used a gun unless he had to, though, when he had to, displayed the nerve for which our people have always been justly renowned. Here are a few pages of a talk I delivered a few years back, some parts of which made it into Chronicles.
It was about 3 PM on October 26, 1881 as the town marshal and his informal deputies walked down the street. The date is probably not familiar, but you all know what happened that day in Tombstone, when Marshal Virgil Earp—also a deputy US Marshall, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and the Earps’ eccentric friend Dr. John H. Holliday confronted Isaac and William Clanton and Thomas and Robert Findley McLaury near the OK Corral. After thirty seconds of firing, Morgan Earp lay badly wounded, Holliday and Virgil had sustained less serious wounds, while Billy Clanton and the McLaurys were dead or dying. Only Wyatt and Ike Clanton—who had fled the scene, unarmed--were unscathed.
Witnesses to the gunfight said that Billy Clinton and Wyatt drew more or less simultaneously—though Wyatt claimed he drew only when he saw Billy reaching for his gun. Rather than shoot Billy, however, Wyatt went for the best gun in the bunch—Robert—known as Frank--McLawry and shot him in the stomach. The wounded McLawry took aim at Doc Holliday, saying, “I’ve got you now.” Raising his gun, Doc told him, “Blaze away: You’re a daisy if you do,” but Frank shot Holliday in the hip before being hit again by a wounded Morgan Earp.
The details are a little sketchy and have been debated by the Earps’ defenders and detractors for over a century and a quarter, but most of us who do not have a dog in this famous fight will probably still see the events as a morality play in black and white that has been told and retold in fiction and movies. The noble Earps—all good Republicans—were on the side of law and order. They were virtuous men who did not drink liquor or indulge in the vices that were on gaudy display in the Old West. Wyatt even ate ice cream instead of drinking redeye. The lives of these gallant officers of the law had been repeatedly threatened by a gang of rustlers, stagecoach robbers, and murderers, but when the time came, the fearless Earps, quick on the draw, showed their mettle.
This, or something very like it, was the story I grew up believing. It was enshrined in one of the classics of frontier literature, Stuart N. Lake’s Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, republished as the Life and Times of Wyatt Earp, a book I read more than once as a boy. I do not know how many films have been made, but the more famous ones include: Wyatt Earp (1994), Tombstone and (1993), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), My Darling Clementine (1946), and Stuart N. Lake’s Frontier Marshal (1939) with the best cast imaginable: Randolph Scott (Wyatt), Caesar Romero (Doc), Ward Bond, Lon Chaney, Jr, John Carradine, Binnie Barnes, and, playing the entertainer Eddie Foy who was in Tombstone, is Eddie Foy, Jr.
The most ridiculous of these films is probably Gunfight at the OK Corral with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster—I cannot recall which played Earp and which played Doc Holliday. Even more dishonest, perhaps is John Ford’s My Darling Clementine, in which the under-muscled Henry Fonda romances Doc Holliday’s former schoolmarm girlfriend—quite a difference from Holliday’s woman known as Big-Nosed Kate. Although it is not clear, exactly how Kate got her name, whether from the size of her nose or her habit of sticking it into matters that did not concern her, she was certainly no Rhonda Fleming. Ford kicked out the McLaurys and focused on the evil old man Clanton, played brilliantly by Walter Brennan, though Old Man Clanton must have had real grit to direct operations from the grave he was already lying in.
We all wanted to be cowboys in those days. We saw all the Western serials in the theaters—not just Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the incomparable Hopalong Cassidy, but the oaters of Bob Steele, the Three Mesquiteers, and Lash Larue and Johnny Mack Brown recycled on TV—when it finally came to the small towns that were still inhabited by real Americans, when there were real Americans. Some of these cowboy heroes were sure to come to the Tristate Fair that was the highpoint of every year. Although I was sick in bed the year Hopalong Cassidy came to town, my father got me an autographed from Hoppy and his pal Lucky, who were staying in my father’s hotel, but the biggest thrill was the night my old man brought home Johnny Mack Brown for supper. This former halfback for Alabama’s Crimson Tide was a dead man walking. I had seen, in my short life, more than a few drunks, but I had never seen any man that drunk who could still walk and talk and more or less function, though not well enough to keep this 11 year old boy from skinning him, hand after hand, at poker.
We all knew, of course, that our cowboy heroes were only singers and actors—though even dead drunk Johnny Mack Brown could knock most men’s blocks off. But Wyatt Earp was no actor: He was the real thing. My father had told me many times about the time he had sat, as a very small boy, on the great man’s knee. Earp was in Chicago to do one of his lectures, and after receiving the keys to the city, he was asked if he wanted anything else. Yes, the former deputy marshal of Tombstone replied, he had read in the newspaper about the kind of real lawman he admired and would like to meet. That was my father’s uncle Garret Fleming. An anarchist—today we would call him a terrorist—had taken hostages (a woman and perhaps her daughter) and said he would shoot them if anyone came to arrest him. Great uncle Garret was no slouch—he would later put a slug or two into Frank Nitti—and he crashed through the window, drilled the anarchist, and rescued the hostages unharmed. Since Garret had no children, he took his brother and his nephew to meet the hero.
That incident, told and retold, explains my love for Stuart N. Lake’s hagiography on which the television show starring Hugh O’Brien was loosely based. My father never liked the show, and one night, as we were watching Wyatt confront the crooked sheriff Johnny Behan after fortifying his nerve on a wholesome glass of milk, my father observed, “All this comes out of the Tombstone Epitaph. If you read the other paper, The Nugget, Behan was an upright character and the Earps were villains.”
The remark taught me many things. I continued to revere Wyatt Earp, but I began to question the facts that were put in newspapers and history books, and I dimly realized that to understand history it was not quite enough simply to take sides. Life is not always so simple as a Sunset Carson movie; sometimes it is downright complicated—more like Bud Boetticher’s Ride Lonesome film than Roy Rogers in The Gay Ranchero.
Take the Earps. They were unquestionably brave men and tough. In Dodge, Wichita, and Tombstone, they proved themselves tough and resourceful. They inspired respect from many, envy from some, but very little affection. Perhaps it was the steely glaze of their cold blue eyes, or perhaps it was the fact that they were continually on the make, willing to make money by almost any means that did not involve working with their hands. At the preliminary hearing held for the killing of the Clantons and McLaurys, Wyatt listed his occupation as saloon-keeper. This was a piece of social pretension. While it is true he did tend bar from time to time, like his oldest brother Jim, he was a professional gambler and ran the Faro table at the Oriental Saloon. Early in his career there were charges—and not unsubstantial charges—that in Lamar, Missouri he had falsified a legal document and a defrauded a man of $20. He had even committed the Western sin against the Holy Ghost by stealing a horse.
Paragons of courage though they undoubtedly were, the Earps did not practice all the virtues. Jim was something of a lush, and his wife Bessie was both a prostitute and a Madame. It is not clear when or if Virgil, Morgan, or Wyatt married the women they were living with as man and wife in Tombstone, but one or another of them had worked the streets at one time. In fact, early in their career, when admirers of the brothers dubbed them the fighting Earps, enemies responded by calling them “the fighting pimps.” Even Wyatt’s middle-class Jewish wife Sadie had lived openly with Wyatt’s enemy, Sheriff Johnny Behan as his pretend-wife, though previously, when her modest thespian talents were not in demand, she had apparently practiced a more ancient if slightly less honorable profession.
One detail of the legend is true: Wyatt loved ice-cream and in his Tombstone days refused to drink.
The aftermath of the OK Corral fight—which took place on the street not in the corral—was even bloodier than the fight itself. Ike Clanton, backed by Johnny Behan, filed murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday, though only Wyatt and Doc had to undergo a hearing. The mood in Tombstone and around the country quickly shifted from a celebration of the Earps’ courage to a denunciation of them as murderers. Ike Clanton’s confused and contradictory testimony, however, undercut the prosecution’s case. But Ike’s stupidity and prevarication do not necessarily exculpate the Earps.
It is true that Virgil and Wyatt were peace officers who had a right to disarm the Clantons, but anyone with a drop of common sense knew that blood would flow if the two groups met on the street. Ike Clanton had been in Tombstone, getting drunk and badmouthing and threatening the Earps. But—and this is how bizarre things were--not long afterwards Virgil, Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Sheriff Johnny Behan had stayed up all night playing poker, in which an altercation broke out between Ike and Virgil who ended up beating Ike with his gun. Taken into custody, Ike threatened the Earps and Morgan offered to pay his fine, if Ike would face him with a gun—Morgan always had a big mouth. Later, about 1 PM Wyatt ran into Tom McLaury on the street. By this time, Wyatt was out for blood:
“Are you heeled?” Wyatt snarled at McLaury. Tom told him politely that he was a friend of Wyatt’s and held no grudge but “If you want to make a fight, I’ll make a fight with you anywhere.”
“All right, make a fight,’ was Wyatt’s answer as his crashed his pistol into Tom McLaury’s skull. Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, after these events, can any reasonable person defend the Earps’ decision to confront the Clantons and McLaurys? Can any of you pretend that they went into the street to enforce the law? It is clear that the usually clear-headed and cool-tempered Wyatt—who had probably never killed a man and preferred to get the drop of a troublemaker by coming up behind him in an alley with a shotgun—had made up his mind. Ike Clanton had shot off his mouth once too often about killing the Earps and it was time to kill the Clantons and any friends who stood by them before they killed the Earps.
Even after the hearings, the fight was not over. In late December, Virgil was shot-gunned by three men in the street. Ike Clanton’s hat was found nearby, and his friend Frank Stillwell was spotted. Wyatt drew the obvious conclusions—though they would not have amounted to much in a court of law. By the end of January, though Virgil was still in a serious condition, Morgan Earp was pretty well recovered. Though warned of trouble, he insisted on having a night on the town, going to the theater and then to the pool hall, where he was shot through the window, as he bent over to make a shot. People said the shooter was Frank Stillwell, and when Wyatt caught up with him, he and Ike Clanton appeared to be laying for Virgil Earp, who was being sent home to California for his health. When Wyatt came upon Stillwell, he killed him in cold blood: “I ran straight for Stillwell,” he later recounted, “it was he who killed my brother. What a coward he was. He couldn’t shoot when I came near him. He stood there helpless and trembling for his life. As I rushed upon him, he put out his hands and clutched at my shotgun. I let go both barrels, and he tumbled down dead and mangled at my feet.” Wyatt went after Ike, but the cowardly Clanton once again made his escape.
By the standards of civilized life, both parties were guilty of cold-blooded, premeditated murder in the first degree, but look at it from each of their perspectives. The Clantons would say with some justice that the Earps had provoked a quarrel with the Clantons and McLaurys and then with their homicidal dentist friend, gunned them down in the street. By the laws of Vendetta, they deserved to die, not in a fair fight, as in an affair of honor, but executed without mercy or a chance to resist. The Earps, on the other hand, though they would not have accepted the cowboys’ right to blood, applied the same argument to the men who had assassinated Morgan and tried to do the same to Virgil. By the end of the story, the Earps will have killed two McLaurys, Billy Clanton, Frank Stillwell, Curley Bill Brocius and who knows whom else.
And yet, for all their toughness and homicidal violence, neither the Earps nor the McLaurys were really gunmen, much less outlaws. They lived according to an ancient code that had withered in London and Boston but sprang back to life on the frontier. Meaning of the frontier/West: lawless stateless conditions that permitted pre-modern life to revive and burst into flower. Gun battles and lynch mobs were as much a part of the can-do American mentality as quilting bees and barn raisings. Even New Englanders had shared some of this spirit, at least in the early days, but it was the Anglo-Celts of MW/South, as they moved West, who defined it.
Like so many Americans of that time, the Earps were footloose vagabonds. Their father came from Kentucky, but their childhood had been scattered across the West from Monmouth Illinois to California. Like so many rootless men who went West, Wyatt and his brothers were in eternal pursuit of the American dream: the fast buck. (I sometimes think that Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Cramden should be the American archetype or, if we prefer a literary character, either Bret Harte's Col. Starbottle or Col. Beriah Sellers in The Gilden Age co-authored by Mark Twain). Wyatt would go on to be a gambler, saloon-keeper, and boxing referee: In 1896 he refereed the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight for the heavyweight world championship. Wyatt gave the victory to Sharkey, who had been taking a beating all night, accusing Fitzsimmons of landing an illegal low blow that injured Sharkey. When Sharkey refused a medical examination, the word went up that Wyatt had fixed the fight, though it is more likely that he was taken in by Sharkey and his manager. Wyatt’s lowest point was his arrest in Los Angeles (in 1911) for taking part in a gambling con.
But the legend never quite died, and Stuart N. Lake, who interviewed the hero, made Wyatt a permanent icon of the Old West. The book has many inaccuracies but how many are due to Wyatt (known for his reticence) and how many to Lake is anyone's guess. I have made use of a number of books, especially Casey Terfilliger's fairly recent biography. It is well-researched and well worth reading, though a good editor could eliminate some of the clumsy writing and tendentious argumentation.
If there is any popular demand, I'll post a sequel that makes a case for the Cowboys.
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Interesting timing. We were just in Tombstone last Friday. Much of the factual dynamics surrounding the shooting near the OK Coral are lost in the fog of beliefs as is all of America history.
I apologize- I forgot to post my full name to the comment--Bryan Fox
An occasion well worth marking. Your account of Wyatt Earp brings to mind Earp's brief scene in Little Big Man, the only involving novel I've encountered by Thomas Berger. Confronted by a drunken, pistol-brandishing tough, Earp calmly but firmly walks up to the miscreant and coldcocks him with his own sidearm. This was SOP for Wyatt, the novel's narrator explains, and is why he very seldom killed anybody.
Thanks for spurring a rereading of Bret Harte's "Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff," in which, however, the colonel isn't the one out for the fast buck; if anyone is that, it's the plaintiff, though the events of the story suggest that her case was real, in any event. I don't recall Starbottle appearing in The Gilded Age, though it has been several decades since I read the novel. There's a colonel in the book, but I can't remember a thing about him.
Thanks for the comment, Ray. I conflated two notes in revising this piece and will correct
Earp was one of the many thugs motivated and enabled by the Republican Party and the U.S. Army to continue killing Southerners after the war was over. "Wild Bill" Hickock was another.
'Buffalo Bill" Cody was another. This is not to mention the uniformed killers like Sheridan and the fool Custer.
When I was about ten, my uncle made me two rubber-band guns, cutting their shapes out of a one-by-six and adding a clothes pin for a "trigger." He cut the barrels extra long to accommodate the longer, stronger rubber bands and to give the guns that long-barreled, Wyatt-Earp look. He painted them black. My buddies and I re-fought the shoot out at the OK Corral again and again. In most of those fights, I got to play Earp because I had the guns which we had come to associate with him. Although we did not have a television, I had come to know of Wyatt Earp through glimpses which I had gotten of the T.V. series "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp," with Hugh O'Brian playing the lead. That was not the most accurate source of the Earp legend, but it had to do.
A German professor of early medieval history drew the parallel between the fact and legend of the American West and the fact and legend associated with Germanic warriors, particularly as they appeared in sources like the Nibelungenlied. Hagen and Hildebrand would have likely been right at home in Tombstone.
An historian of American violence has attempted to explain the Earp/Clanton feud in terms of the war but with only partial success. The Earps had not amounted to much in earlier years but they were reliable peace officers. The OK corral was a highly unusual since they usually made sure to get the drop on their enemy from an alley-way--perfectly honorable methods for any policemen to use when they are protecting public order. Wyatt rarely snapped, but Ike Clanton's yapping exasperated him. The Clantons were pretty much white trash--Confederate deserters, by the way. The McLaurys, though they may have run a few brands, were fairly honorable men, but they were from New York State. The tough Cowboys tended to be Texans like Curly Bill Brocius (of rather hazy background) either by birth or experience, though John Ringgold was of Dutch stock and from an Indiana family that were among the first robbery victims of the James-Younger gang. Earp's friend John Holliday, by contrast, was from Georgia, and his father served in both the Mexican War and the War between the States. The War is certainly a factor in turning Texas into the scene of countless feuds and insurrections, but the Earps' imaginations never appeared to have soared high enough to make them partisans of the glorious union. Like most Americans of the Gilded Age, they were pretty much in everything they were in strictly for the money.
Dr. Fleming,
I would very much enjoy reading another post in this vein.
I'm a John Ford junkie and a graduate of modern schools, so, while my intellect knows that the history of the West is far different from what Hollywood has taught me my heart cannot escape the images of Henry Fonda walking down a dusty street towards the Clanton gang or dancing awkwardly against the open sky.
Sadly enough, I'm even a fan of the old cowboy singers like Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers.
And my thanks to Dr. Peters - a rubber band gun has been added to my list of projects to build with the boys. The oldest is too young for a BB gun and not strong enough for a real sling shot or bow and arrow. Rubber band gun is exactly what he needs.
Ford's My Darling Clementine is not his best movie, but it is certainly worth watching. Fonda is a coldblooded actor, not entirely wrong for Wyatt, certainly better than Burt Lancaster. I have taken in recent years to watching cowboy serials with my granddaughter. She loves Hopalong Cassidy but will watch all the others. Tex Ritter made a few decent oaters and Gene Autry made my favorite piece of junk: The Phantom Empire, a serial on the most absurd plot (an advanced alien race living under Melody Ranch). I saw it as a boy and rented it a few years go. Intellectually, morally, and dramatically, it is a masterpiece compared with anything made by Lucas or Spielberg, but that is not high praise. Johnny Mack Brown was above average, by the way. Roy Rogers, I adored as a boy but I now find him difficult to watch, and I don't know why. Perbaps it is because his later films are too slick. I should add that I meant no offense to the memory of Sunset Carson.
Mr. Cornell--My Darling Clementine may not be Ford's best western, but I like it immensely, especially the way Fonda as Wyatt Earp dances in his chair outside his marshal's office. Although reseeing them might change my estimation of them, the cavalry trilogy of Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande are my favorites, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the most peculiar classics in Hollywood history, a querulous meditation on its material more than a realization of it. I can't say I care much for Gene Autry's films, though the serial Dr. Fleming mentions is a fond memory of my early Saturday morning TV viewing as a kid. Autry as a singer is another thing entirely. He's one of the best very early country music stars (the earlier the better, by my lights). And I, for one, don't sniff at Tex Ritter's recorded work. Roy Rogers I prefer as part of the Sons of the Pioneers; his wide vibrato in his later, solo work is a little much for me. Marty Robbins did quite well by cowboy songs, and if you'll put up with his Wobbly sympathies (which I rather share), Haywire Mac McClintock is well worth hearing. Check out ace novelty singer Carson Robison, too, especially "Life Gets Tee-jus, Don't It" and "Naw, I Don't Wanna Be Rich".
I am listening to Ritter's "Blood on the Saddle" as I write this. One of my favorite old western songs.
I love westerns, too. I have The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on my DVR so I can watch it whenever I have a hankerin'.
Mr Olson,
I could not agree more - that one little scene with Henry Fonda dancing in his chair on the boardwalk - it stuck in my mind from the first moment I saw it. I watched the Fox Classic DVD which has a "restored" version more true to Ford's original cut - the main differences are a dramatic reduction in the background music, giving the entire movie a completely different feel, and the removal of the awkward and almost movie-ruining kiss at the end - a stupid stunt I read the producers forced the actors to film long after the original negatives were in the can. Those two changes (or restorations, rather), for me, made an okay movie into a great one. Someone I read I listened to suggested that, while Stagecoach was a compact narrative told in expert fashion - a sort of height of movie prose, My Darling Clementine was much closer to poetry. And my kids love the second 2 calvary movies - I've been waiting to do Fort Apache until we've had a chance to study Custer and all of his idiocy.
It's funny about Ford and Clementine - I thought I read that Ford actually did know or met Wyatt Earp and even used that experience to market Clementine as one of the most accurate takes on Earp's legend to-date, which was obviously brilliant flim-flam on his part. At least Earp drinks whiskey in the movie.
I am intrigued by this Phantom Empire serial. Clearly it can't be worse than that wretched Cowboys and Aliens that came out a few years ago.
And while I would certainly not come to the defense of Spielburgh, I have to say that Dr. Fleming was a little too rough on Indiana Jones in the last Chronicles radio show. It's not like that muslim with the huge sword didn't have it coming - it was about ten or twelve to one on top of kidnapping his sort of girlfriend. I can't blame the guy for taking the easy way out.
Not that I'm even a fan of that movie, either, although I will say it does look much, much better if you watch it in black & white.
Mr. Cornell--In my retirement, I'm seeing all the movies I wanted to when I was a young film critic, including all the Ford that is available. His work pleases the visual aesthete in me as much as it does the not-so-secular humanist--indeed, probably more. He stole from the best Europeans, Murnau and Pabst, as did many a front-rank Hollywood director, and if you want to see his most German cinematic expressionist film, his late silent, Four Sons, about a German mother who sends all her sons to World War I, is exquisite. I believe he drew on what he learned making Four Sons throughout the rest of his career. His sea pictures are also well worth one's time, starting with Seas Beneath (1931), which is about submarine warfare in WWI in unexpected locales; its principle distinction and a true technical marvel is all the footage shot below decks on the sub, which I understand was done on a real one. See if you don't detect in the lead performance of the sub captain by George O'Brien the kind of acting manners Ford would encourage in John Wayne at the other end of the decade and beyond. The Hurricane and The Long Voyage Home are two other sea-oriented dramas I found very impressive. I also recommend Judge Priest (1934), starring Will Rogers and Stepin Fetchit and based on stories by Irvin S. Cobb set in post-Reconstruction Kentucky. I think all these movies are suitable for 5th graders, at least; younger kids might be bored by anything but the action sequences in them (and entirely, perhaps, by Judge Priest).
The Phantom Empire is a hoot and safe for all ages. The only other old serial I saw on TV when a kid that approaches it in memory is the Flash Gordon one in which Flash's enemies-turned-friends are the rock people, who emerge from and sink back into the walls of caves.
Alas, it seems that there is no place for the Western in the new, multicultural America.
Mr. Chan,
That depends on if you count the likes of Tarantino' s Django Unchained which is not only a box office smash but, apparently, even an Academy Award level film.
I will say, rediscovering a lot of Westerns later in life I do marvel at the sheer volume and popularity in America. You've got the cowboys & movies mentioned here, but beyond that there are legions of TV shows: The Cisco Kid, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Wild Bill Hickock, The Virginian, Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train, and on and on and on. The volume alone is staggering. America was all in with cowboys one minute, and then it's like they dropped off the face of the earth.
Surely the multicultural poison shares much of the blame. I wonder if this why comic book heroes are so prevalent today. They're a safe, multicultural venue to get a hero fix.
Mr. Olson,
I am not as familiar with Ford's earlier work as I should be. I've seen Long Voyage Home and heard of Four Sons, but am not familiar with the others you listed and will look them up sooner than later. Thank you for your always welcome recommendations, especially the age appropriateness. I did watch Steamboat Around the Bend with the kids, and they loved it. I thought the oldest girl was going to jump off the sofa during the climactic race. They enjoyed The Iron Horse, too, though the fawning over Lincoln was a bit much for me.
Mr. Cornell--I envy you, since I haven't yet seen Steamboat Round the Bend. I have read the novel it's based on, by the popular 1930s-'50s author Ben Lucien Burman, who has pretty much vanished without a trace. I recommend it. It's rather like an Erskine Caldwell novel without the salaciousness and the cussin'. The characters are dirt-poor, live on the outskirts of their own threadbare society and pretty much for the day, yet are far from sunken in sin and depravity. They know the importance of kin and personal loyalty, and they never stoop to a handout.
More tips that are fresh with me since I started my Netflix and Classicflix accounts: For westerns, try any directed by Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman, or Andre de Toth (who did several of Randolph Scott's before Scott found Budd Boetticher, or vice versa).
I agree with you about Iron Horse, and as any kind of factual account of the transcontinental railway, it's utter balderdash. But the characters and, above all, the action are engaging and thrilling, respectively. I'm really cheered to hear that your kids liked it. So many youngsters resist black-and-white, let alone silent, movies.
Mr. Olson, are you referring to Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. I think his friends were clay people. Just a minor point. I remember watching all of those Saturday morning serials. Each episode ended in seeming disaster for the hero. You had to wait for the next episode a week later to see how it turned out. I believe that Clyde Beatty had a jungle-based serial that I used to watch, too. There were also Captain Midnight and Commando Cody. I also watched those westerns, with my "fanner fifty" when I was young, always trying to out draw the gunfighters.
I'll have to admit that among my gun collection I have a western rig with a Ruger Vaquero in .45 Long Colt that I sometimes "practice" with. (I have so far resisted the urge to join the cowboy-action shooters who hold monthly matches at my gun club. They seem to have a good time. Although I have the necessary shootin' irons, I don't have the proper clothing and haven't thought up a suitable monicker. Maybe "the Netherlands Kid?")
Back for a moment to Indiana Jones. It is path- breakingly stupid, ill written, wretchedly acted, hysterically and inexcusably bigoted against Germans, and fundamentally anti-Christian. My objection to the killing of the sword-wielding Arab was not that an armed man should not defend himself but the immoral cliche that equates civilization with technology and treats the primitive as subhuman. Indiana Jones is a thief who has no business going into the Arab world and stirring up trouble. He's an academic Hilary Clinton. It is a test of sanity to hate such a film from the beginning. As for the disgusting conclusion, normal Christians should have stormed the theater. Watch the Phantom Empire and you will glimpse an entirely different ethic.
Dr. Fleming,
Equating Indy with Hillary Clinton is perhaps the greatest internet comment I've ever read. Surely we could make some money turning that into a YouTube video - we just need someone whose handy with video clip splicing.
I understand better now the context of your statement. The disdain of "primitive" cultures only grew with each sequel. As one disadvantaged with being raised in those movies I can attest to how mind warping they can be. I am thankful to be free of them now, and am glad I can instead treat my kids to Will Rogers, Hopalong, and even the Phantom Empire.
Mr. Cornell, can we say that Django Unchained is an "anti-Western"? I have not seen the movie and have no plans to do so.
I did enjoy the recent Hatfields and McCoys miniseries, and watch those shows that seem to be inspired by Westerns, like Justified and Longmire (which admittedly are not free from considerations of political correctness).
Mr. Chan,
That makes two of us. I don't think Django will be on my Netflix queue anytime soon. I did see that remake of True Grit from a few years ago, but it just didn't feel like a Western to me. I also have to say I enjoy the older movies because they don't feel compelled to show me every bloody detail of every gunshot wound.
I saw a commercial about that Hatfields & McCoy series. I'd be willing to check it out if it's worth the time. The kids and I did watch the Buster Keaton send up in Our Hospitality - brilliant!
Without any intent to delve into psychobabble, I wonder if the wild success of the Walking Dead show has something to do with a sort of longing for a return to the pre-Ransom Stoddard west. I don't watch it, but even old ladies where I work are talking about it all the time. The one thing about it all is that they seem to enjoy this idea of a world that is free from all bureaucratic machinations. It's about survival, life, justice, and real danger. Bear in mind that I work in a behemoth of federal bureaucracy, so perhaps I'm just projecting my wishful thinking.
Mr. Olson,
My thanks again. My granddaddy whom I was not able to meet but who is my namesake loved Randolph Scott movies. So far I've only seen 7 Men From Now with Lee Marvin, but others are on my list. I did see Raoul' s Big Trail with the impossibly young John Wayne. It didn't seem nearly so bad as I had been lead to believe.
I've started the kids off young with Chaplin and Keaton and Laurel & Hardy - black and white movies are just part and parcel for them. We finished the 2nd half of the Ten Commandments today, and while I could do without DeMille' s constant subliminal cheerleading about America and Democracy I am still impressed by the spectacle of the movie. In a CGI world those thousands of traveling Israelites would have just been a bunch of one's and zeroes. Thank goodness that Spielburgh at least had the sense to make his crummy remake (that blatantly stole from the classic) a stupid cartoon.
Mr. Van Sant--Thank you. A little Googling confirms that you are right. And I, too, fondly recall the Clyde Beatty serials, with all their crocodile pits, quicksands, and lions-all-around! I rather doubt that I'll see any of them again, though. I suspect that they are best left as fading memories.
I'd like to see your gun collection some time, though don't expect to find a shooter in me. My dad was a captain of artillery during WWII and had lost his beloved stepmother in a tragic gun accident. Those experiences made him lose all interest in guns, and in fact, I and my sibs were forbidden to have them. He saw nothing wrong, however, in my little-boy fascination with "kye-boys" (my childish pronunciation) and shootin' irons.
Mr. Cornell--You're welcome, of course. About Spielberg's "remake" of Ten Commandments: From what I've uncovered, it isn't going to be a cartoon but a live-action film focused on the life of Moses rather than Exodus--Ohhhh-Kay! I probably won't bother with it, though I plan to see DeMille's first, silent Ten Commandments, which echoes Griffith's Intolerance (which I like a great deal) by juxtaposing the Exodus story and a contemporary morality play with the old theme of two brothers, one who walks the straight and narrow and the other who decides to break all the commandments for the sake of his own pleasure. It's probably less kid-friendly than the big '56 TC, whose cheerleading for America and democracy I've quite forgotten; my favorite aspect of that epic is Elmer Bernstein's wonderful score, which I listened to over and over in the 2-record set I talked my mom into getting. While we're on the subject of DeMille, let me recommend The Sign of the Cross (1932), which I've seen recently and may be the most visually impressive of his "religious" pictures. It's about the persecution of Christians under Nero (Charles Laughton with an outrageous "Roman nose") and is full of compositions copped from nineteenth-century Bible-scene art that are hyperdramatically lit. It's very crisply edited and moves well for an epic, especially considering DeMille's preference for very slow delivery of dialogue. The ending, framing heroine and (converted) hero walking hand-in-hand toward the arena in which lions will devour them, is the cherry atop the film's heaping helping of painterly images. (Cautionary note: Sign includes two "controversial" sequences, the first of Poppaea [Claudette Colbert] exposing a nipple while in her bath [I didn't see it, though] and the other of martyrs attacked in the arena by crocodiles, bears, and big cats. These scenes were truncated when Sign was rereleased in the '40s but restored for the DVD transfer.)
Mr. Olson, I would be honored to show you my collection if you make it to my "neck of the woods" (Annapolis, MD). I have a S&W mountain gun, which is a variation of Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum, and a Walther PPK/S, which is a variation of James Bond's Walther PPK. I also have some black powder arms, including a Ruger Old Army cap & ball revolver.
When I was very much younger, I read a book called "We About to Die," which gave an account of the gladiators and the animal trainers. (It was difficult to turn the animals into mankillers.) I recall a story about one of the emperors letting a Greek poet do a recitation in the arena. The stage was an island with a rock-like background in the middle of the arena. The arena itself was flooded, with scantily clad women in canoes floating around the stage. When the recitation was complete (or perhaps in mid-recitation), a hidden door opened behind the poet, releasing a bear, which killed the poet. At the same time, crocodiles and hippos were released into the arena. The hippos upset the canoes and the crocodiles took care of the women. That was supposed to be the emperor's response to the poet's complaint about a lack of culture in the arena.
Mr. Van Sant, I take it this was children's fiction?
Mr. Van Sant--I'll get back to you when I'm ready to come your way. Thanks. I'm also with Dr. Fleming--surely the arena spectacle you sketch was fictional. I know the horrors of the arena in DeMille's extravaganza have no factual basis, nor are most of the legends of martyrs borne out by anything other than the legends themselves, I understand. Which in no way trivializes martyrdom, I say.
Mr. Cornell, I have not seen the version with John Wayne, but I thought the recent True Grit had its moments. The ride against the backdrop of a surreal sky at the end of the movie, though, was odd. Perhaps Jeff Bridges was too distracting? Have you seen Appaloosa? I do not think the new Disney Lone Ranger movie with Johnny Depp will revive the genre.
As a lad I watched Hopalong, Autry, et al. These films were a significant part of my formation and played a role in my later decision to become Navy pilot. There just wasn't much separating Western gunfighting lawmen and military pilots, both chasing the bad guys across the wide open spaces. But my all time favorite was Wyatt Earp who seemed to epitomize everything good and righteous. After reading your post, I've decided to ignore the facts and continue to believe the legend.
Since we are all sharing favorite Western films, let me throw in a few. Ray Olson mentioned in passing Bud Boetticher's collaborations with Randolph Scott. They are a bit dark and offbeat, but very good. I strongly recommend "Four Faces West" with Joel McCrea, based on Paso pro Aqui by Genel Manlove Roves (a beautiful novella), and "The Furies" with Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston, Andre del Toth's Day of the Outlaw with beautiful performances by Burl Ives and Robert Ryan, Texas with William Holden and Glenn Ford, John Ford's beautiful Wagon MAster with Ben Johnson, William Wellman's Yellow Sky with (ugh) Gregory Peck, Anthony Mann's the Tin Star with (ugh) Henry Fonda and (gak, ugh) Tony Perkins, and Albuquerque with Randolph Scott. This should keep you busy and make money for Netflix.
Old junk series I can watch over and over are both Charlie Chan and the somewhat superior Mr Moto, with Peter Lorre, especially the first (Think Fast, Mr. Moto. On a more serious level, the Testament of Dr. Mabuse filled me with as much terror as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which I saw when I was perhaps 13--Don Siegel's first real masterpiece.
More recent movies (a very few) I have enjoyed are With a Friend Like Harry, and Whit Stillman's trilogy
To Captain Dana: Studying the real Wyatt Earp has in no way diminished my affection for the legend--that would be a destructive exercise in pedantry--but the real story is in many ways more interesting, if somewhat tragic.
There is a Western which has never been made: the story of the West and Kimbrel Clan, a clan whose outer circle was made up of "upstanding" citizens but whose inner circle consisted of John West and Jack Laws Kimbrel. West was a Methodist Sunday school teacher and served as sheriff. Kimbrel and his wife ran an inn. The clan preyed on the flood of refugees coming out of the Carolinas and Georgia during the years of reconstruction. West had come into the Atlanta/Montgomery area of Louisiana from the Neutral Zone of western Louisiana and Kimbrel had come out of the east, somewhere. Both had served in the Confederate army. It seems that the outer circle of the clan, the "upstanding" ones, believed that the clan was bringing law and order in the face of carpetbaggers, scalawags, black militias and federal troops who indeed plagued the region; however, the core were highwaymen and murderers. The clan had a series of dry wells along the Harrisonburg Road, a stretch of the El Camino Real. Into those wells, they dumped the bodies of their victims, often, as it is told, entire families, including women and children. The story goes that Mrs. Kimbrel, the matron of the inn, had the grim task of cutting the throats of the women folk who had been dined and bedded in her inn.
The end of the clan came when on of the members had a falling out. He and some of the "upstanding" citizens went to the governor for assistance. The Reconstruction governor did not have the troops to spare, so it is told, because there were too few since the bulk were already being sent West to fight the Indians. So, according to the story, he gave the petitioners pardons for the murders which they had not yet committed, murderers which they would later carry out. These avengers of the evils of the clan were joined by a Texas ranger who had allegedly been hunting for West since his days in Texas, hunting him for murder.
It is a Western waiting for a script, a director and some good actors. Most of the extras for the film could be rounded up at the annual Hog Dog Festival which is held every March between Winnfield and Atlanta, precisely the stomping and murdering grounds of the West and Kimbrel Clan. Some of the people whose dogs are baying hogs are descendants of the Wests and the Kimbrels.
Thank you for the recommendation! What are y'all' s thoughts on The Big Country with Gregory Peck & Charlton Heston? Again, not a typical western, but an interesting fish out of water tale.
In the western spoof category, my wife an I recently enjoyed Along Came Jones. Gary Cooper could be pretty funny when the situation called for it.
Mr. Chan, the preview I saw of the new Lone Ranger made my skin crawl. Jay Silverheels must be rolling in his grave. My kids, who enjoy the Clayton Moore show, would be mortified if I took them to see such a dark portrayal of the Dudliest Do-Right of the west. What's next? A Howdy Doody movie starring Chuckle?
Mr. Olson - by remake I was referring to the wretched Prince of Egypt cartoon that came out in the nineties. Thoroughly forgettable. I did hear that he was going to try another take at it with some sort of Moses the warlord type of movie - oy vay! I will definitely seek out the Sign. The only one of DeMille' s older classics I've seen was the one about the Crusades. I loved the battle scenes and the ferocious young Lionheart, but the "can't we all just get along" ending was a little on the sour side for me.
This sounds like a job for the multimedia branch of The Rockford Institute! Maybe we can make it into an HBO or AMC TV show!
The first Western which I remember seeing and from which I recall vague images was Vera Cruz with Bert Lancaster and Gary Cooper. I saw it in a "picture show" at the Rex Theater in downtown Pollock with my father when I was a mere four years old. The Rex closed soon thereafter although the marquee retained the postings of the last movie, a monster movie, for years.
At a faculty meeting at the beginning of the year, I told the teachers that we would be having a working lunch and that should be punctual, at precisely "Gary Cooper Time." I had to translate to "High Noon" for the younger faculty.
Mr. Cornell,
For the most part, the movie could be shot on location.
Mr. Cornell--I remember liking The Big Country primarily for Chuck Connors as the mean, rotten, nasty, despicable son of the Burl Ives character, who finally has to kill him because no one else has. The film also has a wonderful score by Jerome Moross, but don't feel you have to share my enthusiasm--I admit to watching certain movies simply because I'm curious about their music. I also recall The Big Country as being just about the longest western ever made, right up there with John Wayne's hokey but somehow endearing The Alamo.
Gary Cooper was a fine comic actor. Among my favorite parts he played were his role as an aspiring baseball player in Frank Capra's comic but ultimately too serious" Meet John Doe" (the scenes with Walter Brennan are hilarious) and with Claudette Colbert in Lubitsch's "Bluebeard's Eight Wife" (with Claudette Colbert and Edward Everett Horton as the quintessential stuffed shirt). Apart from Preston Sturgess, who is inimitable, Lubitsch was the greatest comic director who worked in America.
I just report them as I remember them, Dr. Fleming. In the future, I'll try to be more forgetful.