Vera Cruz

If the word “frenemy” had been around in the late 1860s, it would have certainly described the relationship between Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster), an outlaw, and Ben Trane (Gary Cooper), an ex-Confederate Army colonel.  When they first meet each other in Mexico at the beginning of the movie, Erin and Trane engage in some horse trading but, unlike the scene in Wrong Train to Brimstone, the outcome in Vera Cruz is rather different and it nicely sets the tone for the rest of the film.  Erin has a gang of men working for him, one of whom, Tex, is played by Jack Elam (Boot Coby in Bad Night in Big Butte).

In Vera Cruz, Cooper and Lancaster play two Americans who take sides during Benito Juarez's uprising against Emperor Maximilian—and note the use of the plural "sides."  Caesar Romero (Senor Armendariz in The McCreedy Bust, The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone, and The McCreedy Feud) plays a noble in the service of Emperor Maximilian and it was very interesting to see him portray a Frenchman. 

He is all dolled up in military finery; his wife, a countess, wants to return to Paris so, naturally, he hires a group of misfit Americans who have demonstrated their prowess with rifles to accompany her and her large retinue to the coast, where she will embark on a ship at the port of Vera Cruz.  Of course, all sorts of twists and turns and treachery occur before they reach their goal.

Filmed completely in Mexico, including, amazingly, a scene at Teotihuacan, this 1954 movie is jam-packed with action, which I occasionally found difficult to follow as it did not always make sense to me.  The DVD I watched was grainy but that did not detract significantly from my enjoyment of the movie. 

The central plot of Vera Cruz can be likened to the main plot of The Girl in Boxcar #3, although the outcome is not exactly the same.  Be sure to watch the melodramatic theatrical trailer after watching the film as it is quite amusing.

A Study in Colors

It is commonly believed that the TV show Alias Smith and Jones was created as a direct result of the success of the blockbuster movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Both productions featured two winsome young men as anti-heroes, one blond and the other dark-haired.  They were partners; one man was a gunhand, the other the brains of the outfit.

But what if ASJ was not derived from that popular 1969 movie but from much earlier source material?  What if ASJ’s ancestry was Sherlock Holmes and John Watson instead?  Having become enamored of the recent BBC Sherlock TV series, I began to read Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and noticed several similarities between Homes and Watson and Heyes and Curry.

Aside from the obvious fact that their surnames begin in "H," both Sherlock Holmes and Hannibal Heyes are keen observers of the human condition and are master manipulators.  Heyes as a high-stakes poker player and leader of the Devil’s Hole Gang and Holmes as the world’s only consulting detective who has no qualms about using people to achieve his often opaque ends.  Holmes solves crimes no one else—certainly not the police—can solve (A Study in Pink and The Sign of Four).  Heyes, a self-proclaimed genius, commits robberies that no one else ever attempted, as witness his success at opening the Pierce & Hamilton ’78 safe (How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson).  Heyes also makes the cognitive connection, after reading Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, that fingerprints can determine who killed Mr. Henderson (Something to Get Hung About). 

In that respect, he very much resembles Sherlock Holmes, who also sees things dull, ordinary people miss.  Neither has much respect for the law although both do have one friend in law enforcement: Detective Inspector Lestrade for Holmes and Sheriff Lom Trevors for Heyes.  Also, both men are fastidious in their eating habits; food does not seem to be very important to either of them.  In terms of clothing, Sherlock Holmes, as played by Benedict Cumberbatch, wears a blue scarf and Hannibal Heyes, as played by Pete Duel, wears a blue bandana.  In one respect, though, the men are complete opposites: Sherlock Holmes can go days without speaking (A Study in Scarlet/Pink) but Hannibal Heyes often seems never to shut up (The Bounty Hunter).

Kid Curry and John Watson have a lot in common, too.  Both are thoroughly familiar with guns and are superb shots (Curry in Exit from Wickenburg and Smiler with a Gun, Watson in A Study in Pink and The Hounds of Baskerville).  Watson watches out for Holmes and has his back; Curry does the same for Heyes.  Neither man is stupid but each sometimes has a hard time keeping up with the intellectual leaps of their partner. 

Both Curry and Watson are willing to call their partners out when they disapprove of something they've done: Curry questions Heyes’ logic, a trait Heyes is proud of (The Reformation of Harry Briscoe) and Watson tells Holmes he’s an idiot (A Study in Pink) and a dick (The Reichenbach Fall).  Both Curry and Watson like the ladies.  Curry is always helping the damsels in distress, often to Heyes’ displeasure, and Watson has a series of girlfriends, much to Holmes’ annoyance.  Also, Curry wears a sheepskin coat with wool lapels and Watson wears a parka with fur trim around the hood.  One difference between Curry and Holmes, however, is that Curry is younger than Heyes whereas Watson is older than Holmes.

Hannibal Heyes and Jedediah “Kid” Curry have so many similarities with Sherlock Holmes and John Watson—as the characters are portrayed in both the original stories and the 2010 BBC TV reboot—that it seems more than just a coincidence.  Alias Smith and Jones is certainly in excellent company if it were indeed based on such an iconic literary duo as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Aces and Eights

I can see why Tim McCoy was a big star in his day.  Despite the poor audio and picture quality, his charisma shines through Aces and Eights.  He plays Gentleman Tim Madigan, a professional gambler.  His lucky poker hand is the same as the one that allegedly was being played by Wild Bill Hickock, which is how the movie opens, although it is clear that part of the scene was cut.  But McCoy’s luck runs out in Nevada when he catches a card sharp cheating and the man later ends up dead.

Madigan rides with a sidekick who, early in Aces and Eights, draws his gun when his partner is accused of cheating; naturally the scene in the beginning of Exit from Wickenburg where Curry does the same thing sprang to mind.  Madigan, like Heyes, has a wry sense of humor: “Well, when there’s five aces on the table and you’re dealing…”

After the encounter with the card sharp, the remainder of this 1936 black-and-white movie deals with how Madigan clears his name.  He gets involved with a Mexican family and Don Hernandez, the patriarch, wears a costume that reminds me of Senor Armendariz.  The plot of Aces and Eights is actually rather good and it is a shame there is so much background static that the dialog is difficult to make out.

At only 62 minutes long, Aces and Eights would work very well as an episode of a TV series.  Oh wait!  It did become a TV series decades later: Maverick, a Roy Huggins show produced by Universal.  Could this movie have been an ancestor of Alias Smith and Jones???

A bonus for me was hearing the phrase “All bets are off!” uttered by a sheriff watching a poker game.  Aces and Eights was the first time I had ever heard the phrase in what I assume was its original context and that was a lot of fun.

Yuma: The Quartermaster Depot

The Quartermaster Depot in Yuma, which also doubles as the Yuma Visitors Center, is a lovely state historic park located near the California border on the Colorado River (see photo at right).  A large map in the Visitors Center explains that “Settlement  of the Southwest hinged upon the Army’s ability to protect American lives and property during the frequent Indian conflicts. 

But, the effectiveness of the soldiers was only as great as the Army’s ability to keep outposts supplied.  The Quartermaster Depot at Yuma was established in 1864 as the primary supply terminal for posts in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas."

Of course, this being the nineteenth century, horses were an important part of Army life and there was a large corral on the grounds for them (see photo at right).  Mules were also stabled here.  In 1906, the Bureau of Reclamation, part of the United States Department of the Interior, took over this building and added an addition to it. 

Nowadays, what one sees when visiting here is a history of the Bureau’s efforts to siphon water from the Colorado River to the surrounding land in Arizona and California.  The purpose was to provide water for irrigation and, in fact, the Yuma region produces 90% of the United States’ yearly lettuce crop.  A canal several yards from the corral building is visible through a fence and apparently is part of the Colorado River Siphon.

The house where the commanding officer of the Yuma Quartermaster Depot and his family lived was built by George Alonzo Johnson in 1959.  It is thought to be the oldest home still extant that was built of adobe in Arizona by an Anglo.  Each room in the house exhibits the furniture and accoutrements of the time period when Army officers resided there.  There is a glass barrier prevents visitors from touching the contents in any of the rooms, though, which accounts for the glare and shadows in the photos accompanying this blog entry. 

And, had there been cross-ventilation, the temperature inside the building would undoubtedly have been somewhat cooler but as it was, it was extremely hot and uncomfortable.  I hope for the sake of the people who actually lived there, especially since they wore much heavier clothes than we do nowadays, that they found it more tolerable.  The master bedroom room (see partial view in photo above, top) was adjacent to the children’s bedroom and they occupied one side of the house; on the other, connected by a hallway, lay the dining room and parlor (see partial view in second photo above; i.e. fourth from top of screen).  The kitchen and servant’s quarters were in a separate building only a few feet away.  The “servant” was usually a soldier from the post and a sign explained performing this duty earned him additional pay and his own room to sleep in.   

In 1872, the Army constructed a building that the Quartermaster could use as his office (see photo at right).  It was the last building that the Army built on the grounds.  It currently has displays about Army uniforms and their insignia, and about its use from 1875 to 1891 by the Signal Corps as a telegraph office and weather station (see photo at right of the desk where the telegraph equipment was) until the Army left in 1883.  When the Weather Service was formed as an independent agency in 1891, separate from the Army, civilians maintained the weather station on the grounds through 1949.

Six months’ worth of supplies was always kept at the Yuma Quartermaster Depot.  They were stored in a large building (see photo below) which is now a transportation museum.  Inside the huge, barn-like structure are numerous vehicles ranging from an 1846 wagon used by the Mormon Battalion  to dump wagons from the late nineteenth century used in the construction of the Yuma Territorial Prison and for harvesting grain to an Army escort wagon, to early twentieth-century combustion-engine harvesters and cars modified as wagons for business purposes.  A small room off the central room showcases the importance of steamboat travel in the area, for both business and pleasure, and contains maps, a hand cart for transporting goods, and a model of the Cocopah steamboat.

Making a circuit of the lovely, well-manicured grounds of the Yuma Quartermaster Depot and exploring all the buildings should take about two hours.  There are picnic tables set up by the canal and in a cooler season would be a very nice place to relax.  The Visitors Center has plenty of free brochures about the area as well as a gift shop; it is air-conditioned, which provided pleasant relief from the stuffy interiors of the other buildings on the premises.

If Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry did take that ride down the Colorado River, as Heyes suggested at the end of Six Strangers in Apache Springs, maybe they transferred to a steamboat and made it all the way to Yuma.  If they did, they might have ended up at the Quartermaster Depot looking for work at the conclusion of their journey.

Website for the Quartermaster Depot State Historic Park:
http://azstateparks.com/parks/YUQU/index.html

The Yuma Territorial Prison

Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry were fortunate they didn’t face the prospect of serving twenty years in the Yuma Territorial Prison.  Known as the “Hell Hole” by the inmates, the prison opened in 1876 and closed in 1909 when overcrowding became too severe, so it was in operation at almost the same time as the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, which I described in a blog entry in July 2011. 
 

Built by convicts on a hill just outside the city of Yuma, the prison was surrounded on two sides by the Colorado River, which made escapes difficult though not impossible.  Today, the Yuma Territorial Prison is an Arizona State Park (see photo above) and is open year round; though tours are not offered in the summer, the park rangers, called customer service representatives, are very knowledgeable and happy to answer questions from visitors.

Perhaps the most famous prisoners held at the Yuma Territorial Prison were “Buckskin” Frank Leslie and Pearl Hart; both have displays in the site's museum.  Leslie was a gunman infamous in Tombstone and was sentenced to twenty-five years for murdering a prostitute there.  He arrived at the prison in 1890 but was pardoned—a common occurrence back then—six or eight years later (records differ as to when exactly he was released).  Hart was an erstwhile stagecoach robber who initially was found not guilty at her trial but the judge convened another jury that convicted her and she was sentenced to five years.  In its thirty-three year history, the Yuma Territorial Prison housed 3,069 inmates, of which 29 were women.

When a convict first arrived, he or she entered the prison through the sally port, (see two photos at right and below: the top shows the original adobe structure and small white-painted guard post next to it; the photo below shows the view through the sally port looking out towards the Colorado River).   The convict was photographed and vital statistics were noted; using a mirror with a cut-out section on the bottom, the photographer was able to simultaneously take a photo that captured a full and profile view of the person.  This mirror is on display in the museum and visitors can don a black-and-white striped shirt, made of heavy cotton by Levi Strauss’ company, and try it out for themselves.

A display reveals that most of the prisoners were between 21 – 30 years old, although the youngest was 14 and the oldest 88.  Not surprisingly, at least half were single, although the marital status of one-quarter was unknown.  The vast majority used some form of tobacco, which was allowed in the prison, but the inmates had to supply it themselves. 
 

Most of the prisoners were either Anglo or Mexican; much smaller numbers were Native American or African-American.  Over 1,300  prisoners identified themselves as Catholic and slightly more than 500 as Protestant; only three prisoners were Jewish and just one was Buddhist; however, the religion of approximately sixty percent of the remaining inmates was unknown.  Interestingly, at least half of the prisoners were literate, although the literacy level of an additional one-quarter of the convicts was not known.

 

Prisoners were housed six to a cell, with ten cells in a row facing ten other cells across a narrow passageway that was barred at both ends with a metal gate (see four photos at right and below).  This is what remains of the cellblock today and what visitors see.  Behind each of those rows of cells were additional cells.  Original strap-iron doors have been preserved (unlike the doors at the Wyoming Territorial Prison).
 

Each cell was furnished with bunk beds—originally made of wood but when the bedbug problem became too great, iron bunks were used instead—a chamber pot, and an iron ring bolted to the floor that was used for punishment by chaining an inmate to it.  Prisoners had their heads shaved weekly (though not the women, as far as I can tell from photographs of them) and bathed at least once a week.  Prisoners were required to work and, in fact, were able to learn a trade while incarcerated at the Yuma Territorial Prison. Female inmates were housed in a separate section of the prison.

The law-abiding citizens of Yuma referred to the prison as the “Country Club on the Colorado” because it had amenities they themselves did not.  For example, starting in 1885 there was electricity, and the surplus was sold to the town; there was also running water that was pumped into a reservoir on the prison grounds from the Colorado River; forced ventilation; and a hospital which not only provided medical but also dental care.  The hospital was constructed over one of the cell blocks and a doctor was on call.
 

For twenty-five cents, townspeople could visit the prison; this fee went towards the purchase of books for the prison library, which was the largest in Arizona with 1500 – 2000 volumes (accounts differ).  In its time, the prison was considered a model penitentiary.  I was not able to find out if the Auburn System was in effect here, though.

Several buildings from the era of the Yuma Territorial Prison no longer exist.  They include the hospital, the dining hall for prisoners, the superintendent’s house, the building where the guards lived, and the women’s cells.  However, when the prison began to become overcrowded, a new cell block was built and visitors can still see that.

Another part of the prison that can be visited is the Dark Cell.  Unlike the one at the Wyoming Territorial Prison, which was located in the same building with the other cells, the Dark Cell at the Yuma Territorial Prison was located in a separate section.  It can be seen behind the iron gate in the sixth photo from the top of this blog entry.  The Dark Cell was reached through a short, dark passageway (see photo above).
 

I visited the prison the day after a very heavy monsoon thunderstorm and the entrance was flooded so it was not possible for me to actually go inside and see the place.  But I was told that it was an iron cage and the only light was from a small vent in the roof.  Prisoners wore only their undergarments while there and were fed a meal of bread and water once a day.  There was no bedding, not even a chamber pot.  If wearing a ball and chain or being confined to solitary—a separate row of five cells--was not a severe enough punishment, inmates were sent to the Dark Cell.  There was a punishment even worse than the Dark Cell—the Incorrigible Ward, which consisted of five small cells behind the main cell block (see the foundation of the Incorrigible Ward at the center right of the photo below).

 

There were many escape attempts but only a few were successful.  Convicts who died while serving time were buried in the prison cemetery, located partway down the hill.  There are no markers, only heaps of stones now, to indicate the graves but a plaque explains that 104 prisoners are buried there and it lists their names.

A museum, built where the dining hall used to be, contains very interesting exhibits about the history of the prison and the prisoners who spent time there; it definitely should not be missed.  The building at the entrance to the park also serves as the gift shop and contains a few books about the prison as well as many others about Arizona; there are also lots of other prison-oriented souvenirs available for purchase.While I enjoyed my time immensely at the Yuma Territorial Prison, I am sure that Kid Curry and Hannibal Heyes would have had a completely different perspective had they ever been incarcerated there.

Official website for the Yuma Territorial Prison:

http://azstateparks.com/parks/yute/index.html

A short history of the Yuma Territorial Prison:

http://www.yumaprison.org/timeline.html