The Hired Hand

Peter Fonda, the director, calls this 90-minute long 1971 Universal Pictures film "an incredibly different Western," "a revisionist Western." It sure is different from all the others I have seen! Fonda's audio commentary really helps explain what he was trying to do when filming The Hired Hand and makes it obvious that it is definitely a film of its time.

Fonda stars as Harry and Warren Oates as his partner of seven years, Arch. The movie, set in 1881, opens with an oddly-filmed scene along the Rio Grande in New Mexico (the movie was filmed on location). Somewhere along the way, they have picked up Dan, played by Robert Pratt (Billy in Night of the Red Dog); he wants to see California and the Pacific Ocean and since the two older drifters have nothing better to do, they go as well.

However, when they stop at a town in the desert to quench their thirst and see to their horses, bad things happen and plans change. Harry, wearing a slightly fancier sheepskin jacket than Kid, goes "home" to the wife and child he abandoned years earlier, and Arch accompanies him. The rest of The Hired Hand is about the relationship between Harry and his wife, Hannah, played by Verna Bloom, and the relationship between Harry and Arch.

The Hired Hand seems almost like it was filmed in slow motion: Each scene takes its time unfolding and there is a minimum of talking. There are lots of close-ups of faces, lots of scenes filmed in silhouette, and lots of sunsets which are filmed beautifully. There are also many places where scenes are slowly dissolved into each other and the audience sees the two images superimposed, a technique that becomes tedious as the movie drags on. The Hired Hand seems more like a sequence of separate scenes strung together than a film with a cohesive plot, until the violent end when it becomes obvious why it was necessary to have a partner in the Old West who would always watch your back.

Because there were no opening credits for The Hired Hand, it wasn't until the end when the closing credits appeared that I realized Severn Darden (Alan Harlingen and his father, Oscar, in Never Trust an Honest Man) was in this movie. He plays a very bad guy and although I hadn't recognized him at first--I don't think I've ever seen him in anything else--once I knew who his character was, the resemblance was obvious. He looks thinner here, even though his appearance in ASJ was the same year, but his voice is very similar. Ann Doran (Mrs. Simpson in Witness to a Lynching) has a small part as a middle-aged busybody who needles Hannah about her husband.

The War Wagon

So many scenes and lines of dialog in The War Wagon are reminiscent of ASJ episodes that, at times, I felt I was watching a pastiche of the TV show. This movie, based on the book Badman by Clair Huffaker, was directed by Burt Kennedy. It was filmed in 1967, runs 101 minutes and was produced by Universal Studios. Set in and around Emmett, New Mexico, the movie was actually filmed in Durango, Mexico.

Starring John Wayne as Taw Jackson and Kirk Douglas as Lomax, The War Wagon is the quintessential buddy movie. As one character says to another, "A beautiful thing to see--friendship." Taw is a rancher framed for a crime and sent to prison so a rival could get control of the gold on his land. He has many attributes of Hannibal Heyes.

 Lomax is a gunfighter with scruples who ultimately sides with Taw in his quest to recover the gold that was stolen from him. Lomax resembles Kid Curry in many ways but there is one important difference: Lomax is the safe-cracker in this partnership. There is a lot of great banter between these two characters. Robert Walker, Jr. plays Billy Hyatt, an explosives expert whose character reminds me of Kyle.

Two actors who had multiple guest starring roles on ASJ appeared in The War Wagon. Keenan Wynn (Charlie Utley in Stagecoach Seven; Horace Wingate in Dreadful Sorry, Clementine; Artie Gorman in What Happened at the XST?) played a grumpy old codger who becomes part of the gang Taw assembles. He is immediately recognizable and even wears red underwear like he did on ASJ.
Joanna Barnes (Janet in How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson and Mrs. Hanley in Miracle at Santa Marta) is Lola, a card dealer in a saloon; appearing about one hour into the movie, she looks a lot softer here than in ASJ.

Two other actors who appeared on ASJ also are in The War Wagon: Boyd "Red" Morgan (Augie Helms in The Fifth Victim) and Hal Needham in two uncredited roles (one of the Devil's Hole Gang members in Wrong Train to Brimstone and Duke in The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone).

ASJ episodes the movie reminded me of are, listed sequentially as the plot of The War Wagon develops: The Bounty Hunter; Six Strangers at Apache Springs; The Mcreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone; The McCreedy Bust; How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson; Wrong Train to Brimstone; The Long Chase. Sometimes it is an entire scene and sometimes it is just a line or two that makes the connection for me. In one instance, it is a prop--a safe that is cracked, using nitro by the way, has the name "Pierce Mining Company" on it. Could this be the precursor to the Pierce & Hamilton line of safes? The ending of The War Wagon is very ASJ-like as well.

There are three bonus features and all are worth watching. The first one is production notes about the making of The War Wagon. It includes a very interesting fact about Keenan Wynn. The second bonus feature gives biographies of John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Kennedy. I learned that Kirk Douglas attended St. Lawrence University, just like Pete Duel! A theatrical trailer for the movie is the last bonus feature and it includes an oral description of the film by John Wayne, which is pretty interesting.

Watch The War Wagon and draw your own conclusion as to whether it had any influence on the television show that was produced by the same studio only a few years later!

Escort West

If Last of the Mohicans were transported about one hundred years into the future, it might look like Escort West. This 1959 black and white film stars Victor Mature as Ben Lassiter, an ex-Confederate soldier traveling with his daughter in 1865 who, because his wife/her mother has died, are going to Oregon to live with the girl’s aunt.

At a waystation, they encounter two sisters, who do not get along, and an Army detail that is escorting them to California, where one sister is going to be married. Naturally, the Army soldiers and the sisters, who are from Boston, take an instant dislike to the “rebel,” as they call him.

Several guest stars on ASJ were in Escort West. Noah Beery (the sheriff in Something to Get Hung About) and Slim Pickens (Mike the bartender in Exit from Wickenburg and three sheriffs in The Man Who Murdered Himself, The Day They Hanged Kid Curry, The Strange Fate of Conrad Meyer Zulick) play two of the soldiers. Slim Pickens was easily recognized, although his voice didn’t have as pronounced a twang as it did in ASJ. Noah Beery was also recognizable, albeit not as easily.

X Brands (one of the poker players in The Biggest Game in the West and Roberts in McGuffin) plays a renegade Modoc Indian leader, and underneath all the makeup and a wig, I couldn’t identify him at all. Leo Gordon (Ebenezer in Smiler with a Gun) was also one of the soldiers and I couldn’t identify him, either; additionally, he is credited as one of the three writers of the film.

When Lassiter discovers the women after their party has been attacked by Indians, he ends up taking on the responsibility of escorting the two sisters on their journey. An injured African-American soldier tells them about an Army payroll they were carrying and after locating it, together they all resume their trek west. It was not clear to me why the Army had split up but for some reason they did and Escort West cuts back and forth between Lassiter and his group and the soldiers, who are trapped by the Indians in a canyon.

Many adventures ensue before they all finally reunite. There is lots of action, some suspense, a little romance, and betrayal as the movie reaches its climax. There is also a scene with a rattlesnake, which is even sillier than the scene in High Lonesome Country when Kid wrestles with the cougar. Other than that, at 75 minutes, Escort West was an enjoyable diversion.

Young Billy Young

This 1969 movie, directed by Burt Kennedy, had a lot of scenes that reminded me of ASJ episodes. But throughout the course of its 89 minutes, the music in Young Billy Young kept me from enjoying it as much as I might have otherwise as it was very jarring, very out of context--very 1960s in tone.

The opening scenes of a train making its way through the West reminded me of all the train scenes in ASJ that were used to show the passage of time and the movement of characters from one place to another. The train passes through what is apparently supposed to be a Spanish-speaking region, and for quite a while there is no dialog at all in the movie; when people do finally start talking, it's in Spanish. Suddenly, a group of men are lined up against the wall of a church and another group of men who look like soldiers executes them, in an obvious reminder of Kid's daydream or, rather, nightmare, in Miracle at Santa Marta.

Another early scene occurs in a saloon, where the title character, played by Robert Walker, gets into a gunfight and uses his fast draw to his advantage, reminding me of Kid in Exit from Wickenburg. But unlike Kid, Billy has no evident compunction about killing people. He escapes and encounters Ben Kane in the desert, played by Robert Mitchum. Kane is a lawman who travels around the West cleaning up lawless towns; he has a secret which is revealed in the second half of Young Billy Young.

They meet up with Paul Fix (Clarence in Night of the Red Dog), who plays a stagecoach driver and has an important part at the end of the movie. Angie Dickinson also stars in the film. There is a climactic gunfight that reminded me of Stagecoach Seven: two men inside a small building trying to hold off a much larger group that was shooting at them.

I think the plot is supposed to be serious but there are many slapstick and sort of silly moments in it, which lessened its impact. There were long periods without dialog, but they seemed to go on interminably instead of add to the suspense. Young Billy Young was filmed at Old Tucson Studios and, having been there, I recognized the location and some of the sets, which made it difficult for me to accept that the movie was set mostly in a lawless place called Lordsburg.

Plus, an early scene in the film occurs in Bisbee but it didn't at all resemble the Bisbee I have visited. However, the scenery was beautiful--lots of scenes in the desert filled with saguaro and ringed by mountains. Although several veterans of Westerns were associated with Young Billy Young, the movie just didn't resonate with me.

Medicine in the Old West

If you overindulged during the holidays and suffered from an upset stomach, perhaps you chewed some mint leaves or drank some mint tea to feel better. If so, you were practicing a health cure that was common in the 19th century. This folk custom, according to Medicine in the Old West: A History, 1850 – 1900, by Jeremy Agnew, was the origin of having an after-dinner mint.

This 252-page book, published in 2010 (ISBN 978-0-7864-4623-0) by McFarland, is both an excellent resource about medical care in the latter half of the nineteenth century and a fascinating look at how people in various walks of life managed to survive during that time period. Considering the general lack of knowledge about pathogens, sanitation, hygiene, and diet, it’s a wonder that so many people lived to adulthood. Of course, they didn’t live nearly as long as we do now—in 1880, life expectancy for men and women was around 40 years old.

There are twelve chapters in Medicine in the Old West. After providing a general introduction to medical beliefs, the training of physicians, and general living conditions experienced by various groups of people living on the American frontier in the first three chapters, the author then spends the next two chapters describing numerous “Common Diseases” such as cholera, dysentery, malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis, and others, and “Unmentionable Diseases,” which were sexually-transmitted diseases. Information about each disease is presented clearly and includes how they were treated. One chapter at the end of the book describes dentistry and ophthalmology in the Old West.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter in Medicine in the Old West is Chapter 6, entitled “Healing with Drugs.” Purging the bowels was a common treatment as doing so was thought to purify the body. As Agnew writes, “…neglect of the bowels was thought to send a person down the pathway to appalling disease.” (p. 98). Plummer’s pills, a mixture of jalop, antimony, and colomel, was one very powerful laxative. Exit from Wickenburg takes on a whole new meaning when I think of Jim Plummer now!

Later chapters in the book include information on folk remedies, patent medicines, and Native American healing practices. The heyday of medicine shows was from 1870 - 1920, and Dr. Snively and his daughter Cybele in Witness to a Lynching are archetypes of the pitchman, who was "...a distinguished older-looking man dressed in a frock coat and top hat..." who sometimes "...conferred the title of 'Doctor' on himself..." (p. 193), and the entertainer who sang and danced and then sold the show's product.

Chapter 8, "From Sawbones to Surgeons," deals with common injuries and how they were treated. According to Medicine in the Old West, infection almost always occurred after surgery, due to the fact that surgical tools were not sterilized before use and because doctors did not understand how infection could be prevented until the 1870s and 1880s and even then, many did not take preventive measures when they operated on patients. One section in this chapter describes the use of anesthetics. Four and a half pages are devoted to describing how gunshots and arrow wounds were treated. As in other parts of this book, Agnew intersperses medical information with historical accounts of people who were shot and the doctors who treated them, often quoting from primary sources; these eyewitness descriptions offer readers a sense of how difficult life really was at that time. After reading this part of the book, it is obvious that Heyes was exceptionally lucky in The Fifth Victim.

Another chapter in Medicine in the Old West describes several different job occupations and the hazards that arose from that work. Working in a mine, in a mill, and on the railroad are extensively covered. The section on dynamite (pgs. 160 – 165) is very revealing: Kyle Murtree had to be very brave and not nearly as, well, stupid, as he is often made out to be; otherwise, there is no way he would have survived so long using such a dangerous explosive.

A glossary; two appendices: a list of drugs commonly used between 1850 - 1900, and a description of what a doctor's bag typically contained; along with endnotes, an extensive bibliography, and an index round out Medicine in the Old West.

Contributing a beneficial counterpoint to how gunfights and illness are portrayed in movie Westerns and TV shows, and as an essential reference for writers of Western fiction, Medicine in the Old West: A History, 1850 – 1900 is a must-read for anyone interested in the reality of medical care during this time period.

Publisher's website for the book:
https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/medicine-in-the-old-west/