Reeling Backward: "Angel and the Badman" (1947)

"Angel and the Badman" is regarded as one of the signature films in the John Wayne library, but it doesn't deserve to be.

It's a rather stiff and unoriginal Western, filled out with an insipid female lead and clichéd supporting cast, containing zero surprises in the plot. Wayne plays Quirt Evans, a legendary bandit who tries to go straight after he's taken in, healed and befriended by a family of Quakers. Of course, he falls in love with the daughter, Penelope (Gail Russell), setting off a whole lot of 'am-I-good-enough' perambulations.

The villains have generic cowboy names, Laredo (Bruce Cabot) and Hondo (Louis Faust), and they came straight off the Central Casting Express. We're never even really sure what their conflict with Quirt is about -- something to do with claiming a piece of land Laredo wanted. Later, Quirt and a pal rustle some cattle that Laredo & Co. had just rustled, setting up the final showdown where Quirt must choose between resorting to violence or the love of a good woman.

Penny is so pure, so devoted to Quirt and such a straightforward depiction of the 1940s feminine ideal that she's a total bore. To wit: I have no more words to spare for her.

It's your typical John Wayne flick: He's taller than everybody else, louder than everybody, all the women are crazy for him, all the men feel a combination of hate and envy, wanting to either kill him or befriend him. He takes guff from no man, though he'll knuckle under to an appropriately maternal figure if there's flapjacks and sausage in the offing.

Wayne is the epitome of the old saw about the difference between a movie star and an actor: He always plays himself. That's fine, but watching the movie for the first time, I felt like I'd already seen it a hundredfold.

John Halloran plays the Quaker dad, Mr. Worth, who sort of reminded me of a smaller, gentler version of Rory McCann, the actor who plays The Hound in the "Game of Thrones" series. Irene Rich is Mother Worth, Stephen Grant plays the scrappy younger brother whose name (of course!) is Johnny.

Olin Howland plays the nervous-nelly telegraph operator, who brags about being a close friend of Quirt's despite having just met him, which of course brings the black hats around for a visit. Tom Powers portrays Dr. Mangram, the atheist doctor who comes by to tend to Quirt and spare a little philosophy with Mrs. Worth. He advises her to give Quirt the boot, and of course she ignores him.

Paul Hurst plays Frederick Carson, the local meanie farmer who's damned up the river, depriving the Quakers of water to irrigate their crops. A quick visit from Quirt not only rectifies that situation, but the cantankerous oldster even befriends Penny's parents. Soon they're exchanging pleasantries and poultices.

These are all fine veteran performers, but the script by James Edward Grant, who also directed the film, just doesn't give them anything special or interesting to do. We know what each character's going to do as soon as they're introduced, and it's just a matter of waiting for them to get around to it.

Grant was a busy screenwriter who worked on a lot of John Wayne movies, including "The Alamo" and "McLintock!" "Angel" was his first stint as a director, and shows his lack of visual flair or ability to elicit strong performances from his cast. He only directed one other film, 1954's "Ring of Fear."

There's one thing worth a quick comment: much has been made of who wears the black hat and the white hat in Westerns. Quirt literally wears both, exchanging a big white 10-galloner from the first part of the movie for its black counterpart in the last act. This happens during a typical saloon brawl, and after being thrown out the door (several times), Quirt is tossed the black hat in lieu of his own, and he acquiesces to the change.

A better movie would have made more of this moment, as Quirt -- who has temporarily wavered on his commitment to a kinder, gentler life -- fumbles in confusion over what his true role is.

Really, the only thing I liked about this movie was Harry Carey as the aged local marshal with the humdinger of the name, Wistful McClintock.

(I wonder if Grant repurposed the moniker, slightly varied, 16 years later for "McLintock!", a script Wayne commissioned from him.)

Carey was as big a cowboy superstar in the silent era as John Wayne was a generation later, so it's nice to see the two play in a movie together. Almost 70, this was one of the last films he made, passing away a few months after production wrapped.

His Wistful is a cagey old coot, sharp with the tongue and still deadeye with the long gun. He knows Quirt's reputation, recognizes that he's trying to make a fresh start, and just doesn't place any faith that it'll stick. He refuses to grant Quirt the benefit of the doubt, but at least acknowledges its possibility.

He shows up every now and then to interrogate Quirt about his doings, and the pair develop as much mutual respect as hunter and hunted can. Wistful even promises to pay Quirt the honor of using a brand-new rope when he comes to hang him.

"Angel and the Badman" is worth a look-see, if only to witness the hand-off from one ersatz cowboy legend to another.

Reeling Backward: "Hondo" 1953)

"Hondo" isn't one of John Wayne's best Westerns, but it diverges in a few notable ways from the rest of his six-shooter work. In 1953 Wayne had the sort of clout that he could hand-pick his projects and directors, and this film was made through his own production company.

"Hondo" underwent a frame-by-frame restoration a few years ago, and is being released on Blu-ray tomorrow, June 5, in its first-ever widescreen presentation on video. Click the link below to find out more -- it also comes with a nice collection of extras.

Wayne & Co. found a short story by a then largely unknown Western writer, Louis L'Amour, and turned it into a screenplay stamped with Wayne's signature laconic style. James Edward Grant, a Wayne favorite, handled the script, a lean, atmospheric exercise coming in at a mere 84 minutes.

They used 3-D technology to film it, with some difficulty, and the film did relatively well at the box office. Interestingly, L'Amour penned a novelization of the movie that became a best seller, and did much to boost his career writing novels. Certainly, Hollywood took notice of him, with dozens of subsequent adaptations of his work.

But the most consequential thing about "Hondo" to me is that it's essentially a romantic drama that wears the dusty, fringed clothes of a Western. There are plenty of gunfights and chases -- using the all-too-popular 3-D technique of having stuff fly at the camera. But the heart of the story is about love and loyalty.

Geraldine Page, a bona fide Broadway star who used this movie to segue into a very successful film career, plays a prairie wife who falls in love with Honda Lane, a prototypical Wayne protagonist in many respects -- a hard, lonely man of action who lives by his own stubbornly independent credo.

Hondo's intro is pure Wayne myth-making. He stumbles in out of the desert, parched and horseless, bearing only a Winchester rifle, pistol, ammo belt and scruffy mongrel named Sam in tow. Sam is his companion but not his servant, and does what he likes, which is how  Hondo prefers it. His motto is to let other people do what they want to do, even if he knows it to be foolish or wrong, as this is the same courtesy he expects others to extend to himself.

Mrs. Lowe -- her name is credited as Angie, though I don't believe we ever hear her called that -- is a stubborn ranch wife, overseeing her rambunctious 6-year-old Johnny (Lee Aker). She repeatedly insists to Hondo that her husband is rounding up cattle and shortly to return, but they both know this to be a lie.

This have a confrontation where they make their feelings for each other plain. It includes Lowe making the extraordinary statement (for a Hollywood film in 1953) that she knows she's a homely woman. Hondo does not refuse this point, only stating that her inner qualities of steadfastness make her more appealing than any superficial traits.

Page is not of course anything in the same galaxy as homely, but director John Farrow (who won an Oscar for his screenplay of "Around the World in 80 Days") deliberately shoots her in a way to play up a dowdy sort of plainness.

Page, an early devotee of Method acting, does a yeoman's job with her part, which as written isn't terribly sophisticated. Her reactions and off-kilter line readings give her performance a showy sort of distinctiveness. It isn't a particularly authentic portrayal of  a 19th century ranch wife, but it does stand out from the drab sort womenfolk that generally populate these sorts of movies. Page received the first of eight Academy Award nominations for her turn.

(I should also note that L'Amour also received a nomination for best motion picture story, but L'Amour and the film's producers asked that it be withdrawn since it was based on a story that first appeared in a magazine, and the Academy complied. I'm not sure if there's any other occurrence like that in Oscar history.)

Frequent Wayne sidekick Ward Bond is around, playing a cantankerous ally named Buffalo Baker. James Arness, the future "Gunsmoke" star, has a small role as a Hondo antagonist who later saves his life, and is given Hondo's prize rifle as a reward. They have a brief fistfight, which is noteworthy for the fact that the looming 6-foot-7-inch Arness was one of the few actors who could make the 6'4" Wayne seem less intimidating.

"Hondo" has also been praised for a relatively progressive view of American Indians. Vittorio, the Apache chief (played by an Australian, Michael Pate, alas), is certainly fierce and bloodthirsty. But he has good cause -- Hondo himself notes that it's the whites who broke the treaty, not the Indians. Vittorio tells Mrs. Lowe that all his sons were killed by white raiders, yet he spares her and Johnny because he deems the young boy a brave little warrior for defending his mother from them.

Hondo himself is part Indian, living among the Apache for five years, took a squaw, and openly admires their ideals -- especially their hatred of lying. In the film's last moments, after the Apache have been driven off from their attack on settlers and the cavalry, Hondo notes that it's an end of a way of life, and a good one at that.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Comancheros" (1961)

I don't regard "The Comancheros" as an exceptional Western. Its production values are exquisite -- gorgeous Deluxe color Cinemascope photography by William H. Clothier, a jaunty and memorable score by Elmer Bernstein, wonderfully detailed sets and costumes, and the steady hand and keen eye of director Michael Curtiz.

But in terms of plot and themes, it's largely a muddle. John Wayne plays Jake Cutter, a Texas Ranger who spends much of the movie undercover posing as a gunrunner. He apprehends Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), a Louisiana gambler wanted for murder after he won a duel against the son of a wealthy New Orleans family. They part ways, reconnect, evolve from adversaries to allies, and eventually team up to take down the Comancheros -- white and Hispanic men who have been supplying the Comanche Indians with rifles and whiskey.

Oh, and there's a short-shrifted romance, too.

The story seems to meander with the tumbleweeds, following one course for awhile until it grows boring or reaches a dead end, and then picks up a breeze and heads the other way.

What I did find notable about the film is Wayne's character and performance. Despite a life of pain, including having his family killed, Cutter has an upbeat demeanor, always quick with a smile and a joke. He treats even his enemies with a friendly regard and a measure of respect. I can't remember another movie in which Wayne's eye twinkled so brightly and often.

This is at odds with the Duke's star persona, which always had a streak of orneriness running through. Sometimes meanness dominated the character, as with Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers," and sometimes it was barely discernible, like the Ringo Kid from "Stagecoach." Most of the time, though, Wayne's cussedness lay just beneath the surface, like the hard iron of a Colt Peacemaker inside a comfortably worn leather holster.

There's really only one moment in "The Comancheros" when Cutter loses his temper, and that's in his confrontation with Comanchero Tully Crow. Cutter, posing as gunrunner Ed McBain -- complete with foppish grey top hat -- rendezvous with Crow and cuts a deal to sell guns to the Comanche. They get drunk to celebrate, wind down with steak dinners and a game of cards, and get into an argument about cheating.

What's memorable about this scene is how Wayne's character repeatedly and deliberately ignores the other man's threats and insults, and only resorts to violence when Crow draws on him. Most of Wayne's hombres would have thrown done at the first hint of disrespect.

Crow is played by Lee Marvin in a deliciously vicious, brief performance made all the more memorable by the fact that Crow only has half a scalp -- the other having been taken by the Comanche before he gained their trust and began bartering with them. Curtiz aims the camera leeringly at Crow's raw, bizarre wound -- a freakshow counterpoint to the man's even more repulsive personality.

Speaking of Curtiz, "The Comancheros" was his last film. He died shortly after its completion, and in fact he did not actually finish filming. His health forced him to drop out, and Wayne himself completed production in the director's chair ... though he refused an onscreen credit for co-directing.

Curtiz' name is generally not mentioned when lists of the great Golden Age directors are bandied about, but he deserves to be. Because he was largely a journeyman filmmaker, who took whatever jobs the studio assigned him or (later) he could find, most historians and critics regard him merely as a capable gun-for-hire who was lucky enough to find himself attached to good projects.

Bollocks. One does not acquire this sort of astonishing filmography -- "Casablanca," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Mildred Pierce," "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," to name just a few -- through happenstance. The very fact that he did not have a distinctive style is what made him great: Curtiz adapted his artistry to the material, rather than forcing his vision on a picture like a Hitchcock or Ford would have.

Stuart Whitman had an interesting career. Though he was never quite a star, he worked steadily in film and television for nearly 60 years, until a self-imposed retirement starting about a decade ago. He's still with us, and contributed to a fantastic new Blu-ray edition of "The Comancheros" to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Ina Balin plays Pilar Graile, daughter of the head of the Comancheros. In the grand Hollywood tradition of Caucasian actors assigned to ethnic roles, Balin was a Jewess from Brooklyn playing a Hispanic woman. Pilar is interesting for her unbending self-confidence, pursuing a romance with Regret -- but only if she can maintain the upper hand.

Nehemiah Persoff has a steely turn as her father, a crippled man who nonetheless rules the Comancheros with the absolute power of a patriarch. (Persoff was also Jewish, so I guess at least there was a twisted consistency.) Even Cutter acknowledges that father Graile must have been "a man to step aside from" when he was young and whole.

The plot seems to have its own, unfathomable rhythm. The screenplay by Clair Huffaker and James Edward Grant is based on the novel by Paul Wellman. Cutter's pressing duty ricochets back and forth between apprehending Regret and tracking the source of the Comanche's guns. They end up in the Comanchero village for the final showdown with the Rangers almost by happenstance.

Speaking of guns, despite being set in the 1840s, the rifles depicted in the movie are lever-action Winchesters not available until after the Civil War. Similarly, the revolvers are not the clumsy cap-and-ball weapons of that era but the more advanced cartridge pistols that were not invented until 30 years later.

Usually, Hollywood would have just rejiggered the period for the sake of expediency. But the Comanche tribes were relegated to reservations by the 1850s, and the Comancheros quickly faded away without their best trading customer.

"The Comancheros" is not a particularly good example of the classic Western, but I found it an engaging movie to see and think about. Some movies are like that -- better when considered than watched.

3 stars out of four