The Outlaw

Playing fast with historical fact, The Outlaw posits Doc Holliday as an old friend of Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, who transfers his friendship to William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Doc, played by Walter Huston, takes a liking to the Kid, played by Jack Beutel. 

Garrett, played by Thomas Mitchell, resents that and does his best to arrest Billy. Into this mix comes Rio, played by Jane Russell in her film debut. The rest of the movie is all about the interaction between these four people and how they betray each other.

Doc Holliday in The Outlaw is completely different from the Doc Holliday character portrayed in Which Way to the O.K. Corral? Here, Doc smiles a great deal, which doesn't fit with my impression of him from other Westerns. And even though The Outlaw was shot in black and white--a colorized version is also available on the DVD I viewed, and it's interesting to watch that for the contrast--it's quite obvious that the pants Doc wears throughout the movie are plaid. It's very hard to take him seriously as a gunfighter when he is wearing plaid.

Billy the Kid is shot and Doc takes him to Rio's house, which she shares with her aunt. It turns out that Rio is Doc's girl, and he asks her to nurse the Kid, not realizing that she has a grudge against Billy and tried to kill him earlier. There are several scenes of her watching the Kid lying in bed, which reminded me of Heyes recuperating in The Fifth Victim.

However, Mrs. Carlson never revealed so much cleavage when she was nursing Heyes! In The Outlaw, Jane Russell usually is pouting and in her close-ups, she is backlit, presumably to make her look even more sexy. It must have worked, though, because Billy falls for her, and she for him.

Much of The Outlaw consists of Doc and Billy trying to escape the clutches of Pat Garrett, who comes off as a bumbling lawman. Rio comes along for the ride. But Doc and Billy also face off against each other, often over a horse whose ownership is claimed by them both. At one point, there is a showdown and Doc draws on Billy. But Billy doesn't draw and Doc has trouble understanding why. Billy's laconic excuse: "No, I just don't feel like it; maybe I ate too much" is typical of his laid-back attitude throughout The Outlaw. I can't imagine Kid Curry ever using that excuse!

One aspect of this movie that really stands out is the music. Unfortunately, it's because it is so bad. It's worse than the music in the beginning of Night of the Red Dog, which clearly telegraphs how the audience is supposed to feel. In The Outlaw, the audience is never left in any doubt whatsoever as to how they should react to the action on the screen.

The Outlaw was filmed in 1943 and lasts 117 minutes. Produced by Howard Hughes, it is hard to take the movie seriously due to the historical inaccuracies, the depictions of the main characters by the actors, and the overall silliness of the plot.

Yuma (the TV movie)

Broadcast in 1971, Yuma turned out to be a TV movie and not a feature film, which I didn't know until I started watching it. The plot is interesting and Clint Walker is the star. Rudy Diaz, who played minor roles in three Alias Smith and Jones episodes (a guard in The McCreedy Bust, the first policeman in Miracle at Santa Marta, and a man in The McCreedy Feud) has a small role in this movie.

A solitary man (Walker) rides into Yuma on a horse, leading a burro. He pulls up in front of the sheriff's office and before he finishes tying his horse's reins to the hitching rail, a stagecoach careens into town, two men atop it firing their guns. When the coach tips over and the men go inside the nearby saloon, the other man grabs his rifle and follows, pinning on a marshal's badge as he goes. An altercation ensues and at the end of it, a man is dead. Unfortunately, that man is the brother of a powerful trail boss who brings a lot of money into the town. So far, Yuma is all about bringing law and order to the town.

Meanwhile, a young Mexican boy, all alone in Yuma, meets the marshal when he gets caught burgling his hotel room. However, the marshal lets him go and after he witnesses the boy trying to steal some food, he befriends him and gives him a job sweeping the lawman's office. This subplot of Yuma made me think of what life might have been like for Han and Jed after they left Valparaiso and were trying to make it on their own before becoming outlaws with the Devil's Hole Gang.

But there is more to Yuma: The marshal is framed for murder, Indians are being short-changed on their cattle rations, and of course there is a romance with the lady owner of the hotel. Most of the movie deals with the marshal trying to clear his name and avoiding being killed by the trail boss who wants to avenge the death of his brother.

Filmed at Old Tucson Studios, which is immediately recognizable to anyone who has been there, and at Paramount, Yuma is light and diverting and at 73 minutes, an enjoyable way to spend part of an afternoon or evening.

River of No Return

Rory Calhoun plays a character in River of No Return that is just as sleazy as Jason in Night of the Red Dog. As Harry Weston, he’s a gambler who’s won a gold claim, and he’s desperate to reach Council City so he can file it properly. Presaging Jason by almost twenty years, he says, “All my life I’ve waited for the one big chance a man gets and this is mine.”

He takes Kay, a singer in a saloon in a mining camp, played by Marilyn Monroe, along with him. Meanwhile, Matt Calder, played by Robert Mitchum, finds Mark, the son he hasn’t seen in years, in the same mining camp where Kay has taken him under her wing, rescues him, and takes him back to his homestead where they are living happily.  Until Harry and Kay show up on an out-of-control raft on the river near the Calder farm.

After being rescued, Harry repays the kindness by stealing Matt’s rifle and horse, which leaves the others at risk of being attacked by Indians. Escaping on the raft at the last possible moment, the rest of River of No Return is about the difficulties faced by Matt, Mark, and Kay as they journey down the river, trying to make it to Council City themselves, where Matt plans to get even with Harry. One of the obstacles is an attack by a mountain lion, which looks very similar to the attack on Curry in High Lonesome Country.

Robert Mitchum as Matt is a complex character. He adds depth to the role and this film makes it clear why Mitchum was a leading man. Matt has a secret, is devoted to his son but treats his female companion shoddily. By the end of River of No Return, the three main characters have grown but Matt most of all.

Marilyn Monroe sings a few songs in River of No Return and if the film had ended when she finished the last one, it would have risen above the ordinary, but there was more after that and Otto Preminger, the director of this 1954 movie, gave it a conventional ending instead. Lasting only 91 minutes the film, while exciting, is also predictable. Bonus features include clips from several of Marilyn Monroe's movies.

Autry National Center

This is a great museum! The Autry National Center, created in 2003 by a merger of three museums devoted to the American West, one of which was founded by actor-singer Gene Autry, is located in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. There are exhibition halls that catalog aspects of life in the Old West along with galleries that display oil paintings illustrating the artists’ views of the 19th century West. Other exhibits showcase how the West was portrayed by Hollywood. Special exhibitions pertaining to the West are also presented.

I spent most of my time at the Autry National Center in the Imagination Gallery, which describes the history of Westerns in film and, to a lesser extent, on TV. This part of the museum includes an entire section devoted to Buffalo Bill and another to Gene Autry, with other areas focused on Native Americans, women, Mexicans, and Asians in Westerns. A highlight is the area set up as a typical Old West main street. Be sure to look up to see the movie cameras on the balcony!

The explanations of the artifacts—props used in movies, posters and lobby cards, costumes worn by actors—were very detailed, and it was fascinating to read about the early years of Westerns. Many actors I had never heard of and now my interest has been piqued to learn more about them and to see their work.

In addition to displays of objects, there were many mini-documentaries about Westerns that lasted about ten minutes, which are well worth the time to watch. Five that I especially enjoyed were those about: Buffalo Bill, with actual footage of him shot at the turn of the 20th century; the first Western movies; early Western movie stars; Westerns on TV, although only shows from the 1950s and 1960s were featured; and how women and minorities have been depicted in Westerns through the years. Although Alias Smith and Jones was not mentioned, this section of the Autry National Center is a must-see for anyone interested in movie and TV Westerns.

Downstairs, the Spirit of Opportunity exhibition included sections on mining and old San Francisco as lived by those in “society.” The Spirit of Conquest exhibition highlighted how the Army and others “tamed” and settled the West. A restored stagecoach was exhibited in this part of the Autry National Center, along with related tools of the trade. The Spirit of Community, spread over a large portion of the downstairs area, featured sections on immigrants from many lands and how they lived in this region of the country; the styles of clothing, the types of work they did, and the everyday objects used by men, women, and children from different ethnic groups was really quite interesting.

Other sections of the Autry National Center, which I unfortunately did not have as much time to spend looking at as I would have liked, included an exhibit on cowboys and their way of life, and the Earps and the O.K. Corral gunfight. I did, however, take the time to look closely at the room set up like an Old West saloon, complete with wooden bar, gambling tables, and lots of whiskey glasses. One of the exhibition halls on the main level is named the George Montgomery Gallery but it was closed the day I visited. I would love to know why the museum has a space named for Curt Clitterhouse (Jailbreak at Junction City)!

The Golden Spur Café has good food and is reasonably priced. Besides jewellery, toys for children, food products, videos and music CDs, the museum shop at the Autry National Center has a large selection of books about the West, both historical and contemporary. I bought a book about train robberies in the Old West; glancing through it, I was disappointed but not surprised to see that Heyes and Curry were not mentioned.

I spent about three hours at the Autry National Center, not including time for lunch at the café or browsing the gift shop, and was not able to see everything before the museum closed. I will definitely return for another visit the next time I am in Los Angeles.

Official website of the Autry National Center:
http://theautry.org

Official website for Gene Autry:
http://www.autry.com/home.php

The King and Four Queens

Clark Gable stars as Dan Kehoe in this 1956 movie as a man who serendipitously learns about a hidden cache of gold and then proceeds to search for it in a town whose only inhabitants are the women who were married to the four outlaw brothers who stole it and the mother of the outlaws.

Three of the four brothers are dead and the fourth may or may not be dead. Their mother, played by Jo Van Fleet, keeps a tight rein on her daughters-in-law but the arrival of Dan shakes things up considerably. Filled with sexual innuendo and little violence, The King and Four Queens runs 86 minutes, giving Dan sufficient time to get to know each of the ladies well enough to decide whom to seduce and also to deduce where the gold is.

There are a couple connections to ASJ but no actors who were in the series appear in The King and Four Queens. The nearest town is named Touchstone, like the one in Everything Else You Can Steal; and one of the widows comments that $100,000 (the haul from the robbery) weighs a lot and would be too heavy for her to move by herself, which harks back to what Heyes tells Alice in The Legacy of Charlie O'Rourke.

 Partway through the film, Kehoe plays a song on the melodeon (a type of organ), in a scene reminiscent of Heyes playing the guitar in The Posse That Wouldn't Quit, except that in The King and Four Queens, he also ends up dancing with the women. The song, "In the Sweet By and By," is a traditional hymn and could have been sung in the time period of ASJ; a link to an instrumental version played on an organ is included below.

It's not clear if the king in The King and Four Queens refers to Dan Kehoe or to the mother of the outlaws, since she rules her household with iron-fisted absolute authority, nor is it completely clear if Kehoe is a crook or merely an opportunist. But it's always enjoyable watching Clark Gable and this movie, while not a masterpiece, is no exception.