Jubal (1956)

Jubal is a 1956 western directed by Delmer Daves who also co-wrote the screenplay with Russell S. Hughes.

The classic way to start a western is to have a mysterious stranger ride into town. That’s more or less the way Jubal starts except that it’s an isolated cattle ranch rather than a town and the mysterious stranger, Jubal Troop (Glenn Ford), arrives on foot having lost his horse.

The ranch belongs to Shep Horgan (Ernest Borgnine). When he discovers that Jubal is a cattleman he takes him on as a ranch hand. For some reason this really displeases one of the other hands, a guy named Pinkum although everybody calls him Pinky (played by Rod Steiger). We will soon discover why Pinky immediately sees Jubal as a threat.

Shep Horgan is a bit of a rough diamond but he’s a decent guy and he takes a liking to Jubal. Jubal is a good cattleman and Shep has decided he’s a man who can be trusted. Jubal also takes a liking to Shep. In a way Shep becomes a kind of father figure and we will later find out why Jubal is looking for a father figure.

Pretty soon Shep makes Jubal the ranch foreman, which upsets Pinky even more.

Shep has a pretty young wife, Mae (Valerie French). It’s a lonely life for a woman. There doesn’t appear to be another woman in the entire district or in the neighbouring one-horse town (which is not even a town since the saloon seems to be the only building in the town). Some women may be cut out for the pioneer life in the wilderness but Mae is not one of those women. She’s obviously not very happy in her marriage. That’s what starts the trouble.

The entire plot revolves around Shep Horgan’s marriage and Mae’s dissatisfaction with that marriage.

It doesn’t take long before Mae starts to put the moves on Jubal. Jubal is determined not to get involved with her, partly because he has his own reasons for wanting to avoid any trouble and partly because of his loyalty to Shep. It is however obvious that he’s not entirely indifferent to Mae’s feminine charms.

It slowly becomes clear that there had at one time been something between Mae and Pinky. Now she despises him but Pinky is determined to have her. Pinky sees Jubal as a dangerous rival who must be disposed of somehow and Pinky seems to have some plan in mind for gaining possession of Shep’s wife and Shep’s ranch as well.

There’s a slight complication in the form of Naomi, a girl from a travelling religious sectarian group to whom Jubal is clearly attracted (and the attraction is mutual).

There’s obviously a bit of Iago in Pinky. Pinky clearly resents the fact that Shep has a ranch (and it’s apparently a pretty prosperous ranch) and a young and pretty wife. The parallels with Othello are fairly clear.

Jubal will find himself in a very sticky situation indeed. One of the things I really like about the script is that Jubal lands himself in so much trouble that it’s hard to imagine how on earth the writers are going to get him out of it. He seems to be comprehensively trapped. I found myself desperately hoping that the writers wouldn’t mess things up at the end. In fact I think the ending works fine.

While Jubal is ostensibly the hero the four main characters - Jubal, Shep, Mae and Pinky - are all equally important and all four characters are reasonably well developed. We get enough of a backstory for Jubal and Mae to understand why they act the way they do and the motivations of Shep and Pinky make sense as well.

Jubal clearly intends to be a grown-up western with a willingness to confront grown-up subjects such as female sexuality. It’s female sexuality, in this case Mae’s sexuality, that really drives the plot.

Jubal was made during the Production Code era when grown-up treatment of sex was just about impossible. As far as the Production Code was concerned any woman who had sexual feelings was automatically a wicked woman who would have to be subjected to savage punishment. The Production Code also allowed no flexibility at all when it came to storytelling. The plot had to end with virtue triumphant and the wicked punished.

It’s obvious that this movie could have been a great deal more interesting had it not been constrained by the straitjacket of the Production Code. Having said that, within those constraints it manages to be reasonably successful.

And the characters have real complexity. Shep is a good man and he’s fundamentally kind. He just has no idea about women. He loves Mae and he tries to treat her well. The ranch house, by the standards of ranch houses in the middle of the wilderness, is quite comfortable and cosy. He buys Mae pretty dresses. He really does want to make her happy. Unfortunately he thinks that patting Mae on the bottom in public is a normal way to express husbandly affection, Mae of course finds it humiliating. And Shep just cannot see that Mae feels no sexual attraction towards him (and the movie is pretty open about that). Shep just doesn’t suspect that Mae might try to satisfy her sexual urges elsewhere.

While the movie obviously cannot condone Mae’s actions it does at least make them very comprehensible. Her marriage to Shep was a mistake. She’s a woman with strong sexual feelings and we can see why she finds Jubal irresistible - he’s kind and gentle but at the same time very masculine. We can also see why she made the mistake of having an affair with Pinky (and it’s made quite clear that they did sleep together). Pinky is a pig but he would certainly be more sexually attractive to a woman than Shep would be. We can see why she fell for his sexy bad boy persona. The movie doesn’t demonise Mae quite as much as you’d expect.

Valerie French does the femme fatale thing quite well. Glenn Ford was always a solid reliable actor. Ernest Borgnine is perfectly cast and manages to convey to us the fact that Shep is a good-natured oaf where women are concerned, but Borgnine does it without making Shep seem pathetic. Rod Steiger as usual displays all the weaknesses of Method acting - he’s too hammy and much too stagey in his performance.

Charles Bronson does well in a supporting rôle as as Reb, another mysterious stranger who finds work at Shep’s ranch. Felicia Farr manages to make Naomi not too insipid.

I’d seen a couple of the movies of Delmer Daves but hadn’t really thought much about him until the subject came up on the Riding the High Country blog. Jubal has also been reviewed at that blog.

Jubal succeeds pretty well as a western sex melodrama. There’s hardly any action at all but there’s excellent suspense and lots of sexual tension. Highly recommended.

Jubal has been released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in Australia in their excellent Six Shooter Classics series. It cost me just five bucks and the DVD offers a truly lovely 16:9 enhanced transfer. There’s also a hideously expensive US Blu-Ray release.