Yuma, Arizona

Yuma has the reputation of being incredibly hot in the summer but on the three days I visited in mid-July 2012, the temperature was 100, 102, and 105 degrees Fahrenheit and even though the humidity was definitely more noticeable, due to the city’s location on the banks of the Colorado River, than in Tucson where I spent most of my time in Arizona during its centennial year (see photo above), the weather was not unbearable.  In fact, I experienced a big thunderstorm one evening that caused flash flood warnings to appear on TV and as cell phone alerts.  So don’t let the weather forecast deter you from visiting what turned out to be a very nice small city.

Situated near the confluence of the Colorado and Gila Rivers, the region was originally inhabited by Native Americans tribes known as the Quechan, or Yuma, from which the present city takes its name.  A primarily agricultural society, they also traded with other tribes to the north and south.  Nowadays, the federally-recognized Quechan have a reservation on the California side of the Colorado River.  The Cocopah is another Native American tribe whose members also live in the Lower Colorado Valley and Mexico.

In 1540, Hernando de Alarcon was the first Spaniard to reach the site of present-day Yuma.  Other Spanish explorers followed and in 1780 a Spanish mission, called La Purisima Concepcion, was founded near Yuma but the native Quechan Indians were poorly treated and in 1781, attacked and killed the European men living at the mission.  Nothing remains of it today but St. Thomas Mission, which was built in 1922, is located on the hill where the original Spanish mission was located (see photos above; on top is a close-up of the mission and below is the mission with the Colorado River in the foreground).

In the 19th century, the strategic and economic importance of the lower Colorado River was recognized.  Products were transported overland from California and when they arrived in Yuma, were shipped up the Colorado River to points north or continued their journey overland to points further east in the United States.  The settlement at Yuma grew as people traveled the Butterfield Overland Mail route and as Forty-Niners on their way to the California gold fields passed through Yuma.  Nowadays, goods are more likely to be transported by train and I saw numerous freight trains, such as the one in the photo above, during my brief stay in Yuma.

Some shops and restaurants on Main Street—which actually was the main street of Yuma in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century--were closed for the summer or because of the recession.  However, there was still plenty to do: The Yuma Art Gallery exhibits the works of local artists, the historic Yuma Theatre hosts performances, and Yuma’s Main Squeeze (see photos at right) is a local winery that offers daily wine tastings. 

The main attractions for people interested in Western history are the Sanguinetti House Museum, the Yuma Territorial Prison, and the Quartermaster’s Depot and each of these will be described in separate blog entries.  While Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry would certainly have appreciated the pleasures Yuma had to offer, they would have definitely wanted to avoid a stay in the prison!

General information about Yuma:
http://www.desertusa.com/Cities/az/az_yuma.html

The Professionals

To appreciate The Professionals, one should watch the three bonus features before viewing the film.  Interviews with some of the cast and crew, along with a biographer and director, provide a perspective to this 1966 movie that one otherwise might not have.  The appreciation of Burt Lancaster by his daughter and a biographer is especially informative.

Starring Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Jack Palance, and Claudia Cardinale, with rousing and often overbearing music by Maurice Jarre, this movie is certainly a star-studded production.  However, instead of being a fast-paced, exciting adventure film, The Professionals was slow-moving and lethargic to me, especially as it runs 117 minutes. 

There were moments of witty banter: “Well, I’ll be damned.”  “Most of us are.”  And: Go to hell.”  “Yes, ma’am; I’m on my way.”  But mostly, there are long stretches of silence as the actors ride through desolate scenery that is liberally studded with red rock formations made for ambushes and rock climbing, punctuated by bursts of action.

Superficially resembling The Strange Case of Conrad Meyer Zulick for the first half of the film, by the end of The Professionals, the plot is more closely related to The Day the Amnesty Came Through.  Vaughn Taylor (the first Desk Clerk in Return to Devil’s Hole and Willis in The Day They Hanged Kid Curry) has a small role as a banker at the beginning of the movie.

High Lonesome

If there were such a genre as Supernatural Western, then High Lonesome, filmed in color and released in 1950, might have qualified if only the acting hadn't been so overwrought.  With John Barrymore as Cooncat (really?!) and Lois Butler and Kristine Miller as sisters, and all overacting in a plot that was often incomprehen- sible, this movie ended up just being silly instead of spooky.

Ostensibly, the young man eventually named Cooncat is cornered on an isolated ranch one night and is suspected of murder.  But is he turned over to the law?  No!  Instead, after being dragged behind a horse to make him see sense, he is kept on as a ranch hand, where Lois Butler falls in love with him. 

Mix in an old family feud; a soon-to-be-married Kristine Miller; the ranch patriarch who insists on finding out the “truth” about Cooncat; Chill Wills (Bixby in The Biggest Game in the West) as the folksy cook who serves to explicate the plot--such as it is; and two ghostly apparitions, one of whom is played by Jack Elam (Boot Coby in Bad Night in Big Butte) who are more real to Cooncat than anyone else, and well, it’s no surprise that some viewers of High Lonesome might be confused. 

The poor quality of the DVD can’t help make up for being filmed on location near Marfa, Texas — there were many times when dirt was evident on the print and when the sound was almost inaudible.  Fortunately, the movie was only 80 minutes long.  It’s pretty hard to believe that Alan LeMay, credited as the writer and director of High Lonesome, was also the writer of The Searchers and The Unforgiven (the Audrey Hepburn version).

The best part of High Lonesome was actually one of the bonus features.  In addition to text-only bios of the major stars and director, there was a full-length half-hour episode of Stories of the Century, which was a mid-1950s TV show about a railroad detective and his female partner hunting down outlaws of the Old West.  The episode on this DVD was from Season 1, #20, called The Wild Bunch of Wyoming, which makes for a nice tie-in to ASJ.  Although not exactly historically true, the episode itself was fun to watch.

Forty Guns

Forty Guns, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Barry Sullivan, is a disjointed, melodramatic mess of a movie.  Revealed by signage on buildings as set in the county seat of Cochise County, that is, Tombstone, Arizona, this 1957 film has so many subplots it’s hard to keep straight what is going on and why.  Mostly, it’s about one man, Griff Bonnell, a Federal marshal who, with his two brothers, rides into town and gets mixed up with Jessica Drummond and the men who ride for her, including her nasty younger brother, Brockie.

The only tie-in to ASJ is actually an interesting one: Griff doesn’t want Chico, his youngest brother, following in his footsteps.  Apparently, although Griff is a peace officer, he also has a reputation as a gunman and is known as “the truest gun in the West.”  Chico doesn’t understand why Griff wants to keep him out of harm’s way by sending him back to the family farm. 

About halfway through Forty Guns, Griff compares himself to a Roman gladiator and tells his brother, “There’s a new era coming…  My kind of making a living is on the way out…  I’m a freak.”  Of course this hints, by about fifteen years, at the scene in Exit from Wickenburg when Kid Curry tells Tommy essentially the same thing.

But that’s as deep as Forty Guns ever gets.  All the gunfights, love stories, natural disasters, double crosses, and familial problems can’t make up for the shallowness of the relationship between the two main characters and as a result, it’s hard to care about what happens to them or any of the other characters.  At 79 minutes, this black-and-white film seemed much longer.

The Sundowners

The Sundowners, an eighty-minute long color film from 1950, seems to include all the requisite elements of a typical mid-twentieth century Western: The lone rancher doing his best to hold out against more established ranchers, with only a younger brother and one neighbor to support his efforts; an ineffectual sheriff in the pay of or under the thumb of the most powerful rancher in the area; a female neighbor who doesn't seem too fond of her wimpy husband but is overly fond of the unattached lone rancher; a dead foreman, cattle rustling, more dead bodies, a secret, and of course a climactic gun battle. 

And into this mix comes a man with a name like that of an outlaw: Kid Wichita, who, for some reason unexplained until near the end of the movie, takes an interest in both the welfare of the lone rancher and the lonely wife.  The rancher welcomes Wichita's assistance and that of his two equally disreputable friends but gradually seems less sure that accepting his help is the right thing to do.  On the other hand, the rancher's younger brother, who at first wanted to kill Wichita--this gunslinger goes by Wichita, not Kid--eventually ends up practically hero-worshipping him.

The leads are Robert Sterling as the rancher, Tom Cloud, and Robert Preston as Kid Wichita, the outlaw.  Chill Wills (Bixby in The Biggest Game in the West) is the rancher's friend, and Jack Elam (Boot Coby in Bad Night in Big Butte) is the unloved husband.  Elam was unrecognizable but in the twenty-odd years between The Sundowners and his role in ASJ, Wills hadn't changed much.

Overwrought and melodramatic at times, The Sundowners was filmed in Texas and the location shots raise this movie slightly above average as a result.  A bonus feature consists of filmographies of the major actors and the director.