Tag: westerns

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) – A Movie Review

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“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is in a lot of ways the last great classic Western.  Directed by John Ford, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne star with a swarm of excellent supporting cast including Vera Miles, Edmond O’Brien, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef.  But heading up the supporting cast is Lee Marvin as the poisonously evil Liberty Valance.  It is a tale of the closing of the old west when the cattle barons tried to hold onto the open range by standing in the way of statehood in some unnamed mountain western state; possibly Montana or Wyoming.  Here the cowboys are the dead-enders holding off progress and the future is with the farmers and townspeople.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The plot involves the coming to the town of Shinbone of the state’s senior United States Senator Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart).  He’s come with his wife Hallie to attend the funeral of their old friend Tom Doniphon.  The local newspaper owner wants to know what would bring such an important personage as Stoddard to Shinbone for the funeral of a complete unknown such as Doniphon.  And the whole movie is a flash back to Stoddard’s arrival in Shinbone as a young man and how this changed his and everyone else’s lives.

Ransom is headed into town on a stage coach that is held up by infamous criminal Liberty Valance and his gang.  When Stoddard attempts to stop the thieves from stealing a piece of sentimental jewelry from a widow he is savagely beaten by Valance, ending with a lashing from a whip that Liberty always carries with him.

In the next scene Tom Doniphon brings the seriously injured Stoddard into town on his buckboard for medical attention. Now we meet Hallie who helps treat Stoddard’s wounds.  Meanwhile Stoddard insists that the town marshal Link Appleyard (played by Andy Devine) should arrest Valance for robbery and the assault.  But we discover that Appleyard is too afraid of Valance to even consider arresting the outlaw.  Doniphon explains to Stoddard that the only way to stop Valance is with a gun.  But he also makes it clear that the only one Valance fears is Doniphon himself because of his superior gun hand.  He advises Stoddard to leave town.  We also find out that Hallie is Doniphon’s girl.

The movie moves on to a town meeting to appoint delegates to the state election convention where the representative to the federal government will be selected.  Valance attempts to intimidate the townspeople into selecting him as delegate.  But with Doniphon’s help Stoddard and the owner of the newspaper, Dutton Peabody (played by Edmond O’Brien) are selected.  Valance explicitly tells Stoddard that he is going to come gunning for him that night and Hallie and Doniphon both warn him to leave town.

Valance returns that night and destroys Peabody’s newspaper office and beats him savagely.  Stoddard finds Peabody and calls for the town doctor then gets his gun and heads onto the main street to shoot it out with Valance.  Valance toys with Stoddard.  He fires a shot at a flower pot hanging near Stoddard’s head from a long distance.  Then he shoots Stoddard in his shooting arm, allowing him to recover his gun with his left hand.  Finally, he says, “This one will be right between the eyes.”  Stoddard fires first and Valance is hit and eventually dies.

Now Hallie feels guilty that Stoddard risked his life because of her disapproval of his idea of leaving town.  And it becomes clear that she has shifted her affections from Doniphon to Stoddard.  Doniphon sees this emotional change and goes to his ranch and burns down the home he had been building for his married life with Hallie.

Despite their wounds Stoddard and Peabody attend the meeting at the territory capitol and Stoddard’s name is advanced as a candidate.  John Carradine plays an orator working for the ranchers who characterizes Stoddard as a murderer who does not deserve such a high office.  Stoddard feels guilty for killing Valance and walks out of the meeting.  Doniphon follows him out and confronts him about leaving.  When Stoddard admits his feelings of guilt, Doniphon reveals the truth about the shooting of Valance.  In a flashback scene we witness Doniphon shooting Valance from a side street with his rifle a split second before Stoddard’s ineffective pistol shot was fired.  Relieved to know he hadn’t killed another human being, Stoddard returns to the meeting where he is selected representative.

The movie flashes back to Stoddard telling this story to the newspapermen.  The editor thanks Stoddard but tells him he won’t reveal the truth about who shot Liberty Valance.  He says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Ransom and Hallie leave town after the funeral and it is clear that she still had very deep feelings for Tom.  And they both decide to return from Washington and finish their lives in Shinbone.  The parting shot occurs when a railroad official is complimented by Stoddard on the excellent service he had received on the train.  The man replied, “Nothing is too good for “the man who shot Liberty Valance!”

I will say that this movie was something of a throwback for the year it was made in 1962.  Despite younger stars like Vera Miles, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef and Lee Marvin this looked and felt like Golden Age Hollywood western.  The biggest difference was the post-cowboy theme with the ranchers as the bad guys.  And of course, Stewart and Wayne were a little long in the tooth for the characters they were playing during the flashback scenes of the movie.  But I will say this is a very enjoyable film.  I’d say the highlight is watching Lee Marvin getting his comeuppances on the streets of Shinbone.  He does play a satisfying bad guy.  I’ll call this movie highly recommended for anyone who likes a classic western.

The End of Yellowstone

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So, something happened to Yellowstone.  I think Kevin Costner got sick of playing cowboy “JR” and quit.  Well, good.  It’s a bizarre nighttime soap with a cast of characters that run the gamut from absurd, to revolting to demented.  Now granted, the visuals of Montana and the use of excellent non-mainstream country music does make watching the show interesting from time to time.  But it’s still a weird and wacky cartoon in my opinion.  But Camera Girl loves her some psycho-drama.  So of course we’re in.

And the current situation does appear to be headed for a small screen Armageddon.  The first episode opens up with John Dutton (Costner’s character) dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Montana Governor’s mansion.  His insanely driven daughter Beth and his likeable son Kayce converge on the scene to plan what to do about the death of their father.  But Beth is already sure that the death is murder set in motion by their adopted brother Jamie.

And she’s right.  The flashbacks show that Jamie is in cahoots with a vixen from a hedge fund company that will do anything including murder to get their hands on Dutton’s land to build a resort and airport complex.  And we see deals being made with black ops contractors and other ridiculous things.

Okay, so this could be a lot of fun.  I already know how I think this will end.  Kayce Dutton’s son is half Indian.  I’m guessing the ranch becomes a Native American possession with Kayce as the steward of the land on behalf of his son.  It goes along with a bunch of anti-colonial jibber jabber that Kayce’s wife was spouting a couple of years ago.

But the fun will be a full-fledged shooting war between the Dutton Ranch and the bad guys.  Who knows, there could even be tanks and helicopters with sidewinder missiles.  Kayce is the head of the livestock police (really?) and apparently that gives him access to armored vehicles and other military grade equipment.  He’s not just the dog catcher.

There will be bullets and rocket propelled grenades and all kinds of ridiculous stuff going on.  And as a finale Beth has sworn a blood oath that the last thing Jamie sees before he dies is Beth laughing at him.  Now that I’d like to see.  Because it is the outcome that the show has been working up to from the beginning.  Beth is barking-at-the-moon crazy but Jamie is a cowardly, smarmy, disloyal worm and seeing him get terminated by Beth will be enormously cathartic.  Of course, I’m pretty sure Beth and a bunch of other characters will probably end up dead too.  But that would make the whole crazy thing a little less improbable.  So sure, why not?

So, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.  Let the lead fly and let all the cowboys, cowboy up.  We’re headed for the last roundup and when the dust settles all the black hats will be pushing up daisies and one cowboy and one Indian and their son will be left living happily ever after.  How can you not love that?  Well, sorta.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 4

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Westerns – Modern

I’m dividing Westerns into two categories; Classic and Modern, because they really are completely different categories.  I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting modern westerns in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed a number of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion, you can do a search on the site.

  1. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)
  2. A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)
  3. FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965)
  4. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966)
  5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969)
  6. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
  7. TRUE GRIT (1969)
  8. JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972)
  9. HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)
  10. THE SHOOTIST (1976)
  11. THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976)
  12. THE LONG RIDERS (1980)
  13. PALE RIDER (1985)
  14. SILVERADO (1985)
  15. UNFORGIVEN (1992)
  16. TOMBSTONE (1993)
  17. WYATT EARP (1994)
  18. OPEN RANGE (2003)
  19. 3:10 TO YUMA (2007)
  20. TRUE GRIT (2010)
  21. HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016)

Twenty-one is a long list.  Longer than I intended but I guess I have a soft spot for some of these movies.  I included both versions of “True Grit” and both Tombstone and Wyatt Earp.  And I broke my own western rule by including “Hell or High Water” because the time period is modern day.  But modern westerns are modern!

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  I’ve got a lot of Clint Eastwood in this list.  Not everyone likes his stuff.  I left out Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” and “Ride the High Country.”  I could have left out “Unforgiven” and “Silverado.”  Just how I felt at the moment.

Have at it.  Give your opinion in the comments.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 3

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Westerns – Classic

I’m dividing Westerns into two categories; Classic and Modern, because they really are completely different categories.  I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting classic westerns in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed a number of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion, you can do a search on the site.

  1. STAGECOACH (1939)
  2. DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939)
  3. THE WESTERNER (1940)
  4. THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON (1941)
  5. THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943)
  6. ‘MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946)
  7. FORT APACHE (1948)
  8. WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950)
  9. HIGH NOON (1952)
  10. 3:10 TO YUMA (1957)
  11. RIO BRAVO (1959)
  12. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962)
  13. EL DORADO (1966)

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  I left out some classic movies that are on everyone’s list; “The Searchers,” “Shane” and some others.  That’s just my taste. Some people consider “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” a western but because it took place in the mid-twentieth century I don’t consider it a classic western.  It’s a great film but I consider it something else.

So, there it is.  Feel free to add what I have left off or disagree with what I’ve included in the comments below.

Blood on the Moon (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“Blood on the Moon” is a western that manages to transcend some of the cliches of the genre.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

When we first meet Robert Mitchum as Jim Garry, he’s riding through an Indian reservation to reach an old partner of his, Tate Riling (played by Robert Preston).  He’s intercepted by a cattle outfit run by John Lufton.  He tells Garry that Riling is trying to prevent Lufton from getting his cattle off the reservation in time to avoid their confiscation by the government over a voided contract.

When Garry finally reaches Riling, he finds out what kind of job he’s been summoned to perform.  Riling is in cahoots with a federal agent named Pindalest that procures the cattle for the reservation.  They’re trying to force Lufton to sell his cattle for pennies on the dollar and then sell them to Pindalest at the full price with a goodly bribe to Pindalest.  Out of the huge profit Riling will cut Garry in for ten thousand dollars for being the gun hand to make sure nothing interferes with Riling’s plan.

When Riling and his men and the homesteaders that he’s fooled into helping him attack Lufton’s herd they manage to scatter it thoroughly which should be enough to guarantee that Riling’s plan will succeed.  But one of the homesteaders, Kris Bardon (played by Walter Brennan) loses his son in the stampede and Garry decides the whole plan is too dirty for him to go on with.  He quits Riling’s crew and manages to save Lufton’s life when two of Riling’s men were preparing to gun him down.

To further confuse the situation Lufton has two daughters.  Carol Lufton is in love with Riling and has been providing him with information about her father’s plans and actions.  Amy Lufton starts out hating Garry but over the course of the movie as she sees his actions are well-intentioned, she changes her mind and comes to trust him.

When Garry quits the crew Riling goes looking for him and they have a huge brawl in a cantina.  Garry finally knocks Riling out.  When one of Riling’s henchmen gets ready to execute a defenseless Garry, Kris Bardon shoots the gun hand.  Now Garry goes to Lufton and reveals the whole plan about Riling conspiring with Pindalest to steal the herd.  They come up with a plan to defeat it.

Garry goes to Pindalest as if he’s still working with Riling and tells him to suspend the government’s seizure order on Lufton’s herd and creates a ruse that has Pindalest go with him out into the mountains to give Lufton enough time to gather the herd and bring it off the reservation.  The ruse succeeds up to a point but then an Indian whose friends with Riling tips him off that Pindalist is being stalled by Garry.  Riling and his men come after Garry and in an altercation, Garry is stabbed and Pindalist is rescued.

A badly wounded Garry escapes to Kris Bardon’s cabin where Amy Lufton joins them to nurse Garry’s wound.  Soon Riling, Pindalist and one other gunman show up and surround the cabin while Bardon and Amy hold them off with rifles.  That night Garry, sensing that eventually the outlaws would manage to overcome the defense, tells Bardon and Amy to provide a diversion while he slips out the door and sneaks behind the gunmen and takes them on.

He manages to pistol whip Pindalist into unconsciousness and shoot the other gunman.  And in the final confrontation he shoots it out with his former friend Riling.  Garry is victorious and he reappears at the cabin.  Later John Lufton and his men appear at the cabin.  They take Pindalist into custody for delivery to the marshal.  And as the drama ends Amy tells her father of her plans to marry Jim Garry.

Although this western was made during the heyday of that genre, this production differed substantially from the typical black hat, white hat conflict.  Mitchum’s character is more reminiscent of the characters he usually portrayed in film noirs where he would be a small time criminal or a gun for hire.  He straddles the line between good and evil pretty thoroughly until almost the end of the movie.  And that’s what keeps the movie from devolving into a typical good guy, bad guy shootout.  Mitchum and Preston manage to keep the battle between light and darkness alive and interesting throughout the movie.  The rest of the cast isn’t afforded much opportunity to rise above the normal western tropes.  The two actresses in love with Garry and Riling are given fairly stereotypical plot and dialog for those roles and the other parts fairly equally follow the conventions of the genre.  But Mitchum and Preston provide the fireworks and it boosts the movie well above the average.  Highly recommended for fans of westerns and fans of Robert Mitchum.

Seven Samurai (1954) – A Movie Review

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Seven Samurai is arguably, director Akira Kurosawa’s most successful work.  It takes place in Japan in 1586 and tells the story of a peasant village that knows the local bandit army is going to rob them of their rice harvest in a few weeks.  They hatch the plan of hiring samurai to defend them from the bandits.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

They’re rebuffed by several samurai who feel that it is beneath their dignity to work for peasants.  Finally, they come upon a samurai who is in the act of saving a child from a thief who has taken him hostage.  The samurai named Kambei Shimada (played by Takashi Shimura) shaves his own head to disguise himself as a monk then during a ruse to get food to the child throws himself at the thief and overpowers and kills him.

After hearing the peasants’ plight, Shimada agrees to take on their war but insists he’ll need at least six more samurai to accomplish the feat.  The next section of the movie is the assembling of the team.  Each of the samurai chosen has distinctive characteristics.  One is an old comrade of Shimada’s (Shichirōji).  Another is a preternaturally skilled swordsman (Kyūzō).  Still another is a skilled archer and master strategist (Gorōbei).  One is a nobleman’s son (Katsushirō) trying to become a samurai.  Another (Heihachi) is a mediocre swordsman but has so much spirit that he becomes the glue that gives the team cohesion.  And finally, there is Kikuchiyo (played by Toshiro Mifune).  He was pretending to be a samurai but his story was laughably false.  The group mocks him and tells him to get lost but he trails them and eventually is accepted as a sort of mascot.  Eventually he shows his worth by the way he can control and organize the farmers into a defense force for the war.  Eventually the story comes out that he is an orphan of a peasant family that was murdered by bandits.

Shimada and Gorōbei lay out the plan for the defense of the town.  They order the peasants to build defensive fences out of timber and to flood some of the perimeter fields.  They also destroy some bridges that span the local river.  Shichirōji, Katsushirō and especially Kikuchiyo drill the peasants in the use of home-made bamboo spears and the tactics they’ll need to support the samurai in their defense against the bandits’ cavalry charges.

After catching a few scouts that show up on their perimeter a sortie is sent out against a fort that the bandits have about twenty miles from the town.  The raid is a success.  The bandit’s fort is burned down but Heihachi is struck by a musket shot and killed.

The next day the bandits attack in force.  For two days the samurai and their peasant troops steadily whittle down the bandits’ numbers through dividing up the cavalry charges and attacking the outnumbered stragglers.  But during one attack Gorōbei is killed.

Finally, the last day of the battle dawns and it is pouring rain.  The samurai let all the bandits into the town for a final pitched battle.  And the village forces are winning the day.  But the bandit chief hides out in the women’s building in the center of town with a musket.  He shoots down Kyūzō.  Kikuchiyo runs toward the building to revenge him.  The chief shoots him in the belly but Kikuchiyo manages to stab the chief to death before he also dies.  And the battle ends with all the bandits dead.

The next day while the villagers rejoice in their victory, Shimada, Shichirōji and Katsushirō walk past the graves of their fallen comrades and reflect that the victory was a pyrrhic one for them.  The real winners were the farmers whose lives can now go on undisturbed by bandits or samurai.

I’ve left out some subplots involving a love story between Katsushirō and a farmer’s daughter named Shino.  There’s also a farmer whose wife was kidnapped by the bandits and turned into a concubine who runs back into a burning building to avoid the wrath of her husband.  And a village elder who rather than abandoning his building to the bandits is killed along with his son and daughter in law.  But these are window dressing.  The story is the war and it is well told.  Now let’s get down to cases.  This is a three and a half hour, black and white movie in Japanese with subtitles.  Those things right there will be disqualifications for a very large subset of Americans.  But if you do not automatically reject such a film then I’m happy to say that “Seven Samurai” is quite a good adventure story.  Kurosawa based the concept of this film on American westerns.  This was black hat outlaws versus farmers and some white hat cowboys.  Think of the Earps versus the Clantons.  In fact, the story was remade as a western called the “Magnificent Seven.”  Of course, each of us has a limit on just how wide our comfort zone is for exotic stories but in my opinion Seven Samurai is well worth the trouble of some of the oddities.  The whining peasants are a little annoying and the pacing at some stages is on the slow side.  But I’ll highly recommend this movie for fans of adventure stories.

Ride the High Country (1962) – A Movie Review

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“Ride the High Country” was a 1960s revisionist Western directed by Sam Peckinpah.  It stars Joel McCrea as Steve Judd an over the hill lawman who is taking on a job to guard a gold shipment from a mining town called Hornitos in the Sierra Nevada.  Judd hires his old partner Gil Westrum, played by Randolph Scott, and a young cowboy named Heck Longtree to help him guard the gold on the trip.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Along the way to Hornitos, they stay over at a farmhouse owned by Joshua Knudsen.  And we meet his daughter Elsa, played by a very young Mariette Hartley, who wants to run away from home to marry one of the miners in Hornitos named Billy Hammond against her father’s will.  After the men head out Elsa catches up to them and Judd allows her to ride with them out of concern that she might be attacked by wild animals in the wilderness.  Along the way we see Longtree flirting with Elsa.  But we also learn that Westrum and Longtree plan to steal the gold from Judd.

When they reach Hornitos, Elsa meets up with Billy and the rest of the Hammond brothers.  To say the least they are depraved animals.  Billy marries Elsa in the town bordello with the madame and prostitutes as bridal party.  When Billy passes out before the honeymoon two of the brothers attempt to rape her in the “bridal suite.”  Judd and Longtree hear her screams and rescue her from the Hammonds.  When Billy demands his wife back Westrum threatens the judge who married them to force him to claim that the marriage was illegitimate.

They leave Hornitos with Elsa in tow to bring her back to her father.  The next night Westrum and Longtree attempt to sneak out of camp at night with the gold.  But Judd catches them and takes them prisoner.  He binds their hands and declares that he will hand them over to the law when he delivers the gold.

The next day Billy Hammond and his brothers catch up with Judd and demand to have Elsa back.  Judd agrees to allow Longtree to have a gun and between them they kill two of the Hammonds.  The other Hammonds ride off and Judd and the rest of the company stop for the night.  Westrum escapes on horseback and returns to the scene of the gun battle and retrieves a pistol from one of the dead Hammonds.  Then he begins to follow Judd’s party.

When Judd and Longtree reach Elsa’s home they find her father dead on the ground and come under fire from the Hammonds who have set up an ambush.  Longtree is shot in the leg and Judd is hit in the belly.  But before the Hammonds can finish them off Westrum rides into the scene and tells Judd that he’s returned to help his old partner face off against the Hammonds.  A classic gun duel, with both sides walking toward each ensues and the three Hammonds riddle Judd with bullets but the two old lawmen manage to kill their three enemies in the fight.

Judd tells Westrum that he’s going to die but doesn’t want Longtree and Elsa to see him expire.  He tells Westrum to finish up the gold delivery and also says that he is satisfied that Westrum has come back to his duty and will do the right thing.  Then he dies and Westrum joins Longtree and Elsa to tend to Longtree’s wounds and finish the job.

Although this is supposed to be a modern Western with a blurred boundary between the good guys and the bad, for the most part McCrea and Scott are very close to the quintessential golden age cowboys.  Scott’s turn as a bad guy is shown to be not very deep seated as he comes back at the end to risk his life for his old friend.  There is a lot more realism in the depiction of how depraved the folks in the mining camp were as compared to a classic western.  But for the most part this film still stays pretty close to a classic western.  I’ll say that I quite enjoyed the movie and I recommend it for fans of traditional westerns.  It’s about halfway between the movies made in the ‘30s and ‘40s and the stuff you might see in the spaghetti westerns that Clint Eastwood starred in.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – A Movie Review

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I saw this in the movies with a buddy of mine when I was a kid.  It was the first modern western I had seen.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid actually were outlaws at the tail end of the Old West.  Played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford respectively, this pair are still holed up in Wyoming in 1898, robbing trains with their “Hole in the Wall Gang.”  But Union Pacific head, E. H. Harriman gets tired of the gang robbing his trains so he hires the best trackers and lawmen in the country to find and kill Butch and Sundance.  The pair are chased across the Southwest until finally cornered by the posse they have to jump off a cliff into a raging torrent to escape.

Figuring out that they’ll never escape Harriman’s men they decide to head down to Bolivia to steal gold from the miners.  They start robbing banks and mine payrolls until finally they stir up so much trouble that the federal troops organize an ambush and at a small town they’re set upon by a large company of police.  And while they are pinned down a military troop arrives complete with a cannon.  The movie ends with the pair wounded and desperate charging out into a fusillade of lead to their apparent deaths.

This is a revisionist western of the type that came out in the sixties and seventies with anti-hero protagonists and questionable morals.  So, if you’re more of a traditionalist this type of movie might not be your cup of tea.  But in my opinion, this is a highly entertaining film.  Newman and Redford are the quintessential bickering friends.  Newman’s Butch comes up with the wild schemes and Redford’s Sundance reluctantly backs him and bails them out with his unbelievable shooting skill.  I recommend it for the action and for the buddy comedy.

How the West Was Won (1962) – A Movie Review

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“How the West Was Won” is a Western extravaganza with enough Hollywood stars for five films.  It consists of five vignettes that are strung together out of the fortunes of a family from the East caught up in the settling of the western frontier.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Karl Malden is Zebulon Prescott, a farmer in New York State who becomes disgusted with his rocky unproductive land and sells it to go west with his wife Rebecca, (Agnes Moorehead) and two daughters Eve (Caroll Baker) and Lilith (Debbie Reynolds).  Along the way they meet fur trapper Linus Rawlings (Jimmy Stewart) who saves them from some nefarious river pirates led by Col. Jeb Hawkins (Walter Brennan) but finally Zebulon and Rebecca are killed going over the rapids on their raft and Rawlings reluctantly gives up his wandering ways to marry Eve and start a farm by the river.

In the next vignette, Lilith has become a show girl and does a song and dance act in St. Louis.  A messenger informs her that a former admirer has left her a gold mine in California.  She joins another woman Agatha Clegg (Thelma Ritter) in a wagon train headed west.

When gambler/fortune hunter Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck) overhears her good fortune, he follows her to California.  At first reluctantly and then gratefully, after he saves her life during an Indian attack, Lilith partners with Cleve.

But when they get to California, they discover that Lilith’s gold mine is played out.  Cleve leaves Lilith in the lurch to pursue his gambler’s life.  She receives a proposal of marriage from wealthy rancher Roger Morgan (Robert Preston) but rejects him because she doesn’t want a conventional life as a wife and mother.  But when Cleve overhears Lilith singing on a river boat, he realizes that they will both be happiest if they marry and combine their two adventurous lives together into a partnership.  And they do.

In the next story the Civil War has begun.  To dramatize this we even have a brief look at Raymond Massey portraying Abraham Lincoln.  Eve’s son, Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) wants to follow his father into battle on the side of the Union.  Eve tearfully says goodbye and Zeb is swept along by the tides of war.

During this episode he manages to save General Grant (Harry Morgan) and General Sherman (John Wayne) from a Confederate soldier who was trying to convince Zeb to desert.  After the war Zeb returns home to find that both his parents are dead.  He leaves the farm to his brother and heads west as a cavalry soldier.

In the next vignette Zeb is a cavalry officer tasked with helping the Union Pacific Railroad cross the Great Plains.  The ruthless railroad boss Mike King (Richard Widmark) is angering the Indian tribes by laying down the track through the Indian hunting grounds.  Zeb has help from buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart (Henry Fonda), an old friend of his father.

They convince the Indians to accept the latest route but finally when settlers start filling up the area the Indians revolt and we watch as they stampede a herd of buffalo through the railroad worksite.  Disgusted with the railroad’ treachery, Zeb and Jethro leave for happier circumstances farther west.

In the last episode, we see Lilith as an old woman in San Francisco.  Cleve has died and an auction is proceeding to liquidate their estate to pay off debts.  All that will remain will be a ranch in Arizona that she hopes to retire to with her nephew Zeb Rawlings and his wife Julie (Carolyn Jones) and children.

Zeb was a sheriff and while meeting his aunt at the train in Arizona he catches sight of an outlaw Charlie Grant (Eli Wallach) that Zeb put in prison years ago.  He figures out that Grant means to rob the train when the next gold shipment is aboard.  Zeb recruits his old friend Marshal Lou Ramsey (Lee J. Cobb) to go with him to guard the train.

The train robbery scene involves Grant and eight or ten of his men boarding the train and battling Zeb and Lou as they fight them off with rifles and hand guns.  In the ensuing violence the train is battered to pieces and finally derails in catastrophic fashion but Zeb puts a final bullet in Charlie Grant.  Then he returns to take up a peaceful life as rancher with his family.

The movie ends with a panoramic view of California including Los Angeles freeways and the golden Gate Bridge with a stirring speech by the narrator (Spencer Tracy) about the epic adventure that was the taming of the west.

So, you get the picture.  This is an extravaganza.  They put every actor they had into it.  I’ve even left out a few other for the sake of brevity.  So, what do I think?  As far as spectacle, the scene of the raft on the rapids and the buffalo stampede are exciting and in the wide screen of a theater must have been fun for the audience.  Some of the landscapes are truly beautiful.  The plot is very straightforward.  It covers the various stages of the westward expansion of the United States with a personal story.  The performances vary from competent to perfunctory.  This isn’t high drama.  I would restrict my recommendation to saying if you’re in the mood for an epic western movie (and you have three hours to spare) this movie would be fine.

The Westerner (1940) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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In this western story Gary Cooper is Cole Harden a drifter passing through Vinegarroon, Texas on his way to California.  But Vinegarroon is the home of “Judge” Roy Bean, the only law west of the Pecos River.  Bean (played by Walter Brennan) is a hanging judge who hands out rough justice based on being an advocate for the cattlemen.  If the cattlemen stampede a herd of cattle through a corn field and the farmer shoots one of the steers he’ll be hanged by Bean for the offense.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

When Harden appears in the movie, he’s being led to Bean’s court house (saloon) because one of the locals recognized Harden’s horse as one that was stolen from a local.  Naturally the jury will declare him guilty but Harden manages to convince Bean that he is a friend of the famous actress Lily Langtry whom Bean greatly admires.  Claiming that he has a lock of her hair Harden gets Bean to “suspend” his sentence while evidence of his innocence can be found.  While Harden and Bean cement their friendship over bogus tales of Langtry and Bean’s rotgut whiskey the real horse thief walks into the saloon and Harden punches him out and retrieves the purchase price of the horse from his pockets.  When the thief attempts to shoot Harden, Bean beats him to the draw and thus reinforces the bond between the drifter and the hangin’ judge.

After this the movie drifts off into other directions.  Harden leaves town and while travelling through the area ends up working as a field hand for the Mathew family on their farm.  A romance blossoms between and Harden and the daughter Jane.  But we find out that Judge Bean has been persecuting the farmers and intends to drive them off their land through harassment and judicial malfeasance.  The farmers organize and decide to go en masse and shoot Bean to end their problem.  When Harden hears this, he gallops to Bean’s saloon and warns Bean.  Harden and Bean stop the plot and send the farmers away.  But Harden convinces Bean to remove all the cattle from the valley where the farmers live in exchange for Lily Langtry’s lock of hair that Harden claims to have.  Harden manages to get a lock of Jane Mathew’s hair for the purpose and when Bean fulfills his promise to move the cattle, he ceremoniously hands over the hair.

Now the farmers are triumphant and have a celebratory feast.  But while it is going on the cattlemen set fire to the fields and homesteads of the farmers and destroy the whole valley.  Jane’s father is murdered by the cattlemen and she blames Harden for the deeds she attributes to his friend Bean.

Harden forces Bean to admit that he was responsible for the fire and Harden leaves town to get a warrant for the arrest of Bean for murder and arson.  Coincidentally Lily Langtry is in the area for a concert and Judge Bean buys up all the tickets so that he can enjoy a private audience with Miss Langtry.  And the performance becomes the site of a shootout between Harden and Bean.  Eventually Harden fatally wounds Bean but before Bean dies Harden carries him backstage so Bean can see Langtry before he dies.

In the final scene Harden and Jane are a married couple on a rebuilt farm celebrating the return of the other settlers that had been driven out by Bean.

By the description, you can tell this is a very strange western.  The way I can describe it is a comedy for the first half of the movie that switches over into a more conventional melodrama.  From my point of view the comedic portions of the movie are the better parts.  Cooper and Brennan have a weird funny chemistry that makes the movie interesting and enjoyable.  The later romance and drama are okay but clash with the comedic elements.  I’ll recommend the movie based on the scenes with Cooper and Brennan even though as whole the movie is sort of a mess.