The Man from Utah (1934)

The Man from Utah is a 1934 western B-movie made by Lone Star Productions and it’s one of the many B-westerns John Wayne made in the 30s.

Somehow or other the music track for this movie was lost at some stage and eventually a somewhat unsatisfactory modern music track was added. Fortunately the original dialogue track survived.

When we’re first introduced to John Weston (John Wayne) we think this is going to be a singing cowboy movie but it isn’t.

John Weston arrives in a little town in the West looking for work. When he almost single-handedly foils a bank robbery the crusty but good-natured Marshal Higgins decides he’s found the man he needs to take on a gang that uses a rodeo in the neighbouring town of Dalton as a front for its criminal activities including a series of robberies.

Weston is deputised. He will be undercover, posing as an entrant in the rodeo. It could be dangerous. There have been several mysterious deaths at the rodeo - men who fell foul of the gang. Marshal Higgins can’t prove that these were murders but he has no doubt that they were.

Weston is going to have romance problems as well. He falls for Marjorie Carter (Polly Ann Young), daughter of Dalton’s leading citizen but he has to play up to sexpot Dolores (Anita Campillo). Dolores is mixed up with the gang and she could provide a way for him to ingratiate himself with the gang.

The leader of the gang is Spike Barton (Edward Peil). He has his suspicions of Weston. Weston has some ideas about how the gang uses the rodeo as a cover for its robberies. He also thinks he’s figured out how the murders were carried out.

So it’s going to be a cat-and-mouse game between these two.

A major advantage that B-movies (especially crime thrillers, spy trillers and westerns) enjoyed was that the running times were so short. This one clocks in at just 51 minutes. You didn’t have to think about the pacing. It had to be brisk. There was no choice. This movie moves along very quickly indeed.

There’s lots of rodeo action. It’s all stock footage of course but it’s integrated into the movie pretty well.

There’s lots of action. Of all kinds - shoot-out, fistfights and daring trick riding.

The Big Trail (1930) was an ambitious epic western that was expected to make John Wayne a star but it didn’t happen. The movie flopped. This turned out to be, perversely, a lucky break for Wayne. He wasn’t ready for stardom then, the John Wayne persona was not yet fully formed and he did not yet have the necessary star quality. He spent almost a decade in the B-movie ghetto but when he did finally get his big break, in Stagecoach in 1939, he was ready. He’d gained a vast amount of experience, his trademark persona was now fully developed and the characteristic John Wayne star quality was there in abundance. After that his career never looked back.

In The Man from Utah you can see the process half-completed. He’s starting to get that easy good-humoured confidence that was such an essential part of John Wayne the star.

This movie boasts a perfectly serviceable plot and while it’s obviously not one of the great westerns there’s a lot for fans of the genre to enjoy. If you’re a fan of Duke Wayne, even better.

The Man from Utah is a fun little movie and it’s highly recommended.

My copy is on an ancient long out-of-print Payless double-feature DVD (it’s paired with a Roy Rogers movie) but the transfer is quite acceptable.

The Big Trail (1930)

Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail was an early attempt to make a truly epic western. Fox (this was before the merger that created 20th Century-Fox) not only spent a fortune on the film they also decided to shoot it in an all-new experimental format which they called Grandeur. This was the first widescreen process to be used in Hollywood.

The timing could not have been worse. By the time the movie was ready to go out the Depression was starting to bite. Added to this movie theatre owners were still reeling from the expense of converting to sound. There was no way anyone was going to spend the money required to convert theatres to allow The Big Trail to be screened in the Grandeur format.

The idea of an epic western was also fairly new and perhaps movie-goers were not ready for it. The Big Trail performed poorly at the box office.

The legend has it that this was the movie that should have made John Wayne a star but ended up setting back his bid for stardom by a decade. Personally I think that in 1930 John Wayne was just not ready for stardom. His performance here has none of the effortless quality that characterised his later great performances. He seems a bit nervous and and a bit tentative. When he did finally achieve star status he was ready and in full command of himself as an actor.

The Big Trail is concerned with a huge wagon train full of settlers heading west. Breck Coleman (John Wayne) has been hired as a scout. The wagon boss is a disreputable character named Red Flack (played by Tyrone Power’s dad Tyrone Power Sr). Flack has with him his equally disreputable pal, Lopez.

Coleman signed on as scout because of Red Flack, and because of an old friend of Coleman’s. He very strongly suspects that Flack and Lopez murdered that old friend. Coleman intends to make them pay. He has no intention of turning them over to the proper authorities. That’s not how frontier justice works. He simply intends to kill both men.

Coleman has other things on my mind, principally one of the would-be settlers, Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill). He got off on the wrong foot with her and she hates him but he’s still sure she’s the girl for him.

Gambler and con-man Bill Thorpe (Ian Keith) is a complication. He has also set his eyes on Ruth and has told her stories of his vast plantation in Louisiana. In fact Thorpe owns nothing but the clothes on his back but he’s a charming liar and Ruth believes him. He will cause lots of problems.

The trek to the West is an ordeal. There are constant setbacks, wagons are lost in river crossing, many settlers die crossing 500 miles of desert and there’s a full-scale battle with the Cheyenne. The wagon train pushes on regardless, while Coleman watches and waits for his opportunity to avenge his friend.

These were the very early days of sound pictures, when those pictures were very static and studio-bound. Raoul Walsh wasn’t having any of that nonsense. He intended to shoot on location with live sound, and he did.

This was an insanely ambitious movie. The scale of the movie is breathtaking. Every shot seems to include several hundred extras. There are huge numbers of wagons. This is not the sort of wagon train you see in most westerns. This is like a vast army of settlers on the march.

Walsh’s shot compositions are incredibly busy, there is so much happening in the foreground and the background, but they work. This is spectacle in the best sense of the word. And this was 1930. Walsh could not rely on special effects. If he wanted a scene with dozens of wagons being lowered down a sheer cliff-face the only way to do it was to lower dozens of wagons down a sheer cliff-face, which is what he did. Those kinds of scenes look real in a way that modern CGI never does look real. They look real because they were real.

There are some problems. The pacing is slow at times. The plot doesn’t have much complexity. Many of the supporting actors were forced on Walsh by the studio. He wasn’t happy with them, and he was right. Many of them are terrible. Tyrone Power Sr is just awful. The acting of most of the supporting cast members is stiff and some of the dialogue scenes are rather cringe-inducing. There is irritating comic relief, and there’s too much of it.

John Wayne is OK, but he’s not yet the real John Wayne, the John Wayne of his great movies. Marguerite Churchill on the other hand is very good (her performance is the best in the movie).

You have to make allowances for the fact that this was 1930. The conquest of the West was not something that happened in the distant past. There were plenty of people still living who took part in that conquest, and had first-hand memories of the Wild West. The director of the movie, Raoul Walsh, was personally acquainted with Wyatt Earp (and Earp and John Ford were good buddies). The West had an emotional resonance with Americans in 1930 that is difficult to imagine today. The triumphalist “planting civilisation in the wilderness” message is understandable when you take these things into account.

Somehow The Big Trail manages to overcome its flaws. The visual magnificence helps a great deal. What also helps is the total lack of modern fashionable irony. Whatever you think about the conquest of the West there is no denying that those pioneers had guts. This movie takes their courage seriously, and it takes their suffering seriously.

Watching this movie in its correct aspect ratio on Blu-Ray is an overwhelming experience. If you’re serious about classic movies it’s one that you have to see. And it’s one of the great Hollywood epics. With all its problems it’s still highly recommended.

His Private Secretary (1933)

His Private Secretary is a 1933 romantic comedy starring John Wayne. Which is not such an outrageous idea - Wayne was always quite adept at light comedy. His Private Secretary is bright and breezy and reasonably entertaining.

Dick Wallace (John Wayne) is the son of a crusty millionaire businessman. Crusty is perhaps not quite an adequate term - Mr Wallace (Reginald Barlow) is a mean-spirited irritable cantankerous old curmudgeon. Mind you, he has plenty to be cantankerous about. Dick Wallace is lazy, pleasure-loving and an inveterate womaniser. Mr Wallace decides he’s had enough - he’ll give Dick one last chance to shape up. He puts him in charge of the debt collecting side of the business.

Dick’s first debt collecting assignment takes him to the tiny town of Somerville. Of course Dick manages to pick up a woman on the way, by persuading her that the bus to Somerville has broken down. Marion Hall (Evalyn Knapp) is not the kind of woman Dick is used to. She’s feisty but thoroughly respectable. In fact she’s the daughter of a clergyman, the Rev Hall (Alec B. Francis), and the kindly old clergyman is the man from whom Dick is supposed to collect the debt. Dick might be an irresponsible hedonist but he’s a arm-hearted guy underneath it and when he realises that the minister has spent the money helping people he gives him an unlimited extension on the loan. And promptly gets himself fired by his dad for not collecting.

Dick isn’t too worried by this since he’s fallen had over heels in love with Marion. He’s also decided to turn over a new leaf. Now he’s found the right girl he’s ready to get married and settle down. Persuading his father to accept his new bride is however going to prove quite a challenge. Marion has her own plan to win the old boy over - he gets herself a job as his private secretary.

His Private Secretary is fairly typical of pre-code comedies. It has a promising setup and it has an engaging charm but it’s rather light on gags. It’s an odd thing but Hollywood in the pe-code era never quite seemed to get the idea that comedy requires gags - lots of gags.

While it doesn’t provide too many laugh-out-loud moments it does at least manage to be gently amusing. Even with its very short running time (just 60 minutes) the pacing is a little on the slow side.

On the plus side John Wayne and Evalyn Knapp are likeable enough leads.

There are a few of the mildly risque (in his case very mildly risque) moments that pre-code fans tend to enjoy. On the other hand it’s also a movie that comes down firmly on the side of marriage, fidelity and taking responsibility. Dick is an irresponsible wastrel early on but he learns his lesson. Dick and Marion go through a few rough patches but they get through them because they realise they’re on the same side, and that that’s what marriage means. Fortunately the movie is really only interested in offering entertainment so don’t be worried that you’re going to be preached to.

Phil Whitman’s direction is workmanlike if uninspired (again fairly typical for pre-code comedies which were generally turned out rather cheaply). The script definitely needed more actual comedy but the plot is adequate enough for this type of film.

I picked this movie up as part of a two-movie public domain set. As one tends to accept with public domain releases image quality is fairly poor (although in this case quite watchable). Sound quality is more of a problem but at least the dialogue is understandable.

This movie doesn’t reach any great heights but it has a certain charm and it’s interesting to see John Wayne as a contemporary urban professional with not a horse or a six-gun in sight. His Private Secretary is harmless lightweight fluff. Worth a rental, and possibly worth a purchase if you find it in the bargain bin.

The Green Berets (1968)

The Green Berets was John Wayne’s Vietnam War movie, so as you might expect it’s very different from the later crop of movies on that subject. It’s an old-fashioned war movie, but that’s no bad thing.

This was a movie that Wayne very much wanted to do and it was made by his own production company, Batjac Productions. Wayne also gets a credit as co-director.

Wayne stars as Colonel Mike Kirby, commander of an elite Special Forces group (the US Army Special Forces were known as the Green Berets from their distinctive headgear). Kirby arrives in Vietnam to take command of a base camp under construction. Construction of the camp is proving to be rather difficult due to incessant Vietcong mortar attacks. In fact before the camp is finished it comes under full-scale attack, providing the opportunity for some fairly spectacular combat scenes.

Before leaving the US Kirby had had a bit of a run-in with an anti-war newspaper reporter, George Beckworth (David Janssen). Beckworth tells Kirby the US has no business being in South East Asia. Kirby asks him if he’s ever been to South East Asia. When Beckworth replies in the negative Kirby just says, “Uh-huh” and walks away. Beckworth then decides to head for the war zone himself where he is confident he’ll find evidence to prove his case. The situation he actually finds there is not at all what he’d expected. He is shocked by the brutality of the Vietcong and by their atrocities against civilians. He later remarks to Kirby that if he tells the truth about what he’s seen he’ll probably lose his job, a telling (and depressingly accurate) reflection of the media’s treatment of the war.

One of the soldiers selected Kirby for his force is Sergeant Petersen (Jim Hutton), a man with a remarkable talent for securing desperately needed equipment. Petersen doesn’t go through official channels - he simply commandeers whatever is needed. Petersen finds himself adopted by a young Vietnamese orphan, a boy who has lost everything he ever cared about. Petersen’s fondness for the boy could have been merely an excuse for introducing an element of sentimentality but in fact it’s a key element of the movie. It personalises the conflict. The orphan boy is after all what the war is all about - trying to create a future for civilians whose lives have been devastated by Vietcong atrocities.

The latter part of the movie is almost like an episode of Mission: Impossible as the Green Berets carry out a daring plan to kidnap a top Vietcong commander. But since the Special Forces exist in order to carry out these kinds of unconventional operations it makes sense to include this element.

This is a movie that sent opponents of the war into a frenzy of self-righteous indignation and it has been widely dismissed as mere propaganda. In fact it’s no more propagandistic than the later widely praised anti-war movies. It’s obvious when reading most reviews of the film that its critics had already decided it was a bad movie before they had even seen it. It’s actually a pretty good war movie and it’s nowhere near as unrealistic as most of the anti-Vietnam War movies that these same critics go into raptures about.

The action sequences are well executed. The movie makes no attempt to gloss over the horrors of war and the violence is quite graphic by the standards of 1968.

John Wayne does a fine job as Kirby. Playing hardbitten heroes with a sensitive side is the sort of thing he always did well. The supporting cast is strong, with Aldo Ray standing out. George Takei of Star Trek fame is excellent as a tough South Vietnamese officer. David Janssen is good as the reporter who finds that the reality of war doesn’t match his prejudices. His role is perhaps the one unrealistic element in the movie - the idea of a journalist admitting to being mistaken stretches the limits of credibility to breaking point!

The Green Berets is a movie that wears its political incorrectness like a badge of honour. Unlike virtually every other Vietnam War movie it shows respect for brave man who were doing their duty, and it emphasis the patriotism of South Vietnamese fighting for their country’s freedom.

The Region 4 DVD provides an adequate anamorphic transfer.

Whether you agree with its politics or not The Green Berets is an effective and exciting war movie that also emphasises the human costs of war. It was a major box-office hit. As John Wayne pointed out at the time, the negative reviews it received  merely succeeded in making it an even bigger hit. Highly recommended.

Hatari! (1962)

Hatari! is a lavish 1962 comedy adventure romp from Howard Hawks. The basic idea was, for 1962, rather clever. How do you get all the thrills and danger of big game hunting without having any animals killed? Simple. You make a movie about a group of men catching wild animals for zoos. It’s actually even more dangerous and exciting and it provides perfect family entertainment.

Hatari! is epic in scale with lots of location shooting and some very exciting action sequences. It was filmed in what is now Tanzania, and was naturally shot in widescreen and in Technicolor. If that wasn’t enough to attract audiences then for good measure it had John Wayne as its star. With those ingredients it couldn’t miss, and it didn’t, being a very major hit in 1962.



The setup is a rather classic Hawksian one. You have a group of men more or less cut off from the outside world, facing danger and death. That was the classic Hawksian drama formula. Since this one is played mainly as comedy the danger and death elements are downplayed somewhat but the opening sequence, in which one member of the team is badly gored by a rhinoceros, serves to remind us that the dangers are very real. The element of danger is the crucial ingredient for the sorts of camaraderie and group dynamics that always fascinated Hawks.

Sean Mercer (John Wayne) leads the group. They are currently collecting animals, mostly for a zoo in Switzerland. The Swiss zoo has decided it would be a swell idea to send out a photographer to document the expedition. Only they neglected to mention that the photographer they were sending is young, attractive and very female. The arrival of Anna Maria D'Allesandro (soon to become known as Dallas, and played by Elsa Martinelli) is somewhat disconcerting to Sean Mercer. Not that he has anything against women, but he was badly hurt by a woman in the past and now he’s somewhat gun-shy where the opposite sex is concerned. He’s especially gun-shy where members of the opposite sex to whom he is attracted are concerned, and he’s certainly attracted to Dallas.



Dallas is not the only woman Sean has to contend with. The animal-collecting outfit is actually owned by Brandy de la Court (Michèle Girardon). Her father had been a famous animal collector until he was killed trying to catch a rhino. His young daughter Brandy was more or less adopted by the survivors but now she’s not so young any more. Now she’s a very attractive young woman of eighteen and that’s going to cause more romantic complications, especially when a young Frenchman joins the team. He notices her charms at once, and that brings her charms to the notice of the team’s ace driver, Kurt Muller (Hardy Krüger). But this is not just a romantic triangle, it becomes a romantic quadrangle when yet a third member of the team decides he’s in love with Brandy.

Sean has his own problems. Like figuring out what to do about Dallas. He knows he’s in love with her but he has no idea how to tell her. Dallas meanwhile has been collecting baby elephants. Lots of baby elephants. They just keep turning up the camp and they all decide that she’s the ideal mother for a baby elephant. Sean also has to worry about the latest project of Pockets (Red Buttons). Pockets fancies himself as an inventor and he’s come up with a brilliant idea for catching monkeys. It’s the fact that his idea involves large amounts of gunpowder that has Sean worried.



This is, at 157 minutes, a rather long movie. But it doesn’t really seem long at all. The animal-catching action sequences, involving high-speed chases in cars and trucks, are nicely interspersed with the more romantic and comedic scenes. The whole thing is quite well balanced. Some process shots are used in the action scenes but they’re very well done and it’s obvious that most of these scenes are pretty much done for real. They’re a good deal more exciting than most of the CGI-laden dreck that currently infests movie screens. Hawks knew how to do action. With spectacular scenery as a backdrop this movie scores highly on visual impressiveness.

Hawks’ ability to handle action, romance and comedy with equal dexterity stand him in good stead and despite the film’s length he is never in the slightest danger of losing control.



The strong cast certainly helps. John Wayne’s easy-going likeable performance anchors the movie. Red Buttons could be an irritating actor but Hawks knows how to use his comic skills to best advantage and his performance works quite well. Hardy Krüger is equally likeable and is the ideal young gun to Wayne’s experienced old-timer. The only puzzling thing is that with the young and hunky Krüger around the two women seem determined to overlook his obvious charms and instead fall in love with the old-timers! Elsa Martinelli and Michèle Girardon are both delightful.

The barebones Region 4 DVD provides an anamorphic transfer but the picture is inclined to be a little soft and at times the colour balance seems just a little off.



Hatari! is a remarkably good-natured movie that provides action, romance and comedy. It ends with an inspired extended comedic sequence that is almost pure screwball comedy, hardly surprising since nobody ever did screwball comedy better than Howard Hawks. This is family entertainment that actually will entertain the whole family. It’s impossible not to like this movie. Highly recommended.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, made in 1949, was the second film in John Ford’s famous cavalry trilogy and it nicely encapsulates all that was best in Ford’s film-making style.

It is just after the disaster that befell George Custer’s 7th Cavalry in 1876. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho and the Comanches are all on the warpath. It is an uneasy time, with no-one knowing where the next blow might fall. It is an especially uneasy time for Captain Nathan Brittles (John Wayne). He has given his whole life to the army and now they’re putting him out to pasture. In six days’ time he retires. His next mission will be his last.

The commanding officer of the fort has decided to send the women east to safety. That will make Captain Brittles’ job even more difficult, with a wagon and two women accompanying his troop on patrol.

The unease mounts as a large party of Arapaho is sighted. They make no hostile move and Brittles (who has no intention of starting trouble if it’s not necessary) decides to bypass them. This will delay his patrol, with fateful consequences.

More signs of trouble soon follow. The Paradise River patrol is attacked and because of the delay caused earlier they barely escape to rejoin Brittles’ troop, with one badly wounded man. He will need an immediate operation which will delay the troop even further. And they need to get to a nearby outpost in time ti get the women safely on the stagecoach. But they are too late, and they are too late for the people at the outpost. It seems that Nathan Brittles’ career has ended with an ignominious failure.

He leaves a rear guard to defend a ford and heads back to the fort where he will ride off to an uncertain future in civilian life. It seems a strange ending to the movie, with the lead character about to be written out of the picture. But this movie is not over yet, and nor is Nathan Brittles’ story.

Being a John Ford movie there is comic relief as well, mostly provided by Victor McLaglen as a feisty old top sergeant who also happens to be one of Brittles’ oldest friend. He is also about to be retired. In this case the comic relief works well, lightening the mood for a moment before the dramatic climax.

There is also romance. Olivia Dandridge has been enthusiastically courted by both Lieutenant Flint Cohill (who will take over command of the trop when Brittles retires) and 2nd Lieutenant Ross Pennell. The other woman in the picture is the wife of the commanding officer, known affectionately as Old Iron Pants. She is more army than any of the men.

There is action as well, and Ford’s method was always the same with action scenes. He loathed the idea of rehearsing an action scene - he preferred the chaos and spontaneity of simply rolling the cameras and as usual the method works superbly. It is of course a method that only a master film-maker could get away with.

John Wayne gives his usual apparently effortless performance as the ageing Captain Brittles. Of course this kind of apparent effortlessness can only be achieved by an actor with vast experience and who has learnt his craft perfectly. It’s one of Wayne’s finest and subtlest roles.

He gets good support from John Agar as Lieutenant Cohill and Ben Johnson as Sergeant Tyree (a former Confederate officer), and from Joanne Dru as Olivia.

Ford was never cynical about heroism but that didn’t stop him from examining the phenomenon with intelligence and a critical eye. Heroism in a John Ford movie is not a simple or an obvious thing. Nathan Brittles is a doughty fighter but that doesn’t mean he likes fighting. He won’t run away from a necessary battle but he won’t provoke an unnecessary one. As in Fort Apache we see the John Wayne character trying to avoid a fight with the Indians and showing that he regards them with respect. Brittles and his old friend, the equally ageing Chief Pony That Walks, do their best to avoid a fight but again as in Fort Apache circumstances are against them. Younger and more hot-headed men want war.

The Warner Brothers DVD presents the superb Technicolor in all its glory (Winton C. Hoch won an Oscar for his Technicolor cinematography on this picture, and deservedly so. It’s magnificent).

Another intelligent and subtle western from the master of the genre. Anyone who doesn’t take Hollywood westerns seriously has clearly never seen a John Ford western (and I’d further suggest that anyone who doesn’t take John Wayne seriously as an actor has never seen the westerns he made with John Ford). A great movie, and a very entertaining one. Highly recommended.

Fort Apache (1948)

Fort Apache was the first movie in John Ford’s informal “cavalry trilogy” and it’s one of the great westerns. Ford had had a commercial disaster with The Fugitive in 1947 and desperately needed a hit, and Fort Apache put him back on top.

Lieutenant-Colonel Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) had been a distinguished general in the Civil War but like most regular army officers he’d reverted to his former rank in peacetime and his career is languishing. He regards his appointment as the new commanding officer of Fort Apache in the Arizona Territory as an insult and is keen to find some way to win glory. He knows nothing about the Apaches and is unwilling to take the advice of experienced officers like Captain Kirby York (John Wayne). His first step is to counter what he sees as unpardonable slackness in his new command. Some officers don’t even wear full uniform!



He was accompanied to his new posting by his daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple), who immediately falls in love with a handsome young lieutenant. He’s the son of the Regimental Sergeant-Major so to Thursday he’s not really one of the “officer class” and he has no desire to see his daughter marry the son of a mere NCO.

There’s trouble brewing with the Apaches. Cochise has led most of the Chiricahua Apaches over the border to Mexico in protest against the corruption of the local Indian agent who is more interested in selling Cochise’s people rotgut whiskey than blankets and decent food. Bringing Cochise and his people back to the reservation appeals to Thursday as a way of making a name for himself. Thursday’s foolishness will lead inevitably to tragedy.



Ford always liked to mix romance and comedy with the drama even in his darkest films and it often worked surprisingly well, making the tragedy even more poignant. That’s certainly true in this case.

There was a lot of nonsense talked in the 70s about the new breed of “revisionist” westerns that supposedly did ground-breaking things like showing the Indians’ point of view and exposing the reality behind the myths of the Old West. This was utter humbug. Ford had been doing such things for decades, and he did it more intelligently and more subtly. John Ford invented the revisionist western.



I’ve never liked Henry Fonda as an actor but I have to admit he’s superb here, resisting the temptation to overplay the character or to play him as a mere bumbling fool. Owen Thursday is a proud brave man who makes some disastrously foolish decisions but Fonda gives him dignity, and that’s the element that really makes this movie work. John Wayne, one of classic Hollywood’s most underrated actors, gives another fine performance. Like Thursday, Captain York is a complex character, torn between his duty of obedience as an officer and his loyalty to the army on the one hand and his belief that Colonel Thursday is tragically wrong and is leading his command to disaster. York is also a deeply honourable man. He has no great love for the Apaches but he can see their point of view and he believes the best way to deal with Cochise is to deal with him honourably.

There’s a fine supporting cast with Victor McLagen, Ward Bond and Shirley Temple all very solid. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her in an adult role and she’s quite capable.



In Ford’s westerns from Stagecoach onwards the Monument Valley locations are as much the star of the films as the lead actors. In Fort Apache his director of photography, Archie Stout, used infra-red film (developed during the war for military use) to achieve startling effects. It was tedious to use, requiring special make-up for the actors, but both Ford and Stout considered (quite correctly) that the results were worth the extra trouble.

Considering Ford’s reputation for not rehearsing action sequences and for disdaining the idea of planning shots in advance the action scenes in this movie can only fill the viewer with awe. They really are magnificent, not just spectacular but deeply moving as well (especially the scenes of Thursday’s charge and its tragic consequences).



Warner’s Region 1 DVD includes a brief documentary on John Ford’s Monument Valley. One of the reasons that Ford loved making movies there was that he got on very well with the local Navajo people and his films provided much-needed employment for them and pumped a great deal of money into the local community. On one occasion when they faced starvation because of an incredibly severe snow storm he used his military connections (as a former naval officer) to arrange a military air-drop of supplies for the Navajo and their animals. He’s still remembered with a great deal of affection by the Navajo. That’s why all the Indians in Ford’s westerns are played by Navajos!

A great western and a great movie.

Rio Bravo (1959)

In Rio Bravo in 1959 Howard Hawks returned to the themes that informed all his great action adventure movies. Once more we have we have a group of men facing danger and death, and once more they are professionals and as such they willingly accept the risks involved.

Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) has a prisoner in his gaol in a small border town in Texas. Joe Burdette is accused of murder. A US Marshal is on the way to collect the prisoner but will not arrive for six days. The problem for the sheriff is that Joe Burdette’s brother Nathan is the most powerful man in the county. Nathan is a rancher but in truth he’s more of a gangster. For Nathan Burdette murder is a minor matter compared to saving his brother from the noose. He has dozens of well-armed men and he is determined that his brother will not stay in gaol. Sheriff Chance has only his two deputies, a cripple (Stumpy, played by Walter Brennan) and a drunk (Dude, played by Dean Martin).



The plot is essentially a siege. When Nathan pays a travelling Mexican band to play the same song that the Mexican army played during the Battle of The Alamo to try to convince them of their doom it makes perfect sense. Chance and his men are every bit as besieged as the defenders of The Alamo.

The plot isn’t really the point of the movie. This is a heavily character-driven movie. The heroes will be sorely tested and their weaknesses will be exposed. Their ability to overcome those weaknesses will decide their fate.



This applies particularly to Dude. He’s an alcoholic and when the events of the movie start to unfold he’s been sober for precisely one day. He doesn’t know if he will be able to get the job done, and nor does Chance. There’s a memorable scene where the two of them have to go into a saloon full of bad guys to arrest a killer. Chance lets Dude take the lead. He wants to give Dude the chance to prove that he’s up to the job but he’s ever watchful in case this proves not to be the case. The scene is beautifully played by both actors.

Wayne gives one of his strongest performances, nicely leavened with humour. When Hawksian heroes face danger and death they don’t get all maudlin about it. Dean Martin is the big surprise. He apparently was very keen to land the role. He clearly thought he could do it justice, and he was right. Ricky Nelson is also surprisingly good as the young gunslinger Colorado Ryan. He wasn’t the world’s greatest actor but he’s more than adequate and he plays the role with a certain sly humour which complements Wayne’s performance nicely.



And then there’s the girl. Feathers (Angie Dickinson) is a classic Hawks woman. She’s feisty, strong, intelligent, resourceful and level-headed. In a tight corner she’s not a burden to the hero; she’s an asset. At first the love story between Chance and Feathers might seem a bit unlikely but really it makes perfect sense. She’s been married to one loser and she’s not going to make that mistake again. Next time she’ll pick a man who is worthy of her. She’s an alpha female and she’s going to go for the alpha male. While Dude and Colorado are both nice guys and they’re both cute John T. Chance is clearly the alpha male here. Angie Dickinson makes a slendid Hawksian woman.

This is an extraordinarily claustrophobic western. There’s hardly a scene in the movie where you can see the horizon. While other Hollywood westerns of the 50s were taking advantage of the widescreen formats to show the wide open spaces of the frontier Hawks takes the opposite tack. He closes everything in. His characters are trapped in the town, surrounded by Nathan Burdette’s gunmen. They’re in a universe of their own, completely cut off from the outside world, just like the airmen in Hawks’ much earlier Only Angels Have Wings. It’s a very effective technique and it really ratchets up the tension.



Hawks was not tying to do anything radical in this film. He was not trying to re-invent the western. This is a much more conventional movie than the westerns John Ford was making at the same time. What I suspect Hawks was trying to do was to show that the traditional western themes were timeless and that if done with sufficient skill they would still work. What it does have in common with the contemporary westerns of Ford, and of people like Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, is that it’s a very grown-up western.

While Hawks is dealing with well-worn themes he never descends to mere cliché. This is illustrated rather nicely by the character of Colorado. when we first meet him we expect he will fall into one of two cliché roles. We expect that most probably he will be the young hot-headed gunslinger - cocky, over-confident and dangerous - who will cause trouble for the sheriff. But it doesn’t happen. There is tension at first between Colorado and Chance, but that’s just the older man testing out the youngster. Chance soon decides that this kid is alright. The second alternative would have been for him to the typical rookie who needs the older man to teach him the ropes. But that doesn’t happen either. Colorado is young but he’s a cool-headed professional. We also suspect that when he is given his deputy’s badge he will clash with Dude, being a threat to the older man. In fact he and Dude get along very well.



While Hawks made some memorable westerns I don’t think he was a western director in the sense that John Ford was. John Ford movies like The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance could only have been westerns. There’s an obsession with the psychology of the frontier and the mythology of the west. Rio Bravo could just as easily have been a war movie, or a movie set in a big city with the heroes as cops. For Hawks the western was a means to an end, a way of telling the stories he liked to tell. For Ford the western was an end in itself.

With a fine script by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, a strong cast and with Hawks’ non-nonsense directing style Rio Bravo is magnificent entertainment.

Reap the Wild Wind (1942)

Hollywood may have seen better directors than Cecil B. DeMille but very few have ever equalled him when it comes to pure entertainment and his 1942 production Reap the Wild Wind is a fine example of DeMille at his best.

In the 1840s, before the railroad boom, the prosperity of the United States was dependent on seaborne trade. This trade faced many hazards, few being more deadly than the reefs around Florida’s Key West. Salvage operators made a lucrative but dangerous living retrieving the cargoes of ships wrecked on these reefs.

Few were as brave and as daring as the beautiful Loxi Claiborne (Paulette Goddard). She inherited the family salvage business on the death of her father. The lack of a man to run the business has been no problem - Loxi is as courageous and as determined as any man. But the ships sailing these seas face a far more insidious threat than the reefs - ship-wreckers.

Some salvage operators are not content to wait for a wreck. These land-borne pirates arrange their own wrecks, bribing greedy ships’ captains and officers to drive their own ships onto the rocks. The most notorious of all are the Cutler brothers, King Cutler (Raymond Massey) and Dan Cutler (Robert Preston).

Their most recent victim was the command of Captain Jack Stuart (John Wayne). His first mate Mathias Widgeon was in the pay of King Cutler. Jack Stuart, a brave and honourable seaman, has lost his ship, and possibly his career. He would have lost his life as well had it not been for Loxi Claiborne.

While Jack recuperates he and Loxi get to know each other and love soon blooms between them. Jack fears that the loss of his ship may deprive him of the one thing he wants more than anything else in the world - command of the Southern Cross, a brand-new steamship. Jack knows that steam is the future, and whoever commands the Southern Cross will find himself in line to take over the Deveraux Line when the aged Commodore Deveraux goes to a better world.  

There is another man with ambitions to run the Deveraux Line - their maritime lawyer Steven Tolliver (Ray Milland). Loxi travels to Charleston, determined to use her feminine wiles to save Jack’s career. She flirts with Tolliver but in her mind she dismisses him as a schemer and a milquetoast. It proves to be the most serious error of judgment of her life.

Jack and Steven find themselves in Key West, uneasy allies in the fight against the ship-wreckers. They are very different men. Jack is a rough diamond while Steven is a suave, charming dandy. They have never liked each other and now they are rivals for Loxi’s affections. Jack’s failure to elise that beneath his foppish exterior Steven Tolliver is a brave and honourable man will prove to be a disastrous error of judgment on his part. And King Cutler has plans for the Southern Cross.

There is romance and adventure aplenty here, but there is much more. There is real human drama and complex characterisation. Loxi, Jack Stuart and Steven Tolliver are all complicated people torn by conflicting emotions. They have great strengths and they have real human weaknesses. Even a relatively minor character like Dan Cutler is more than just a stereotype. Faced with such challenging roles all the main players rise to the occasion admirably. 

John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland and Robert Preston are all playing somewhat larger-than-life characters but in all cases they manage to combine a certain amount of over-acting with surprising subtleties.

Visually it’s a typical DeMille production. It’s spectacular, filmed in Technicolor and with some impressive underwater scenes. 

This is over-the-top melodrama but it’s intelligent and superbly made melodrama. Highly recommended.

Stagecoach (1939)

In 1939 the western had been a staple of Hollywood filmmaking for two decades but it was a genre that was not taken very seriously. Westerns were low-budget potboilers cranked out mainly by Poverty Row studios. John Ford’s Stagecoach changed all that. It ushered in the epic western, westerns made as A-pictures featuring major stars and made by the top talents at the big studios.

It’s worth noting that it was not the only significant western to appear in 1939. Cecil B. DeMoIle's Union Pacific would also adopt an epic approach, and while George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again took a satirical view of the genre it was definitely a major step in the development of the western as something more than just horse operas.



But it was Stagecoach that defined the new style of western. John Ford had discovered two essential ingredients that were to become trademarks of his westerns and major icons of the genre - Monument Valley as the quintessential western location and John Wayne as the quintessential western star.

The plot is simple enough. A stagecoach has to run the gauntlet of hostile Apaches while the nine passengers and crew slowly reveal the depth, or in some cases the lack of depth, of their characters. One of the passengers is the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) and the journey has particular significance for him. He has broken out of prison and when he reaches his destination he will have to confront the three brothers who killed his father and his own brother. Since they’re tough hombres and he’s really just a goodnatured cowboy the probability is that this is for him a journey to his own death. At least the assumption of everyone else is that he hasn’t got a chance.



If you focus on the story then you could easily conclude that Stagecoach is really nothing special. It’s somewhat corny, it’s sentimental, the characters are stock types, the social commentary is heavy-handed and obvious (the social outcasts turn out to be more virtuous than the respectable types). None of that matters. What matters is Ford’s very serious approach to this material. He treats it as the stuff of epic. He gives it a grandeur that makes it work on that level, that forces the viewer to take it as seriously as the director did.

Ford had a good cast to work with and he got the best from them. While the characters may have been stock types that in some ways adds to the epic feel. We don’t expect the heroes of myth to be fully rounded characters. That would get in the way of the myth. And the performances are memorable. There’s a chilling moment when the aristocratic southern gambler played by John Carradine shows that he really does takes his code of chivalry as seriously as he claims to, and while we’re horrified by what he’s about to do it has to be admitted that it forces us to take the character as seriously as he takes himself.



Ford was a Catholic and the theme of redemption is central to the film. And there are three characters in particular need of redemption. There’s the alcoholic doctor (a role that won Thomas Mitchell an Oscar). Secondly there’s the whore, played by Claire Trevor, who manages to persuade us to believe she really is a whore with a heart of gold.

And then there’s the Ringo Kid. This is the role that made John Wayne a star. Prior to this he was regarded as a very lightweight B-western actor. This movie was not just the making of him as a star, but as an actor as well. Ford believed in him and cast him over the strong objections of producer Walter Wanger, and Wayne repaid the director’s faith handsomely. I find myself admiring John Wayne as an actor more and more. In our modern age which regards serious acting as something that should look as tortured and as difficult as possible the quiet authority of Wayne may not seem like real acting but in fact it’s far more effective than the contrived histrionics of today’s stars.



In this film Ford also provided an object lesson in how to shoot an action sequence. The extended chase sequence with the stagecoach being pursued by an Apache war party is a template for just about every similar scene in every subsequent movie but while it’s been copied countless times it’s rarely been surpassed. Ford also provides a lesson in pacing and structure, with character-driven scenes and action scenes in perfect balance. Orson Welles believed that you could learn everything you needed to know about filmmaking from watching Stagecoach and he was probably right.

The first of John Ford’s great westerns, a movie with a huge reputation that lives up to that reputation.