Anthony Mann: The Life and Films

Anthony Mann ALSO BY WILLIAM DARBY AND FROM MCFARLAND Deconstructing Major League Baseball, 1991–2004: How Statistics...

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Anthony Mann

ALSO BY WILLIAM DARBY AND FROM MCFARLAND Deconstructing Major League Baseball, 1991–2004: How Statistics Illuminate Individual and Team Performances (2006) John Ford’s Westerns: A Thematic Analysis, with a Filmography (1996; paperback 2006) Major League Baseball, 1979–1992: A Year-by-Year History Using Fan Oriented Statistics (1993) American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915–1990 (1990, paperback 1999)

Anthony Mann The Film Career WILLIAM DARBY

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Darby, William, 1942– Anthony Mann : the film career / William Darby. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-3839-6 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Mann, Anthony, 1906–1967. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—United States—Biography. I. Title. PN1998.3.M36D37 2009 791.4302'33092—dc22 [B] 2009024023 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 William Darby. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover image: Cimarron (1960) directed by Anthony Mann. Credit: MGM/Photofest ©MGM. Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the memory of Dr. Finley A. Hooper (1922–1993), teacher, mentor, and friend

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Acknowledgments While the majority of those who contributed to my understanding of Anthony Mann’s career and works are cited in the bibliography or the chapters that follow, there are a few individuals whom I must single out for special thanks. Charles Greenwell and the late Bernie Cohan allowed me to “think out loud” about Mann and his movies. I undoubtedly owe them both for advice which prevented egregious missteps and for patience which went beyond the bounds of friendship. Jeanine Basinger, our foremost Mann scholar, encouraged me several years ago when I began to look at Mann seriously. I needed to be assured that I wasn’t simply spinning my wheels, and she was kind enough to tell me that I was not. My son David has helped me with numerous technical details, and I thank him for learning so much about modern technology. My wife Carolyn has endured my varying moods throughout this project with her customary equanimity, support, and love. As always, she makes my life as a writer a pleasure. Naturally, none of these good persons are to be blamed for any evasions or overstatements in what follows.

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Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction

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1. In Search of Anthony Mann 5 2. Mann and the B Film 26 3. Mann and Film Noir 48 4. Mann and the Western 92 5. Mann and the 1950s 166 6. Mann and Epic Films 201 7. Mann and the Century of Total War: The Heroes of Telemark (1965) and A Dandy in Aspic (1968) 239 8. Mann and the Critics 254 Filmography 267 Chapter Notes 281 Selected Bibliography 283 Index 287

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Introduction I first became intrigued with Anthony Mann when I was one of a select audience for the debut of The Fall of the Roman Empire in downtown Detroit in 1964. Some of my enthusiasm for the film was tempered by the individual to whom this book is dedicated, and whose more fastidious factual tastes were bound to conflict with some of its fast-and-loose playing with the historical record—points which he especially registered after I had persuaded him to see the movie. Although I can recall Dr. Hooper admonishing me over the fact that Sohames of Armenia (Omar Sharif in Mann’s work) had existed one hundred and fifty years before the events portrayed, I retained a serious affection for The Fall of the Roman Empire and I linked Mann with another much admired film of my youth, Men in War (1957). In the late 1980s I decided to re-examine Mann to see if my earlier reactions had been valid in any serious way. I had done the same thing with other movies from my young adulthood and often found them either overblown (Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks) or disappointing (the Jason Robards, Jr. comedy A Thousand Clowns). After viewing El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire, and, at that point, always looking for ways to move ahead as a college English instructor, I decided to research Mann in the hopes of producing what I thought would be yet another probably all-too-formulaic scholarly article. However, in the standard process of checking all the previous “sources” for Mann, I quickly learned that they were anything but plentiful and so I could not simply react in a predictably academic fashion. Eventually, I became intrigued enough to write much of what serves as the basis for the discussion of Mann’s epics in Chapter 6 of the current volume, but, alas, at a length that was simply unwieldy for the few scholarly journals I eventually contacted about possible publication. Before that time I was brash enough to send a copy of my work to Professor Jeanine Basinger at Wesleyan University, whom I had discovered was the only serious Mann scholar working in the United States. I wanted to see how she would react to what I had written and, being much younger then, the idea that such an “unsolicited manuscript” would be an intrusion never crossed my mind. 1

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Fortunately, the good professor not only read what I had written but also promptly responded in most encouraging and enthusiastic terms; and, while she will, in all probability, have now forgotten what she wrote at that time, her kind words suggested to me that I might indeed have something worth saying about Mann. If nothing else, her missive made me appreciate anew the significance of Blanche DuBois’s famous line in A Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.” For the past twenty years, many other things (including writing books on baseball, film music, and John Ford’s westerns) have intervened, even though Mann remained as someone I wanted to explore further. When I returned to Mann two years ago, I suspected that many new works on the director and his films would have emerged, especially given the surge of publications in film and film studies since the mid–1980s. But that was clearly not the case as newer critics and commentators tended to treat Mann as either a subject to be introduced to those unfamiliar with his work or as evidence for larger theories they wished to propound about psychological, social, or sexual changes in either society or film. While much of what was written offered thought-provoking insights about individual Mann films, all too often the basic emphases of his subject matter and the course of his career were assumed in order to focus on these particular summary and ideological problems. While my work does not seek to seriously revise the general critical outlines of Mann’s career, it does set out to re-examine his films from the perspectives of stylistic developments within the movie business during his lifetime as well as major social and historical trends that affected the director and his subjects. In examining all of his movies, I have gained an enhanced appreciation for Mann as a storyteller, a screen stylist, and a serious thinker. No matter whether the film is set in the back alleys of a modern city, the rugged landscapes of the West, or the huge canvasses of medieval Spain or ancient Rome, Mann never forgets the personal plot which is the spine of virtually every movie. The more often one watches the majority of Mann’s films, the more frequently one realizes how subtly and completely their diverse cinematic elements are integrated. Even with such modest efforts as his apprentice films from 1942 through 1946, or the decidedly woeful Serenade (1956), one can admire Mann’s efforts to transform mediocre material through cinematic means; indeed, despite his training in the theatrical world of New York, he almost intuitively understood that movies must “show” and not simply “tell.” Cinematography, costume and set design, acting, and music conspire within most of Mann’s finished films to serve the bigger human issues addressed in the stories he is telling. If great dramatic art is to be judged on the basis of

Introduction

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the coherence of all its disparate elements, then Mann is clearly one of a handful of movie directors who achieved such stature. How he perfected that art, while offering abiding perceptions and ideas about violence, family life, and historical obligations, can best be seen by examining his films in approximate chronological order and in terms of their overriding themes. The biographical details of Mann’s life before he directed his first feature film, Dr. Broadway (1942), are set forth in Chapter 1, and, while admittedly sparse, they offer a necessary background to the director’s career as well as an instance when one must resist the temptation of offering pop psychological explanations in order to make a more pleasing and seemingly fuller account of his life. Mann’s work as an “apprentice” is analyzed in Chapter 2 where we see that his early suspense films and musicals, while decidedly B efforts, provided him a solid grounding in movie techniques. Even at this early stage of his career, the director was not producing “filmed plays,” and when he moved on to film noir he showed himself to be an able Hollywood craftsman. Chapter 3 examines eight of Mann’s noir films in matched pairs that center on larger thematic conflicts, as well as an early costume drama, The Black Book (1949), and a police procedural drama, Follow Me Quietly (1949), which he co-wrote. His movement into westerns, hailed by one and all among critics and commentators as opening the most successful period in Mann’s career, provides the basis for Chapter 4. Ten of his films, which appeared between 1950 and 1958, are treated in matched pairs that focus on the thematic issues they raise, and another work, Night Passage (1957), is discussed because of Mann’s aborted involvement with it. The director’s other films from the 1950s are taken up in Chapter 5 and grouped in categories that are more arbitrary than those discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. With these films we see Mann working on Americana, whether as an historical mystery (The Tall Target, 1951), a propagandistic flag-waver (Strategic Air Command, 1955), or a literary adaptation (God’s Little Acre, 1958). Chapter 6 discusses the director’s involvements with epic film production. His less than happy, less than successful associations with Spartacus (1960) and Cimarron (1960) are followed by a discussion of his satisfying experiences and results with El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. His two epics demonstrate both the intellectual maturity and the artistic excellence that Mann had perfected by this stage of his career. Indeed, these works are comparable, if not superior, to anything else in the genre, and remarkably demonstrate his mastery of yet another standard movie type. His last two films are analyzed in Chapter 7 and, while they were not popular upon their initial releases, they also demonstrate his great facility as a storyteller

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Introduction

capable of using the film medium to offer insights into the modern world in which he found himself. Mann’s stature, both within the history of Hollywood and the larger arena of world filmmaking, is argued in Chapter 8 where it is urged that it is long past time for his critical importance to be both more greatly appreciated and more widely recognized. His earliest critics from the late 1960s and early 1970s clearly saw that Mann was one of a kind—a perception that most contemporary reviewers tended to either downplay or ignore altogether. The passage of time and the emergence of newer styles of filmmaking have made many of Mann’s directorial contemporaries appear either passe or hopelessly dated, while, if anything, that same temporal movement has made his works loom ever larger as enduring contributions to the art of motion pictures.

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In Search of Anthony Mann Anthony Mann died on April 29, 1967, while in Berlin working on the film A Dandy in Aspic. Unfortunately, this was still a time when film scholarship was neither as respectable nor as organized as it is today; and, as a result, many of the details of the director’s life and career are either obscure or unknown. While the few interviews that Mann gave offer some professional insights and bits of personal information, it is simply not possible to reconstruct a detailed biography, especially for his earlier work on stage and when breaking into the movies. As his daughter Nina recently admitted, her father is something of a “mystery” even for her, so she, like any aspirant critic or commentator, must accept “looking at his films” to better understand Anthony Mann.1 The future film director was born in Point Loma, a city near San Diego, on June 30 of either 1906 or 1907. There is also some confusion as to whether his first name was Anton or Emil. No such obscurity attaches to his surname of Bundsman. His father was Emil Theodore Bundsmann and his mother was Bertha (nee Waxelbaum), who was originally from Macon, Georgia, and both of them were philosophy teachers. An early connection with the Theosophical Society of San Diego would certainly have accorded with the intellectual interests of his parents and may have also sparked a theatrical interest in the young Mann. In 1917 the family moved to New York where Anton/Emil exhibited a penchant for school playacting which was reinforced by his participation in the Young Hebrew Men’s Association; indeed, Mann may have been both directing and acting while still in high school. With the death of his father in 1923, the boy decided to leave school in order to help with the family finances. Because he was fortunate enough to get a night watchman’s job at Westinghouse Electrical, he was able to indulge his passion for the theater by attending auditions and exploring other theatrical possibilities during the daytime. Within a very short period, Mann went to work full time in the Triangle Theater in Greenwich Village. His taking a major cut in pay to do so implies that getting into the theater had been his major motive for ending his formal education. 5

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He appeared as an actor in The Dybbuk in an English version by Henry Alsberg under the direction of Howard Barlow, and in The Squall by Jean Bart in 1925–1926. Later in the decade he performed in The Blue Peter as a “Chinese” under the direction of S. Templeton Thurston in a cast that featured future Hollywood stalwarts Margaret Wycherly, Warren William, and Morris Ankrum. He subsequently played another supporting role (as a “workman”) in a production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya which featured Franchot Tone and Morris Carnovsky. Mann joined the Theater Guild in 1930 as both a production manager and (eventually) a director, working there with such notables as David Belasco and Rouben Mamoulian. At the same time he appeared in Streets of New York (1931), in which he played the “Duke of Calcavella”; the play was directed by Dion Bochanius and featured Dorothy Gish. He then appeared with Miss Gish and Henry Hull, as the featured leads, in The Bride the Sun Shines On which was directed by Will Cotton. The young man was billed as a “photographer.” In 1933 Mann directed Thunder on the Left, scripted by Jean Ferguson Black from a novel by Christopher Morley. Louis Jean Heydt was the most notable member of the cast in a drama which did not please Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times. According to the critic, Thunder on the Left “with its medley of realism and fantasy grows less intelligible scene by scene.” Atkinson also argued that the theme of whether a young man should or should not choose to grow up would have required “myriad genius” on the part of the director and that, unhappily, the third act came off as “incoherent and silly.”2 Mann soldiered on directing The Squall which appeared on Broadway in 1933, and in which he both acted and performed as an assistant stage manager. He also established his own summer stock repertory company which featured Macdonald Carey, who would star in the director’s first film, Dr. Broadway (1942), and James Stewart, with whom Mann would work so well and so extensively from 1950 to 1955 in Hollywood. Van Johnson and Imogene Coca were featured in New Faces of 1936, a revue crafted by Mindret Lord and Everett Marcy with some minor sketches supplied by director Mann himself. The New York Times saw this “soufflé” as “cheerful ... and unpretentious.”3 After directing Cherokee Night (1936), Mann’s next theatrical venture was So Proudly We Hail by Joseph Viertel which featured Richard Cromwell and Eddie Bracken as cadets in a military school that, ultimately, dehumanizes its young men. The central character’s transformation from “artistic to atavistic” was clearly not helped by the director, for the New York Times dismissed the play as “on the whole ... built mainly on sound and fury.”4 Mann’s

1. In Search of Anthony Mann

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last stage effort, The Big Blow, was written by Theodor Pratt, featured E.G. Marshall, and was performed at the WPA Ford Theatre. Once again, Brooks Atkinson had little good to say about the direction of this melodrama set in “Florida cracker land.” Although he deemed the production technically adept, the critic found the suspense “not well handled” by the “uncertain directive hand” that operated throughout.5 While Mann was working at all sorts of jobs within the theater for much of the 1920s and 1930s, he found time to marry Mildred Kenyon in 1936, and the couple produced two children, Anthony (b. 1938) and Nina (b. 1944) before they divorced in 1956. By 1937 Mann was also working for the Selznick Studio as an East Coast talent scout; and, in that capacity he accompanied executive Kay Brown during a promotional college tour seeking potential Scarlett O’Haras for the upcoming Gone with the Wind (MGM/Selznick, 1939). Mann subsequently supervised numerous screen tests for the epic as well as Intermezzo (Selznick, 1939) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (Selznick, 1940).6 In 1939 Mann moved to Hollywood and began working at Paramount as an assistant director, a position he quietly filled for the next three years. His most notable assignment was Sullivan’s Travels (1941), a film that enabled him to work with comedic genius Preston Sturges. According to Mann (whose own films rarely feature humor or comedy), he learned a great deal from the writer-director. I directed a little [of Sullivan’s Travels]. I’d stage a scene and he’d tell me how lousy it was. Then I watched [the] editing and was able gradually to build up knowledge. Preston insisted I make a film as soon as possible. He said it’s better to have done something bad than to have done nothing.7

Mann got that opening opportunity at the studio with Dr. Broadway, a B film that featured the screen debut of its leading man, Macdonald Carey. Mann’s first feature was thoroughly panned by both Variety and the New York Times, with the former offering that the film was “a ‘c’ in the guise of a ‘b’” with few if any prospects at the box office. In addition, Vari-

Preston Sturges gave Mann his first hands-on directorial experience with Sullivan’s Travels (Paramount, 1941). Mann served as assistant director on the film.

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Anthony Mann

ety claimed that Mann’s direction “just wasn’t.”8 Less harshly, the Times review simply dismissed Dr. Broadway as a “Damon Runyonesque” effort that “falls flat.” With Mann’s second effort, the cheapie musical Moonlight in Havana (also 1942), Variety was even more severe as its reviewer insisted that the film “gets no assistance from director Anthony Mann.” It was not until he was put in charge of The Great Flamarion (Republic, 1945) that critics began to mildly praise Mann’s direction; and such attention came about largely because of the presence of the legendary Erich von Stroheim in the title role. While Mann was both in awe and somewhat envious of his leading man’s “genius,” he would later insist that his experience had taught him that he had to “work” at his craft and could not rely on inspiration as the actor had seemingly done.9 Whatever anxieties might have beset Mann simply by virtue of working with the flamboyant actor were undoubtedly exacerbated because von Stroheim disliked the flashback plot of The Great Flamarion, believing that such a structure ultimately bored the audi-

Publicity still from The Great Flamarion (Republic, 1945). The title character (Erich von Stroheim) pursues Connie Wallace (Mary Beth Hughes) in a plot seemingly based on The Blue Angel (UFA, 1930). Mann would later note that von Stroheim was a genius while he was only a talent and had to work at his craft.


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ence. (Von Stroheim would later be featured in Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Blvd. [Paramount, 1950] which would feature one of Hollywood’s most notable and celebrated flashback plots.) While the New York Times summarily dismissed The Great Flamarion as “an exercise in tedium,” Variety offered a much more comprehensive and appreciative review. Despite the film’s being a “heavy melodrama,” its production values, camerawork, and editing were all praised; and the reviewer also saw the film as offering von Stroheim one of his better roles at that time. Even more significantly, Mann’s direction was seen as “imaginative and well paced.”10 The director’s other efforts at Republic, Strangers in the Night (1944) and Strange Impersonation (1946), while stylistically and thematically foreshadowing Mann’s more mature films, elicited no such extended reactions from either source. By 1945 Mann was also working at RKO where his first effort Two O’Clock Courage was dismissed as “slow paced” by Variety and as a “modest little item of second-rate cinematic form” by the New York Times.11 The director’s second studio entry, Sing Your Way Home, a B musical comedy also released in 1945, was also panned for its unconvincing plot and miscast youngsters as wartime refugees with no notice of Mann’s work whatsoever. Variety found The Bamboo Blonde (1946) to be a “tired affair” made on a low budget, featuring mediocre sets, and with direction that was “never too good and never too bad.”12 By this time, after nearly five years of trying to improve mediocre scripts and motivate marginal acting talents, Mann realized that he would have to provide better materials for himself or be consigned to Hollywood’s various B units for the rest of his career. Teaming with writer Dorothy Atlas, the director came up with the story line for Desperate (RKO, 1947), his first major film noir and a taut thriller (at 73 minutes) in its own right. Variety praised the finished product as a “ripsnorting gangster meller” which was enhanced by the absence of familiar lead and character actors. The ending, in which the protagonist (Steve Brodie) singlehandedly kills the villain (Raymond Burr) to free himself and his family from pursuit by the police and the underworld, “gives [the] film a lift.” And, while some “corny incidents” should have been edited out of Desperate, Mann’s direction “mainly stresses suspense” and is “done skillfully.”13 His next career move, to Producers Releasing Corporation which would soon become Eagle-Lion Pictures, saw Mann emerge as a definitive master of American film noir. Railroaded (1947) was scripted by John C. Higgins who would be the lead writer on T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), He Walked by Night (1948), and Border Incident (1949). Their initial collaboration was hailed by Variety for being an “old type blood-and-thunder gangster meller”

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John Alton with Ethel Barrymore on the set of It’s a Big Country (MGM, 1951). Mann and the Hungarian-born Alton perfected a striking film noir vision style in T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), He Walked by Night (1948), The Black Book (1949), Border Incident (1949) and Devil’s Doorway (1950). Alton would win an Oscar for his work on An American in Paris (MGM, 1951).

that was far better than its “no-name cast” would lead one to expect. Mann was cited for his “real acumen in developing [a] maximum of suspense.”14 Starting with T-Men, the director also teamed up with the highly accomplished and strongly individualistic cinematographer John Alton, and together they did much to canonize film noir stylistics. Beginning with that film and moving on to Raw Deal, He Walked by Night, The Black Book (1949), Border Incident, and Devil’s Doorway (MGM, 1950), Mann and Alton created deeply shadowed and chiaruscuro lighting patterns that brought the rainy streets and shabby hiding places of film noir memorably to the screen not only in crime stories but in a costume drama and a western as well. For the cinematographer, who had begun working in Hollywood for MGM, gone to France to assist famed director Ernst Lubitsch, and forged his own writing and directing career in Argentina in the 1930s, Mann was “a


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director I can really sit down and talk with.”15 Their partnership ultimately proved to be so successful that some later critics have gone so far as to argue that Alton, and not Mann, should be seen as the “auteur” of the works on which they collaborated. However, both men prospered apart from each other as Alton won an Oscar for An American in Paris (MGM, 1951) and Mann emerged as a master of westerns and epic films. T-Men got them off to a rousing start with its tale of Treasury agents working their way into a Los Angeles–based counterfeiting ring. Higgins’s screenplay provided some startling twists, such as the murder of agent Gennaro (Alfred Ryder) in front of his helpless colleague O’Brien (Dennis O’Keefe); opportunities for physical action, such as O’Brien’s being beaten by irate gamblers in a washroom; and intriguing locations, such as the docked freighter where O’Brien finally uncovers the higher-ups in the counterfeiting operation. Variety’s reviewer compared the film favorably to the celebrated The House on 92nd Street (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1945) for its location work, predicted “good grosses,” and found Mann’s direction to be “well done.” Although he called T-Men “wearisome,” Bosley Crowther also lauded the location work and the director’s “fine sense of melodramatic timing” in the New York Times.16 These critical sources voiced essentially the same reactions to Raw Deal whose romantic triangle between Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe), Pat (Claire Trevor), and Ann (Marsha Hunt) makes the film probably the most romantic that Mann ever did. He Walked by Night, while officially credited to Alfred Werker, was largely directed by Mann, who once again collaborated with Higgins and Alton to produce a taut thriller. Variety noted that there was no romantic angle to slow down the action and that Richard Basehart (as the mysterious alienated criminal Morgan) was a “talented find.” Ironically, its review also declared the film to be “another package of dynamite” comparable to T-Men, while the New York Times singled out “Werker’s brisk direction.”17 In 1949 Mann saw another of his story ideas produced by RKO as Follow Me Quietly, a modest police procedural of 60 minutes that was directed by Richard Fleischer. At the same time the director worked on his first costume drama, The Black Book, which was produced by long-time Hollywood executive Walter Wanger. While reaction to this drama set in Paris during the Reign of Terror was mixed, Mann’s film was reviewed by The New Yorker and Newsweek as well as Variety and the New York Times. During this time, Wanger, his actress-wife Joan Bennett, and their company Diana Productions were actively trying to develop projects for famed German émigré director Fritz Lang. They had collaborated with Lang on Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), and The Secret Behind

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the Door (1948). In January of 1946, Diana Productions bought the screen rights to a short story by veteran western writer Stuart Lake in the hope of turning out another vehicle for Lang—an undertaking that would, ultimately, lead to Anthony Mann’s first critically acclaimed western Winchester ’73 in 1950. However, before he took over that assignment, Mann and his key collaborators Higgins and Alton were persuaded to come to MGM by newly arrived studio production chief Dore Schary, who had also worked at RKO during the late 1940s. Even though Schary had been summarily fired by new RKO boss Howard Hughes, Nicholas Schenck of MGM, worried by that studio’s having fallen on lean financial and production times, and increasingly disenchanted with the management choices and style of long-time head Louis B. Mayer, had eagerly brought Schary on board. In his new situation Mann was not only able to complete Border Incident, which he had been developing prior to leaving Eagle-Lion, but also to do so in a much glossier style than he would have been able to achieve at the lesser studio. The completed work was seen by Variety as a “solid” second feature, and, in an aside, their reviewer credited Mann with having directed He Walked by Night.18 In addition, Schary approached Mann about doing his first western, Devil’s Doorway, and the director was thoroughly convinced after reading the screenplay by Guy Trosper. However, while Mann would subsequently declare that the script was the best he ever had, and his film would feature long-time MGM star Robert Taylor, the studio was initially reluctant to release Devil’s Doorway because of its downbeat subject matter (white prejudice against Native Americans), plot resolution (the death of the protagonist), and casting against type (Taylor as a Shoshone). The contemporary box office success of Twentieth Century–Fox’s Broken Arrow (1950) spurred timid MGM’s executives to put Mann’s film into release. Variety’s review praised Mann and Alton but felt that the movie’s box office prospects were “not good”; however, five months later, the New York Times called Devil’s Doorway “a whooping action film,” praised the direction of its battle sequences, and thought that Taylor had delivered “a forceful performance.”19 With the passage of time, Mann’s first western has gained more respect as a serious, realistic, and moving account of the problems of the Native Americans in the Old West, while Delmer Daves’s more immediately popular Broken Arrow is now regarded as a bit too melodramatic and romanticized. Inspired by his stage success in Harvey, the Mary Chase vehicle about an amiable middle-aged drunk and his giant imaginary(?) rabbit, James Stewart agreed to a two-picture deal with Universal in 1949 in order to get the play filmed. This arrangement, worked out by the actor’s agent Lew Wasser-


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man, was unusual in that Stewart waived a considerable portion of his salary in favor of subsequently getting a percentage of the films’ profits. While he would operate in this fashion for much of the rest of his Hollywood career, Stewart’s immediate problem was to find a property that would satisfy the second obligation in his contract. In doing so, he came across the preliminary versions of Winchester ’73 which were in the Universal files. The ultimately unsuccessful attempts of Walter Wanger and Fritz Lang to create a workable script had commenced when the producer met with Stuart Lake in late 1945 about the possibility of reviving an earlier effort by the writer entitled “Superstition Mountain”; however, Lake convinced Wanger that a newer story—the basis of Winchester ’73—would be a better bet.20 As a result, Wanger not only hired Lake to produce a screenplay but also agreed with Universal that the project would be one of two Diana productions for 1946 at a budget of $1–1.3 million and to be delivered by December 31 of that year. When Lake subsequently came up with a twenty-page outline, instead of the two hundred pages that Wanger expected, the producer fired the writer, who then went on to produce a novel based on this story. In the meantime Lang, who had become enamored of studio screenwriter Silvia Richards, decided that his latest girlfriend would be the one to produce the Winchester ’73 script; however, when the less than enthused or ambitious Miss Richards could not produce a workable effort, the whole project was allowed to fall into the Universal files. When Stewart came across it there, he initially wanted Lang to direct, but the latter had other commitments and so the actor began looking for an alternate. Stewart then saw some of Mann’s work, was impressed, and decided to offer Winchester ’73 to the director. Now budgeted for $850,000, shooting started in Tucson and wrapped up by February, 1950.21 While Stewart worked diligently in preparing for the film, even going so far as to practice for four days before doing its initial rifle-shooting contest sequence, he was eventually faced with the ironic facts that Harvey enjoyed modest business while Winchester ’73 proved to be financially and professionally much more significant. Mann’s film cast Stewart as a more mature and more complex figure than any he had memorably portrayed up to that time: Lin McAdam is a hero with a penchant for physical and emotional violence that sets him distinctly apart from such characters as the cracker barrel philosopher–lawman Tom Destry (in George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again [Universal, 1939]), the idealistic Jefferson Smith (in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [Columbia, 1939]) and the scholarly (and slightly graying) Rupert Cadell (in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope [Warner Brothers, 1948]). From 1950 to 1955 Mann and Stewart would make seven more films, and

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in their westerns they would perfect a hardbitten persona for the actor that would ultimately be memorably used by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo (Paramount, 1958) and John Ford in Two Rode Together (Columbia, 1961). Winchester ’73 was also the first of three western scripts by Borden Chase who, in Bend of the River (Universal, 1952) and The Far Country (Universal, 1955), would explore the new Stewart persona from the perspectives of a man trying to become respectable (Glyn McLyntock in the earlier film) and a character reluctantly coming to accept his obligations to the larger society in which he lives (Jeff Webster in the later work). Chase’s screenplay and the other technical aspects of Winchester ’73 were lauded by Variety as “Grade A” with good box office prospects. In addition to praising all the featured actors, the reviewer singled out Stewart’s performance as a “lean concentrated portrayal,” while Mann’s direction was “on a par” with the overall quality of the film. Bosley Crowther initially dismissed Winchester ’73 as a typical “cowboy loves gun” horse opera; however, he also noted that the work was “action crammed” and complimented the “light handed direction” that Mann brought to it.22 The Furies (Paramount, 1950) found Variety equating it to Winchester ’73, while the New York Times simply damned the film with faint praise by calling it “colorful.” Cinematographer Victor Milner’s Oscar nomination for the film better suggests its stylistically baroque qualities.23 In 1951, in some measure because of his successes the previous year, MGM sent Mann to Rome where he worked on the studio’s blockbuster production of that year, Quo Vadis. While the final film was largely directed by Hollywood veteran Mervyn LeRoy, two of its obvious “second unit” sequences— the triumphal entrance of the protagonist into Rome and the burning of the city at the mad Nero’s command—are attributed to Mann. His subsequent direction of the action sequences in The Tall Target (MGM, 1951), a train and costume movie about a potential assassination attempt on newly elected president Abraham Lincoln, was “well developed,” although the film needed to reduce its footage devoted to railroad exteriors according to Variety.24 Bend of the River, the second Stewart-Mann collaboration, and the first of seven successive films in which the director would work with the actor, found screenwriter Chase adapting Bill Gulick’s novel Bend of the Snake (1950) by significantly altering its plot and switching the action to Oregon. In the novel, the Emerson Cole character is older than the protagonist and caught up in a war for stagecoach hegemony in the Northwest; eventually, his bad deeds are unearthed and, while he succeeds in temporarily overcoming his various “good guy” rivals, Cole does die by drowning. However, the villain does so in Gulick’s original in spite of the hero’s trying to rescue him; and such characters as the entire Baile family, the


15

gambler Trey Wilson (Rock Hudson) and the money-crazed storekeeper Hendricks (Howard Petrie) are significant Chase additions. The central character, named Scott Burton, who emerges as a rancher, gives way to Glyn McLyntock, the ex–Missouri border raider trying to overcome a checkered past, in which he was almost hanged at one time, in order to settle down among the apple-growing community he helps to establish in the new Oregon territory. Variety’s laudatory review emphasized that Stewart was as good as he had been in Winchester ’73 while predicting a “hearty” business for the film. Mann was cited for his “vigorous direction” and the episode in which McLyntock and Cole kill the marauding Indians at night in a forest was singled out as brilliantly executed. While this critic also responded to its “strong outdoor features,” the ever-acerbic Bosley Crowther could only complain of the use of Stepin Fetchit as a comic stereotype.25 The ensemble qualities of The Naked Spur (MGM, 1953) were praised by the New York Times as “refreshingly tough and taut as they come” and its director again lauded for his handling of its action scenes. Variety believed The Naked Spur was “made to order for the western addict,” thought the five-member cast was uniformly excellent, and praised Mann for its unrelenting pace and “understated action” sequences.26 With the completion of The Naked Spur Mann’s contract with MGM came to an end at a time when Hollywood studios were cutting back on long-term arrangements in the face of the rising tide of television. Thunder Bay (Universal, 1953) received mild notices; and, while Variety could praise Mann for getting action “to replace” talkiness, its commentator essentially agreed with the New York Times which dismissed the film as “very ordinary.”27 No such reservations were expressed by these critics with The Glenn Miller Story (Universal, 1954) as both the Times and Variety saw this musical biopic as certain to be successful; indeed, the former found it to be the best Hollywood musical biography since Yankee Doodle Dandy (Warner Brothers, 1942), while the latter, despite some reservations about the film’s length, found its direction to be “sympathetic.”28 Strategic Air Command (Paramount, 1955), the third film initiated by star Stewart which Mann essentially agreed to do out of loyalty rather than intense personal commitment, was variously praised for its music and aerial photography (by the New York Times) as well as its large-screen process (VistaVision) and the ways in which the action segues from scene to scene.29 The work represents the most overtly jingoistic or patriotic film that Mann ever directed as its story of a ballplayer turned jet pilot ended up pleading for national preparedness and praising the military organization that was protecting America’s safety and prosperity.

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Anthony Mann

From left (foreground): James Stewart, Anthony Mann and cinematographer Charles Lang (standing, right) on the set of The Man from Laramie (Columbia, 1955). The last collaboration between the actor and the director would prove to be one of their best as Will Lockhart (Stewart) discovers his need for revenge must give way to his being human.


17

The Far Country and The Man from Laramie (Columbia, 1955) completed the series of westerns for which Mann and Stewart would later be celebrated by critics. The Far Country received good reviews from Variety, which characteristically cited its box office appeal, and the New York Times, which praised its location work.30 The second film represented what Mann would later call his final variation on the tough persona which he and Stewart had created; at the same time, with its heavy emphasis on family and patriarchy, it clearly foreshadows Man of the West (United Artists, 1958). The director’s work on The Man from Laramie was described as “expertly punched” by Variety and as “fierce and steady” by the Times; more insightfully, the first reviewer also commented on how directly the violence related to the plot development.31 It was seemingly this feature of The Man from Laramie that helped to precipitate the breakup of the Mann-Stewart working partnership. When Will Lockhart is roped and dragged through a fire during the scene at the salt flats, and when he battles against Dave Waggoman (Alex Nicol) and Vic Hasbro (Arthur Kennedy), it is clearly Stewart who is being photographed without the use of a stunt double. Such a procedure was, of course, in line with Mann’s sense of realism; indeed, his oft-cited remarks about how exterior locations add immeasurably to the actors’ performances clearly imply such a direct approach to scenes of violence. His star, who was in his late forties by this time, while outwardly agreeable to doing such sequences, was privately complaining about their rigors, and when Mann subsequently questioned the characterization that Stewart wanted to develop in Night Passage (Universal, 1957), the two men went their separate ways.32 Before that professional rupture, however, Mann turned out The Last Frontier (Columbia, 1955); and, while the film received a lukewarm critical reception—Variety said it “never rises above the routine” and the Times’s Bosley Crowther simply noted that its theme was civilization is “awful”—it has emerged as one of the director’s more intriguing works.33 No such claim can be advanced for Serenade (Warner Brothers, 1956). This attempt to reprise the success of The Glenn Miller Story flounders from beginning to end. Variety described Mann’s direction as “skillful” but its review and that of the New York Times offer little more than damning with faint praise for tenor Mario Lanza’s supposed “comeback” effort.34 During the filming of Serenade, Mann and leading lady Sarita Montiel fell in love, a development that led to his divorce of Mildred and remarriage to the Mexican actress in 1957. Montiel appeared in Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz (United Artists, 1954) and Samuel Fuller’s Run of the Arrow (RKO, 1957); however, the fact that she had to be dubbed (by co-star Angie Dickinson) in the less than distinguished Tension at Table Rock (RKO, 1956),

18

Anthony Mann

when combined with her less than scintillating work in Serenade, indicates her limitations as a performer. When Mann and Stewart differed over Night Passage, the director shifted over to The Tin Star (Paramount, 1957) with a script by celebrated screenwriter Dudley Nichols. The usual sources found The Tin Star to be “a quality western” with “smooth direction” and an outstanding performance from Henry Fonda (Variety) in addition to exhibiting a “lean laconic fashion” on Mann’s part (The New York Times).35 Mann next moved to independent production with his own company Security Pictures, for which he directed Men in War (1957) and God’s Little Acre (1958), two of his most successful works. In addition to lead writer Philip Yordan, the crews included cinematographer Ernest Haller, composer Elmer Bernstein, and lead actors Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray. The Korean War story received only slight praise from Variety which claimed it was “mostly for male audiences” even though the battle scenes, the music, and the performances of Ryan as the beleaguered commander, Ray as a seemingly heartless professional warrior, and Robert Keith as a shell-shocked colonel, were all praised. The always prickly Bosley Crowther simply dismissed Men in War as yet another exposition of the theme that combat is “unequivocal hell” and found Mann’s direction “clichéd.”36 While it is based on the novel Combat (1949) by Van Van Praag, Men in War transforms its source in many obvious ways. Yordan transfers the World War II action of the book to the early stages of the Korean War; eschews its approach, in which many characters appear and disappear almost at random, to hone in on the trials of a single combat unit; and abandons its downbeat ending, in which the major character is finally sent home because of wounds, to offer a profound meditation on how savage apparently civilized men must become in order to survive in war. Once again, the film’s reputation has grown considerably with the passage of time and the emergence of more skeptical sensibilities. The critical responses to God’s Little Acre were much more laudatory. While initially billed as a lurid tale of unrestrained sexuality—and hailed by the mainstream publications Life, Time, and Newsweek because of such prerelease publicity—the serious critics saw the finished film as “adult, sensitive, and intelligent” (Variety). Ryan’s performance as the tragic-comical patriarch Ty-Ty and the musical treatments of Elmer Bernstein were also lauded. Mann was praised for his direction of his whole ensemble, which included performers with talents as various as Tina Louise (as the earthy but honorable Griselda) and Buddy Hackett (as the comically inept Pluto Swint).37 The director’s next film, Man of the West, is now widely hailed as a mas-


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From left: Director Nicholas Ray with Philip Yordan. The screenwriter would work with Mann on The Black Book (1949), The Last Frontier (1955), Men in War (1957), God’s Little Acre (1958), El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

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Anthony Mann

terpiece, if not as the masterpiece, in Mann’s entire career. Its initial release in New York found the film running off Broadway in a secondary theater in spite of its featuring Gary Cooper as its leading man. Variety noted that while it contained scenes of “great power” in showing how its protagonist must revert to “savagery,” Man of the West suffers from being obsessed with “pseudo-masculinity.” Its emphases on realistic, rather than psychological, conflict make it “one of the bloodiest, most brutal, and unsparing portraits of the Old West.” Paradoxically, the New York Times thought the film exhibited too much “staginess,” even though it was “well acted and beautifully photographed” and Mann had directed “like a stalking panther.”38 Mann’s screenwriter, Reginald Rose, worked diligently to transform the Will C. Brown novel The Border Jumpers (1955) into a workable movie script. To do so, Rose deleted major elements such as a Texas Ranger eventually marrying Billie Ellis; the protagonist frequently remembering his wife Lucy, never approaching the saloon singer romantically, and killing Coaley himself after their epic struggle; and the blind Dock Tobin committing suicide after all the other members of his gang are gunned down in an attempted raid on a general store. Rose cleverly emphasized the madness and power of the outlaw patriarch, the torments of the trapped protagonist who must annihilate his former evil family, and the character of Cousin Claude, who emerges as a powerful mirror image of Link Jones. Indeed, the moral and intellectual insights of Mann’s protagonist stand in the sharpest contrast to the simpler and more accepting personality of Brown’s leading character. The next phase of Mann’s career found him laboring, with varying degrees of success, on Cimarron (MGM, 1960) and Spartacus (Universal, 1960). For the former film, the director was called back to his former studio to remake the RKO original which had won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1930. Producer Edmund Grainger and screenwriter Arnold Schulman saw the popular Edna Ferber novel (1929) as a great romantic story set in the West, while Mann envisioned the film as a panorama of the social movements that had shaped America from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries.39 The director tried to make an outdoor epic by relying heavily on location shooting, but studio executives eventually became troubled by this approach because they felt the film needed more emphasis on the soap opera marriage of its principal characters, Yancey (Glenn Ford) and Sabra Cravat (Maria Schell). This disparity in approaches eventually reached a boiling point and Mann left the production. It was finished by Grainger, who brought in Reggie Callow to film some scenes to make the romantic angst of the Cravats more apparent. While Mann is officially credited as the director of Cimarron, the unevenness of the finished picture was perhaps best described


21

by the New York Times’s Bosley Crowther who found it “exciting—for half an hour.”40 Interestingly enough, Edna Ferber thought it the better of the two film versions, even though she believed that neither work had truly caught the spirit of what she had written.41 Universal had decided to financially back Kirk Douglas’s Spartacus; however, the actor-producer’s wish to have Stanley Kubrick, who had overseen the masterful anti-war Paths of Glory (United Artists, 1957), direct this blockbuster was looked at askance by studio officials, who insisted that the more experienced Mann be used. However, after a few weeks of shooting, neither Douglas nor Universal were pleased with the results, and so the director was fired—albeit he was paid his full salary ($75,000) by Douglas, who personally handled the dismissal. One popular explanation for this turn of events was that Mann was being too subservient to actor Peter Ustinov, who won an Oscar for his performance as Batiatus the ever-mercenary trader in gladiators, and that Douglas became incensed over this seeming slight. While the truth of the matter seems more mundane, it remains fairly clear—as Mann himself would subsequently state—that much of the film’s first hour was done by the director in spite of Kubrick’s getting the screen credit.42 Serendipitously, in spite of these two artistic and personal setbacks, Mann’s reputation as an epic director was secured by his next assignment, El Cid, released in 1961 under the aegis of legendary producer Samuel Bronston. As a vigorous self-promotional genius, Bronston, whose family was related to the famous Russian Revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein), had finagled his way into various film studio jobs in France during the 1930s; and, at the same time, he had made a useful contact in the widow of the American novelist and short story writer Jack London.43 Forced to leave France and emigrate to the United States because of “financial difficulties,” Bronston inveigled a job as a film producer at Columbia in the early 1940s. The Adventures of Martin Eden, based on the London novel, was released in 1942; and Bronston went on to be officially credited as the producer on United Artists’ Jack London (1943), a highly romanticized account of the writer’s life. He was then associated with City Without Men (1943), Lewis Milestone’s somber war drama A Walk in the Sun (United Artists, 1945) and the delightful Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None (United Artists, 1945) crafted by expatriate French director Rene Clair. Despite such associations, Bronston fell on hard times in the late 1940s and returned to Europe where he was able to ingratiate himself with the Papacy to the extent that the Roman Catholic Church hired him to produce a series of documentary films on the artistic treasures of the Vatican. By the late 1950s Bronston, ever the calculating promoter, had come to realize that

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Anthony Mann

movie production in Spain could be financed in ways that would attract foreign investors. Due to currency restrictions imposed by the Franco government, profits could only taken out of the country in the form of Spanish currency which was seriously devalued in international markets. Bronston proposed (to virtually anyone who would listen) that by making movies for worldwide release he could essentially utilize the “frozen funds” and pay his investors back in more profitable currencies. His own predilection for epic stories and his own quest for artistic “realism” not only led to Bronston’s building his own movie studio near Madrid but also to his setting forth on a series of six epic films with international casts. These spectacles, which increasingly came to feature performers from various countries in an effort to maximize their box office appeal, were characterized by the painstaking construction of open air sets and Bronston’s own style of highly individualized marketing. While his first two releases, John Paul Jones (1959) directed by John Farrow, and King of Kings (1961) directed by Nicholas Ray, enjoyed enough success to keep Bronston financially afloat, it was with El Cid (1961) that he was to enjoy his greatest success: That film, made at a cost of approximately $6.5 million, grossed nearly $26.5 million upon its initial release. Unhappily, this financial windfall led to the ultimate demise of Bronston’s production company: The movie impresario was not financially careful in being too trusting of some of his closest associates, as well as prodigal with production moneys. His financial plan was, quite simply, that the profits from a movie in release would satisfy his creditors and encourage new investors; and, while this scheme worked to perfection with El Cid, Bronston’s successive works— 55 Days at Peking (1963) again directed by Nicholas Ray, The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and Circus World (1964) with Henry Hathaway in charge—were Producer Samuel Bronston. The ornate producnot nearly profitable enough tion values of El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the to keep his movie operation Roman Empire (1964) reflect the prodigality with which Bronston approached epic filmmaking. afloat. It was, indeed, the


23

production costs of The Fall of the Roman Empire, estimated at between $26 and $28 million, that sank the producer’s ship when that film returned approximately $7 million at the box office on its initial release. Mann was brought into this idiosyncratic atmosphere of continual financial promotion and production values that outdid anything ever attempted before (or since) in terms of the scale of the sets, especially for The Fall of the Roman Empire. His work on El Cid was widely heralded by critics, with Variety emphasizing the film’s action and “pictorial values” while singling out Genevieve Page (as the villainous Urraca) and Douglas Wilmer (as the Moorish ally Moutamin) for their performances. Bosley Crowther gave the film the very best notice that he ever had for a Mann work, going so far as to praise the director and cinematographer Robert Krasker. In addition, the veteran New York Times critic extolled the “sheer pictorial punch” of much of the film and was especially delighted by the duel sequence at Calahorra. At the end of the year, Crowther even included El Cid in his list of the ten best films of 1961.44 Eager to repeat his success and working with individuals who were constantly looking for new epic material, Mann suggested the theme of Roman imperial decline to Bronston and Philip Yordan, who was functioning as a writing supervisor for the producer; and they, in turn, pitched the idea to Sophia Loren and Charlton Heston, the co-stars of El Cid. While Loren was willing to participate, Heston balked for personal and professional reasons and then accepted the lead role in 55 Days at Peking, another project that was in the works at the Spanish movie studio. Eventually, even without Heston’s participation, Mann and Bronston gathered a thoroughly epic cast for The Fall of the Roman Empire with Stephen Boyd, Loren, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Christopher Plummer, and Omar Sharif along with numerous other well-known performers. The grandiose sets, which were built as free standing and three-dimensional structures, included the winter fortress–palace of Marcus Aurelius and a virtual reconstruction of the Roman Forum. Despite such attention to detail, and spectacular sequences like the forest battle with the German barbarians, the chariot race–fight between Livius (Boyd) and Commodus (Plummer), the gigantic battle of the four armies on the plains of Asia Minor, and the final orgiastic and duel scenes within the Forum, The Fall of the Roman Empire was a decided commercial failure. The review in Variety proved shortsighted when it declared that this Bronston release was “bigger and better than El Cid,” for, while The Fall of the Roman Empire may well have been more lavish in its sets, the story simply did not please in spite of its being “cleverly directed.”45 Bosley Crowther was clearly more prescient when he declared the film

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to be “incoherent and overdone;” and, if observers can now see a great deal more to appreciate in Mann’s Roman epic, the critic’s judgment was undoubtedly reflective of the more sober political atmosphere which descended upon America after the assassination of President Kennedy. While El Cid presented the triumph of heroic action over social and political disarray (and was shown at least three times at the White House during Kennedy’s administration), The Fall of the Roman Empire reflected some of the loss of confidence in political action that would become even more marked as the 1960s wore on. Shortly after his marriage to Sarita Montiel was annulled in 1963, Mann wed ballerina Anna Kutzho, with whom he had a son, Nicholas, born in 1965. At the same time, because of the increasing shift toward independent movie production and the demise of the Bronston establishment, Mann realized that he would have to take a greater hand in finding projects. Now based in Europe, he was instrumental in producing as well as directing The Heroes of Telemark, a Rank-Columbia co-production that was released in 1965 and which would be his last completed film. This World War II story of Norwegian resistance fighters undoing Nazi efforts to produce “heavy water,” an essential ingredient for an atomic bomb, found the director reunited with leading man Kirk Douglas. In addition to feeling that he “owed” Mann a movie because of what had happened on Spartacus, the star later described how the director would throw snow in his face, and that of co-star Richard Harris, in order to increase the verisimilitude of their scenes in the wintry landscape. Variety praised the art direction and the cinematography and pronounced The Heroes of Telemark a “lofty, gripping, and carefully made entertainment”; the New York Times found the film “scenically beautiful” and complimented Mann for his “tight direction.”46 Despite such complimentary reviews, the work did only modest box office business, in part, perhaps, because of its anticlimactic screenplay which featured an entire hour of plot after the main attack on the German installation. Clearly, Mann’s film lacked the kind of typical bravura ending found in such films as The Guns of Navarone (1961). More notable and obvious plot problems also beset the last film on which Mann worked. A Dandy in Aspic featured a script by Derek Marlowe, who had written the 1966 novel on which the work was based; however, both versions were simply too convoluted, and the overall plot of a double agent being used as a pawn by callous superiors had been much more deftly rendered in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (Paramount, 1965) which featured Richard Burton and was based on a John Le Carre novel. In addition, and most tragically, the director died in the middle of


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filming and was replaced by leading man Laurence Harvey, who completed the work for Columbia in 1968. A Dandy in Aspic was panned by both Variety (which saw its direction as “contrived”) and the New York Times (which dismissed it as “wobbly”). While one would like to imagine that the finished product would have been improved if Mann’s guiding hand had been present throughout its shooting, it is strikingly apparent that the director was critically regarded as passé.47 However appropriate such an evaluation was for its time, Mann’s final films are much more resonant and prescient today. The Fall of the Roman Empire, however entertaining the personal stories that went into its making, appears particularly apt in being a meditation over how political power is, ultimately, lost. Indeed, it is a film that operates at several levels; and, while it has been evaluated and often dismissed in terms of plot or acting, on a philosophical level Mann’s work emerges as one of the truly thought-provoking efforts in film history. If anything, the large-scale intellectual challenges thrown out by The Fall of the Roman Empire render its earlier dismissals as essentially beside the point. At the same time, The Heroes of Telemark and A Dandy in Aspic show Mann turning his attention to the twentieth century in ways that he had not heretofore done. The claustrophobic worlds of his noir films and the contented societies he portrays in his obligatory assignments for James Stewart— Thunder Bay, The Glenn Miller Story, and Strategic Air Command—lack the scope of these two final films. While they are uneven because of the director’s death and the circumstances under which A Dandy in Aspic was completed, both films illustrate Mann’s greater concern with coming to grips with the modern world of the Cold War and potential annihilation.

2

Mann and the B Film Had Anthony Mann died or simply quit Hollywood before 1947, his career as a film director would be of little interest, save to the most zealous of auteurist critics. From his debut, effort with Dr. Broadway (Paramount, 1942) through The Bamboo Blonde (RKO, 1946), Mann was beset by trite scripts, meager production values, and superficial (if not incompetent) actors. While two of these films—Strangers in the Night (Republic, 1944) and Strange Impersonation (Republic, 1946)—exhibit stylistic features and thematic emphases that mark the mature filmmaker, Mann was, at best, making B pictures on very tight shooting schedules. Mann exhibits greater control as he works through these assignments, and one can clearly discern a marked stylistic gain with his first feature for RKO, Two O’Clock Courage (1945), if only because of more luxurious production and post-production facilities supplied by that studio. If Dr. Broadway foreshadows Mann’s work in film noir by virtue of its urban setting and character types, Two O’Clock Courage also anticipates this later development because of its emphases on a weak male protagonist and the conflicting personas of the women he encounters during his basically nocturnal adventures. During the war years, Mann worked industriously enough as a B film director at Paramount, Universal, Republic, and, finally, RKO. His debut film Dr. Broadway is of greatest interest because it shows Mann’s relative control of the medium in which he was to work until his death twenty-five years and forty-one pictures later. While the five musicals which Mann turned out during this period also show his stylistic competence, they are neither inspired or inspiring; at best, they show how the director could accommodate himself to standard studio assignments. Strangers in the Night and Strange Impersonation were much more temperamentally congenial to Mann because they deal with suspense, murder, violence, and psychological anguish and serve as clear anticipations of what he would accomplish in film noir.

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2. Mann and the B Film

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Breaking the Ice: Dr. Broadway Mann’s debut feature is, at best, a well-crafted B feature whose wisecracking script and austere production values uneasily compete for slightly more than an hour. Fortunately, Mann achieves a pace that covers up much of the clichéd character drawing and familiar plot holes that beset the script. He also delineates his first set of double villains, offers some signature stylistic moments, and provides harsh physical violence, all traits that will mark his more lauded later films. Initially, one is struck by the comic dialogue in Dr. Broadway. The good characters—Dr. Timothy Kane (Macdonald Carey), Detective Sergeant Pat Doyle (Richard Lane), and Connie Madigan (Jean Phillips)—are virtually signaled by their breeziness. Indeed, their repartee reassures the audience that nothing serious will happen to any of them. On the other hand, the villains—Vic Telli (Eduardo Ciannelli) and Jack Venner (J. Carrol Naish)—are never given any genuine comic lines. The dying Telli, who has been paroled because of a terminal illness, can plead with Dr. Kane after we see him simply snarling at his former confederate Venner. The haberdasher-criminal can only alternate between being browbeaten, hypocritical, or demonic with Telli and Kane. The protagonist is one of those concoctions so beloved by screenwriters, for Timothy Kane embodies the noble loner qualities we associate with the heroes of private eye and cowboy fiction. Under prodding by Sergeant Doyle, who asks midway through the film why Kane “hangs around Broadway” instead of developing a lucrative practice elsewhere, Dr. Broadway offers that he is “needed” here. Like numerous knights errant and such fictional and idealist characters as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Jack Schaefer’s Shane, Mann’s central figure is sacrificing himself for a greater, com- Dr. Timothy Kane (MacDonald Carey) and Connie Madigan (Jean mon good. Phillips) in Dr. Broadway (ParaAs the eponymous hero, Kane mount, 1942). Mann’s first film emerges as a combination of Lancelot, uneasily combines tension and Tarzan, and Sherlock Holmes: Not only comedy.

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Anthony Mann

does he seek to do good deeds because he must but he also has the support of a virtual community of Broadway’s denizens whenever he needs their assistance. Just as the Lord of the Jungle could summon up its animal population to aid him in combating evil, Dr. Broadway can enlist the aid of his urban pals, a group that includes con men like the Professor (Olin Howland), newspaper vendors like Broadway Carrie (Mary Gordon) and assorted toughs like Maxie, the Goat (Warren Hymer). Kane naturally agrees to seek out Telli’s long-lost daughter in order to deliver the money ($100,000) left to her by her father. When he is confronted by an imposter in the duplicitous Mary (Jane Randolph in the first of three appearances for Mann) who has been sent by Venner, Kane quickly discovers that she has her tonsils, because of a detail that Telli shared earlier with him about “holding” his daughter’s hand when she had them removed. Despite such prescience, the protagonist gets knocked out and is at risk of his life at the climax. To alleviate this problem, Mann unhappily resorts to a deus ex machina device which has Maxie kill Venner so that Kane does not have to do so; indeed, the staging of this sequence offers an abrupt reversal because the audience does not see Maxie until after the shots have been fired. Vic Telli is introduced as apparently out to get even with Mann’s protagonist because the latter’s testimony sent him to prison. Despite numerous warnings, Dr. Broadway goes to meet Telli in a nightclub, and the sequence is initially staged as though it were to be a shootout. Telli holds court at a side table and, after dismissing the obsequious Venner, he is told that Kane has arrived. The camera then tracks with a waiter who informs various patrons of the impending confrontation and they, in turn, get up and leave. At the end of that track, Kane is shown entering and silence prevails as he walks to Telli’s table in a reverse tracking shot. At the criminal’s table Kane is initially perplexed when Telli reaches into his breast pocket, but, instead of a gun, he produces a cigar—a trait that Venner has already brought to the audience’s attention by mentioning that Telli has always offered him a cigar in their previous meetings. While the withholding or rewarding of a cigar represents a simple way of delineating good and bad guys, it is a measure of Mann’s skill at this point that he feels that this device be underlined by expository dialogue; as he develops, the director will simply show such actions without comment and allow his audiences to make such connections for themselves. Mann is more purely visual with other sequences, particularly Telli’s murder. Kane is initially informed of the criminal’s return by a message written on a mirror, the first of numerous instances when such an object and its reflections will be used in Mann’s films. Telli’s demise in Kane’s office is, of course, not shown in any detail; instead, as he settles into a chair to be treated


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Connie Madigan (Jean Phillips) on the building ledge at the beginning of Dr. Broadway (Paramount, 1942). Mann’s film begins and ends in the same location with the title character rescuing the heroine on both occasions.

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by a heat lamp, we see a door behind Telli that is being ominously opened. Later, when Kane and Doyle notice the heat lamp is still on (after the protagonist told Telli he should only stay under it for five minutes) and rush to the office, their reactions to the apparently “cooked” villain are handled through reactions shots of their faces, then a quick cut to an electric light as if to re-emphasize what has happened. Venner emerges as the film’s major villain, albeit one for whom overt violence is only a last resort; indeed, like Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr) in Raw Deal (1948), the hoodlum prefers to have others do his dirty work. In an extended confrontation with Kane, the master villain mixes open confessions and threats with repartee about buying a suit; in doing so, Venner comes across as a charming antagonist—one who prefigures such characters as Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy) in Bend of the River (1952) and Judge Gannon (John McIntire) in The Far Country (1955). One of Venner’s gang, Red (Gerald Mohr), anticipates the libidinous henchmen perfected later by John Ireland in Railroaded (1947) and Raw Deal as well as Charles McGraw in T-Men (1948) and Border Incident (1949). Red not only slaps Connie around after taking her prisoner but he also works over one of his gang when the man attempts to leave prior to their executing Mann’s heroine in line with Venner’s ultimatum to Kane about delivering Telli’s money or losing the girl. The abruptness with which Red strikes out at both of these other characters and the sadistic pleasure he seemingly takes in humiliating them are traits that Mann will explore and perfect in such figures as Dave Waggoman (Alex Nicol) in The Man from Laramie and Coaley (Jack Lord) in Man of the West (1958). The most notable stylistic feature of Dr. Broadway is its emphasis on heights. The film is framed by two scenes on a building ledge, one played for comedy and exposition and the other for resolution. In the first scene, which opens the movie, Connie perches precariously on the ledge and has attracted the attention of police, firemen, and various gawkers as she hollers “Out of this world!” A sorely beset fire chief and Pat Doyle muse over the situation until Dr. Broadway shows up, speculates on the psychology of the seeming suicide, and then offers to get her down. After some elliptical dialogue about his being a “pigeon,” Kane does get the girl inside only to discover that she has been hired to promote a jazz band that is “out of this world.” He then knocks Connie out in order to gain time so that he can maneuver her out of serving time in jail. While the rapidity of Kane’s affection for Connie and the ease with which he contrives to get a friendly judge to parole her to him as his receptionist are inevitable features of B movie scripting, Connie’s subsequent cleaning of Kane’s office window—by leaning out precariously and having


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him pull her back inside—makes the obvious connection that he must and will save her in the film’s climax. That action occurs when Connie manages to get away from the Venner gang and call attention to her being once again perched on the building ledge by dropping one of her shoes on the head of a pedestrian nine stories below. Now aware of the gang’s hiding place, the police and Sergeant Doyle storm the building and arrest the thugs; at the same time, Kane has his final confrontation with Venner and the latter is killed. The film then moves to its quick resolution as Connie is now terrified of being on a ledge and once again only the protagonist can save her. After Kane gets her to stop being “frozen” and to come back with him to the open window, Mann’s camera reverses to Doyle and a friend as they watch the lovers embrace as signaled by Connie’s telltale bending up to kiss the hero. In this way Mann restores comic order to the world of Dr. Broadway in a thoroughly judicious (and inexpensive) B movie fashion. Dr. Broadway was not well received on its initial release; however, a later and more nuanced evaluation from The Motion Picture Guide offers that Dr. Broadway “is a poor first film from director Anthony Mann, but it does hint at his later talents.” Dr. Broadway reveals Mann’s ability to understand the genre in which he was working; if he does little that is out of the ordinary, at the same time he does nothing that slows the pace or that seems gratuitous. Clearly Mann had learned well from his earlier years in and around Hollywood.

Mired in Musicals (1): Moonlight in Havana (1942), Nobody’s Darling (1943), My Best Gal (1944), Sing Your Way Home (1945), and The Bamboo Blonde (1946) Between 1942 and 1946, Mann directed five B musicals at Universal, Republic, and RKO. While none of them rise above the ordinary, they again show his competence in handling generic pieces. Mann combines the placing of musical numbers with the love triangles and screwball comic turns that mark Hollywood efforts of the time. These films are obviously quickly made and replete with cheap sets and process shots, and Mann’s sure sense of pace once again serves to conceal their meager budgets. While each film ends with an obligatory lavish production number—a convention that always finds huge spaces and elaborate casts and props suddenly employed in what has heretofore been an austere film world—Mann never allows these big set pieces to go on too long as he brings about quick romantic resolutions to his supporting plots. Whether it’s the happy fadeout of Moonlight in Havana (Universal, 1942)

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in which the reconciled lovers, Johnny “Whizzer” Norton (Allan Jones) and Gloria Jackson (Jane Frazee), perform to “Rhythm of the Tropics”; the “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” ending of Nobody’s Darling (Republic, 1943) where teenage sweethearts, Janie Farnsworth (Mary Lee) and Chuck Grant (Jackie Moran) cavort; or the army base production of “Everything Is Awfully Humpty Dumpty” in My Best Gal (Republic, 1944) as Johnny McCloud (Jimmy Lydon) and Kitty O’Hara (Jane Withers) are blissfully reunited, Mann never allows such sequences to become tedious. The finale of Sing Your Way Home (RKO 1945) is more succinct as the adult lovers, Steve Kimball (Jack Haley) and Kay Lawrence (Anne Jeffreys), return to her nightclub only to discover that the ingénue lovers, Bridget (Marcy McGuire) and Jimmy (Glen Vernon), have substituted for them in the big production number (“Imagine Me”). Mann ends the film with a shot of the laughing adults which is thoroughly in keeping with his plot line in which the egotistical reporter Steve must be comically corrected by the people around him and, most especially, by the affection of Kay. Mann takes a similarly light and comic approach in The Bamboo Blonde (RKO, 1946) when he has the feuding lovers, Pat Ransom Jr. (Russell Wade) and Louise Anderson (Frances Langford), reconcile at the home of the boy’s rich parents. This resolution follows a staged emergency landing by Pat which is designed to enable his parents (Paul Harvey and Regina Wallace) to meet the girl he loves. After Pat has fallen into an oil well and been thoroughly soaked, he returns to the palatial Ransom home to find that Louise has captivated his parents into singing, so he whisks her off into a side room as the end credits emerge on screen. Mann’s wartime musicals often include mistaken or serious love triangles to keep their thin plots afloat. In Moonlight in Havana this relationship turns on a comic gambit in which Johnny Norton must have a head cold in order to sing well. At one point Norton can only attain this condition by kissing the already sniffling Patsy Clark (Marjorie Lord), who then briefly imagines that the protagonist is in love with her. To add to this complication, their kissing scene is witnessed by Gloria, who immediately sees romantic perfidy, a development which leads to some inevitable comic confusions before the lovers arrive at the climax to sing and dance. Sing Your Way Home briefly pits the lovestruck and teenage Bridget against the more mature Kay; however, this complication remains fixed at a comic level because Steve never seriously considers the younger infatuated girl as suitable. The love triangle figures more significantly in The Bamboo Blonde in that Pat is initially engaged to Eileen Sawyer (Jane Greer), even though she is too busy in the film’s opening sequence to spend the evening with him before he ships out to the Pacific. While her absence leads to Pat’s meeting


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Commander Pat Ransom, Jr. (Russell Wade) admires the pin-up painting of singer Louise Anderson (Francis Langford) which inspires him and his crew to fight more effectively against the Japanese in The Bamboo Blonde (RKO, 1946).

Louise and their happy times at a small diner and train station, Eileen later emerges as a distinct threat to the eventual happiness of the lovers. When Pat and his crew return from overseas as heroes because of their record in action (apparently motivated by their painting of Louise in a bathing suit on their B-29), Eileen shows her jealous nature by intruding into the airport

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meeting between the pilot and Louise and reasserting her position as his fiancée. This situation becomes even more explosive when Pat prevails on the general (Jason Robards) to allow Louise to accompany him and his crew on the bond drive for which they have been brought back home. During this tour the singer delivers a musical number (“Right Along About Evening”) in which she strips down to her slip and takes a folded poster of Pat to bed with her at one rally. Despite such an obviously symbolic “coupling,” Eileen re-emerges to convince the middle-class Louise that Pat’s wealthy parents will never accept her as a daughter-in-law. This development leads to Louise’s oversexed performance of “I’m Good for Nothing But Love” in front of the elder Ransoms, their guests, and a stunned Pat. When Louise then runs out, the hero follows her to the local airport to set up the film’s comic resolution. Interestingly, the nefarious Eileen is simply shunted to one side—and essentially forgotten—in the final sequence. These films also feature obvious comic relief characters with Hollywood’s most memorable funny drunk, Jack Norton, appearing in Moonlight in Havana and Sing Your Way Home. Gladys George, as inept homemaker Eve Hawthorne/Farnsworth in Nobody’s Darling, and George Cleveland as superstitious Broadway producer Ralph Hodges in My Best Gal, also operate as stereotypes to provide laughs. While Eve Hawthorne/Farnsworth eventually emerges as a caring mother and a faithful wife, Hodges is strictly a comic foil who constantly consults astrology charts, insists that the “kids” cannot be in his show, and then relents to give them “one chance.” Much of the comic business in Sing Your Way Home naturally devolves on Jack Haley who performs various pratfalls and verbal gaffes, while the loudmouth impresario Eddie Clark (Ralph Edwards) carries the same burdens in The Bamboo Blonde. Edwards’s performance is probably the most annoying turn rendered by anyone in these films and, finally, comes across as a rare instance when an actor comes across as “too stagey” in a Mann work. These musicals all turn on familiar generic and plot conventions. Thus, we find the old chestnut of “let’s put on a show” so the kids “can be discovered” as the central plot point in Nobody’s Darling and My Best Gal. The “show must go on” motif is utilized in Moonlight in Havana so that Johnny must finally choose between baseball (his ostensible reason for initially wanting to get to Havana and rejoin his team) and show business (the means he uses to get to Cuba because he’s broke and the team won’t advance him any travel money). Naturally, romance and applause win out in Moonlight in Havana, even though the team’s owner has money problems; and, in a bit of slapdash plot-


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ting, those financial worries are magically resolved before Johnny and Gloria do their final number. Sing Your Way Home offers numerous shipboard performances by the repatriated “hep cats,” all designed to win attention and become part of Steve’s radio broadcast; while The Bamboo Blonde, as a showcase for Frances Langford, uses her songs to underline her romantic feelings for Pat. Loyalty to show business is a pronounced feature of Nobody’s Darling which begins with the news that matriarch Eve has been replaced as a leading lady by her movie studio. This bombshell is Publicity still of Frances Langford at the delivered to daughter Janie by time of The Bamboo Blonde (RKO, 1946). her father, Curtis Farnsworth The singer would also be featured in The (Louis Calhern), who has deciGlenn Miller Story (Universal, 1954). ded that he too must retire in order to spare his wife’s feelings. While this initial ploy only leads to Eve’s becoming angry, because Curtis presents it as a unilateral decision (in order to hide the truth from his beloved wife), and throwing him out while threatening divorce, the couple reconciles when their daughter is about to be expelled from the prestigious Pennington School, an educational enclave for the children of movie stars. At the film’s conclusion, the Farnsworths and Mr. Grant (Lloyd Corrigan) are persuaded by the benevolent and wiser Miss Pennington (Lee Patrick) to allow the school’s musical revue to go on with their children, Janie and Chuck, in the leading roles. The parents are convinced not only by the argument that the show must go on but also by their own egotistic assumptions that their offspring must inevitably be talented because of genetics. Mann uses the same motif in My Best Gal in which a doting grandfather, Danny O’Hara (Frank Craven), takes pains to get his granddaughter Kitty to follow in his showbiz footsteps. After allowing the neighborhood to eavesdrop on Kitty as she showers and sings, Danny tries to cajole her to go to an audition but runs up against her practical argument that she enjoys eating too much to want to risk trying for a career in show business. This

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conflict is carried further when the smitten Kitty goes out on a date with Johnny who has agreed to Danny’s scheme to get her to unwittingly audition for an important producer. When Kitty sees through this ruse, she becomes angry with Johnny to create the familiar “she loves me, she loves me not” plot dilemma. Her dismay becomes even more pronounced when Johnny appears to betray “the kids” by selling his musical to Hodges with the understanding that Broadway professionals will be its cast. However, by this time Danny has fallen ill and needs money for an operation so that it’s clear to the audience that Johnny has sacrificed for a nobler cause. When Kitty figures out the real reason for her lover’s behavior, she naturally rushes to see him off at the train station (he’s enlisted) and then persuades Hodges to change his mind about casting the youngsters in order to set up the army base finale. On the road to that resolution, Mann interjects a highly sentimental scene between Danny and Kitty in which the grandfather gives her a set of tap shoes as a symbolic gesture to affirm her new commitment to the performing life. The shoes, it turns out, had belonged to Kitty’s mother—an erstwhile vaudevillian like Danny—and he’s been saving them for an appropriate moment. Now that Kitty has opted for a show business career, she can receive the shoes, which she promises to restore and use in the future. We see here how the director makes an object stand for a complex of ideas and emotions and, while the meanings are still delivered through expository dialogue, his use of such symbols will become both more profound and less obvious in later films. World War II emerges as both background and then foreground in the plots of Mann’s B musicals. Nobody’s Darling touches on wartime scarcities by showing Eve Hawthorne/Farnsworth trying to become a homemaker, failing at cooking a stew, and then crying for some domestic help, only to be told by the faithful Curtis that there are no servants to be had because of the impact of the war. In My Best Gal, Johnny has eagerly enlisted and is hailed by one and all for his dedication to the war effort. In addition, the film concludes with a musical revue at a military base that stylistically foreshadows Mann’s later rendering of outdoor musicianship in The Glenn Miller Story (Universal, 1954). The plot of Sing Your Way Home finds a gaggle of child entertainers being sent back to the United States under the care of a reporter who has written an egocentric book about his war experiences. The Bamboo Blonde offers an overseas sequence that includes both studio scenes with the B-29 crew as they decide to paint their captain’s supposed girlfriend on the fuselage of their plane and actual combat footage to establish their danger and prowess. Mann would combine these elements most notably in The Glenn


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Miller Story in a memorable sequence in which the protagonist continues to lead his band at a London hospital despite the threat of incoming Nazi rockets. These five musicals offer other foreshadowings of Mann’s more mature style. Typically, he employs mirror shots with reflections to underline dramatic moments, so that the comic resolution of Moonlight in Havana begins with just such a set-up to emphasize that the romantic-farcical situation is about to be resolved. In My Best Gal, Kitty’s initial song (“I’ve Got a Wonderful Feeling”) is partly shot as she sits before a mirror, and the scene in which Pat comes back to Louise in The Bamboo Blonde finds her looking into a mirror as they realize for the first time that they truly love each other. Mann presents interesting shots of feet in My Best Gal as Kitty gets dressed in its opening sequence; in Nobody’s Darling as a way of tracking into the Pennington School for the first time; and in Sing Your Way Home when he shows part of a dance number in a shower and discreetly cuts to the girls’ shuffling feet. Perhaps the most single arresting shot (and one that points to verticality as a major thematic and stylistic feature in Mann’s more celebrated movies) occurs in Nobody’s Darling at the end of a romantic reconciliation scene between Janie and Chuck. They have returned from their publicized night out, been hassled by reporters and photographers, and then beset by irate parents who insist on removing them from the Pennington School, when they meet in a hallway. While their adolescently shy puppy love slowly emerges, Mann cleverly ends the scene by having them go off in opposite directions on a staircase, with Chuck rising and Janie descending. In addition to being an obvious visualization of the immediate plot point of their being separated, this shot offers the youngsters a convenient way to reluctantly say goodbye. Thus, even in such formulaic pieces, Mann was developing stylistic ways of getting thematic points across; and, perhaps more importantly, he was quickly coming to appreciate that movies had to be directed to and through the camera. At the same time, the director was employing rudimentary framing and flashback devices to offer a greater distance from the action that would provide his audience with a more privileged position in regard to the stories being presented to them. In Nobody’s Darling there is a dream sequence in which Janie imagines herself to be Chuck’s one and only with his dancing attendance and, finally, giving her his sharpshooter pin as a symbol of their going steady. Some of this material represents the heroine’s sublimated desires as well as her guilt over stealing the coveted pin (Mann does not stay with the dream conceit long enough to encourage such pop psychological musings).

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His initial set-up in The Bamboo Blonde is more interesting in that the film begins with a reporter arriving at the world headquarters of Bamboo Blonde Enterprises to get a story on the company’s origins. The journalist sits down to interview the apparent head of this conglomerate, Eddie Clark, and is immediately beset by a non-stop sales pitch about various Bamboo Blonde products (from furniture to candies). The loquacious executive (Ralph Edwards at his worst) finally sits down too and we go into a flashback of Pat Jr. and Louise meeting at Eddie’s Club 50. This device is employed through the first half of the movie as Clark’s voiceovers bridge plot transitions; however, by film’s end, this arrangement has been forgotten and so there is never any return to the opening “present” to complete the framing. Clearly, a work like The Bamboo Blonde did not require the more serious framing devices that attach to more significant works like Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) or Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window (1944).

Toward Film Noir: Strangers in the Night (1944), Two O’Clock Courage (1945), and Strange Impersonation (1946) Mann was more at ease with Strangers in the Night (1944) which took him away from the frequently contrived situations of B musicals and allowed him to work in the more sinister and melodramatic worlds of suspense and the woman’s film. Character types who would inhabit his later successes, whether for good or ill, can be seen in nascent form in this brief (56-minute) second feature. The screenplay for Strangers in the Night by Bryant Ford and Phil Gangelin anticipates the far more successful play and film versions of Norman Krasna’s Dear Ruth by essentially serving up the same plot situation with a diabolical, rather than a romantic or a comedic, twist. The sinister Hilda Blake (Helene Thimig) not only fantasizes that she has a daughter named Rosemary but goes so far as to write letters for the girl and to spend much of her time gazing adoringly at a portrait of this imaginary child. Naturally, she performs these actions within a proverbial “old dark house” in which mirrors abound and the reflection of candlelight provides appropriately eerie shadow patterns for Mann and his cinematographer, Reggie Lanning, to exploit. Rosemary’s letters to Marine Johnny Meadows (Don Terry) ultimately boomerang on Hilda when the wounded Guadalcanal veteran shows up on her doorstep looking for her daughter; moreover, this difficulty is then quickly exacerbated by Johnny’s meeting and being smitten by local physician Leslie Ross (Virginia Grey) and then learning that there is no Rosemary. This last complication pushes Hilda over the brink so that she murders her own best friend (and Johnny’s informant) Ivy Miller (Edith Barrett)


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before attacking the lovers and meeting her own demise. Unhappily, that event represents an obvious employment of the deus ex machina resolution brought on, as Jeanine Basinger sagely notes, because of the superabundance of plot contained within this modestly budgeted B programmer. In a variation of the ending of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the distraught Hilda is conveniently killed when she pleads for help to Rosemary’s portrait and it promptly falls and kills her! While Strangers in the Night embodies stylistic touches that foreshadow what Mann would accomplish in film noir (atmospheric lighting, mirror reflections), the largely static rendering through dialogue of much of the plot underscores the director’s less-than-assured grip on the material. Even if certain standard character types found in the later films are clearly present here, one still wishes for more visual and physical representations of the characters’ internal states. At best, Hilda Blake represents the first of many older parental figures who exercise decisive influences within Mann’s films; indeed, in her delusional approach to the world she inhabits, she foreshadows Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb) of Man of the West (United Artists, 1958) who is arguably the most dominating parental figure in all of Mann’s films. Johnny Meadows, despite having been wounded in combat, resembles such weak Mann male leads as Stephen Lindstrom (William Gargan) of Strange Impersonation (1946), the cynical though dominating Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey) of The Furies (Paramount, 1950), and, most notably, the ever-loyal Gaius Livius (Stephen Boyd) of The Fall of the Roman Empire (Paramount, 1964). Like these later figures, Meadows reacts to rather than acts upon the situation in which he finds himself. Of course, that arrangement arises in significant measure because Strangers in the Night and these other films are dominated by their female characters. In these works Mann must deal with many of the elements traditionally associated with “soap opera,” and one of the most obvious of those is the denatured male who exists only to please the more dominant female. Clearly, Mann was never as successful with this kind of arrangement as he was when his male leads were stronger and more self-willed, as seen most clearly in Cimarron (MGM, 1960) in which one is never certain whether the leading character is the male, Yancey Cravat (Glenn Ford), or the female, Sabra Cravat (Maria Schell). If Lindstrom emerges as simply cloying in the attention he pays to Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) in Strange Impersonation, and Darrow as a plot contrivance against which the protagonist Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck) can react in The Furies, Gaius Livius seems more dramatically justified because of the historical subject matter of The Fall of the Roman Empire. Indeed, a weak male protagonist in a work dedicated to

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exploring the nature of historical change allows the spectator to more acutely feel just how “the times they are a-changing.” No such rationalization can, of course, be adduced for Johnny Meadows in Strangers in the Night, for his character is simply a plot device to which Mann unhappily devotes far too much time in this tiny film. The director was still obviously struggling to find himself and his own style in this feature, and it would be some time yet before Mann came to fully appreciate what “the language of cinema” could do to transform the inherent talkiness of a script such as that of Strangers in the Night. Two O’Clock Courage (1945) finds Mann combining a whodunit with a screwball comedy in a remake of an earlier RKO release, Two in the Dark (1936). Both films are based on a novel by Gelett Burgess which initially appeared in 1934 and is even more prolix than the plot of Mann’s film. The novel, also entitled Two O’Clock Courage, is replete with literary allusions delivered by a reporter named Hillier (who hardly matches Richard Lane’s comic stereotype as Haley) as well as a first-person point of view and more complicated romantic machinations. Burgess’s novel also uses frequent newspaper accounts to bridge plot transitions, and a partner to the amnesiac hero, Josephine Ghelt, who represents a genuine down-on-her-luck Depression character with whom the protagonist is never romantically involved. Mann’s film uses Burgess’s primary mystery ploy about murder resulting from the theft and plagiarism of a play (entitled “Two O’Clock Courage”) but the script changes all the characters’ names, does away with many of the supporting figures, and reshapes the others into seeming wisecracking cynics. Thus, we find Police Lieutenant Brenner (Emory Parnell) and the newspaper reporter, Haley, constantly trading barbs and putdowns while, at the same time, being unable to see details that are right in front of their faces. When the protagonist Ted Allison (Tom Conway) points out an alternate escape route at the scene of the crime, Brenner lamely opines that he “never thought of that.” Haley has an extended gag with his managing editor in which he keeps changing the identity of the killer and forcing the latter to remake the front page; at one point the reporter is even suspicious of “Harry,” which is a pet name that Patty (Ann Rutherford) has given to her cab. As if these two characters weren’t enough comic relief, we also find a butler who is so ditzy that he is temporarily charged with the murder of his employer; Jack Norton as yet another falling-down-drunk who recognizes the amnesiac Allison in a nightclub; and a nosy spinster landlady who keeps trying to eavesdrop on Allison and Parry when they are in the girl’s apartment. Even the second female lead Helen (Jane Greer) has to come in drunk in order to reveal that Mark Evans (Lester Matthews) is implicated in the murder of the theatrical producer Dilling. Such buffoonery, when coupled


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with Patty’s virtual non-stop smart aleck dialogue and Allison’s frequently bemused responses, prevents Two O’Clock Courage from becoming a film noir despite its use of archetypal genre settings (nightclubs and darkened streets) and situations (amnesia and the seemingly powerless individual who must prove his innocence). Patty is a most familiar, if not clichéd, type: the girl who automatically decides she must take care of the victimized hero in spite of knowing virtually nothing about him. Her instincts simply tell her on their first meeting that Allison, in spite of his being dazed and injured, and in spite of his fitting the physical description of the suspect the police are seeking, and in spite of her having picked him up near the scene of the crime, cannot be guilty. So she quickly becomes his partner, and, as the story unfolds, predictably falls in love with him. Such cheerfulness, naïveté, and trust are decidedly at odds with the values of hardboiled femme fatales such as Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity (1944) and Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer) in Out of the Past (1947). Two O’Clock Courage opens with an evocative musical main theme by Roy Webb that segues into its opening scene on a foggy, dark street. Ted Allison enters and stumbles against a lamp post, and we see he is groggy and bleeding. He then lurches across the street and is almost hit by Patty’s cab to some appropriately eerie music; however, with her arrival the film’s mood abruptly changes into screwball comedy accompanied by mild danger. While the protagonist is driven to exonerate himself, and rediscover who he is, even this quest becomes comic as he pretends to understand the remarks of people he meets who know his real identity. His comic bumblings finally yield his identity when he returns to Mark Evans’s hotel room and discovers that Helen has been there, a development that leads the plagiarist playwright to angrily blurt out Allison’s name. Such serendipitous plotting also distinguishes the end of Two O‘Clock Courage. When Allison goes alone to the murdered producer’s house and is shot after discovering an incriminating copy of the original play with its author’s name on it, a dream-flashback sequence explains his initial involvement at the crime scene. Unfortunately, while this reversal of his amnesia is clear to Allison, he cannot convince the bumbling Lieutenant Brenner of his innocence until the conscience-stricken Helen stumbles into the room to deliver her drunken confession about Evans. Even then, the apparent suicide of Evans turns out to be another murder—this time by celebrated stage actress Barbara Borden (Jean Brooks), who is the murderer of Dilling as well. All of these plot details are revealed in rapid succession so that the mystery in Two O’Clock Courage emerges as decidedly secondary to its romantic comedy elements.

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Mann is clearly undone here by a script that offers too much talk and too little action. The characters are not morally or psychologically ambivalent enough to engage him and there are simply no opportunities for the kinds of stylized violence that would mark his more mature films. The pace of Two O’clock Courage again covers over some of its plot problems, such as a picture of Jason Robards in Mark Evans’s room that Allison seemingly recognizes but which never leads anywhere. One senses that at some point, Mann simply gave up on the script and simply let things happen. In keeping with his penchant for rapid resolutions, the film ends with a breezy fadeout as Allison and Patty, now wed, return to her apartment and her harridan landlady—this time to foil the latter with a marriage license after the groom has carried his bride across the threshold. Such a reprisal and reversal of their earlier “fake wedding” scene with the landlady is, at best, a small pleasure in a clichéd film. Mann moves into more interesting material with Strange Impersonation, a work that uneasily moves between film noir and woman’s picture with the latter tendency ultimately winning out. The central plot focus is the proverbial “man trouble” found in countless Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck vehicles; however, Strange Impersonation also uses an extended dream sequence in which the nightmare world of film noir presses increasingly on the protagonist. In a fashion similar to Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window (RKO, 1944) Mann’s plot resolves itself when the character wakes up to discover that she has simply had a bad dream. In keeping with the romantic inclination of the film, this realization leads to a final clinch between Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) and Stephen Lindstrom (William Gargan) in which all the previous malevolent moments and events are simply rendered void by the bliss of the to-be-married couple. Dr. Lindstrom personifies the passive male so often found in women’s pictures, whether he is being patient and indulgent with Nora’s quest for scientific fame or simply reacting after her supposed death in the dream sequence by marrying the manipulative Arlene Cole (Hillary Brooke) on the rebound. Once Nora’s face has been injured, Stephen can protest that he still wants to marry her, but he is then easily duped by Arlene’s machinations. He goes from whining about the fact that Nora no longer wants to see him, to passively accepting the heroine’s dismissal of him, to then marrying her romantic rival without ever taking any action on his own. Arlene’s scheme, by which she separates Nora and Stephen through first convincing the hospital staff that his visits are upsetting to Nora and then Lindstrom that the protagonist has issued the order that he no longer see her, underscores the weak nature of the male lead. In that same vein, Stephen acts romantically in ways that seem more


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From left: Dr. Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall), Nurse (Mary Treen), and Arline Cole (Hillary Brooke) in Strange Impersonation (Republic, 1946). In Nora’s dream sequence she awakens to discover that her face has been seriously marred in a fire. The scheming Arline feigns concern but soon turns against Mann’s protagonist.

characteristically female because he is the ever-solicitous male who consistently accedes to whatever Nora dictates. Their first romantic tryst in her lab is initiated when Lindstrom convinces Arlene, the protagonist’s assistant, that he needs something from the library and she obliges by going out for a cigarette. After some modest kisses, Nora then sends Stephen away as he resignedly asks. “Why did I fall in love with a chemist?” Later, at Nora’s apartment, Stephen’s romantic urges are checkmated once more by Nora’s turning his every remark into an excuse to show off her scientific knowledge until Lindstrom finally asks her to stop. His reason for showing up leads to the major romantic crisis in Strange Impersonation as Stephen once again presses Nora to marry him because he is leaving for France the very next day! She, of course, refuses because she needs to test her anesthetic and, in a bit of obvious symbolic byplay, she takes off her engagement ring only to have him put it back on her finger. The love triangle in Strange Impersonation is essentially Arlene’s cre-

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ation, and her motivation appears to be malevolence for the sake of malevolence, as one never gets any sense that she is in love with Lindstrom. If he is, at best, a meal ticket to security and wealth, Arlene seems driven by a need to punish Nora because of her holding Stephen at arm’s length for the good of science and her own career. Indeed, we are left to conclude that Strange Impersonation is psychologically structured as an object lesson to the heroine about the need for giving in to the wishes of a “good man” before she loses him to a “bad girl.” Once Nora reappears as Jane Karaski in the dream section and wins the admiration of Stephen because of her prowess in the laboratory, a second triangle emerges with Nora as the instigator. Her easy victory—Lindstrom tells her he is divorcing Arlene because he has fallen for her and hopes to start a “new life” together in France—brings the central section of Strange Impersonation to its nightmarish conclusion. This sequence plunges the film into the surreal nature of Nora’s dream world as she is arrested for seemingly having murdered herself. Because she

Dr. Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) in Strange Impersonation (Republic 1946). Her lab coat and glasses establish her initial frigidity and cold treatment of Dr. Stephen Lindstrom (William Gargan) in the earlier scenes of the film.


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has taken over the identity of Jane Karaski (Ruth Ford), a slattern who came to rob her and whom she struggled with and killed in self-defense, and someone whose identity Nora was able to assume because her attacker’s corpse was mistakenly identified as her own, the police now believe that Nora is a killer. This heavily ironic situation is, of course, thoroughly in keeping with the fatalistic atmosphere of such celebrated noir films as Detour (PRC,1945) and The Dark Corner (Twentieth Century–Fox,1946). Mann presents Nora’s climactic agony in a rapid series of shots in which a police lieutenant (Lyle Talbot) and a conniving insurance salesman (George Chandler) accuse the protagonist despite her protests that “I’m Nora!” This frenzied montage intercuts their accusations (“You killed her!”) with probing lights and dissonant musical cues to lead to Nora’s fainting and subsequent return from the world of her nightmare. Nora’s dream world is replete with standard film noir elements. In addition to characters like Arlene and the real Jane Karaski, both of whom are strictly out for themselves, we find Mann briefly using a voiceover when Nora decides to become Jane Karaski after her assailant has fallen from the apartment balcony and had her face destroyed. Before Strange Impersonation descends into its dream sequence, we meet Jane Karaski (because she is inadvertently knocked down by Nora’s car) and the insurance hustler J.W. Rinse (who comes immediately upon the scene, urging the drunken Jane to sue for damages). When Nora takes Jane to the latter’s rooming house, and Rinse inevitably follows, we plummet into a setting of flashing neon, urban sleeze, and rapacious characters so common to film noir. Despite such stylistic touches, Strange Impersonation has Nora’s love life as its central concern; indeed, the strongest elements in her dream revolve around her suppressed wishes about wanting to start a “new life” and her reliance on physical beauty to provide her with an identity. Nora must learn to become a woman who relies on marriage, rather than career, for happiness, so that the dream ultimately strips her of any desire to be a scientist. The fire that results when Arlene adds more chemicals to the anesthetic mixture at the beginning of the nightmare leads to Nora’s being hospitalized with a burned face. She then rejects Stephen in large measure because she cannot believe he will accept her scarred countenance; and, after Arlene maneuvers her into believing that Lindstrom is seeing someone else, Nora utters a highly revealing line: “He didn’t give up [France] for me!.” Thus, despite her rejection of Stephen, we see that Nora is dismayed that he is not still pining for her. Her subsequent homecoming with Arlene presents the altered Nora without any protective bandages, and we see her scars appropriately lit from below and accompanied by a musical stinger. After a brief exchange with Arlene about how she’s planning to have plastic surgery, the latter leaves and

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Nora wanders around her apartment. The doorbell rings and the protagonist finds Jane Karaski in the hallway. After being admitted, and noting that Nora lives in a “swell joint,” Jane urges that she should have been more generously awarded after the accident, pulls a gun and begins to take things of value. As she and Nora move toward the door, they fight and Jane is pushed over the balcony. After looking down, Nora rushes out to the street and learns that Karaski’s corpse has been identified as her own because of the jewels on it and, more traumatically and symbolically, because Stephen, who just happened to be coming for a visit, has recognized the engagement ring on the dead woman’s finger! After a newspaper headline announces Nora’s death, Mann cuts to a Los Angeles plastic surgeon’s office and a montage in which Nora’s face is “fixed”; however, as she is recovering, she comes upon yet another newspaper story about the wedding of Stephen and Arlene and becomes distraught enough to want to get out of bed. Told that she must remain in the hospital for at least three more months, Nora decides that she will use her new physical and personal identity to gain revenge on Arlene. By doing so, the protagonist reasserts the “new life” theme of Strange Impersonation paradoxically at the center of her earlier rejection of Lindstrom in the real world of the film. Nora has, in essence, become a mirror image of Arlene in wanting to work her will upon the world, and her new sense of urgent purpose causes her kindly surgeon (H.B. Warner) to warn her that she cannot really change herself. His advice comes after her bandages have been removed and we see her restored face, which is decidedly better made-up than before her accident. Despite this warning, which echoes one of the standard themes of science fiction in which the overreacher is invariably destroyed, Nora-Jane moves ahead with her scheme. At this point, however, the austere budget of Strange Impersonation comes to the forefront, for the audience is asked to believe that a cosmetic makeover and a change in hair color are sufficient to fool the other characters about Nora’s identity. When she returns to the Wilmott Institute and applies for a job with Stephen, he does not recognize her even though he is sufficiently drawn to her so that he invites her to his home for dinner with Arlene. Under the latter’s suspicious gaze, Nora-Jane explains that she was a lifetime friend of the deceased Dr. Goodrich and that when they were together, “we were always taken for sisters.” In her laboratory job, NoraJane is such a great success that Stephen declares she is “amazing” and that he feels as if he is “working with Nora again.” The protagonist’s revenge comes full circle when Lindstrom tells her about his impending divorce and promises they will have a life together—events that trigger the montage climax of Nora’s dream.


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Strange Impersonation returns from Nora’s nightmare by means of a dissolve to the heroine lying on her couch just as she was before the initial descent into her dream world. She awakens to find that Stephen has been watching over her and that he has sent Arlene home long ago, actions that were prompted because Lindstrom had to return for his forgotten briefcase. Quickly dismissing the scientific experiment that has occasioned her somnolence, the shaken Nora rushes to a mirror to be sure that she is still herself, cries for joy when she sees her familiar reflection, and then turns to her fiancé to urge they marry at once so they can go to France as husband and wife. Naturally, Stephen is overjoyed and responds to Nora’s symbolic question—“How do you like the way I look?”—by kissing her. That the heroine has at last discovered who she is and become giddy over the prospect of being Lindstrom’s bride is characteristically rendered by this sequence’s being photographed in a mirror, an object that Mann has repeatedly used to demarcate major changes in his characters and plots throughout these apprentice films. In his first five years as a film director, Anthony Mann learned to improvise in order to improve on the meager scripts and budgets with which he had to work. While he always did the best he could with formulaic musicals, mysteries, and women’s pictures, Mann came to see that his real strengths could best be utilized in stories centered on more physically and psychologically violent characters and situations. He would always be able to handle, and sometimes even improve, obligatory assignments (The Glenn Miller Story, Strategic Air Command [Paramount, 1955], Serenade [Warner Brothers, 1956]) in the future, but rising above such formulaic work would require finding other ways to express his thematic and stylistic strengths. The emergence of the film noir style in Hollywood and the motivational dualities of the leading female characters in Strange Impersonation would offer the means by which Mann would rise to become an A director in the next few years. Clearly, his time as an apprentice filmmaker had prepared him for better things.

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Mann and Film Noir Film noir is often regarded as a style and a mood rather than a genre unto itself. While such films do not have the typological clarity that one associates with westerns or science fiction, there is much critical consensus on the historical limits of film noir. Most accounts see Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) as the beginning of a cycle which was essentially played out by the time that Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) appeared. While there have been later films which embody much of the style and spirit of film noir, such as Chinatown (1974) and Body Heat (1981), these efforts often lack the dramatic power of earlier works. The world-weary sense of survival of the protagonists in these later films, their often consciously constructed natures as homage to the works of the earlier period, and their employment of color photography are traits that significantly separate these post–1958 efforts from film noir in its heyday. Postwar doubts and anxieties brought on by the advent of the atomic age with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki undoubtedly contributed to the emergence of film noir, as did a dissatisfaction with studio Hollywood’s consistent penchant for the “happy ending.” Earlier films had, of course, ended “unhappily” but always with the underlying message that order and right were being restored. Throughout the 1930s, gangster films consistently adhered to this pattern so that the deaths of Enrico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar [1930]), Tony Camonte (Paul Muni in Scarface [1932], and Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart in The Petrified Forest [1936]) were overtly presented as necessary defeats of criminal hubris. Even in John Huston’s classic version of The Maltese Falcon (1941), a film which exhibits some of the stylistic and plot characteristics of film noir, the removal of the villain (in this case Mary Astor’s duplicitous Bridget) by the man who is in love with her (Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade) leads to a sense of the restoration of order. While the detective protagonist can tell the murderess that he will experience “some bad nights” without her, Spade is never as madly in love as such film noir characters as Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford in Gilda [1946]) with the title character or Jeff 48

3. Mann and Film Noir

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Bailey (Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past [1947]) with the murderous female lead. Noir films frequently combine naturalistic exteriors with very stageylooking interiors to emphasize the claustrophobic and trapped lives their major characters lead. Thus, Jeff Bailey’s romantic scenes with the “good” girl Ann (Virginia Huston) occur against natural backdrops in daylight, while his fevered affair with “bad” girl Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer) happens on a darkened beach or within confined spaces in Out of the Past. Typically, when he and Kathie seem most happily in love they are staying in a cabin in the woods; and, naturally, their bliss comes up short when Jeff’s former partner Fisher (Steve Brodie) shows up to blackmail them. The ensuing struggle between the two men occurs within the unlit cabin and ends when Kathie shoots Fisher after Jeff has overpowered him. Murder in film noir often results from a combination of middle-class greed and the manipulation of lovesick males by less sentimental and more ruthless females. Typically, in Double Indemnity Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) gets Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) to kill her husband (Tom Powers) for an insurance payout, only to be tripped up when her greed causes insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) to smell a rat. If Kathie Moffett and Phyllis Dietrichson are too greedy for their own good, the men they manipulate emerge as helpless pawns of fate; indeed, Jeff Bailey and Walter Neff are victims of the “twists of fate of an irrational universe.”1 The cast of characters peculiar to film noir begins with such non-heroic protagonists, men who can occasionally perform bold physical deeds but who are finally the playthings of much stronger and physically irresistible women. In addition, lesser villains are often psychopaths like Vince Stone (Lee Marvin in The Big Heat [1953]) or Monty Montgomery (Robert Ryan in Crossfire [1947]), and corruption is rampant in both society and police departments. Ultimately, the characters in noir emerge as flat in that they gradually reveal their personalities and motivations but hardly ever show any signs of changing for the better as a result of the traumatic experiences they undergo. Most of these films are played out against urban cityscapes which are distinguished by nightclubs full of lonely egotists, hotel rooms invariably lit by blinking neon lights, rain-soaked streets which are often empty late at night, and police stations with numerous probing interrogation lamps. Such backgrounds are frequently coupled with voiceover narrations and lengthy flashback sequences to establish the characters’ attitudes about the loss of order and the growth of cynicism, sexual tensions and jealousies, moral indifference and complacency, and destructive and often gratuitous brutality. Within and against such themes and attitudes, the protagonists of film noir

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are often on the run either because their pasts have caught up with them or because they must try to clear themselves of criminal charges that have arisen because of the workings of fate. Mann was a major contributor to film noir in its heyday; indeed, from 1947 to 1949 he not only worked exclusively in this genre but he also may have been its single most important director. His own visual style certainly emerged during this period as did his skill at dealing with compromised and violent characters. His eight contemporary noir films can be grouped around four plot features that distinguish the genre: (1) blind love which leads to disaster or heartbreak or both; (2) criminal involvement which can only be undone through the protagonist’s taking great risks and suffering severe emotional and physical pain; (3) eccentric villains whose charm or expertise almost compensate for their criminal acts; and (4) police heroes who infiltrate the underworld by taking on its characteristics and defeat it only after profound injuries. In addition, Mann created a most intriguing variation with The Black Book (1949), which is set in the Revolutionary Paris of 1794 but is inhabited by standard film noir character types, and helped to create the screenplay for Richard Fleischer’s more modest Follow Me Quietly (1949).

Prisoners of Love: The Great Flamarion (1945) and Raw Deal (1948) The Great Flamarion can easily be seen as deriving from The Blue Angel (1930) in its emphasis on an older man trapped by his own obsession for a younger woman. While embodying neither the technical skill nor the tragic dimensions of the Josef von Sternberg classic, Mann’s film illustrates his increasingly visual style of storytelling. In the backstage world of The Great Flamarion we are given brief glimpses of various showbiz eccentrics; however, their idiosyncrasies and comic banter are never allowed to dominate the sober events of the film’s plot. There is an almost Shakespearean quality about these minor characters, for they function as a veritable chorus commenting on the actions of the principals in the foreground. The clownish tumbler (Lester Allen) and the philosophical stagehand (Michael Mark) in Mexico City set forth an ironic perspective with their dialogue about everybody’s “being on stage”; while the buffoonish vaudeville couple, who recite their theatrical résumé (“snappy songs”) when being interrogated by the police, symbolize the tawdry world of The Great Flamarion. Other random comments about “poor Eddie” (Stephen Barclay) and how his dead wife Connie (Mary Beth Hughes) was sexual “dynamite” are rendered in sympathetic tones to provide the sense of an uncaring world that


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Dan Duryea (as Al Wallace) and Erich von Stroheim (as the title character) in The Great Flamarion (Republic, 1945). Mann frames the two besotted males in a mirror to suggest that they are equally under the spell of the scheming Connie Wallace (Mary Beth Hughes) in the director’s first film noir.

is impervious to the romantic agony of the title character (Erich von Stroheim). Mirrors are more prominent than in Mann’s past work. The act in which Flamarion displays his skill with pistols is conspicuously played out in front of a large mirror so that we see the synchronized movements that Al Wallace (Dan Duryea) must make to avoid being shot. After their first performance, we find Al and Connie in their dressing room arguing over her flirting with Flamarion. After Al tells his wayward wife that she can’t leave him because he knows too much about her criminal past, the glowering femme fatale is reflected in a mirror. Once Connie has infatuated him, Flamarion tries to persuade Al to leave the act, and their meeting once again plays out against a mirror in the protagonist’s dressing room; indeed, Mann’s composition offers double images of both men to show how each of them has become a victim of the amoral Connie. For one telling moment the two characters are photographed as though joined at the neck to make this symbolic connection even more obvi-

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ous. After Al’s death and the long separation instituted by Connie, we see the lovestruck Flamarion primping in a mirror in the hotel in Chicago where he expects to be reunited with his beloved. Mann enhances the protagonist’s rapture even further through a montage showing Flamarion briefly dancing for joy, picking out a wedding ring, and arranging flowers—all to a muted rendition of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” on the soundtrack. Flamarion’s loss of control throughout the film is underscored further by Mann’s manipulation of guns as symbols. The protagonist’s prowess and power derive, of course, from his skills as a marksman so that it is not unusual to see him practicing with an air pistol when Connie comes to see him about his threat to dismiss both her and Al after the latter has been slightly off in his timing during a performance. When she flirts with him and explains that Al is suffering from jealousy (“I think he knows how I feel about you”), Flamarion is skeptical, but the ominous ticking of a clock and his subsequent inability to continue with his target practice clearly signal that he is about to descend into being the proverbial besotted male of film noir. Before Connie proposes that Flamarion accidentally “shoot” Al, she fondles one of the protagonist’s pistols in an obvious bit of sexual symbolism. When Flamarion realizes that Connie has ditched him in Chicago and sets out to find her, we see his moral and financial decline reflected in his pawning all of his pistols, save one. Appropriately enough, when he confronts Connie in Mexico City, their struggle culminates with her using the weapon to mortally wound Flamarion prior to his strangling her to death. Mann utilizes a framing pattern in The Great Flamarion: The plot starts with its climax and then doubles back as the dying protagonist insists that he must tell his story to the vaudevillian who has found him prone on the stage. Flamarion’s flashback constitutes the bulk of the film and is, naturally, accompanied by his voiceover reflections throughout. The flashback ultimately returns to the film’s opening scene to bring the plot to its logical end with the death of Flamarion, who has functioned as his own witness to the “truth” that will obviously never be uncovered otherwise. Mann also employs effective tracking shots to bring the audience into this opening scene as well as to emphasize Flamarion’s despair when he realizes that Connie has stood him up in the Chicago hotel. The first of these shots takes viewers inside the cheap theater in Mexico City with its milling crowd and threadbare acts to suggest that illusions will be central to what follows: Connie appears to be something to Flamarion that she is not, just as the performers in the theater play at being what they are not. The tracking shot in the hotel emphasizes the course of Flamarion’s search for Connie in that he appears all but lost when measured against the scale of the lobby, just as he is similarly confused about both Connie’s motives and whereabouts.


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The protagonist’s subsequent search for the girl is appropriately rendered by a montage of rushing trains, seedy streets, and his selling of his pistols to a pawnbroker. In the midst of this sequence, Flamarion encounters Cleo (Esther Howard), an old colleague, and she informs him about Connie’s attachment to Eddie, who was featured as a bicycle rider in Pittsburgh where the sharpshooter’s flashback began. Using this clue, Flamarion is able to track down the unfaithful Connie and, after killing her, to flee into the rafters of the theater. We see him ascend to that hiding place from a bird’s eye camera angle; and subsequent shots show him hanging on, with an open trapdoor further accentuating the precarious height to which the wounded man has ascended. Flamarion’s subsequent fall to the stage can be seen as his coming down to the “real world” in which he must repent and atone for his crime. The Great Flamarion’s love triangle foreshadows a similar relationship in the more celebrated Out of the Past because the two male leads are obsessed by the same cynical and conniving female. Unlike Jacques Tourneur’s Kathie, however, Connie ultimately wants nothing to do with either Al or Flamarion; indeed, she appears to be a veritable nymphomaniac in that we see Eddie arguing with her about her flirting with a new man just prior to her being killed by Flamarion. Earlier, his awareness of his wife’s sexual appetites drives Al to drink because he cannot live without Connie and yet he knows that she will never change. He can threaten to reveal her sordid past, but he is basically too weak and too easily impressed by any sign of affection from her to ever do so. Mann illustrates their alienated relationship in a hotel lobby as Connie hides in a phone booth in the right front of the frame while Al buys some cigarettes at the left rear of the composition. Of course, by this time the besotted Flamarion has agreed to the shooting of Al on stage, and all that seemingly remains is to get Wallace sufficiently drunk so that a coroner’s verdict of accidental death will inevitably result. Flamarion resembles Connie (and many another film noir character) in that he also has a traumatic past that has shaped his present life. Like Howie Kemp (James Stewart) in The Naked Spur (1953), Mann’s marksman has been wronged by a woman who cost him his identity. Somehow Connie knows about this situation for she brings it up in Flamarion’s train compartment in her most seductive scene with him. From her (“I know about Alma”) we learn that the protagonist has been double-crossed by a woman and dismissed from the army as a result. Thus, for fifteen years Flamarion has been solely dedicated to his sharpshooting act—an allegiance that earlier has caused him to berate Al because “you were one beat off.” If the finale of this act, in which Flamarion cuts a shoulder strap on Connie’s dress with a wellplaced bullet, again dramatizes the protagonist’s latent sexual feelings in an

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Anthony Mann

obvious fashion, the initial set-up of the whole situation, in which a seemingly enraged husband (Flamarion) returns to find his wife (Connie) entertaining another man (Al), cleverly mimics the love triangle at the center of The Great Flamarion. Connie’s subsequent kissing of the protagonist on the train (done to “wake him up”) leads inevitably to his wondering whether his newfound romantic feelings represent a “new life” or the “beginning of the end.” We next see Flamarion and Connie in a restaurant as he fusses over her and she starts hinting about getting rid of Al in a scene that clearly echoes Double Indemnity. Connie later tells Flamarion about her dream in which Al suffers an “accident”; however, this revelation only occurs after she examines a dress that the protagonist has bought for her and caresses his pistol while smiling seductively at him. Their next meeting occurs after the inquest into Al’s death on stage and finds Flamarion chastising Connie for being late (“Aren’t you ever on time?”); however, despite such romantic eagerness, he then accepts her three-month separation scheme which she explains as a “trip” to see her mother. After Connie insists there can be no communications between them during this time, the infatuated protagonist gladly gives her $10,000 in cash and sets up their future rendezvous in Chicago. Their final meeting introduces another stylistic device that Mann will exploit throughout his noir period, for a swinging lamp is used to impressionistically light Flamarion’s strangling of Connie. Raw Deal is clearly superior both thematically and stylistically because it eschews the melodramatic character drawing of The Great Flamarion and incorporates better production values than the earlier film. In the interim, Mann had found his two most important collaborators in film noir—writer John C. Higgins and cinematographer John Alton—and both of them contribute notably to Raw Deal. In its plot Raw Deal attains a sense of tragedy as each of its three leading characters, Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt), Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe), and Pat Cameron (Claire Trevor), ends up victimized and so exposed to his or her own raw deal. Mann’s greater artistry is apparent from the opening credit sequence which uses a bleak prison wall as its backdrop to symbolize how the characters are caught or trapped by their own wishes and desires. The inevitable atmosphere of film noir is reinforced by an eerie main title musical theme meant to create unease and to, again, foreshadow the bleak world in which the protagonists move. Alton’s brilliant camerawork commences with a deeply shadowed waiting area in which Pat must sit until Joe’s “other visitor” is finished, and with the distorted optical treatment of the simultaneously ongoing interview between Ann and Joe inside. This second composition sets


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these two characters conspicuously apart from their surroundings and, thus, makes plausible the emerging love between them, which belongs only to them and which will ruin any prospect for happiness for the nervously waiting Pat. Alton’s style with the criminal world of Raw Deal comes to the forefront later in a fight sequence inside a taxidermist’s shop. Joe goes there ostensibly to get his share of the loot from the robbery for which he “took the fall” to protect crime boss Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr). The latter, however, has lured Sullivan to this meeting so that his Marsha Hunt (as Ann Martin) in Raw Deal minion Fantail (John Ireland) (Reliance/Eagle-Lion, 1948). By this point her can kill the escaped convict. character has changed from a law-abiding Rick’s underling initially gets idealist to an infatuated woman willing to kill the drop on Joe in a shot that to help prison escapee Joe Sullivan (Dennis shows both of them in deep O’Keefe). When Ann subsequently breaks focus, a stylistic trait which will down on a bench, Joe discovers that he’s in characterize Mann’s films all love with her. the way through A Dandy in Aspic (1968). Joe manages to turn the tables on Fantail and the shop owner (Tom Fadden) in a fistfight that basically takes place in the dark with only small pools of light to demarcate the struggling figures. At one point the hero impales the gunman on a moose antler after himself being assaulted with a broken bottle. A more conventional arrangement characterizes the visual presentations of the sadistic Rick, who is frequently photographed from low angles to emphasize his being threatening and powerful. Given that the character is essentially something of a coward, such set-ups offer a kind of ironic undercutting of Mann’s principal villain. At the same time, when Rick is killed in a final struggle with Joe inside the darkened office of his nightclub, he is pushed into a veritable tunnel of fire and falls downward in an obvious visual

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reversal of his earlier stature. His fiery death, which suggests that Joe has, finally, freed himself from his own evil past is, alas, once again fraught with irony, for by this time Sullivan has been mortally wounded himself and only has enough energy left to rescue Ann and then die in her arms. Alton’s most arresting work takes place on board the freighter to which Pat and Joe have fled prior to Raw Deal’s savage finale and after they have quarreled over whether Sullivan should seek revenge on Rick for the earlier ambush at the taxidermist’s. In their heated exchange in a seedy hotel room, Pat had tried to dissuade Joe from going against the criminal boss by arguing, “If Ann asked, you wouldn’t do this” and promptly gotten slapped by her (supposed) lover. Pat has learned that Ann has been taken as a hostage by Rick, but she does not tell Joe about this development at this point. Instead, realizing the depth of Joe’s feelings for her romantic rival by virtue of being hit, Pat temporarily runs out of the room only to return because she is tied to Joe no matter what he does or how badly he treats her. Once aboard the steamer, which will take them to South America and safety, Joe ironically starts talking about marriage, something Pat has wanted to hear for years; however, she cannot stop thinking about what she hasn’t told her beloved about Ann’s plight, and the guilt she is feeling is beautifully caught by the composition of this scene. Alton shoots Pat in a darkly lit medium closeup which takes up approximately half of the frame with the other half being given over to a well-lit clock on the cabin wall which ticks ominously and more emphatically as Joe continues talking about their future. The rising tension finally erupts when Pat breaks down and shouts “Ann” to the hero, who then quickly learns of the danger in which the woman he now loves finds herself, and goes to her rescue. Unhappily, Pat cannot stop Joe when saving Ann becomes his object; and his death then takes on the unsettling nature of a good man being destroyed, a theme more appropriate to classical tragedy than to the standard melodramatics of Hollywood. More typical film noir stylistic devices include Pat’s voiceover narration which supplies a sense of omniscience and fate to everything we see. Thus, flashing neon illuminates the motel to which the three principals flee in Crescent City. Raw Deal also uses a lack of communication to achieve further irony in a manner that foreshadows the resolution of the initial killing which prompts all the action in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. Just as the audience in that more celebrated film learns of the identity of the killer in a veritable throwaway line, John C. Higgins’s script for Mann’s film supplies the information that Rick and his henchmen know that Joe has been officially cleared of any involvement in the earlier robbery. However, this exoneration does nothing for the inevitably doomed protagonist, who never hears of it. Raw Deal presents much more frequent and more graphic violence than


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one encounters in The Great Flamarion. This tendency would, of course, become more marked and more remarked upon as Mann’s career unfolded; nevertheless, its presentation is nearly as sophisticated here as it would be in later films. While such behavior is expected from the villains, Joe pushes Ann down viciously after discovering that she has called the police after he has ordered her not to do so. Because of her action, Joe, Pat, and Ann must flee together because the girl’s apartment has become too dangerous for the escaped convict to use as a hideout; and this plot development is illuminated by Joe’s rationalization of his romantic feelings by insisting that having Ann along will enable them to more readily get through any police roadblocks. Later, when Pat becomes more aware of the effect Ann has on Joe, she slaps her rival; and, of course, Joe slaps Pat when she implies that he is in love with Ann. This last act dramatizes the shift in the romantic triangle in Raw Deal in starkly physical and photographic terms. When Pat reveals that Ann has been abducted by Rick and will probably be killed, she does so while standing in the doorway of the freighter cabin which she and Rick occupy. Her resigned posture clearly indicates that she will not stop Joe from going to rescue the other woman, while the doorway symbolizes Joe’s escape from the life that Pat wanted to have with him. In essence the male protagonist is about to make his second escape in Raw Deal. This plot reversal is foreshadowed in an earlier sequence in which Joe, Pat, and Ann hide out in the countryside with a mechanic who will supply them with a car. Joe and Ann start a romantic encounter in a garden only to be interrupted by police sirens in a jarring reversal of mood which suggests that the law has caught up with the fugitive protagonist. However, Mann then reverses audience expectations once again as we discover that the police are actually in pursuit of another prison escapee (Whit Bissell) who begs to be admitted into the cottage to which Joe and Ann have retreated. The imploring fugitive tells of how he loved a woman and then killed her before he dashes back off the porch to perish in a volley of police bullets. In a darkened closet Joe and Ann are huddled together as she symbolically notes, “That could be you.” Pat’s essential absence from this sequence as well as the fact that Joe does not seek her out is, once more, evidence of the director’s increasing skill and sophistication. Rick Coyle resembles the stock, often under-motivated, if not unmotivated, villain of countless films; however, Raw Deal makes his melodramatic character much more interesting by consistently associating him with the primary element of fire. In his first scene the ever-malevolent Rick touches a lit cigarette lighter to the ear of a subordinate who has momentarily displeased him. Later, in a truly unsettling scene, Mann shows Rick so disturbed at being interrupted that he throws a plate of burning crepes into the face of

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a nightclub hostess, who is seemingly his girlfriend! When one recalls the anguish of Nora Goodrich in Strange Impersonation over the injury to her face, the depth of Coyle’s depravity becomes even more heinous. Of course, Rick reluctantly tries to make amends by throwing dollar bills at the distraught woman; however, his gesture does not diminish his cruelty which has been caught memorably by Alton’s camera angle by which the burning food has been thrown directly into the faces of the viewing audience. Rick’s death in the blazing inferno in his office is thoroughly appropriate and almost Biblical (“Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword”). Ann’s epiphany moments in Raw Deal come about when she breaks into the fight in the taxidermist’s, picks up a gun, and wounds Fantail. While she does so to help Joe, the man she loves, Ann still breaks into tears because of her realization that she is capable of a degree of violence that she has tried intellectually to deny in herself and all “good” people. Once Joe has overcome his opponents, Ann flees from the scene of mayhem to run headlong down a beach until she collapses, and the pursuing hero then arrives to attempt to comfort her, only to end up kissing her as she declares, “Oh, Joe, I do love you!” The character’s remorse offers an early example of the moral duality that will distinguish so many of Mann’s later celebrated western protagonists: In resorting to violence, Ann has had to face that capacity within herself and, perhaps, to realize her own potential for evil. It is thoroughly appropriate that Ann openly declares her love for Joe at this point, since she has truly entered his world for the first time and, in so doing, become a more rounded character than the nagging do-gooder she has appeared to be to this point. Joe is struck by Ann from the beginning, for their initial prison interview ends with his asking, “Would you wait three years for me?” as a riposte to the girl’s marked optimism about how little time he would have to serve if he just followed her advice. After Ann gives him her address (and so sets up his subsequent flight to her apartment with Pat), Joe asks her not to “wear that perfume” on her next visit as he is made restless by it. Such double talk gives way to more overt action when Joe climbs through a window into Ann’s apartment, awakens her by kissing her, and then quickly puts his hand over her mouth to prevent her crying out. Their relationship becomes clear on the beach and the discretionary fadeout over their embrace clearly implies that Joe and Ann spend the night together romantically. Joe exhibits the kind of momentary rage and loss of control that we associate with later Mann protagonists when he sends Ann away in order to save her from the kind of life he leads. On a road next to the ocean, Joe drives with Ann to meet Pat, who has been told earlier to rent a car and join them at this point. Joe then orders the lovestruck and startled Ann to take the rented car and get away; however, she does not immediately move to do so,


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and in a fury, he opens her door and orders her to “get out!” Naturally, his attempt at doing the right thing founders when Rick captures Ann, even if Joe’s final rescue of her by laying down his own life reveals the depths of his romantic feelings. Joe’s final act of nobility seals the fate and the future of Pat, who has recognized almost from the beginning of Raw Deal that she is being replaced as the object of his affection. She initially sees Ann when the latter is leaving the prison and is stunned by the younger woman’s good looks. This opening sequence once more reveals Mann’s sophisticated control of his story: Pat has had to wait while her beloved Joe has been with another woman and the action then segues beautifully into her next scene when she again waits for her beloved to make his prison break. As passing cars and their intrusive lights unnerve Pat in the front seat of a getaway car, she offers that “all my life I’ve been waiting,” and by the film’s end we clearly see that that will continue to be her fate. On the road to that sober resolution, Pat remarks, after twisting her ankle and being carried into the cottage hideaway, that Joe “has never really told me he loves me.” Her final condition is artfully foreshadowed by Pat’s frequently wearing a veiled hat, as though she were already in mourning even before Joe’s death, and further reinforced by the fact that she and Sullivan never kiss, in marked contrast to the number of times that he and Ann do so. Both of these elements are present in Pat’s most romantic scene with Joe aboard their getaway ship when he talks about their married future, and she ironically does not want to listen to words she has waited her whole life to hear (“Why can’t he stop talking!”) because of her guilt over not telling him about Ann’s dilemma. Pat finally realizes that any time Joe kisses her in the future “he’d be kissing Ann” and so reveals what has happened to her rival. In keeping with her genuine love for Joe—one that finally wants his happiness above her own—there is a relief in Pat’s voice when she sees the dying hero cradled in Ann’s arms and concludes: “There’s my Joe [with] a kind of happiness in his face.”

Troubled Bystanders: Desperate (1947) and Side Street (1949) Desperate is a breakthrough film for Mann in that it is more stylistically sophisticated than anything he had done up to that time; indeed, all that is missing is John Alton, whose cinematic genius would augment the director’s work for the rest of the 1940s and early 1950s. Mann’s ability to foreshadow plot developments through seemingly innocuous bits of action is clearly on display in Desperate. Thus, in its opening scene a small neighborhood boy

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Steve Randall (Steve Brodie) and wife Ann (Audrey Long) are hounded by underworld forces in Desperate (RKO, 1947). Mann’s first successful film noir finds the protagonist finally fighting criminal boss Walt Rodak (Raymond Burr) to save himself and his bride.

plays “stick ’em up” with protagonist Steve Randall (Steve Brodie) after the latter has returned home from work. Steve’s comic plight obviously foreshadows that the plot will take him into increasingly “desperate” situations. Also characteristic of Mann’s emerging masterful style is the use of camera reversal, for we see Randall proudly polishing the logo on his truck before a track is made to bring the meddlesome little boy into the frame. Walt Radek (Raymond Burr again as a deranged villain) is introduced by a camera shot that deliberately frames him against the rungs of a chair, ostensibly to associate his character with jail bars and the criminal and entrapping underworld which he inhabits and seemingly controls. After the unsuccessful robbery of the fur company in which his headstrong brother Joe (Larry Nunn) is captured by the police, we find Walt and his gang in a low-ceilinged cellar which represents a veritable Hell. At the warehouse robbery, Steve, who thought he had been hired for a legitimate transport job,


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has become an unwitting guilty bystander. In attempting to escape and so foil Radek’s plan, Steve pulls his truck rapidly away from the loading dock and causes Joe to fall and be overpowered by the police. In a bravura sequence that follows the botched theft, Steve is brought into the gangsters’ lair and ordered to take the rap for Joe. When he refuses, Steve is brutally beaten by Walt’s henchmen. This struggle is brilliantly and impressionistically lighted by a single overhead swinging light bulb that alternately casts light and shadow on the struggling men and on onlookers Walt and Shorty (Freddie Steele). An initial close-up of a fist starts this sequence and, after Steve has been subdued, Walt reports the make and model of the protagonist’s truck to the police. When Steve continues to object, Radek breaks the neck off a liquor bottle and, again in a tight close-up, waves it in the protagonist’s face while sadistically noting, “I’ll bet that bride of yours is real pretty.” Viewers are thus plunged into the kind of graphic violence and subconscious plot foreshadowing of more to come which mark so many of Mann’s films. When Steve subsequently escapes from Radek, he calls Ann and they meet on a train in which their plight is underscored by another tight closeup, as if to indicate their isolation in a world in which they find themselves hunted by both police and mobsters. Their lengthy journey to Anne’s kindly Aunt Klara (Ilka Gruning) and Uncle Jan (Paul Burns) takes them from the train to cars, to busses, and, ultimately, to their own feet as they try to elude various pursuers and would-be captors. At one point they even manage to hide out in the back of a truck loaded with cartoonish mannequins, and, after the police have cursorily searched it at a roadblock, we see their heads among these grotesque masks to suggest once more the madhouse world into which they have descended. In the meantime, Radek hires the sleazy investigator Pete (Douglas Fowly) to find the fleeing couple, and when the nettlesome private eye returns with an initial clue, we see Mann’s major villain appropriately photographed from low angles to indicate his control of the situation. The same technique is used in the climactic staircase gun battle between Randall and Radek. As Steve climbs the staircase, the mobster is consistently shot from below. However, Steve’s ascent, which represents his own climbing out of the quagmire into which he and Ann have fallen, gradually brings him into an equivalence with his nemesis. Walt futilely empties his pistol at Steve, but the latter kills the mobster with a single shot, and Radek’s death finds the former master of the underworld bouncing off staircase railings as his corpse plunges to the ground floor. The criminal’s descent is, appropriately, shot from a high angle to signify how the beleaguered protagonist has finally saved both himself and his family.

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This clever climax has been preceded by another beautiful rendered sequence in Steve’s apartment. The protagonist has just sent Ann and their infant child to California to arrange for the purchase of a gas station they hope will remove them from the dilemma in which they find themselves. However, when the now optimistic Steve opens the door to his room he is quickly overpowered by Walt and Shorty and forced to endure waiting for midnight when they plan to kill him. This scheme has been hatched by Walt as an appropriate revenge for Joe who is scheduled to die at that same moment in the electric chair. However, in a nice bit of plot reversal, Walt himself dies at that exact time as noted by the manipulative police detective Ferrari (Jason Robards). Before that resolution, Steve must suffer waiting for death, and we hear both a musical pulse and a ticking clock heavily emphasized on the soundtrack to underscore his agony. These impressionistic sounds continue and are accompanied by intense close-ups of Walt, Shorty, and the sweating Steve. Eventually, the camera moves in even closer so that the eyes of each character are emphasized to go along with even louder musical and auditory pulsations. After he has killed Walt and been sent off by the police, Steve walks down the darkened street as the camera pulls back and rises to a long shot to symbolize the freedom the protagonist has achieved and can finally enjoy. Because Desperate traces the reversal of fortunes through the journey that Steve and Ann undertake, Mann uses one stylistic device abundantly to symbolize this major plot development: The initial set-up of a scene is gradually augmented by a slight camera tracking that either reverses or comments ironically on what has first been shown. When Ann gets the rushed phone call from Steve telling her to flee from their apartment, her distress is slightly muted by a panning shot to the meddlesome little boy (sitting on the staircase) who has, obviously, overheard her conversation. Later, in the train, Ann buys a newspaper which has Steve’s picture on its front page and a story about his being a fugitive from justice; and, when the protagonist notices another passenger with the same paper who intermittently glances at him, he immediately tells Ann they must leave the train. After their hasty exit, the passenger laughingly tells his wife that he can always spot honeymooners by their happy expressions! After they abandon the train, Steve goes to a shabby used car lot and runs afoul of its crooked owner Morgan (Cy Kendall) so that he must technically “steal” the car he has already paid for and worked to get into running condition. When this vehicle breaks down, Steve and Ann are picked up by a passerby (Robert Bray) who initially appears to be a do-gooder but who then reveals that he is the local sheriff. Following their subsequent arrival at the farm of Ann’s relatives, Steve is persuaded by the religious Aunt Klara


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to have a formal Czech wedding because she does not believe Ann’s civil ceremony is valid. At the subsequent festivities, a radiant Ann tells Steve that she feels “safe for the first time,” a line that is immediately and ironically undercut by a track to the arrival of the mercenary Pete, who immediately recognizes the fugitive pair—information which he takes back to Walt. By now Ann has revealed her pregnancy to Steve (a point she was agitated about making in the film’s opening sequence) and, because of a shootout at Walt’s hideout between criminals and police in which Pete is killed and Radek severely wounded, the couple is given some months during which they can believe they are safe. However, after a store owner asks Steve about exactly when his baby is due, Mann’s main character recognizes Walt in a car parked across the street behind his own truck and must use a bag of seeds to shield himself from the criminal’s view. Naturally, Steve comes back to the farm to tell Ann that they must again flee because a situation, which appeared to be safe, has suddenly become dangerous. When Ann’s labor pains force them into a hospital, Steve is beset by a persistent insurance salesman in the waiting room. This character, while ostensibly brought in as comic relief, creates a major plot point when he succeeds in selling Steve a policy after the protagonist has been assured that it will pay his family no matter when or how he dies. Steve subsequently mails this policy to Ann after he has put her on the bus to California, so we see that even a seemingly minor character has contributed to the development of Mann’s film. The police in Desperate are hardly reassuring, for once Steve has managed to get Ann safely ensconced with her relatives he returns to the city in an attempt to clear his name. When he pleads his case with Ferrari, the policeman oscillates between outright cynicism and contempt before ordering the protagonist out of his office. It is only when Steve has left that Ferrari tells a subordinate that he is using Randall as bait to lure Radek into the open. Even more ironically, Ferrari later tells Steve that “we don’t want you any more” just before the protagonist falls into Walt’s hands. While the police do show up in time to thwart Radek’s plan for a midnight murder, Randall must go alone into the apartment house to kill the sadistic murderer. Ferrari briefly notices and comments on Steve’s only having to use a single bullet to dispatch the villain as a prelude to eagerly dictating a “press release” in which he, and not Steve, is presented as responsible for Radek’s demise. In his final act, Ferrari tells Steve he is “free to go” and smiles benevolently as Randall walks away into a presumably better life in California. While it is not, as engaging as Desperate, Side Street also displays stylistic touches that characterize Mann’s best works. The story of Joe Norson (Farley Granger) starts by reversing that of Steve Randall in that we learn that this Mann protagonist is suffering from money troubles because he failed

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as the owner of a gas station. Unlike the earlier protagonist, though, Joe consciously chooses to commit a crime, only to be saved by the police when it becomes apparent that he has gotten in over his head. However, like Steve, Joe must also personally extricate himself from the clutches of the underworld during a riveting car chase through Manhattan’s streets.2 The credits to Side Street offer tracking aerial views of New York to set up this finale chase sequence as well as to establish the cityscape against which the characters move. The narrow streets of the metropolis and the heavy emphasis on location shooting—traits that the film shares with numerous films from the late 1940s which were influenced by The House on 92nd Street (1945) and its “documentary” style—combine to make the city into a veritable landscape in its own right. Its overarching presence throughout much of Side Street points toward Mann’s westerns with their consistent use of landscape to enhance and enlarge the conflicts in which their characters find themselves embroiled. Typically, when Joe is trapped (for a second time) inside a taxi with the murderous George Garsell (James Craig) and his driver-stooge Larry Giff (Harry Bellaver), Mann’s camera records much of this chase sequence from extremely high (bird’s eye) angles. Such shots reemphasize the point that Joe has been basically running in and up blind alleys since he stole the money from the office of the shady lawyer Victor Backett (Edmon Ryan). At the same time, these shots reduce Joe’s plight by making it appear a Farley Granger as Joe Norson in a publicity part of the inevitable nature still from Side Street (MGM, 1949). The of things: He is simply one young mailman becomes embroiled with the more tiny individual struggling underworld when he steals from mobster George Garsell (James Craig). The film uses against the larger powers of numerous Manhattan locations to portray society and the universe. Mann Norson’s lifestyle and efforts at redemption. intercuts such depersonalizing


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shots with close-ups of the conflicted characters inside the cab to achieve a balance between the cosmic and the personal. Ultimately, one is never allowed to forget that Joe Norson is an individual and a type. Mann’s protagonist remains sympathetic despite his crime, for he has taken an envelope which he believes contains only $200 from Bakcett’s open safe because he wants to buy a present for his pregnant and long-suffering wife Ellen (Cathy O’Donnell). When Joe discovers that the envelope contains $30,000, he quickly realizes the trouble he has gotten himself into, and at one point we even see him crying out of frustration after he has thrown himself on a bed in despair. Knowing he must protect Ellen and his in-laws, Joe rapidly concocts a story about getting a new job out of town so that he can stash the hot money and figure out some way to extricate himself from a no-win situation. He subsequently decides to leave the money with local bartender Nick Drummon (Ed Max) in the guise of an “anniversary present” for his wife while he goes off to live in a cheap hotel. When Joe gives Nick the package, the latter surveys it and asks, “What did you do? Rob the mail?” The line not only reinforces the gnawing guilt of the protagonist but also foreshadows the bartender’s subsequent theft of the contents of the package. On his later return to this bar, Joe learns that Nick has sold out and gone away; however, he thinks nothing of this news since the new owner returns what appears to be the parcel. By this time Joe has decided he must go to Backett, confess what he has done, and return the money; in essence, he has become genuinely repentant and is now seeking forgiveness. When confronted, however, Backett insists that he has not been robbed and dismisses Joe rather summarily because he is doubtful about what Joe is really trying to do. Backett restrains Garsell at first, because, as a lawyer, he is fearful that their blackmail schemes will be revealed. Garsell, who has already murdered the call girl Lucille Colner (Adele Jergens) who fronted the shakedown of the aging businessman Emil Lorrison (Paul Harvey), cannot be checked for long. He and Giff grab Joe off the street, and Garsell proceeds to beat up the protagonist when he discovers the package is full of scrap paper. Norson only manages to save himself by jumping out of the speeding car and falling in front of an oncoming truck, which miraculously runs over him without making any physical contact. Because Garsell has threatened Joe’s wife and family, Norson now actively sets out to find the missing money. His search initially takes him to an undertaking parlor where a bratty boy eventually accepts a bribe to give up Nick Drummon’s address. In a nice bit of further plot development, after Joe has rushed off, this youngster jokingly announces to a friend that this has been the second time that day that he has sold this information to someone. Given this detail, it comes as no surprise that Joe finds Nick dead in the

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latter’s seedy apartment, and it is even less surprising that he will become the prime suspect in this killing, as shown in inevitable newspaper headlines. Joe’s next move takes him to a local bank where bureaucratic teller Harold Simpson (Whit Bissell) pedantically informs him that the name of any person making a large withdrawal cannot be divulged. After riding home in the subway and seeing Joe’s picture in a newspaper, Simpson is confronted by Mann’s protagonist and threatened into giving up Lorrison’s name. Joe pretends to have a gun in his pocket during this scene and, in doing so, offers a portrait of the conflicted Mann hero whose methods and psyche frequently resemble those of the villains. Joe’s search next leads him to nightclub singer Harriet Sinton (Jean Hagen), whom he tracks down in a second-class lounge. After flirting with her and buying her drinks, Joe searches Harriet’s purse and is seen doing so by the girl, who promptly calls her boyfriend, Garsell. Harriet’s phone call precipitates the climax of Side Street; however, before that car chase, Garsell strangles her in the backseat of Giff’s cab, after promising her a great romantic future with him and after giving her numerous kisses. The murderous Garsell even shoots Giff when the latter runs out of the taxi to surrender to the police. When Joe manages to crash the car, Garsell dies in a hail of gunfire from the many police officers who have arrived on the scene. His death in medium close-up against a metal railing puts the emphasis on his dying expression and his final actions, which resemble those of a trapped animal. Mann’s film does not resort to the elaborate choreography or the editorially balanced shots that so often accompany cinematic gun battles. Death here is, indeed, up close and personal. One of the more obvious reasons that Side Street does not affect viewers as strongly as Desperate lies in its use of a voiceover. In this case Captain Walter Anderson (Paul Kelly) opens the film with some generalized statistics on New York culminating in his mentioning that there is a murder a day, and most these end up on “my desk.” The tone of Kelly’s delivery, both here and later, never sounds hurried, flustered, or frightened. He is also unflappable in the numerous police procedural scenes in which he both commands his subordinates and controls eager reporters. Anderson’s efficiency reassures the audience that Joe Norson will survive precisely because this patient and knowledgeable police detective is on his side. After noting that Joe has gotten into “more than he bargained for” because of robbing Backett’s safe, Captain Anderson reassures the audience, after the climactic car chase, that Norson, who is being taken away on a stretcher, while “no hero, no criminal,” is “going to be all right.” Side Street also embodies standard stylistic features that are characteristic of Mann. Joe reaches the conclusion that he must go on the lam before


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a mirror in his and Ellen’s bedroom. On his mail carrier rounds, Joe pauses before a shop window to eye a mink coat; as he does so, the camera angle is reversed so as to photograph him gazing in with the coat now dominating the frame in an obviously symbolic expression of what he longs to do for his beloved Ellen as well as the fact that he is essentially walled off from achieving such a goal. In Backett’s office, as he is delivering the mail, Joe bends down to retrieve a fallen object; however, his attempt at courtesy is abruptly checked by Garsell, who steps on the fallen money and tells Joe to leave it alone. Appropriately enough, when he has finally succeeded in breaking into the lawyer’s safe and taken the money envelope, the fleeing Joe bumps into the gunman as he leaves Backett’s office. Such stylistic devices and stagings enable Mann to reinforce the central plot movement of Side Street in which Joe Norson, like Steve Randall, must extricate himself from the nightmarish netherworld into which he has fallen. The difference, of course, is that Joe can only do so with the active help of the police, a quality that is clearly signaled by the film’s final shot from the ambulance that takes him and Ellen away from the car wreck which saved him and led to Garsell’s death. Randall’s confident final walk in Desperate has been replaced by a nurturing wife and a kindly cop, who represent the kinds of community support which will become ever more essential to the heroes of many subsequent Mann films.

Intriguing Villains: Railroaded (1947) and He Walked by Night (1948) While Railroaded and He Walked by Night contain lengthy sequences devoted to police work and forensic investigations, their emphases on such procedures are ultimately superseded by their villains, who emerge as the most intriguing and lively characters in these films. Duke Martin (John Ireland) and Roy Morgan (Richard Basehart) represent a deepening of characterization for Mann’s leading bad men—a development that will blossom even further during the 1950s in his more celebrated westerns. Such a development must also be credited to John C. Higgins who scripted both of these works as well as the more widely praised T-Men and Border Incident. These two films have static opening credit sequences, with Railroaded resorting to an obvious model of a neon-lit city street and He Walked by Night opting for a rough-looking wall with sinister shadows cast upon it. In both movies, police officers are killed in the line of duty to provide key plot points and to establish the depravity of their respective villains. Duke Martin kills a patrolman during the opening robbery at the beauty parlor-bookie joint managed by Clara Calhoun (Jane Randolph) and then dumps his fatally

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wounded cohort Cowie (Keefe Brasselle) on a local doctor’s doorstep. Roy Morgan’s attempt to break into an electronics store is interrupted by an offduty policeman whose suspicions are aroused. When Morgan starts to walk away, the officer follows in his car, asks for some identification, and then is shot at point blank range by the criminal. We see the police at work with Captain MacTaggart (Charles D. Brown) being ably assisted by Mickey Ferguson (Hugh Beaumont) in Railroaded; however, their collective efficiency only extends so far, for when the innocent Steve Ryan (Ed Kelly) is implicated by Cowie, the police are basically content to accept the dying criminal’s word. Only Mickey’s emerging love for Rosa Ryan (Sheila Ryan) keeps him on the case, and his efforts have to be undertaken “on his own time.” It is, of course, Rosa who most strongly refuses to believe that her brother could be guilty and who undertakes her own investigation to find the real killer. The smitten Mickey follows in her wake and gradually figures out Martin’s guilt only because Rosa has provided the impetus. Police procedures are much more noticeable in He Walked by Night as the efficiency of laboratory work is more consistently stressed. The forensics technician Lee (Jack Webb) and Captain Breen (Roy Roberts) are able to develop clues and act decisively in moments of crisis; and we see their combined talents at work as they supervise a number of witnesses who provide them with an artist’s composite sketch of Roy. Lee has reduced this process to a series of slides of various facial features, and Breen masterfully interrogates each of the contributing eyewitnesses. Once the picture has been assembled, Mr. Reeves (Whit Bissell), the electronics shop owner who has unwittingly been operating as Roy’s “fence,” is brought in and instantly declares as he sees the drawing, “It’s Roy!” Harsh physical, psychological, and verbal violence marks Duke Martin’s relationship with Clara Calhoun. They conspired to set up the initial robbery as a means of cheating their mutual boss, the nightclub owner Ainsworth (Roy Gordon). However, because of the killing of the police officer and the subsequent “heat” it has generated, Ainsworth decides he must close Clara’s operation, and Duke subsequently finds his bored girlfriend drinking too much and feeling sorry for herself. He slaps her and then reminds her that “cops ain’t people” before ordering her to get out of town. In their next meeting, Duke is convinced that Mickey has been to see Clara and gotten her to talk. When his moll denies this allegation because of her feelings for him, the gangster dismisses her with “Don’t give me that love stuff!” Their final rendezvous begins with Duke eavesdropping on Clara’s phone call to the police in a local drugstore. After copying and (presumably) checking the number Clara has dialed, Martin confronts his co-conspirator


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Richard Basehart (as Morgan) fights it out in the underground sewer system in Los Angeles in He Walked by Night (Eagle-Lion, 1948). Although Mann was not officially credited as the director of this film, it was widely understood (even at the time of its release) that he had been responsible for most of it, including the brilliant shoot-out finale which would be echoed in The Third Man (British Lion/ London Films/Selznick, 1949).

and shoots her after Clara has appropriately (and almost predictably) been looking nervously into a mirror. Roy Morgan’s capacity for violence is most evident when he sneaks into Reeves’s home, despite police protection that has been provided for the shop owner. The killer pistol-whips Reeves in order to get money from him and then, while leaving, adds a gratuitous kick to the fallen man. The expressions of pleasure on Richard Basehart’s face as he performs these actions clearly signal the character’s depravity. In an earlier confrontation at Reeves’s establishment, Roy managed to get money from the owner and then successfully overpowered one policeman and shot another, Chuck Jones (Jimmy Cardwell), who is the best friend of Sergeant Marty Brennan (Scott Brady). Both films feature heavily stylized climaxes in which the killers are brought to justice in fatal gun battles fought largely in the dark. In Railroaded, Duke sets up a late night meeting with Rosa at the Club Bombay on

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the pretext of giving her some additional information which will prove Steve innocent. However, the gangster quickly turns their conversation in another direction by asking the surprised heroine, “Why was Clara talking to you?” Fortunately, Mickey is outside, spots the menacing Duke with Clara, and breaks in to save his girl, who gets wounded in the ensuing melee. This gun battle finds Martin hiding behind overturned tables which he maneuvers through the impressionistically shadowed room. His wild shooting enables Mickey to urge “okay that’s six.” When Martin still tries to escape, Mickey kills him with a single shot. Duke dies in a tight close-up as he falls toward the camera and the viewing audience. The climactic gun battle in He Walked by Night is much longer and much more critically celebrated. Roy is temporarily cornered in his bungalow, but he manages to get away into the city’s sewer system—a means of escape which he has utilized earlier. Captain Breen then systematically covers all the exits on this particular section of the water system before he, Brennan and the others descend into the underground maze to pursue Morgan. In a brilliant sequence, John Alton’s camerawork shows retreating and advancing outlines of bouncing flashlights as the police inexorably track down the killer, who scampers wildly in various directions. Thwarted by a patrol car parked over a manhole cover which prevents his getting out of the sewer system, Roy finally turns to battle, is gassed out of his hiding place, and cut down by police bullets. Guns literally belch fire, and sound effects— echoing footfalls and reverberating gunshots—augment the highly impressionistic lighting throughout this entire sequence, which comes to a conclusion as Roy’s corpse is turned over and He Walked by Night abruptly ends. Duke Martin emerges as both a fastidious and potentially charming individual in Railroaded. His seduction of Clara seems apparent right from the outset, even though his ability to terrorize others is, perhaps, best demonstrated when Cowie identifies Steve Ryan as the cop killer, even though the younger mobster is dying himself. We later see that the bullets Duke uses are always perfumed, and he is often shown either caressing his pistol or polishing a cigarette case. As his unsuspecting boss Ainsworth says, “Duke’s an artist.” The criminal’s ambivalent relationship with Rosa begins when she shows up at Clara’s apartment to confront the latter about her testimony about the robbery. As the gunman watches from his hiding place in a closet, the women get into a fight and Rosa overpowers the inebriated Clara. When Miss Ryan goes, Duke reemerges and then orders his girlfriend to leave town because he has been attracted to the heroine and wants to try to manipulate her in the same sadistic/romantic fashion as he does Clara. When Rosa subsequently comes to the Club Bombay looking for clues


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that will exonerate her brother, Duke sees her from Ainsworth’s upstairs office and then joins her at a table on the main floor. The gangster suggests that he has “sources” who can help her; however, at the same time, he insists that “you’re beautiful” and then asserts himself by telling her “don’t interrupt” as he continues to flirt with her. At their second meeting, Mickey intrudes upon Duke and Rosa, asks the criminal about Clara’s whereabouts, and is rebuffed by both of them. Indeed, when Rosa implies that Steve has been framed by the police, Duke joyfully asks, “So you hate cops, eh?” After this scene, Duke drives Rosa home and makes a date with her for the next evening, all the while insisting “For you, baby, anything.” A third meeting between these characters finds Duke producing an alcoholic who tells a story that, much to Rosa’s delight, exonerates Steve. When the gangster insists that he will need $300 to pay for his expenses in the matter, the heroine agrees to deliver the money on the following evening. Their final rendezvous, which ends in the gun battle with Mickey, finds the moody Duke upset because, prior to killing Clara, he copied down a phone number that turned out to be Rosa’s. His sinister question “Why was Clara talking to you?” reveals his consistently egotistical attitude toward the world. However, by this time, Duke Martin has emerged as the first of Mann’s charming villains. His characterization will be more adroitly rendered and thematically important in such figures as Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy) in Bend of the River (1952) and Ben Vandergroot (Robert Ryan) in The Naked Spur. Roy Morgan is the most alienated villain in Mann’s works, for we never learn exactly what is motivating him. Greed does not explain his actions because his modest lifestyle in a court that resembles a motel and being accompanied only by a faithful dog belie that motive; indeed, Morgan appears to be working at crime as one might work at an everyday job. Marty Brennan learns from two other policeman (John Dehner and Byron Foulger) that Morgan worked in their station before he went off to war, that he was an exceptionally good employee, and that he, surprisingly, never asked to get his old job back once he had returned to civilian life. The absence of an elaborate backstory or a traumatic injury or incident to account for Roy’s current behavior is thoroughly in keeping with the unromantic tone of He Walked by Night, a film that conspicuously lacks any love interests. Indeed, the only prominent female role is given over to an addled neighbor of Morgan’s (Dororthy Adams) who bothers Marty when the latter is posing as a milkman to learn exactly where Roy lives. After the factory owner Reeves declares that Roy is an electronics “genius,” we see that quality in his many disguises and his own procedural methods (e.g., changing license plates) which thwart the police. When Roy

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is wounded in the shootout at the electronics store, Mann stages a powerful scene in which the criminal operates on himself; and, in a bit of bravura acting, Richard Basehart makes the audience “feel his pain” as he extracts a bullet from his side in sweaty medium close-up. The other traits of Roy’s which emerge are his pleasure in inflicting pain, best seen when he smiles as he kicks the fallen Reeves, and his fatalistic delight in fighting the police in the sewer system, best seen when he alternates expressions of joy and fear during this entire sequence. Roy Morgan, largely because of the skillful ways he is rendered by actor and director, takes on the world-weary cynicism and resignation to fate one associates with Macbeth; like Shakespeare’s usurper and murderer, the villain of He Walked by Night chooses to die fighting rather than to surrender to the greater forces which are overwhelming him. Railroaded clearly presents more of the compromised, convoluted, and conventional characters that one customarily associates with crime films. Marie (Peggy Converse), who works as Clara’s assistant in both the beauty salon and the betting parlor, causes the initial shootout between Cowie and the patrolman when she screams, despite being told not to do so. Her disagreement with Clara at the police station on the physical appearances and number of the robbers marks her for death, and no one is surprised to learn that she has been murdered (presumably by Duke) and thrown in the river, with only a tattered purse to identify her corpse. Mr. Ainsworth, as the criminal Mr. Big, typically has a cynical younger mistress and an arrogance about how he can always control Duke. Naturally, he gets gunned down by his more ruthless subordinate, who has managed to lull Ainsworth into being too relaxed around him. Rosa Ryan and Mickey Ferguson embody the standard boy-meets-girl aspects of the film, so that her initial resistance to the policeman will gradually soften throughout its course. Mickey, who has grown up in the same neighborhood, is appropriately stunned when he initially sees the heroine (“You’re not Rosie, are you?”); however, his romantic feelings must be subordinated to his obligations as an officer of the law, for he will not compromise his ethics to help Steve (and so gain Rosa) unless the evidence warrants his doing so. As he tells Rosa, “feelings don’t count” when she tries to seduce him into not arresting her sibling on the sole basis of her instinctively knowing that Steve is incapable of murder. Mickey later rationalizes his romantic rejection at Club Bombay by meeting Rosa after Duke has driven her home and complimenting her on “a good act.” Appropriately enough, Mickey kisses Rosa at this point to reassure the audience that the heroine will, indeed, be his at the final fadeout—a foreshadowing that proves thoroughly accurate in the last scene of Railroaded in which, after Steve has returned from prison and been welcomed home, everyone exits except for the lovers who joyfully embrace.


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Clara Calhoun (Jane Randolph) spies Duke Martin (John Ireland) in Railroaded (Eagle-Lion, 1947). Mann’s use of mirrors is once again significant as the criminal decides that his talkative girlfriend must be killed.

Finally, both of these films show working police officers, Ferguson and Brennan, who are thoroughly devoted to their craft. While Mickey feels the strain of being in love with Rosa and still having to jail her brother, he is able to anticipate the wishes of his superiors as well as to employ the newest techniques in crime detection—giving Steve a paraffin test. He is also clearly observant, for it is he who notices the perfume on the murder bullet and later connects it to Martin’s pistol. Moreover, as a dogged police professional, Ferguson insists on working on Steve’s case when all his colleagues believe they have the right man in custody. At Clara’s apartment, Mickey turns up a photograph of Duke and thus ties the gangster to the earlier robbery; then he further forces Martin’s hand by appearing to be coming out of Calhoun’s digs—a misperception on Duke’s part that results in the hairdresser’s death. Marty Brennan shares a similar dedication to finding a cop killer in He Walked by Night, and he also utilizes newer procedural means in his quest. However, his doubts about his own efficiency finally provoke Captain Breen into temporarily removing him from the case—a ploy which his superior

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uses to get Marty to operate with greater insight. This lesson is delivered by the wounded, and potentially paraplegic, Sergeant Jones, who fell victim to the insidious Roy in the shop gun battle. Jones simply tells his partner to work doggedly at the case, and that is what Brennan proceeds to do. His posing as a milkman reveals Roy’s hideout, and Marty performs as an admirable second to Captain Breen in the final pursuit and gun battle with the frenzied Morgan.

Tortured Heroes: T-Men (1948) and Border Incident (1949) In each of these films, government agents go undercover to dismantle criminal enterprises. These descents into the underworld are, however, not without serious costs in suffering and death for the good guys who, despite the supposedly omniscient forensics and support units behind them, must largely improvise for themselves once within these criminal milieus. While Dennis O’Brien (Dennis O’Keefe) and Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder) are always in contact with their Treasury Department superiors once they have penetrated the counterfeiting ring in T-Men, they must use their own wits in dealing with the suspicious and avaricious world to which they have been sent. Pablo Rodriguez (Ricardo Montalban) and Jack Bearnes (George Murphy) must similarly suffer and improvise. A more striking feature of both films is that in each of them a government agent and obvious good guy protagonist dies in a wrenching fashion. Tony Genaro, whose identity has become known to the criminal gang, tries to locate the incriminating notebook left by the Schemer (Wallace Ford) before escaping; however, he seeks too long and ends up trapped by Moxie (Charles McGraw) as his partner O’Brien can only helplessly watch. Genaro is brutally gunned down; alternating close-ups of his face and that of O’Brien, trying stoically not to reveal his own identity, create a devastating effect. The same situation is reprised in Border Incident when Bearnes is discovered to be an immigration officer and Owen Parkson (Howard da Silva) orders his execution. The federal man dies very graphically in a barren field where, after being wounded, he is unable to get away from a mechanical threshing machine that literally tears him to pieces as Jeff Amboy (Charles McGraw once more) drives it over his prone body. Bearnes’s death agonies are played out in front of Pablo and Juan Garcia (James Mitchell) who, being unarmed, can do nothing to stop Amboy and Clayton Nordell (Arthur Hunnicutt). T-Men and Border Incident are also helped considerably by having the same screenwriter, John C. Higgins, and the same cinematographer, John

Arnold Moss, George Murphy and Alfonso Bedoya in Border Incident (MGM, 1949). Zopilote (Moss) and Cuchillo (Bedoya) menace American undercover agent Jack Bearnes (Murphy) in Mann’s first project at MGM.

Alton. The distinctly stylized presentations of violence and locations in these films derive, of course, from the lighting talents of Alton; indeed, with him Mann had found the ideal visual collaborator for his own nightmarish film noir ideas, and these films thus represent the purest expressions of what the director was trying to capture in the genre. This collaborative team had been

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so successful by 1949 (they also worked together on Raw Deal) that new MGM head Dore Schary, who brought Mann and his two collaborators to the studio encouraged them to complete Border Incident, which they had been working on for Eagle-Lion. The more lavish production differences inherent in the wealthier studio can be readily seen by comparing the credit and immediate opening sequences of T-Men and Border Incident. The earlier film opens with its credits superimposed over a shot of the Treasury Department Seal, while Border Incident features much more dramatic and insightful shots of the border of Mexico and the United States as well as of the fences that separate the two countries and the treacherous terrain over which illegal entrants must return south—often to their deaths. T-Men segues to a voiceover by Reed Hadley which introduces a Treasury official, who then ponderously announces that what follows is based on actual Department cases—all in a style that consciously imitates the documentary “realism” of numerous post-war thrillers. Border Incident also opens with a voiceover explaining the need for immigrant Mexican workers to keep California’s agricultural industry humming and emphasizing how the majority of these individuals cross the border legally. Those laborers who cross illegally are often robbed, as we see next in a sequence in which some of these unwary souls are waylaid by Parkson’s gang, robbed, killed, and thrown into quicksand. In this way Mann foreshadows the end of Border Incident while at the same time providing some expository background for what is about to happen in his film. The federal agents in both stories must assume different identities to penetrate the criminal worlds they wish to destroy; and, while such alterations can include name changes as well as phony documents, they must still work diligently at fleshing out their aliases. Even then, unfortunately, they are not able to control the world out of which they have come, so that Genaro is tripped up by inadvertently meeting his young wife at a Los Angeles market. While her noisy girlfriend points him out, the wife (June Lockhart) is smart enough to deny that Genaro is her husband; however, this exchange has been witnessed by Schemer who, in turn, reveals it to Moxie in a futile attempt to stop the thug from killing him in a Turkish bath. Parkson’s contacts in Kansas City eventually inform him that Bearnes is not the escaped criminal he is claiming to be, and so the discovered agent must meet his grisly demise in the cornfield. Both films feature numerous villains since they focus on the structure of the underworld more than Mann’s other noir films. In Detroit, O’Brien and Genaro are confronted by the shady hotel operator Pasquale (Tito Vuolo), a character they do not hesitate to push around in their new roles


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as tough guys. They must also deal with the Motor City’s Vantucci mob in order to find out exactly where the counterfeiters are operating in Los Angeles; and this involvement leads to a beating for Genaro after O’Brien has “blown town” to try and locate where the Schemer is active in the California megalopolis. In addition to the sadistic Moxie, the heroes are also exposed to Shiv (John Wengraf) and Diana (Jane Randolph), subordinates of the Mr. Big who is behind the entire operation. In order to infiltrate the smuggling operation in Border Incident, Rodriguez and Bearnes must begin in Mexico where they are assailed by Hugo (Sig Ruman) and the thugs who work for him—Zopilote (Arnold Moss), Cuchillo (Alfonso Bedoya), and Pocoloco (Jose Torvay). On the other side of the border, in addition to the air pistol aficionado Parkson and his stooges, Mann’s protagonists must deal with Chuck (Jack Lambert) and the sinister Mrs. Amboy (Lynn Whitney). Pablo only survives in this chaotic world because of his friendship with Juan who, in pulling the agent from certain death in quicksand at the climax, reemphasizes the essential improvisational and “lone” hand that all of Mann’s federal men must play. Camera stylistics in T-Men include a complex set-up in which O’Brien must extricate the face plate of the counterfeit set he has offered to the villains. He has taped this valuable commodity under a bathroom sink, knowing full well that if it were not hidden he would be killed. Unfortunately, Moxie has chosen to shave there so that O’Brien must move around him to get the plate—a sequence that is neatly done with low angle shots showing precisely where the object is and how the agent discreetly extricates it. Alton also cleverly photographs locations in Detroit—the public library and the Scott Fountain on Belle Isle—to provide the film with a greater verisimilitude than has heretofore been present in Mann’s works. Finally, a decided future tendency in the director’s films appears at the end of T-Men when O’Brien is taken to the counterfeiters’ ship, escapes, and eventually kills Moxie in an on-deck gun battle. This sequence is not only brilliantly lit and choreographed but it also emphasizes the architectonics of the vessel and is thoroughly in accord with Mann’s increasing awareness of the importance of locations. At the same time, Moxie’s futile knocking on a locked ship door just prior to being shot by O’Brien visually reverses the scene in the steambath in which Schemer futilely tried to avoid his fate. Alton’s cinematography remains at the same high level in Border Incident, which is resplendent with character business and plot reversals that we have seen earlier and which will become more sophisticated in later Mann efforts. Parkson’s fondness for shooting clay pigeons with an air pistol visually reprises the scene in The Great Flamarion in which we see the title character practicing in his room. Pablo’s search for help after witnessing Bearnes’s

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Moxie (Charles McGraw) terrorizes Dennis O’Brien (Dennis O’Keafe) in T-Men (Eagle-Lion, 1947). Mann’s first big film noir success is replete with physical and psychological violence as undercover agent O’Brien penetrates a counterfeiting ring. The ambivalence of good and bad guys in Mann comes to the fore as O’Brien must watch his partner (Alfred Ryder as Anthony Gennaro) gunned down. Later, he retaliates against McGraw.

death takes him to apparent safety in a local ranch house where, after having called for outside help, he is confronted by a transformed Mrs. Amboy. The gun she points at Rodriguez represents a classic reversal of expectations in Mann, particularly because this lady has not been seen before this sequence. Finally, when he is in Mexico, Bearnes tries to follow the illegal workers but is diverted because he is also being followed by another of Hugo’s henchmen, Fritz (Otto Waldis). Bearnes hides, surprises Fritz, and knocks him out in a fashion that will recur when Will Lockhart (James Stewart) confronts the oily Chris Boldt (Jack Elam) in The Man from Laramie (1955). T-Men is arguably Mann’s most overtly violent film, a quality frequently noted by critics. What emerges as distinctive about the director’s style at such moments is that they are mostly recorded on the faces of those witnessing or suffering from these grim actions, rather than in extendedly overt or graphic representations of the harms actually being administered. The most


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disturbing aspect, however, is the speed and ease with which Mann’s good guy protagonists adapt to such underworld mayhem and use it themselves. Like Lin McAdam (James Stewart) in Winchester ’73, agent O’Brien walks a thin line between good and evil; and his moral dualism, which will become increasingly prominent in Mann’s westerns, creates a tension not found in the director’s other noir films. When he initially begins to follow the Schemer, O’Brien reveals himself to the criminal by passing him a counterfeit bill in a crap game; however, the agent is then mistakenly identified as passing the bad bill to another player (an act which Schemer performed) and he is soundly beaten by a group of irate bettors. The federal man ends up on the floor of a washroom as his assailants throw him into the forefront of the frame to create the illusion that O’Brien is being tossed into the laps of the audience. Later, when he confronts Schemer in the latter’s apartment, O’Brien chokes the older man in a shot conspicuously framed through a lamp shade. Although he agrees to let Schemer take one of his counterfeit bills to the higher-ups in the organization, O’Brien has clearly adopted the ethos of violence fully embodied by all and sundry in the underworld. Indeed, the criminals in T-Men utilize physical violence to test anyone who approaches them; so, as a result, O’Brien is confronted by Moxie and Brownie (Jack Overman) shortly after Schemer delivers the counterfeit bill to his superiors. Moxie applies a thorough beating to O’Brien, even going so far as to pull his knuckles out of their sockets in a sequence that focuses on the anguish on the protagonist’s face. Then, as a final touch, Moxie claps O’Brien’s ears to deafen him, an act that is supported by a ringing musical effect on the film’s soundtrack. Later, when O’Brien is taken to see the mob’s higher-ups and told that his offer is being seriously considered, he promptly slugs Moxie to get even for the earlier beating. Mann’s presentation of violence reaches a crescendo with the death of Schemer, whose penchant for Turkish baths causes his demise, just as his fondness for exotic Chinese candy earlier enabled O’Brien to track him down. The Schemer finds himself confronted by a betowelled Moxie who comments ominously on how someone could easily die if the steam were turned up too high. The older man quickly discerns why Moxie has been sent; however, despite various appeals, including his information about Genaro’s accidental meeting with his wife, Schemer is scalded to death. Alton uses reflected lighting and impressionistic steam to devastating effect in this sequence, and its visual climax finds Schemer trying futilely to break a tiny window in a door that Moxie holds fast. We cannot hear Schemer’s final words; we only see the anguish and terror on his face. At Tony Genaro’s execution, the dying agent manages to slip the pawn

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ticket he has uncovered in Schemer’s room to O’Brien; and, appropriately enough, another federal agent subsequently picks a fight with the remaining protagonist so that the ticket can be passed on to headquarters. O’Brien’s final suffering occurs aboard the freighter as he guns down Moxie in a reprise of the film’s opening sequence in which that thug killed a key federal witness on a loading dock. O’Brien’s subsequent collapse leads to the rapid ending of T-Men in which government agents swarm all over the ship, trap the other criminals, and tear gas them into submission. The film’s ending then features a magazine article in which we learn that O’Brien is recovering and that Genaro’s sacrifice has not been in vain, because their actions have been in the best tradition of the Treasury Department standing up for justice in America. Violence in Border Incident is not nearly as prevalent as in T-Men, but two sequences stand out. In the first, Bearnes is tortured by his Mexican captors who want to know where he has hidden the blank immigration permits he claims to have. Their questioning proceeds as he is tied down and periodically jolted with electricity, once again in a style that relies heavily on the actor’s facial expressions rather than on close-ups of how the devices are used. Bearnes is initially awakened by a knife at his throat in an obvious bit of symbolic manipulation, and the lines that cross his chest superimpose a Christian cross as well as seemingly foreshadowing his eventual demise. The climactic battle on the border, fought between farm workers and Parkson’s gang, is the film’s most extended instance of sustained physical suffering. Pablo has disarmed Parkson and sent him ahead through an opening in the rocks to be shot by his Mexican colleagues before he and the other laborers engage in hand-to-hand combat with the bandits. When Pablo overcomes Zopilote, the latter’s body sinks under the quicksand surface; however, Rodriguez now finds himself sinking inexorably into the same deadly ooze. An extended struggle ensues in which Juan manages to extricate Pablo, but only after a Herculean effort punctuated with appropriately sinister musical cues. Interestingly enough, even though no federal agents arrive in time to help, Border Incident ends with an obligatory scene in which order is restored. The immigration departments and heads of both Mexico and the United States, who originally planned the operation, once again convene to celebrate Rodriguez’s achievement and to lament the loss of Bearnes. The voiceover then resumes to assure the audience that all is well again on the border because of the brave sacrifices of the agents of both countries. Border Incident, like Side Street, illustrates Mann’s growing appreciation of how settings and location work could enhance the material he is filming. The nighttime trek through the rocks and gorges leading into Mex-


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ico is visually enhanced by Jeff Amboy’s revolt against his erstwhile superior, Parkson. As they move toward the “canyon of death,” Jeff asserts himself by taking Parkson’s money and demeaning him as someone who is only good at shooting inanimate targets. In essence, just as Duke Martin did with Mr. Ainsworth in Railroaded, the underling has simply been waiting for a chance to take over. However, in this case, Jeff decides to let Parkson live because the ranch owner can walk behind the laborers with a rifle to keep them moving. Jeff and Nordell take positions on plateaus above the dry river bed and we see their silhouettes as menacing shadows looming over the seemingly doomed Mexicans through much of this sequence. Naturally, when Pablo disarms Parkson and a gun battle erupts, the Mexican agent kills Amboy, who falls to his death from a great height. This emphasis on high places is further developed when Bearnes is brought to Parkson’s ranch from Mexico, questioned about the location of the permits, and then sent away to sleep. Because he has consistently urged that he’s “hot” and the subject of a state-wide dragnet, Bearnes has been placed in a room at the top of a water tower and kept under guard. When Juan tells Pablo that he has seen Bearnes there, Rodriguez sneaks out of the wetbacks’ barracks and climbs up to his colleague’s room. In doing so, Pablo manages to elude the suspicious Nordell, who is aroused by disturbing sounds from above him, by moving around the outside of the structure as Bearnes occupies the gunman. While we have seen Mann’s fascination with high places on display in Dr. Broadway and Strange Impersonation, this setting and its complicated visual presentation foreshadows more predominant and meaningful heights in such later works as The Naked Spur and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

History as Film Noir: The Black Book (a.k.a. Reign of Terror) (1949) Mann’s initial foray into historical costume drama utilizes many of the plot devices, character types, and stylistic techniques of his noir films; however, his thematic concerns are much more philosophical in their political and social orientations here than in those atmospheric thrillers. The Black Book is also helped considerably by the talents of its veteran art director, William Cameron Menzies, who had worked on numerous Hollywood blockbusters including Gone with the Wind (1939). His set designs for Mann’s low budget film suggest opulence and large-scale locations through the manipulation of mise-en-scène. Menzies’s designs are augmented by the always notable cinematogra-

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phy of John Alton, who works within a consistently dark canvas to make stunning impressions through the manipulation of lighting and claustrophobic close-ups. Alton cleverly and quickly establishes the overall tone of The Black Book in its opening sequence as we see Charles D’Aubigny (Robert Cummings) riding on the horizon and framed against a thoroughly inky sky with numerous low clouds. When the character arrives at the Austrian castle to which the Marquis de Lafayette has been exiled, Alton shows D’Aubigny’s entry by a high angle shot that emphasizes the gates and walls of the palace. In a film in which such sites consistently represent obstacles that the protagonist must overcome or barriers that he must get past, this initial shot foreshadows the political and social maelstrom which D’Aubigny (and the audience) will face for the rest of the film. When Charles is given a talismanic ring that will identify him to Lafayette’s French supporters who are trying to prevent Robespierre (Richard

Charles D’Aubigny (Robert Cummings) and Fouché (Arnold Moss) struggle in The Black Book (Wanger/Eagle-Lion, 1949). Mann’s foray into the “Reign of Terror” portrays French politics and its popular leaders in film noir style and fashion.


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Basehart) from becoming a dictator, he rides off again silhouetted against the same horizon and darkly impressionistic sky. His arrival at a battered windmill again prepares us for the turmoil and carnage that will be Revolutionary Paris, for D’Aubigny’s entry here is lit so that only his face is clearly in view as a knife is held to his throat; he manages to avoid death by showing the ring to his assailants. This set-up will be used again in Man of the West (1958) when Link Jones (Gary Cooper) opens the door to the hut in which the Tobin gang is hiding and a pistol is pointed at him. The Black Book also features a voiceover like so many of Mann’s noir films. The initial credits are shot against a background of raging fire, and these flames carry over to an opening sequence which introduces several of the principal historical characters of the story. These political figures include Robespierre, Danton (Wade Crosby), Tallien (Norman Lloyd), St. Just (Jess Barker), and Barras (Richard Hart), and their images are superimposed on the roaring flames to emphasize the narrator’s message about the chaos of the Reign of Terror in French history. The voiceover’s tone is strident, feverish, and almost hysterical as he offers rapid characterizations (e.g., Barras is a “good man”) that essentially tell the audience how these figures are to be seen; and, while such overt exposition can be faulted, this technique points once more to the severe budget constraints with which Mann and his collaborators had to work. Another feature of Mann’s increasing artistry which is abundantly displayed in The Black Book is the ease and acumen with which he handles scenes of tension. An extended prison sequence in which Charles is detained by St. Just arises because of doubts that Robespierre and his minions have as to whether the protagonist is who he claims to be—Duvall, the notorious executioner of Strasbourg. Madame Duvall has been sent for and Charles, who has witnessed the death of her husband and taken his place in order to infiltrate Robespierre’s inner circle, clearly believes that his real identity will soon be revealed. However, in a typical example of Mann’s penchant for abrupt plot changes, D’Aubigny’s fears are allayed when his “wife” appears, kisses him passionately, and chides him about neglecting her—all to the obvious chagrin of Robespierre and St. Just, who must now let Charles go free. At this juncture, the real Madame Duvall shows up and demands to see Robespierre. She is told she must wait by an elderly gatekeeper who is distracted by the need to let Charles and the fake Madame Duvall out of the prison. As they and St. Just wait patiently for the fumbling and maddeningly slow sentry to unchain the gate, the soldier casually mentions to the real Madame Duvall that she might wish to speak to St. Just about her problem. This moment of tension is then eased when that lady insists that she will talk to no one but Robespierre; as a result, Charles then gets into a carriage in

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which Madeleine (Arlene Dahl) sits smiling before explaining how she has managed to rescue the protagonist with the help of a female actress-friend. Mann even interweaves a comic turn to create tension when Charles and Madeleine must escape from Paris because they have obtained Robespierre’s death list and need to hide until the following day when that document will be circulated among the members of the Assembly to thwart the would-be dictator’s power grab. The lovers escape from Paris dressed as peasants in a farmer’s cart, and when they must show their papers at the city’s outskirts they are delayed by a guard who only wants to bargain with them about bringing him some chickens when they next come to the market. Mann cleverly juxtaposes the anxious but outwardly calm couple to the suspicious but inwardly greedy guard to create tension, especially since the audience knows that St. Just and his cohorts are already in hot pursuit. Another ingenious presentation of tension occurs at the farmhouse to which Charles and Madeleine flee. D’Aubigny throws himself on a cot because he is exhausted; however, when St. Just and his men arrive, the protagonist inadvertently leaves Robespierre’s incriminating notebook behind in his haste to escape with Madeleine. The villains actively search for them but are thwarted, and when the lead soldier (Charles McGraw) reports on their lack of success to St. Just, the latter decides that he will take a brief nap in the same bed which Charles has just abandoned. Grandmother Blanchard (Beulah Bondi) spots the black book lodged under a pillow just as St. Just is lying down; and, since she is not quick enough to retrieve it, all she can do is make sure the valuable object is securely tucked under the pillow on which the villain’s head is now resting. Charles and Madeleine sneak back to the farmhouse seeking the black book, and the protagonist figures out that St. Just is lying on it. He then goes to the window of the children’s room and rouses them to assist by creating a distraction; their subsequent outbursts cause St. Just and his henchmen to break into the children’s room. In the ensuing confusion we see Madeleine grab the book and run to Charles, who has managed to steal two horses from their pursuers. Mann deftly marks the end of this sequence with a framing shot of the grandmother and the children smiling benevolently as the hero and heroine ride off and their pursuers scramble to take up the chase. The director’s familiar skill in presenting graphic physical violence is also markedly apparent in The Black Book; indeed, the film strikes an appropriate balance between directly showing such effects and merely suggesting them by clever staging. In a carriage ride through the turbulent nighttime streets of Paris, the duplicitous Foche (Arnold Moss) and Charles are attacked by robbers; the police prefect shoots one of these assailants in the head, and we see a brief shot of the man’s bloodied face before Foche pushes him into the


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cobblestoned street. Charles expertly dispatches the other attacker by pushing a torch into his face and, although we do not get a grim close-up, this figure then also falls off into the roadway. D’Aubigny’s act resembles the kind of behavioral change exhibited by O’Brien in T-Men; like the federal agent posing as a counterfeiter, the undercover spy takes on the very traits of the criminals with whom he must deal. We see tortured victims suspended from the ceiling in the bakery cellar which is Robespierre’s secret hideaway: one is killed by the ever-present McGraw and Madeleine is only reluctantly cut down later because the villains can trade her for the black book. The heroine has, of course, presumably been racked and whipped before this release as indicated by her decorously torn clothing. In the prison when Robespierre arrives to witness the reunion of the Duvalls, some of the doomed inmates raise an enormous hue and cry which is put down when guards randomly fire shots at the future victims of the guillotine. When D’Aubigny and Foche find the black book in Robespierre’s library, a struggle ensues in which Charles eventually strangles the police prefect; however, Foche has merely passed out, for he subsequently brings one of Madeleine’s earrings to the protagonist in an effort to regain the incriminating tome. By this time, of course, as Foche reveals, Robespierre has been seized by the mob. However, that development, which has been the purpose of his entire mission, does not prevent Charles from again choking the police prefect in order to find out where Madeleine has been hidden. This second choking scene again emphasizes the degree to which the hero has adopted the methods of the amoral and terrifying world in which Foche prospers and survives. Fire is used throughout The Black Book to underscore the tumultuousness of the times. In addition to its prominence in the opening and closing credits, this element is deftly employed when the real Duvall is killed. We see the notorious executioner checking his appearance after he has been shown to his room in the inn, just before a hand emerges from the right side of the frame and begins to throttle him. As these struggling figures move quickly below camera range, Mann’s composition stays focused on the top of the dressing table, the mirror, and a burning candle. After a couple of moments, a hand rises from below the table and symbolically snuffs out the candle to indicate that Duvall is dead. One is inevitably reminded here of Othello’s line, “Put out the light/And then put out the light” as he moves toward killing Desdemona. When Charles rescues Madeleine at the film’s climax he is shown entering the wrecked bakery with a torch prominently in his left hand. As he desperately rummages through the fallen timbers and then works frantically at

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trying to find a way to get behind what he thinks is a false bookcase, he continues to hold this burning taper. Finally, in dismay, he decides to leave, but before he does so he tosses the torch back against the bookcase. By this time Robespierre’s notorious henchman, who is holding Madeleine in the room behind the shelf, has become aware of Charles’s presence; however, the sadistic McGraw has also inadvertently knocked over a bottle of wine whose contents have seeped into the outer room. By virtue of his fallen torch, Charles notices the fluid running out on the floor, immediately rushes back to the bookcase, retrieves his torch, and pries open the entrance to the concealed chamber. After he forces open the connecting door, he manages to evade McGraw’s sword thrust and, in a desperate struggle, kills the latter by burning him to death. The Black Book also contains allusions to and echoes from past and future Mann films. Its central plot device, in which D’Aubigny must penetrate the world of Robespierre and his gang in order to “save” France, obviously resembles what the federal agents are doing in T-Men and Border Incident. Thus, Charles’s initial meeting with Lafayette, in which the Marquis ruefully says that he cannot order D’Aubigny to do anything, reprises the openings of these other films by setting up the protagonist as the good man who must willingly volunteer to face danger to help his society. When he is initially admitted to Madeleine’s hidden room in the tavern, Charles is struck down by her protectors and thrown to the floor so that he falls toward the camera, just as O’Brien did in the washroom in T-Men. Later, when Madeleine has succeeded in getting Charles away from Robespierre by means of the fake Madame Duvall, she is able to thwart their pursuers by motioning for a cart to block the following posse—a tactic that was also utilized in T-Men when O’Brien’s potential rescuers were temporarily held up by the raising of a bridge while he was facing the counterfeit gang by himself. The sequence at the Blanchard farm takes us back to Desperate. Once again a fleeing couple has gone into the countryside to avoid urban dangers; and, once again, their pursuers catch up with them and, in doing so, terrorize the local inhabitants. In his treatment of the grandmother and the three children, St. Just embodies a greater psychological acumen and subtlety than Walt Radek did with Aunt Klara and her husband; however, the sinister official’s charming attempt to persuade the youngest child to reveal whether Charles and Madeleine have been at the farm is symbolically contradicted when St. Just kicks a cat that has been scratching his leg. Even more interesting is the fact that Charles and Madeleine hide in the loft of a barn to evade their pursuers: the association of such a setting with getting away from one’s society accompanies central plot moments in The Great Flamarion and El Cid (1961).


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The character drawing in The Black Book is more nuanced than in any previous Mann film, a quality that seemingly arises from the talents of its major writer Philip Yordan, who supplies distinctly different speaking styles to its more prominent figures. Thus, Foche consistently uses comic repartee to conceal his cynical self-interests and to underscore his nonchalance about the violence he sees and engenders. Typically, in the cellar after Robespierre has ordered a tortured enemy [to be] put to death, and after the victim screams, Foche asks Charles, “Why don’t you eat your bun?” as he bites into his own roll which is skewered on a knife. When D’Aubigny and Madeleine discover the corpse of one of St. Just’s victims who has been killed to throw guilt on Barras and his supporters, Foche turns up and mockingly asks, “Who, me?” when the protagonist eyes him suspiciously. Madeleine’s dialogue oscillates between scorn and seductiveness; however, after her initial meeting with Charles, we realize that her style is contrived to protect her and the political services she is trying to render to France. As she falls in love with D’Aubigny once more, and so assuages the emotional wounds she caused him four years before the opening of The Black Book, Madeleine’s dialogue becomes not only more normal but also noticeably less important; and it is no surprise that she is essentially silent at the film’s end when she is sheltered in the protagonist’s arms. In its plot emphasis on the injury that Madeleine inflicted on the hero earlier, Mann’s movie foreshadows The Naked Spur in which being emotionally injured by a woman who seemingly loved him has turned Howie Kemp into a bounty hunter. Madeleine’s typical tone is goading mockery whenever Charles complains to or becomes dismissive of her; at one point she taunts him by asking “Tell me about the women who went with the wine” after he has spoken of drowning his sorrows in alcohol after she abandoned him. Robespierre’s dialogue illustrates his dual nature, for while he is pompous and self-righteous in public, in private he is much more candid and egomaniacal. These latter traits emerge, however, when he must defend himself against the enraged Assembly and the mob which pursues him into his office after the black book has become public property. His initial entry into that inner sanctum finds France’s would-be autocrat confronted by Foche, who has appropriated Robespierre’s chair and offers that he has done so to see how it would “fit.” Robespierre’s petulant demand of the police prefect (“Don’t call me Max!”) is adroitly handled as Foche consistently uses that diminutive through the whole sequence. Robespierre’s egotism is demonstrated by his actions as well as his words. At one point we see him conferring with St. Just about the political trick they have played by pretending the black book is missing in order to implicate and exterminate their opponents in the Assembly. Their meeting has the

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master villain seated before a mirror while having his wig delicately powdered by an unseen servant. Robespierre’s various terms for the public which he wishes to rule over further emphasize the character’s rabid self-involvement, for he consistently sees himself as their savior rather than their servant. In his cellar in the bakery lair he proclaims to Foche and Charles that the people are a “mob” which can only be controlled by a strong man capable of ruling through “fear.” Later, after the incriminating book with its death list has turned the Assembly against him, Robespierre argues that the “mob are my children” and asks, if he is removed, “Who takes my place?” Fearful that Robespierre’s oratorical skills will turn the tide yet again, Foche tells an assistant to “shut his mouth” and a pistol shot does exactly that for Robespierre is wounded in the mouth and never utters another syllable. Its thematic implications, finally, provide The Black Book with its most intriguing moments. While the story pits an obvious group of good guys against an equally obvious group of villains, there are disconcerting elements on both sides: The supposedly benevolent Taillien becomes part of the shouting mob which condemns Robespierre to death, while the criminally manipulative Foche survives to establish the film’s wonderfully equivocal ending. The world that these characters inhabit is thoroughly given over to power and privilege, and the only way to checkmate a Robespierre is to use his own methods against him. The tyrant has risen by being able to foment public hysteria against his rivals, as we see in an early scene in which Danton is sentenced to death because Robespierre has whipped up a frenzy of emotion against his erstwhile ally. Throughout The Black Book, Robespierre and his confederates operate like a criminal gang precisely because they can manipulate the public and easily turn the citizens of Paris into a bloodthirsty mob. Of course, the same methods they employ ultimately rebound upon them, for once Robespierre has been deposed and silenced, any vestiges of him are eradicated by the very same citizens who had been working his will against his enemies. The wreckage that D’Aubigny must struggle through at the ruined bakery before he manages to rescue Madeleine is a clear indication of the fickle and turbulent emotions of the mob, as is the revelry and laughter with which they react to Robespierre’s execution. The citizens’ collective behavior begs the question of why anyone would ever want to lead such a rabble and whether the sacrifices and dangers endured by Charles and Madeleine have been worth anything at all. A concluding scene suggests these disturbing possibilities by reaffirming that, despite everything that has happened, the cynics are still in control and history will inevitably provide France with a dictator in spite of Robespierre’s removal. Foche, the rascal and diplomat who always survives any change in


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regime, engages in a casual conversation with a soldier in the teeming streets of the city as the mob dances and sings patriotic songs. In the course of their discussion, the military man, who is consistently shot with his back to the camera, reveals himself to be Napoleon Bonaparte after Foche has belatedly asked for his name. This larger irony is followed by a brief concluding shot of Charles and Madeleine ascending a staircase with their arms about each other as they, presumably, go off into a romantic future. However, what that future can be, given their signal failure to alter the basic modus operandus of France’s political world, must remain as cloudy as the rising smoke that swirls up from the various bonfires lighting Paris. If the protagonist has managed to stop one would-be despot, he has clearly not stopped his country’s headlong descent into ever-graver political and military problems. The closing credit, with its background once more of raging flames, announces “The End of the Reign of Terror”; however, this very set-up hardly indicates that any happy restoration of normalcy has occurred. Mann would ultimately explore many of these problems in his major epic films, and he would find more thematically provocative answers to the dilemmas posed by the end of The Black Book in those works. His initial entry into epic and historical filmmaking, however arresting as an example of the director’s increasing artistry and thematic sophistication, does not finally succeed because of the austerities of its budget and, perhaps even more tellingly, the weakness of its leading man. Robert Cummings as D’Aubigny fails to convince because we never sense any depth of feeling in what he does or how he reacts. In his initial meeting with Madeleine, the actor is too smug and cynical in recounting their stormy romantic past and his great disappointment and desperation after she deserted him. While some of his difficulties must, of course, be attributed to the script, Cummings is simply not capable of making us believe that he embodies such repressed emotional depths. Mann would use the same background situation with the protagonist of The Naked Spur and the very skill of James Stewart makes Howie Kemp’s pent-up nature agonizingly believable. Mann and The Black Book would have been better served if Cummings and Richard Basehart had exchanged roles, for we could much more easily attribute emotional depths to the latter performer and lust for power to the former.

Mann as Screenwriter: Follow Me Quietly (1949) Mann and Francis Rosenwald are credited with the story idea for this film which uses police procedures and a psychopathic killer to produce a

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taut and tight (59-minute running time) second feature. While it is possible that Mann himself may have briefly worked on its actual shooting, Follow Me Quietly emerges as a highly competent B feature from director Richard Fleischer, who would go on to an interesting career in both film noir (The Narrow Margin [1952]) and epic (The Vikings [1958] and Barabbas [1962]). The finished movie clearly embodies plot situations, themes, and stylistic techniques which have evolved throughout Mann’s work in film noir. The protagonist, Grant (William Lundigan), a dedicated police officer, embodies the same kind of professional determination one associates with comparable characters in Railroaded, T-Men, and Border Incident. Like Mickey Ferguson, Dennis O’Brien, and Pablo Rodriguez, Grant must catch the mysterious “Judge” who has strangled seven victims after we see him dispatch the newspaper editor McGill (Frank Ferguson) early in the film. At the same time, Grant resembles Marty Brennan of He Walked by Night when he speaks of suffering from insomnia brought on by his inability to apprehend the criminal and then offers that he would forfeit “a year’s pay” just to see the face of the “Judge.” Like Brennan, Grant has internalized the case; and, in a bit of similar plotting, he is confronted by his superior Mulvane (Charles D. Brown) who asks whether he shouldn’t be taken off the case. The police procedural elements of Follow Me Quietly focus symbolically on Grant’s brainstorm about making a dummy that resembles the unknown killer in every particular, except that its face is left deliberately blank. This object is then shown to Grant’s fellow officers who, apparently, cannot visualize the physical dimensions of the murderer they are seeking. While this plot device comes perilously close to straining the audience’s “suspension of disbelief,” at the end of this sequence the dummy is spun around to reveal its facelessness and a police spokeman shouts “I kill!” What ultimately saves such hamfisted moments, of course, is the very speed with which everything happens in Follow Me Quietly: The pace is so rapid that one hardly has time to notice such histrionic excesses. In a later sequence, Grant is complaining to himself in what he believes is an empty office. He wanders into an adjoining room in which the dummy seemingly rests in a chair facing out a window, and Grant continues with his various ruminations as rain lashes against the glass. The protagonist is then interrupted by his assistant, Collins (Jeff Corey), who, after eavesdropping for a moment, says “You’re getting more like the ‘Judge’ every day.” This innocuous remark implies the kind of symbiotic relationships between heroes and villains that will emerge so strongly in Mann’s westerns. As the two police officers leave, the camera tracks back into the abandoned room and a figure rises out of the chair, puts the real dummy back there, and goes off into the night. This shocking kind of reversal is a tactic


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we have seen repeatedly in Mann’s noir films, and here it is used to suggest several thematic points. Like the astute loner-criminal mastermind Morgan in He Walked by Night, the “Judge” has penetrated the world of the police; at the same time, his recklessness suggests a subconscious desire to be caught and the stormy setting has served to once again trigger his killing instincts. The climactic struggle between Grant and the “Judge” occurs atop various storage tanks, and it features the kind of location shooting and tense close-ups so prominent in Desperate, T-Men, and Border Incident. Their protracted struggle on a scaffold finds Grant suffering in a style that reminds us of the agonies endured by Mann’s protagonists in these films; indeed, it is only a final fortuitous push that enables Fleischer’s hero to throw the villain to his death and bring Follow Me Quietly to its expected conclusion. Struggling in high places and falling precipitously to one’s death will become veritable stylistic markers in Mann’s westerns and epics. Follow Me Quietly does, alas, feature a nagging reporter, Ann (Dorothy Patrick), who emerges as the protagonist’s inevitable love interest, and an obvious red herring in the owner of the bar-restaurant in which Grant and his colleagues consistently meet to drink and discuss the case. This figure is played by veteran Hollywood character actor Nestor Paiva, who was nearly always cast as a shady or villainous figure. Here he is simply functioning as comic relief as his continuous poring over daily racing forms serves to punctuate his serving customers, relaying various bits of information, and smiling briefly at Grant and Ann in the last scene fadeout. The opening credit sequence for Follow Me Quietly is much more arresting with its tracking shot of rain pouring on a sidewalk with the pacing feet of a woman to foreshadow the film’s major plot directions: The rain is the trigger which sets off the mad “Judge” and Ann will have to chase her story throughout the rest of the action. The killer’s megalomania about rain is reinforced during his descent from the storage tower with Grant. While the “Judge” has meekly surrendered when confronted by the police officer, a dripping pipe causes him to revert to his frenzied ways and assault, and all but overpower, the protagonist. His combination of madness and guilt is also reinforced when another sorry specimen comes forward to confess to being the “Judge.” Fortunately, the police quickly see through this imitation killer (Douglas Spencer) and, in doing so, show their professional capabilities. In two bits of serendipitous casting, Grant’s superior is played by the same actor who was Mickey Ferguson’s boss in Railroaded, and the “Judge” is portrayed by an actor (Edwin Max) who would play a duplicitous and eventually murdered bartender in Side Street.

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Mann and the Western Anthony Mann’s stature as an American filmmaker rests most solidly on his accomplishments as a director of westerns. While John Ford, Raoul Walsh, and Howard Hawks created films in this genre over several decades, Mann produced ten exemplary efforts in a nine-year span (1950–1958). Unlike such contemporary and efficient directors as Robert Aldrich, Delmer Daves, and Budd Boetticher, Mann fundamentally altered the emotional nature of the standard western protagonist to provide a uniquely tragic atmosphere to the genre. The costs of preserving and protecting civilization, heroism through violence, and seeking revenge to right a damaged personal past are clearly laid out in the director’s westerns. These films portray a world in which every choice has a concomitant cost and characters must choose what is better instead of indulging the luxury of choosing what is best. The literary and social sources of the Hollywood western have long been understood and appreciated. James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking saga (1823–1841) is often cited for providing the origin of the western because of its portrayal of Natty Bumppo, the first highly independent and morally consistent loner who, ultimately, dies protecting the fledgling civilization which finally forces him out. Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) is also widely regarded as the first serious novel set within the time frame that movie westerns would immortalize. This novel clearly embodies the theme of clashing cultures as its more refined and formally educated Eastern-born and -bred heroine gradually comes to appreciate the virtues of its simpler, honest and moral Western-born and -bred hero. Western films also draw on the traditions and stereotypes set forth in innumerable dime novels that glorified such figures as Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, and Billy the Kid. In such romances, uncomplicated heroes and villains enacted “horse operas” in which the good characters always triumphed over the evil ones. In addition, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show brought many of these same character types and situations to audiences worldwide, so that such spectacles as trick riding and lone stagecoaches fighting off pursuing Indians became veritable clichés very early in 92

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the twentieth century. Frederick Jackson Turner’s celebrated historical essay on the closing of the frontier (1893) added another feature to the mix with its implicit message of the passing of a way of life. Filmmakers would utilize all these elements to cast a nostalgic haze over and impart an often bitter sense of loss to many a western. Against a basic structure of the chivalrous hero who, like the knight errant of medieval legend, must rid the world of evil, novelists and screenwriters developed a number of standardized western plots. One of the most familiar is the revenge story in which the protagonist must seek redress for the murder of a family member. Typically, Ringo (John Wayne) seeks revenge for his massacred family in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), and Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas) must avenge the rape and murder of his Indian wife in John Sturges’s Last Train from Gun Hill (1959). The cavalry western frequently combines conflicts between officers and subordinates with the need for training raw recruits against a background of threats from various “hostiles.” In addition, such plots often fictionalize historical events or offer symbolic commentaries on the course of American history. Thus, one finds General Custer and the battle of the Little Big Horn celebrated in Raoul Walsh’s They Died with Their Boots On (1941) and Union and Confederate enemies being united in the face of greater dangers in Robert Wise’s Two Flags West (1950). Town taming also looms large in the pantheon of western plots; indeed, this necessity arises from the fact that there is “no law west of ...” as well as from the inability of ordinary citizens to organize any resistance to the criminal forces in their midst. Frequently, however, such scenarios also emphasize the initial reluctance of the hero to get involved in “other people’s business.” At other times the protagonist is a beleaguered lawman whose devotion to “doing things legal” conflicts with the avariciousness and fears of those he has been hired to protect, and this motif always underscores the singular courage with which the chivalrous hero must “do what a man’s got to do.” We see Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn) take up the marshal’s duties only after a child has been killed because of rampant lawlessness in Michael Curtiz’s Dodge City (1939); Virgil Earp (Sam Elliott) shames his brothers into joining him as lawmen in George P. Cosmatos’s Tombstone (1993). The darker aspects of such plots are best exemplified by the struggles of Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) and John T. Chance in Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo (1959). The former figure quits after the entire Miller gang has been killed, a decision symbolized by his dropping his marshal’s badge in the dust and riding off with his Quaker bride (Grace Kelly): the latter lawman builds a team of “professionals” who defeat the superior numbers of the villains through skill and courage.

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Range wars and cattle drives have also been frequently exploited as subjects for westerns. Such plots center on rivalries between ranchers, quarrels between land barons and newcomers who threaten the open range, or the personal and natural obstacles involved in getting a herd to a railhead town. We see battling patriarchs in William Wyler’s The Big Country (1958) and embattled farmers pressed by a ruthless cattle owner in George Stevens’s Shane (1953). Jim McKay (Gregory Peck) resolves the crisis in the first film by getting Rufus Hennessey (Burl Ives) and Major Terrill (Charles Bickford) to kill each other, thus bringing about peace. The conflict in Stevens’s film is resolved when Shane (Alan Ladd) uses his expertise as a gunfighter to destroy Wilson (Jack Palance) and his heinous employer (Emile Meyer) in a conventional and therapeutic shootout. Family and individual tensions are resolved in Howard Hawks’s Red River (1948) as Tom Dunson (John Wayne) and his adopted son Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) battle deserters, stampedes, Indians, and each other. Classic westerns generally take place within fairly narrow limits of time and place. For the most part, they occur in a period that begins just slightly before the Civil War and which ends around 1890, with Custer’s massacre at the Little Big Horn in 1876 being a frequent chronological marker. They are also usually set west of the Mississippi River in an area that stretches from Texas to Oregon. Within the canon of western films there are, of course, notable exceptions to these limits: John Wayne’s The Alamo(1960) and Howard Hawks’s The Big Sky (1952) are set in the 1820s and 1830s, while Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963) and Abraham Polansky’s Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (1969) occur well within the twentieth century. Ray Enright’s version of The Spoilers (1942) and Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz (1954) take place in the Yukon and Mexico. If the temporal and geographical limits of westerns can be somewhat flexible, their characters fall into much more consistent types and groups. In addition to cavalrymen, marshals, and ranchers, we see individual outlaws and outlaw gangs in Henry King’s Jesse James (1939) and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). The former film offers a sanitized version of the famed outlaw’s life by presenting his life of crime as a protest against a railroad’s cruel minions; the latter work presents a more disturbing portrayal of the supposed loyalties that even killers feel toward each other as Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his men die gloriously fighting against a cynical and savage Mexican despot. The sidekick, usually an older male companion, is another standard type and often such figures are murdered by the villains to force the hero into openly confronting them. This pattern can be seen all the way from King Vidor’s The Texas Rangers (1936), in which the nefarious villain (Lloyd


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Nolan) kills the comic sidekick (Jack Oakie) and so provokes the fury of the hero (Fred MacMurray), to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) in which another bad guy (Gene Hackman) kills another sidekick (Morgan Freeman) to bring the wrath of the protagonist (Eastwood) down upon him and his companions. The citizenry in westerns is often cowardly and nearly always equivocal; they may give lip service to law and order, but they are incapable of supporting its representatives or repelled by the violence that must be invoked to bring about peace. One needs only to think of the timid townspeople in Vincent McEveety’s Firecreek (1967) or the hostile storekeepers of Edward Dmytrky’s Warlock(1959) to appreciate the ignobility of the “people.” Such consistency is also found among the many gambler-gunfighters who populate westerns. At their best, such figures support the establishment by siding with the sheriff (the many portrayals of Doc Holliday), while at their worst they simply connive for their own ends (Jeff Goldblum in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado [1985]). The Native Americans present greater character variations, for while they are frequently presented as simply a hostile mass or terrifying sadists, they can also assume noble stature and even become worthy of love and respect. One film that captures many of these attributes is John Farrow’s Hondo (1953) in which the Apache chieftain Vittorio (Michael Pate) stands in sharp contrast to his barbaric subordinate Silvio (Rodolfo Acosta). Thus, Vittorio frees Hondo (John Wayne) when he, Vittorio, comes to believe that the cavalry scout is the father of Angie Lowe’s (Geraldine Page) son, while Silvio kills the protagonist’s dog simply out of spite. Neither of these characters is, however, remotely close to the idealistic portrait of Cochise (Jeff Chandler) in Delmer Daves’s celebrated Broken Arrow (1950) which consciously sets out to revise the typical silent and savage stereotypes of earlier westerns. Closely associated with such figures, we find the cavalry scout who is an expert not only in the native languages and mores but also capable of seeking out trails and possible ambushes. Such lone wolf figures can be viciously independent (Robert Duvall in Walter Hill’s Geronimo: An American Legend [1994], Charlton Heston in Charles Marquis Warren’s Arrowhead [1953]) or simply attached to the army life (James Coburn as Samuel Potts in Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee [1965], Ben Johnson as Sergeant Tyree in John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949]). Westerns also typically feature only two kinds of women—good girls and bad girls—in major roles. Older female characters are nearly always subdued, content with aging as hotel keepers or faithful wives, or used as comic confidantes or foils. Often the major female leads work themselves into a love

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triangle with the hero and, invariably, one of them wins his affection at the fadeout. George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again (1939) provides us with a good girl in Janice Tyndall (Irene Hervey) who understands Eastern fashions and being ladylike; a bad girl in Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich) who consorts with the villain (Brian Donlevy) but then gives up her worldly cynicism when she meets the protagonist (James Stewart); and a comic wife in Lily Belle Callahan (Una Merkel) who tyrannizes her second husband Boris Stavrogin (Mischa Auer) and gets into a humiliating saloon brawl with Frenchy. Westerns are also characterized by repeated settings and symbols. The town not only embodies the citizenry who can be alternately cowardly, heinous, or hypocritical, but also features certain standard buildings that are endemic to the genre. Thus, we find the general store, the hotel, the livery stable and, perhaps most importantly, the saloon in nearly every western; and, while each of these locations can be used in presenting the plot, the last structure is the most frequently utilized. The typical western saloon nearly always houses the bad guys, who either own the establishment or frequent it; and when the hero goes into this location there is almost always some kind of confrontation, whether a gunfight, a fistfight, or merely a stare down. Other physical locations that abound in westerns are mining camps (Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider [1985]), hideouts in which outlaws evade their pursuers (Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar[1954]), ranches that approach imperial stature (King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun [1946]), and forts that must withstand various redskin menaces (John Ford’s Fort Apache [1948]). The horizon is another physical feature that is often invoked as a framing device and, more obviously, as a spectacular backdrop for beautifully choreographed columns of horses and riders, perhaps never more brilliantly than in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956). All of these elements conjoin in the best westerns to support the virtues and themes that most distinctly distinguish the genre. Children are nearly always revered as the embodiments of the future, and they are consciously taught by their elders how to act when they become adults; indeed, the passage to maturity is central to a film like Don Siegel’s The Shootist (1976) in which the wayward Gillom Rogers (Ron Howard) takes the moral path in life because of the words and actions of the dying gunman John Bernard Books (John Wayne). Individual responsibility and a refusal to become a victim of larger forces are also themes that permeate many westerns, in part because of the needs for respect, identity, and, perhaps in even larger measure, because each man must be able to defend himself and those he loves on a frontier where there is little or no law. The struggle to establish a viable civilization in the wilderness is embod-


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ied in the conflict between the lawman and the outlaw, with the former bringing about the peace and security needed to create long-lasting conditions that will protect women and children. Indeed, for much of its history the western has glorified the triumph of middle-class morality at the expense of the ethical chaos bred by greed and criminality. On the flip side, we see numerous glamorous portraits of famous bad men who are shown as either misunderstood or fighting against unjust forces themselves. It is the sheer individualism of gunmen, both good and bad, that comes through in this struggle, for only the faster draw can ultimately win. Significant, though, is the frequency with which westerns focus on the importance of death. While many villains (and countless extras) die with little or no fanfare (except for expert stuntwork), many of the more serious deaths in westerns lead either to formal funeral scenes or to prolonged dying sequences in which virtually the whole community participates. Another frequent theme in the western is that romantic love offers salvation for the hero by supplying him with a refuge from the world of gunplay in which he is immersed. At times, such emotions can extend to an entire community as we see at the end of Russell Rouse’s The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) when the whole town goes along with the fictitious death of George Temple (Glenn Ford) so that he will no longer have to exercise his gun prowess and can simply live out his life with wife Dora (Jeanne Crain). In many other instances a long struggle brings the lovers together as in Budd Boetticher’s The Tall T (1957) in which Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott) and Doretta Mims (Maureen O’Sullivan) walk off together as a result of having bested the outlaws who kidnapped them. The better woman will also emerge after the hero casts off his first choice, who proves either mercenary or self-centered as in Rudolph Mate’s The Violent Men (1955) in which John Parrish (Glenn Ford) is rejected by Caroline Vail (May Wynn) because he chooses to defend his property against Lew (Edward G. Robinson) and Cole Wilkerson (Brian Keith). Parrish’s choice leads to a range war in which he comes to win the affection of Judith Wilkerson (Dianne Foster) by virtue of rescuing her father and destroying her uncle and her perfidious mother (Barbara Stanwyck). In his ten westerns, Anthony Mann employed plots, characters, settings, and themes that would be familiar to fans of the genre. At the same time he used these forms to carve out his own particular take on the western in order to push the genre in relatively new directions. At first, he brought some of the concerns and atmospherics of film noir to the western, but, as time went on, his more personal and psychological interests came to the forefront. Like the genre’s other great directors, Mann would ultimately use the western to convey profound themes about the human condition, and his ideas would

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be powerfully implemented by the characteristic physical and intellectual features that attached to the genre.

Out for Revenge: Winchester ’73 (1950) and The Man from Laramie (1955) Mann’s protagonists in Winchester ’731 and The Man from Laramie are out to avenge the death of a close family member. Lin McAdam (James Stewart) seeks the killer of his father—his older brother Matthew (Stephen McNally)—in the first film; and Will Lockhart (Stewart once more) searches for the man who sold repeating rifles to the Apaches and caused a massacre in which his younger brother was killed in the second. McAdam’s quest brings him initially to Dodge City in Winchester ’73 only after he has been pursuing Matthew (a.k.a. Dutch Henry Brown) for a very long time. Lockhart has deliberately taken a leave of absence from his military duties to pass himself off as a freight hauler and go to Coronado, where he believes he can discover the villain in The Man from Laramie. McAdam and Lockhart are not nearly as alienated as other Mann western heroes; indeed, in both cases they have something to which they can return—a place or an institution that gives them a sense of belonging to a community. Thus, at the end of the earlier film Lin will seemingly return to his ranch with both his best friend, “High Spade” Frankie Wilson (Millard Mitchell), and his newly discovered love, Lola (Shelley Winters), in tow. Captain Lockhart can calmly ride back to Fort Laramie after suggesting that he will welcome Barbara Waggoman (Cathy O’Donnell) should she ever be passing through. In both works the protagonists feel no need to settle into the places where the action has taken place. Indians figure prominently in both Winchester ’73 and The Man from Laramie as veritable aliens who are feared but only occasionally respected. The gunrunner Joe Lamont (John McIntire) quickly establishes his racial identity (“I’m white!”) with Dutch Henry and his cohorts (James Millican and Steve Brodie) in the cantina in Winchester ’73. After he has won the famous rifle from Brown, Lamont goes to a rendezvous with the renegade Young Bull (Rock Hudson) and is killed so that the Sioux chief can possess the magic weapon. Later, Dutch Henry shoots the dead Lamont, whose corpse has been propped up by a campfire, in order to regain the rifle. When the outlaw then goes to inspect his handiwork, he quickly sees that the trader is dead and wonders aloud, “Why do they always scalp?” We next see Young Bull and his braves in pursuit of Steve Miller (Charles Drake) and his fiancée, Lola, who are driving to the home they will share after they have married. The furious chase sequence climaxes when Steve deserts


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Lola to seek help elsewhere—an act of cowardice that is only slightly redeemed by his finding the encamped soldiers, returning to the girl, and guiding their buckboard down into the ravine where the troopers are encamped. Unfortunately for the frightened Steve, Sergeant Wilkes (Jay C. Flippen) points out that he and his raw recruits are pinned down by Young Bull’s forces. Only the subsequent appearance of Lin and High Spade, who are also fleeing from the Indians, saves the situation, for they bring the knowledge and the additional firepower which defeats the savages on the ensuing morning. Lin wisely counsels Sergeant Wilkes on the ways of the Sioux by pointing out that they will not fight at night, and then he sets the method by which the Indians’ morning assault can be defeated. His mastery of tactics and his ability to kill Young Bull (and so drive the “hostiles” away) establishes McAdam’s prowess as an Indian fighter. The Indian presence in The Man from Laramie is more continuous but less accentuated. When Lockhart initially arrives in Coronado and finds Barbara Waggoman’s general store, he is greeted by a taciturn Apache assistant (Frank Darrow) who is presented at first as a hand on a railing. Lockhart asks the hired man about a repeating rifle for sale that hangs on a wall; and, when he is told that a brave brought it in the previous spring as trade goods, the protagonist becomes even more convinced that he has come to the right place to find his brother’s killer. The surly assistant, whom Lockhart orders to help with unloading his wagons, is extremely suspicious; later on, we see him at the edges of the action when the protagonist fights Chris Boldt (Jack Elam) in the street. The Apache’s involvement with the death of Boldt, a crime for which Lockhart is arrested, remains mysterious as we watch him disappear after the sheriff, Tom Quimby (James Millican), orders the hero to jail. In the climax of The Man from Laramie the erstwhile shop assistant emerges as the leader of the Apaches who have come for their rifles after Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy) has signaled them from the high ridge on which he and Dave Waggoman (Alex Nicol) have hidden the weapons. When Lockhart intervenes and forces Vic to help him push the wagon load of rifles and ammunition off the ridge—an action that leads to the vehicle’s exploding— the Apaches retreat back down the inclined trail and wait for Vic to ride down. Their leader shoots Hansbro off his horse and, as the villain writhes in agony symbolically clutching at the ground of the Barb Ranch which he will never possess, another brave finishes off the gunrunner with an arrow in his back. Both Winchester ’73 and The Man from Laramie feature paired villains who represent different levels and types of malevolence. Dutch Henry, the

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Barbara Waggoman (Cathy O’Donnell), Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy), and Will Lockhart (James Stewart) meet at a nighttime church social in The Man from Laramie (Columbia, 1955). Once again, the female lead must abandon the charming bad man for the more solid protagonist in order to grow up.

smart though surly leader of the outlaws in the first film, is always quick to exert himself physically and to threaten anyone who balks at anything he wants to do. Characteristically, he offers to smack Lola when she stays too long at a table with him and Waco Johnnie Dean (Dan Duryea) and is shown wrestling the title weapon off both Lin and his criminal partner. His skill for planning is shown in the methodical way in which he explains the scheme he has concocted for the stage robbery in Tascosa. Indeed, this efficient design will eventually metamorphose into the delusionary schemes of Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb) in Man of the West. Waco is a more interesting and more arresting character, albeit one who can be as mean and deadly as the wayward McAdam brother. He combines a cynical laugh with a great capacity for sadism as we see on his initial entry at the ranch to which Steve and Lola have come. Even though the outlaw has brought a pursuing posse to this location, and he and his men are under


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pretty constant fire, Waco wants the Winchester which has come into Steve’s possession. Because he cannot persuade Miller to sell the weapon, Waco decides to humiliate Steve in front of Lola while, simultaneously, supervising his cohorts as they battle the posse. Waco finally so provokes Steve that the latter foolishly tries to outdraw him and is killed. Dave Waggoman offers a much starker portrait of villainy in The Man from Laramie, for he is a bully who must use the men behind him to enforce his will. At the salt flats where Lockhart and his wagoners have gone to harvest what they believe is a free product, Dave barges in, burns the protagonist’s wagons, shoots his mules, and then orders the hero dragged into submission by the cowhands who accompany him. Dave later relies on these same hired hands in his gunfight with Lockhart. After being wounded in the hand, the younger Waggoman orders his men to hold the protagonist still so he can shoot Lockhart’s pistol hand. However, this bit of psychic revenge, which breeds repulsion even among those who ride with him, is not enough to satisfy Dave, who then rides to the ridge where the rifles are hidden and proceeds to signal the Apaches to come and get them. When his partner in crime, Vic, shows up and tries to dissuade him, Dave remains impervious to the harm that the Apaches on the warpath will bring to everyone in the region; thus, his own ego overrides any rationality he may possess. Vic Hansbro, on the other hand, is the most charming of these four villains, even if he does kill young Dave and almost succeeds in murdering the patriarch of the Barb, Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp); in both cases the ranch foreman shows some regret for what he does, but his own ambitions quickly override such moments of remorse. Initially, Vic operates as a protective older brother for the headstrong Dave by stopping the assault on Lockhart’s wagons at the salt flats and then later, in town, taking on the burden of fighting the protagonist, who has been delivering a thrashing to the younger Waggoman. When Lockhart subsequently shows up at the Barb to collect damages for his destroyed property, Hansbro cheerfully greets him and amicably agrees that their earlier fight should be considered a draw. Each of these films also features a sidekick. High Spade accompanies Lin to the end of his quest and, along the way, fights beside him most efficiently during Young Bull’s attack. Morever, Frankie Wilson also functions as a voice of conscience and warning to Lin. Before the finale in Tascosa, as he and McAdam sit around a campfire, High Spade admonishes the protagonist that, “Hunting a man to kill him ... you’re starting to like it.” In return, after defending himself by urging essentially that a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, Lin compliments his saddlemate by reflecting that his father once told him that if a man had one friend he was rich, and “I’m rich.” Charlie O’Leary (Wallace Ford) becomes Lockhart’s sidekick in The Man

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from Laramie when he offers to help the protagonist discover who has armed the Apaches. Charlie has grown to admire Will because of their time together on the trail and, even though he warns that “hate” ill becomes a man like Lockhart, he attaches himself to the hero because “I’m a lonely man.” The bonding scene between them resembles the earlier one in Winchester ’73. Charlie does not accompany Lockhart continuously; indeed, the older man offers to go among his Apache relatives to find out what he can about the shipment of rifles. His abrupt return shortly afterward helps to unravel the mystery because he brings news of the impending delivery and the aggressiveness of the Apaches. Charlie then helps Will track the wagon that originally brought in the rifles and assists in the rescue of the fallen Alec Waggoman. A startling feature in both Winchester ’73 and The Man from Laramie is the frequent loss of control exhibited by Mann’s protagonists. While most commentators note that the good guy possesses some of the same capacity for violence as the bad guy, it is the depth of the rage we see in Lin McAdam and Will Lockhart which is unsettling. We see this capacity in Lin in the saloon in Dodge City where he spies his reprobate sibling and they both attempt to draw pistols that they do not have since Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) has disarmed everyone in town except himself and his brothers. An even more disturbing scene finds the protagonist confronting Waco Johnnie Dean in another saloon in Tascosa and, after asking for information about Dutch Henry Brown, jumping furiously into action by twisting the outlaw’s left arm behind his back and pushing his face down and into the bar top. As he does so, McAdam’s facial expression alternates between grim determination and a kind of jubilant hysteria brought on by a release of his emotions. Taking action against this enemy releases some of the tension which Lin has been carrying throughout the film. Lockhart does not live nearly as close to the emotional edge as Lin McAdam. However, he exhibits determination and emotional release when he fights Dave and Vic in the town square and the cattle pen of Coronado; indeed, he appears almost gleeful when Hansbro interrupts his pummeling of Dave and he can attack the other man. While he exhibits a steely exterior most of the time, Lockhart’s reaction to being shot in the hand by Dave runs a gamut from crying out in pain to cursing his cowardly assailant (“You scum!”). In the finale with Vic on the ridge we see Lockhart initially determined and then given over to a strained effort to push the wagon load of rifles over the side, and these reactions perfectly match his emotional changes in this sequence. While he only wanted to execute Hansbro at first, Lockhart quickly realizes that more is at stake than his own need for revenge and that he must prevent the rifles from falling into the hands of the Apaches.


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Both films have their climaxes in similar locations, and these high places in which the villains are seemingly dominant can only be reached by the heroes after they have struggled to ascend them. McAdam pursues his wayward sibling to a ridge that is behind the outlaws’ cabin in which Dutch Henry and Waco planned the Tascosa robbery. In a lengthy rifle battle between the brothers—one that is replete with each one verbally taunting the other—Lin climbs to the top despite being pinned down momentarily by his brother’s skillful shooting. On the crest they continue the verbal sparring until Matthew/Dutch Henry runs lows on cartridges, rises up to get a better shot at Lin, is shot instead by the protagonist, and plunges from the ridge. The same falling pattern attends Lockhart’s final confrontation with Vic in The Man from Laramie, only this time the wagon of rifles goes over the side and explodes. The frantic effort of Hansbro and Lockhart to push it over the edge sees them struggling against the imminent arrival of the Apaches and their own physical weaknesses—the protagonist’s bandaged right hand and Hansbro’s ineptness in guiding the wagon. When their ordeal is over, Lockhart reverses his earlier pronouncement about wanting to kill Hansbro and motions for the villain to get out of his sight. In this way Will overcomes his own need for revenge and so establishes a leading thematic difference between these two films. Lin McAdam’s quest for vengeance in Winchester ’73 is fulfilled with the death of Matthew/Dutch Henry, however, this search has cost several lives and the protagonist appears totally spent because of the ordeal he has undergone. Lin virtually clings to Lola in a desperate effort to gain some solace for what he has had to do. Lockhart’s rejection of revenge segues into his final scene with Kate Canaday (Aline MacMahon), who has captured the man of her dreams in the blinded Alec Waggoman, and Barbara Waggoman, who appears to want to fall in love with him. The protagonist’s gentle farewell, with its note about nearly everyone in Laramie knowing Captain Lockhart should she pass through that town, clearly constitutes a much calmer and more romantic finale. Because he has managed to transcend his own emotions, Lockhart has created a much more stable world and a more pleasant future for himself. Winchester ’73 gets off to a rousing start in Dodge City with the shooting contest between the estranged McAdam brothers for possession of the perfect rifle; however, before that memorable and extended sequence, a much more defining moment occurs in the saloon to which Lin must go to sign up for the contest. In addition to the psychologically revealing empty-holsterdrawing on each other, the protagonist and Dutch Henry spar in other ways. After witnessing their “showdown” Wyatt Earp warns both of them that they must take their personal trouble out of his town; however, as he admonishes

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From left: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, an unidentified crew member and Anthony Mann (far right) on the set of Winchester ’73 (Universal, 1950). Mann’s commercially successful western leads to seven more films with Stewart. Together they create a hard bitten and neurotic persona for the actor and produce some of the most memorable westerns ever made.

Lin, Dutch Henry orders a glass of milk for his brother-antagonist. In doing so, and in later relieving his sibling of the prized rifle, the villain introduces the notion of violence as emasculating—an association that Mann manipulates throughout the movie. Waco Johnnie Dean’s arrival and gun battle with the posse at Steve and Lola’s ranch also features the same pattern of humiliation as the outlaw goads the cowardly Miller into drawing on him. Waco orders Steve to make some coffee, even though Lola offers to do so, and then chides the other man about needing to wear an apron. When Steve brings the coffee to him, Waco trips him up and Miller falls across the table and into the camera, a stylistic feature that we have seen in many of Mann’s noir films. In killing Steve, Waco naturally gains control of the talismanic weapon, and he proceeds to get away with it and Lola by sacrificing the men who are with him. As they run out of


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the now-burning house onto its front porch and die in a hail of the posse’s bullets, Waco takes the heroine out through a side window. In the sequence in which Young Bull is killed and his band of warriors driven off by the soldiers, Lin, and High Spade, Mann introduces two themes in Winchester ’73. On the night before the battle, Lola speaks to Lin about her dream of owning her own home; and, while she imagines that she will have such a place with Steve, as we have seen, Waco Johnnie Dean insures that that prospect will not work out. At another level, of course, the film foreshadows its conclusion when Lin will take Lola with him back to the ranch that he and his father worked, so they can start a new life. After the defeat of the Sioux as they are preparing to leave, Lin and High Spade get into a brief conversation with Sergeant Wilkes who wishes that they had been with him at the battle of Bull Run. When our heroes respond that they were there, but on the other side, all three men laugh as a way of symbolically reconciling the greater struggle that the nation has endured; now, in 1876, these former enemies can unite against a common foe without feeling any bitterness that the Civil War bred. Mann’s film also incorporates some obvious symbolic objects and devices, most notably the weapon which gets passed from Lin to Dutch Henry, to Lamont, to Young Bull, to Steve Miller, to Waco Johnnie Dean, back to Dutch Henry, and then back to its “rightful” owner, the protagonist. Nearly every character who sees the Winchester wants to possess it, and frantic physical struggles—between Lin and Dutch Henry, between Waco and Steve, and, finally, between Waco and Dutch Henry—often lead to its being taken away from a current owner. The opening credits culminate in a title card explaining the nature of the rifle against the background of the actual weapon which starts the real action, and a tracking shot to a close-up of the gun finishes the last scene of Winchester ’73 after Lin has returned and embraced Lola. His emerging love for the songstress-piano player initially appears before the morning battle with the Sioux. In a very suggestive bit of business, Lin gives Lola a pistol so she can defend herself, and she smilingly notes that she understands “about the last [bullet]” being meant for her should the white men be overcome. What is obvious here is that Lin must see to her welfare even though Lola is still formally engaged to Steve, who once again proves unequal to the task of protecting his woman. After the Indian attack has been rebuffed, Lola returns the pistol to Lin but asks if she can keep the last bullet as a memento, a request the amused Lin immediately grants. Later, in the outlaws’ cabin to which Waco has brought her following their escape from the burning ranch, we see the girl affectionately fingering the bullet as a reminder of the man she unconsciously loves. This connec-

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tion is underlined when Lola discovers a picture of Lin and Dutch Henry with their father, an act that quickly elicits a violent response from the dour Matthew. On the porch of the shack, as Dutch Henry prepares to ride off to waylay the stagecoach he plans to rob, we see Lola again playing with the bullet, and then telling the outlaw that she knows the “other man” in the picture. The villain looks at the cartridge in Lola’s hand and adds that the man in the photo has been trying for years “to get one of those into me.” The girl only comes to understand this remark when High Spade explains Lin’s quest to her in Tascosa after she has been wounded rescuing a child and the protagonist has ridden off to finish his wayward brother. Winchester ’73 is the most episodic of all Mann’s westerns in that it moves from place to place and incorporates various generic elements. The quests of the hero—to regain the rifle he won in Dodge City and to kill the individual who took it from him and killed their father—give the film its plot spine; however, characters appear for discrete episodes—the trader Lamont and the cantina owner Riker (John Alexander), Young Bull, Sergeant Wilkes and recruits (two of whom are played by Tony Curtis and James Best), Wyatt Earp and his entourage—and then are simply not seen again. In this way Mann dramatizes the journey motif of the screenplay; presumably, Lin McAdam, like Homer’s Odysseus, will become a wiser and a better man because of what he experiences on the trail. This result is, however, highly muted in that Lin seems only slightly smarter at the end of the film, even though such additional wisdom has only been gained by his enduring tremendous physical danger and psychological suffering. The Man from Laramie is, ultimately, a much better integrated work, if perhaps not as immediately enjoyable as Winchester ’73. The initial meeting between Lockhart and Barbara incorporates one of the major symbolic designs of the entire film in that the protagonist must climb up a staircase to find the girl, and once there be treated to a cup of tea in a conspicuously homey atmosphere. In this way we learn that Barbara embodies the gentler aspects of civilization which are essential to the plot lines of innumerable westerns. At the same time, she introduces one of the major themes of The Man from Laramie by talking about her father’s wasted life in Coronado as a shopkeeper. Later, we see that her dismay over her parent who stayed on because of unfulfilled promises from his brother, Alec, is a cause of Barbara’s desire to get away with Vic. She cannot, however, convince Hansbro to give up his dreams of someday owning the Barb, and in a powerful scene Mann dramatizes their insoluble conflict by showing the villain angrily kissing the naively hopeful heroine in a kind of psychic rape designed to overpower her rationality. The Man from Laramie also embodies a long-standing range war between


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Kate Canaday and the Barb. The older woman’s introduction comes about when, after Vic has taken over for the beaten and waterlogged Dave in the fight with Lockhart, she deftly shoots a pistol out of the hand of the enraged younger Waggoman. Kate finally succeeds in hiring the protagonist to be her foreman because of his desire to get out of jail after he has been accused of the murder of Chris Boldt and approached by Alec and Kate, each of whom wants him to work for them. The rivalry between Kate and Alec is neatly resolved when the Waggoman patriarch is brought to her ranch by Lockhart and Charlie after they have discovered his fallen body at the base of the inclined trail leading up to the hidden rifles. At the Canaday house, Alec is nursed by Kate, who has been in love with him for years, and by the film’s final scene the now completely blind old man needs to have her with him at all times—a prospect that turns Miss Canaday into a giddy romantic girl. Alec Waggoman, while resting in a darkened room at the Half Moon, not only comes to “see” his need for Kate but also reveals to Lockhart that Vic Hansbro is the man he has been seeking. At the conclusion of The Man from Laramie we see Kate Canaday installed as the mistress of the Barb, and we hear Alec calling for her from within as she says goodbye to Mann’s protagonist. Lockhart’s coming to Coronado has removed both the sources of current troubles (Dave and Vic) as well as healed the longstanding emotional and territorial animosities of the older generation. The plot of The Man from Laramie borrows from classical drama in its emphasis on conflicts arising out of family hatreds and jealousies. Alec Waggoman’s symbolic dream about the man who comes to kill his beloved son, the source of his immediate fears about Lockhart, must be painfully revealed for its inaccuracy. The older man, like Sophocles’s Oedipus, must find the truth through humiliation and injury; indeed, like that literary figure, Mann’s patriarch only comes to see reality after he has been rendered blind. The sibling rivalry between Dave and Vic for Alec’s affections and his property resembles the machinations of the bad sisters in King Lear, while Lockhart’s efforts to exonerate himself with the older man put him in the position of the faithful daughter in Shakespeare’s play. The protagonist’s relationship to Alec Waggoman is, of course, epitomized in their gun battle after the funeral service in Coronado for the fallen Dave. The elder Waggoman remains convinced that Lockhart has killed his son and, after refusing Vic’s offer to accompany him, he rides out alone to seek vengeance. Naturally, Lockhart has anticipated the situation and awaits Alec at Kate’s ranch. He stands under a tree with a rifle cradled in his left arm with his right hand conspicuously bandaged as a result of Dave’s earlier sadistic act. Alec’s failing sight causes him to holler at Lockhart so he can know where the latter is standing, and then we see him spraying bullets wildly

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about as the protagonist stands his ground, never fires a shot, and still manages to unhorse the crazed older man. Appropriately enough, Lockhart lifts Alec and puts him back in the saddle, all the while telling him that he is “not the man in your dream.” While still not convinced of Lockhart’s innocence, Alec examines some bills of sale and discovers a shipment that has never been received. Suspecting that this discrepancy may be the source of the gunrunning that Lockhart has come to uncover, Alex tells Vic that they must ferret out the truth, otherwise the older man will always have doubts about his deceased son. While the guilty Vic tries to dissuade Alec by urging that he not probe into Dave’s activities, the elder Waggoman, like Oedipus, must seek out the truth however personally damaging it may be. On the trail with Vic, Alec discovers the only place where a wagon load of rifles could be hidden; and, as he rides up the steep incline that rises to the top of the ridge, his foreman and wouldbe surrogate son rides up to be abreast of him on the narrow ledge. The angry and frightened Hansbro then wrestles with Alec, who falls seemingly to his death; however, in yet one more final reversal of expectations, there is no effort by Vic to put the patriarch back in his saddle.

Healing the Past: The Naked Spur (1953) and The Tin Star (1957) These films both feature bounty hunters, and each man has only come to this profession because of a great personal injury in his past. In The Naked Spur Howie Kemp (James Stewart) has gone to the Civil War after leaving his ranch under the control of his seemingly faithful fiancée, only to lose the property because she sold it out from under him to run away with another man. Now he seeks money to regain his former home by hunting Ben Vandergroot (Robert Ryan), a man who knows about his past, for a $5,000 reward. In The Tin Star Morgan Hickman (Henry Fonda) has turned to bounty hunting because of the deaths of his son and wife during his earlier career as a town marshal. He discovered too late that the people he was sworn to protect would not support him in a time of need, and since then he has devoted himself to bringing wanted men in, dead or alive. Both men have an unspoken need to break out of their obsessions with the past, to get over its injuries, and to begin life anew in the present. Kemp only comes to this realization by struggling with his demons, which remain largely inarticulate, and gaining the love of Lena Patch (Janet Leigh). Hickman finds his redemption through a boy, Kip (Michel Ray), and his mother, Lorna Mayfield (Betsy Palmer), so that he can restore his former life. Kemp’s evolution only comes at the cost of great physical and psychological suffer-


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ing. He is initially too shortsighted and too emotionally strung out by wanting to get even with his past to realize that love in the present is more important. Hickman, a more experienced and worldly-wise character, reverses his course much more quickly and easily; he lets his actions speak for him with Kip, Lorna, and the apprentice lawman Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins). Both films also place an emphasis on professionalism, especially the ability to handle life-threatening situations efficiently. While much of The Tin Star centers on Hickman’s training Owens so that the younger man can survive as a town marshal, a more sinister kind of expertise surfaces in The Naked Spur through the actions of Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker). This dishonorably discharged cavalry officer not only succeeds in scaling a rock face to initially capture Vandergroot, but he even more skillfully sets up a deadly crossfire to kill the Indian band that is pursuing him. It is thoroughly in keeping with the thematic values of the movie that Anderson ultimately kills Ben and then dies in trying to get the outlaw’s corpse out of the roiling waters into which it has plunged. Hickman’s expertise dominates the early scenes between him and the idealistic but gullible Owens. The former lawman proves his capability by shooting a gun out of the hand of Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) when the latter has tricked the young sheriff into a potentially deadly situation. Of course, the protagonist explains that he intervened because Owens had not signed the necessary reward claim for the dead man Hickman brought into town at the beginning of The Tin Star. Morgan’s professional efficiency is most obvious when he captures Ed (Lee Van Cleef) and Zeke McCaffey (Peter Baldwin) by smoking them out of a cave; Hickman’s every movement accomplishes this task after the headstrong and awkward Owens has gotten himself wounded and so must simply stand by and watch. Mann’s opening credits in these films operate as veritable overtures to what follows. The Naked Spur begins with a shot of a snow-capped mountain in the distance accompanied by some apprehensive sounding music. There is then a rapid cut to a close-up of the spur on Howie Kemp’s boot, the weapon he will use to defeat Ben. As he rides away from the camera and into the wilderness to which he has tracked the outlaw, the soundtrack is replete with brief musical stingers that accentuate the violent struggles that follow. The Tin Star’s credits feature an opening shot in which a rider (Hickman) slowly descends a hill with a second horse, which carries a dead outlaw. The sequence then segues to brief shots of a river, at which Hickman and Owens will be seen practicing later, and a shot of the town’s main street, down which the bounty hunter slowly proceeds and which will be reprised in the final scene when the rejuvenated Hickman leaves town with Kip and Lorna.

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Lena Patch (Janet Leigh) and Howard Kemp (James Stewart) struggle with the rope that is tied to the corpse of Ben Vandergroat at the end of The Naked Spur (MGM, 1953). The protagonist finally breaks down and realizes that Lena’s love and not the bounty on Vandergroat is what must be uppermost in his life.


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The Naked Spur is possibly Mann’s most lushly photographed western; indeed, its many panoramic shots of mountains and clear blue skies stand in the most marked contrast to the base and often dark motives of its characters. The director’s profound feeling for landscape thoroughly permeates the action and adds considerably to the emotional struggles of Howie Kemp to become human, Ben Vandergroat to escape, Roy Anderson and Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) to earn more reward money or strike gold, and Lena to make a new start in California. Savage rock faces, narrow ledges, roaring rapids, and claustrophobic caves are all deftly used to augment the plot: the sheer difficulties of the terrain and weather (a coming rainy season) test the characters and prove that only the two survivors can transcend such difficulties and so prove worthy of a new life. The dramatic tension of The Naked Spur arises from the machinations of the captured Ben, who consciously sets out to divide and conquer his captors. In this process he uses Lena by having her scratch his back in front of the always lecherous Roy; he tells Jesse about a gold strike he has found back in the hills; and he assaults Howie through insults and flattery. In essence, the outlaw works on the greed of his captors by reminding them of how two shares are larger than three, and he is able to manipulate Roy and Jesse because of Kemp’s initial refusal to make the others aware of the size of the reward on Vandergroat. The protagonist’s showing of a wanted poster (with its bottom section torn off) to Jesse and Roy displays Howie’s alienation in the early sections of the story. He hires Tate for $20 to show him the way to some burned-out fires that the aged prospector has come across, and when they have trailed the outlaw to his mountain hideout, he drafts Jesse to fight with him against Ben. When he discovers that Vandergroat has a $5,000 price on his head, Tate angrily returns the $20 to Howie and, along with Roy who has been instrumental in capturing the outlaw, claims a larger share of the reward. Kemp’s dissembling with his cohorts as well as allowing them to think he is a lawman underscore the protagonist’s desperation in wanting to reclaim his ranch and his past. Vandergroat eventually persuades Jesse to cut him loose so he can lead the aged prospector to a supposed gold mine—a ruse that gets Tate killed by Ben, who really wants only to set up a final ambush in which he can kill Roy and Howie. While Jesse accepts his misfortune and tries to bargain his way out of this fix, his coldblooded execution by Ben finally turns Lena against the outlaw. She has come to see that Vandergroat is the murderous killer he is reputed to be and, when the others arrive, she foils Ben’s first shot and is knocked to one side. In essence, the girl has made a moral and a romantic choice to commit to justice and to Howie. Her rejection of Ben and of fond

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memories of her dead outlaw father who was Vandergroat’s partner foreshadows Man of the West in which Link Jones (Gary Cooper) must kill all the members of his criminal family. Roy Anderson’s murderous capacity comes to the forefront in the sequence in which he forces the other characters to join in his killing of the Indians who have followed him to revenge a rape he committed before he was dishonorably discharged from the army. After he tells Howie and the others that the pursuing group is after him and nags them about joining him in making a stand against the redmen, Kemp cuts Roy short with “Your fight ... not ours.” Once Anderson has ridden away, Howie and the others proceed slowly through a wooded area with the Indians following them at the same leisurely pace into a clearing. This slow parade passes by a fallen log under which we see Roy waiting with a rifle; once both groups are past him, and just after Howie and the Indian chief have exchanged peace signals, Anderson opens fire and his companions are forced to battle for their lives. The efficiency of the group is clearly demonstrated by the massacre of their opponents. At one point, however, Ben, who is unarmed and whose hands are tied, is grabbed by one of the redmen and appears to be about to be overpowered; however, Kemp comes to his rescue and beats Vandergroat’s assailant to death with a pistol. This struggle goes on far too long and is yet another instance of Mann’s using action to speak for a character; all the pentup rage in Kemp comes to the surface in this brutal fight. During this melee the protagonist is wounded in the leg to symbolize that his going over the edge must be punished. As the wounded Howie and the others leave the scene of the slaughter, Mann’s camera briefly focuses on one fallen brave lying in a position that suggests the Crucifixion. Howie Kemp’s wound combines with his exhaustion through the rest of The Naked Spur to dramatize his emerging return to being fully human. When he and the others arrive at rapids swollen by rain and argue over whether to cross there or take “four or five days” to find an easier transition downstream, Howie becomes enraged when Roy insists that Vandergroat is only a “sack of money.” The two men then fight in a characteristically staged struggle. Not only are they grappling on the ground and among fallen timbers but Roy presses a rope into Howie’s face and even draws a pistol on the hero before being overpowered. This fight leaves Anderson unconscious and Kemp all but collapsing into some refreshing water; however, what is even more notable is that none of the other characters intervene in any way. Ben smiles, Jesse simply looks on, and Lena only rushes to Kemp’s side after the struggle is over. (The protagonist still distrusts her because of earlier events.) Their romantic relationship is central to the major themes of The Naked Spur, and Mann presents its development in subtle and obvious ways. After


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he has been wounded, Howie attempts to ride but finally succumbs to his pains and falls off his mount; Lena nurses him through a night of fever and delirium. As he rambles about his romantic past, the girl comforts him and the soundtrack signals their emerging involvement through variations played on Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.” This melody, whose very title emphasizes Lena’s hopes for a better life, is then prominently invoked on the ensuing morning when Howie comes out of his fever, wonders why the others have let him sleep so long, and, as Lena re-bandages his wound, asks, “Why should you care?” While the girl offers no answer, the prominence of the Foster tune clearly presents her motivations. Lena’s feelings are again obvious on the trail later that day when she sees Kemp being pushed off his horse by Ben. This sequence is foreshadowed by Vandergroat’s loosening of the cinch on Howie’s saddle before they break camp, and then the outlaw rattles on as Howie unwittingly starts to doze off. However, when Vandergroat knocks Kemp off, the hero’s fall down a steep hillside is stopped by a fallen tree. We then see Howie agonizingly struggling to regain the safety of the ledge from which he has fallen as Roy, Jesse, and Ben look on and only Lena shows any concern for him. In this way Mann re-emphasizes the major thematic thrust of The Naked Spur, for Howie Kemp must ultimately move away from the greedy and self-centered world of outlaws and bounty hunting and rise into the world of genuine human emotions embodied by Lena. A more extended ensuing sequence in a cave demonstrates the struggle within Kemp to achieve such humanity. In a driving rainstorm the travelers seek refuge there, and as they settle in for the night, Ben prevails upon Lena to distract Howie long enough so that the outlaw can crawl out of the back of the shaft to freedom. After Jesse and Roy have fallen asleep, Vandergroat cues the girl to go to Kemp, who is standing watch. The Foster melody rises once more on the soundtrack as the nascent lovers start to talk. She reveals her California dream (“some place new”) while he remembers his idyllic life as a rancher with a house, neighbors, and a community to which he belonged. When Howie suggests that they might return to his ranch together on the money he will earn for taking Ben back to be hanged, Lena refuses because such an act “would be steppin’ on a grave.” At this point Howie grabs Lena and kisses her passionately, as if to signal that her desires as well as her beauty have overcome him; however, once again, Mann employs a reversal because Jesse shouts that Ben is getting away and the alerted Howie immediately jumps up and goes in pursuit. After he has caught the outlaw and dragged him back to the center of the cave, Kemp’s fury takes over as he gives Vandergroat a gun and challenges him to a shootout then and there. Clearly, the protagonist is venting his rage at Lena’s

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seeming betrayal against the individual he sees as its source; however, Ben is wise enough not to accept Howie’s challenge (“I ain’t got a prayer against you”). For a moment Kemp seems bent on simply gunning down his antagonist, but he does not and then, in an obviously symbolic gesture, he goes back to the mouth of the cave and angrily kicks at the tin cups full of water which had been the initial subject of conversation between Lena and himself. The final battle in the rocks between Ben, Howie, and Roy, shows Mann’s great facility with action sequences. After the outlaw has killed the gullible Jesse and left his body below, he takes Lena and goes up to a ridge from which he can easily pick off his foes as they ride out of some woods and into the clearing below. The impatient Vandergroat then fires shots that graze the dead man’s boots in order to hasten the arrival of his enemies. Lena offers to run away with him if he will spare Kemp. The cynical Ben simply responds that she will come along with him anyway after he has killed his pursuers, and the idealistic girl then proceeds to hit his rifle as he is about to kill Howie. After he has knocked her unconscious, Ben starts firing away at Howie and Roy below. Howie climbs up the outer edges of the giant rock formation that Ben is on, Roy keeps the killer occupied by rifle fire. As he nears the top of his ascent, Kemp takes off his left spur to use as a pick on the harsh rock surface. When he is almost at the top of the ledge, Ben hears Howie and crawls over to kill him. The protagonist hooks the outlaw’s face with the spur, causing Vandergroat to rise up in pain and be killed by Roy. In a visual reprise of the end of Winchester ’73 the villain’s body tumbles off the height into the raging waters pouring through the gorge below. As we see Ben’s corpse caught up on a log and washed into a small whirlpool, Howie forgets his quest for money and rushes over to see if Lena is all right, for in the proceeding battle Ben has claimed that she has been wounded and is bleeding fiercely as one more ruse to get his antagonists to reveal themselves. Roy Anderson now rushes to retrieve Ben’s corpse by stringing a rope across the surging waters to where the outlaw’s body is floating. The cavalryman skillfully pulls himself across and gets a rope around the cadaver; however, his announcement (“I got him!”) is skillfully juxtaposed by Lena’s passionate cry (“Stop it!”) to emphasize the major conflict that is still raging within Howie Kemp. At this point a huge piece of driftwood carries Roy away to his death as the protagonist succeeds in pulling Ben’s body out of the surging waters. As he drags the outlaw’s corpse toward his horses, Lena pleads with Howie to “cut him loose,” but the protagonist reverts to being a bounty hunter solely out for money. In a film in which the hero has had to struggle against physical obstacles and endure savage physical pain, his emotional conflict reaches crisis proportions at this point.


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In a remarkable combination of directing and acting, Kemp’s conversion occurs as James Stewart is photographed from the rear trying to tie Vandergroot’s corpse onto a horse’s back. We see his reactions in the tightening and loosening of his shoulders as Lena begs him to stop and, then, in a more resigned voice, tells Howie she will go with him and do whatever he wants. In this way the past has been reversed as the hero finds a woman who will be faithful to him even if he chooses to live off the “blood money” that he has been seeking; and, as Stewart’s shoulders visibly sag, the strains of “Beautiful Dreamer” take over once more. The tension that Howie Kemp has been carrying throughout is now dissipated and, appropriately, he does the right thing by burying Ben’s corpse and riding off with Lena to California as the film ends. As one would expect, Mann fills The Naked Spur with numerous objects and situations that reinforce its major conflicts and plot resolution. In addition to the object of the title, the spur which Howie uses to overcome Ben, pistols are featured throughout; indeed, a close-up of a sixgun opens the movie’s initial sequence in which the protagonist creeps up on Jesse Tate and his mule. The wanted posters that Howie and Ben show are also important in that the former’s torn copy omits the price on the outlaw’s head so that when the latter shows his entire version to Jesse and Roy he is able to begin driving a wedge between his three captors. Later, Roy’s discharge paper shows that he has been dishonorably separated from the service and, naturally, establishes him as closely akin to Ben in being greedy and egocentric. Anderson is also associated with ropes, for he tries to overpower Howie with one and then skillfully uses another to get to the floating corpse of Vandergroat. High places also clearly figure prominently in both the opening siege of Ben’s lofty hideout and at the end when Roy and Howie attack the outlaw on the ridge on which he has perched to ambush them. These confrontations again display the thematic movement of The Naked Spur, for in the first encounter Howie is unable to scale the rock wall, while in the second he not only succeeds in climbing up a sheer incline but also overpowers the outlaw at the top. While Kemp was initially motivated by hatred and his desire for money to re-do his past, in the climactic scene he is subconsciously moved to act because of his love for Lena and a desire to do the right thing. In both instances Roy Anderson also plays a pivotal role. The disgraced cavalryman’s arrival finds him easily ascending the sheer rock face after Howie has failed and then getting the drop on Ben: at the raging river gorge Anderson dies in trying to recover the corpse of the man he has just killed. Roy thus goes from being a bemused spectator and efficient participant in the first instance to a frenzied and shortsighted victim in the second case. In essence, he becomes

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what Kemp is at the beginning—and his death offers a subtle verdict on what such conduct will ultimately lead to. After Howie and Jesse trail the outlaw to his first ridge hideout, they are beset by rocks that Vandergroat rains down on them. Kemp persuades his elderly guide to provide cover as he tries to work around the other side and find a place to scale up to the wanted man. At this point Anderson rides in, introduces himself as an “extraordinary” Indian fighter, and tags along to see whether Kemp and Tate will succeed. Roy offers to provide cover for Howie as the bounty hunter attempts to climb the vertical rock face, and then he sits chuckling as he watches the protagonist attempt this difficult ascent. Mann shoots this sequence from tight angles to catch the fear and anguish on Howie’s face as he slips and slides back down the rope, burning his hands in the process. At this point Roy takes over and nimbly scales the cliff, albeit with one momentary slip when Mann’s camera records a passing smile on Kemp’s face. At the top Anderson sneaks up on the prone and unarmed Vandergroat, who laughingly says “Now ain’t that the way” when the ex-soldier gets the drop on him. In the fight which follows between them, Ben laughs madly throughout and is only overpowered when Howie and Jesse arrive. The presence of Lena and her dying horse, the reason why Ben and she have had to stop, adds another dimension to the manhunt and further complications to the plot of The Naked Spur. Vandergroat, who begins to emerge as the devil/tempter in the film, urges that Lena must help him get sufficient time to turn his captors against each other. In a clever juxtaposition of words and actions, the outlaw says he “must scratch open sore spots” on Howie, Jesse, and Roy at the same time that Lena is massaging his back in the first of many instances when that action is used to emphasize her sexuality. After Jesse and Howie determine that Ben is above them, the two men briefly confer about how to storm the outlaw’s elevated position. When Kemp announces that he has finally caught up with the object of his hunt, the aged miner sagely notes, “You got him, but he’s got you too.” This remark, which implies that the immediate capturing of Ben is going to be, at best, most difficult, carries significant weight beyond just being a reference to the characters’ present standoff. For the duration of The Naked Spur, what Ben represents to Howie—a chance to rework his past—is, what possesses the protagonist. It is only after he has ascended the second ridge, recovered the outlaw’s corpse, and then buried it that Howie Kemp overcomes the condition set forth in Jesse’s remark. The Tin Star initially stands out because of its photographic style. The film is replete with deep focus shots, especially from inside Owens’s office, to emphasize the omnipresence of the town and citizens; the young lawman


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must learn to handle both. Door frames and a long tracking shot also distinguish the opening sequence in which Hickman brings a dead body into town, reports to the sheriff, and is rebuffed by most of the populace who, appropriately enough, despise bounty hunters. At the film’s climax Mann returns to the jail office and, when a rock is thrown through its front window and the shade violently thrown up, we see the waiting mob and its leader Bogardus across the street in another elaborate set-up. Mann also introduces each of his principal characters either through appropriate objects or places that define them; this economy makes the exposition of The Tin Star as appropriately rapid as it needs to be while, at the same time, introducing the relationships and conflicts that mark the subsequent action. As Morgan Hickman rides slowly into the town with his burden, the camera moves closer and closer to him until we simply see the

From left: Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins) arrests the McGaffey brothers, Zeke (Peter Baldwin) and Ed (Lee Van Cleef), in The Tin Star (Paramount, 1957). The training of a novice sheriff (Perkins) by a veteran lawman turned bounty hunter (Henry Fonda) causes both men to arrive at a greater understanding of themselves.

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suspended hand of the outlaw he has killed. At the same time, the stunned faces of the townspeople are shown in medium shots of them in clusters. Hickman must pass a gnarled tree on his way to the sheriff’s office, and this object, found conspicuously in the middle of the street, symbolizes the struggles that will come as well as the often tangled webs that are human history and society. Once inside the jail, Hickman discovers Owens practicing twirling his pistols. After Ben fumbles in putting one of them back into his holster, Hickman asks, “Where’s the sheriff?” and Owens quickly reaches for his vest with the tin star on it. This initial emphasis on the badge as not only a symbol of office but also a source of personal identity introduces another pattern that underpins the major themes of The Tin Star. Owens’s ineptness and Morgan’s initial doubt that the young man could, indeed, be the town marshal sets up the apprenticeship situation in which the older man will train the younger one to become a professional. At the same time, Morgan Hickman’s own healing process, by which he will learn to quit living in regrets about his past, will be completed by his final acceptance of a tin star from Owens. After he has been told he must wait for his reward money, and after he has been refused a room at the local hotel because the townspeople loathe bounty hunters, Hickman rides over to the livery stable in the hope of bedding down his horses for the night. There he is confronted by Bart Bogardus, the owner who is also related to the dead man Morgan has brought in, and told that his business is not wanted. The villain is a hulking, swaggering figure, replete with a prominent white hat, who rejects Hickman at the same time that he is chasing Kip out of his establishment. The insouciant boy has been indulging his love of animals, and in the street he asks if he can ride one of Morgan’s horses. In decided contrast to Bogardus, the bounty hunter gladly allows the boy to ride behind him. Their trip to Kip’s home on the outskirts of town leads to Hickman’s finding a place to stay as Lorna Mayfield accedes to her son’s urging that the protagonist and his animals remain with them. The widow is conspicuously associated with the house and the many chores that go with keeping it up: We see her knitting clothes for other people because she needs the work, doing dishes, and insisting that she sleep in front of the fire for she will be up and about before either Morgan or Kip. The protagonist’s emerging love for Lorna begins with their first night in her parlor when Hickman feels as though this situation were a reprisal of his own domestic life and briefly alludes to his own family (“I had a boy once”). Kip’s role as an instigator is emphasized by a sprightly musical theme that is introduced as he and Hickman initially ride to the boy’s home and which is invoked often through the rest of the film. The boy’s headstrong


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desire to explore and have adventures shows that he, like Ben Owens, needs the guidance of an older male, and Morgan’s emerging feelings eventually lead to his becoming that figure. Kip’s association with animals, especially the pigeons he keeps and then releases when he and Lorna leave with Morgan at the end of the film, is marked throughout: A horse brings him and the bounty hunter together and leads to the former lawman becoming his new father. When Hickman subsequently gives Kip a pony, the boy cannot resist riding the animal in pursuit of the posse that thunders past his home in pursuit of the McGaffeys; and, in a wonderful bit of plotting, Hickman must rescue Kip and Owens out in the fields that surround the cave in which the murderous brothers have holed up. Dr. McCord (John McIntire) represents the history and the conscience of the town in which Hickman and Owens struggle to find their real identities. While Morgan is beset by the outraged official representatives of the place when they learn his occupation (“Collect your money and get out!”), lesser figures are equally hostile and even McCord eyes him suspiciously. The good doctor does, however, have a soft spot for Owens and his fiancée, Millie (Mary Webster), for he attempts to reconcile them in the sheriff’s office when the girl urges that Ben must give up the job. McCord emphasizes that Millie’s own father was the previous sheriff and kept the town safe, that Ben has succeeded to that responsibility, and that her tasks must be to support the man she loves and the need for social order. This argument is even more strongly urged in McCord’s office when he tries once more to reunite the estranged young people and tells Millie that no one can “run away from responsibility.” Familiar stylistic features reappear in The Tin Star, particularly in the sequence in which the venerable McCord is killed by Ed McGaffey. Leaving the scene of a birth, McCord admonishes his horse to simply take him home and settles down for a nap; however, his trip is interrupted by the elder McGaffey, initially shown in a frame that emphasizes his foot in the saddle and which, characteristically, reverses the mood of the scene. At the McGaffey ranch, Dr. McCord patches up the wounded Zeke and purports to believe the brothers’ story about a hunting accident. As he leaves at dawn to return to the town and his seventy-fifth birthday celebration, McCord remarks to Ed that the weather promises it’s “going to be a fine day.” We then see the aged physician again settling into his carriage and preparing once again for a nap as his faithful horse takes over. Inside, the McGaffeys worry about McCord’s realizing that Zeke’s wound was a result of a holdup that led to the death of a stage driver. Ed is convinced that the physician knew the truth from the moment he stepped into their house and is preparing to kill the old man, while his wounded sib-

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ling tries to talk him out of doing so. Mann does not show the actual killing; instead, we see the townspeople awaiting McCord’s arrival, starting to sing “For he’s a jolly good fellow” when they see his carriage in the distance, and then falling into stunned silence as the slumped-over physician passes by. When McCord’s notebook is checked, the townspeople learn that his last stop was the McGaffey ranch and their collective rage leads to posting of a reward on the brothers “dead or alive.” The irony of the situation becomes increasingly apparent as Bogardus and many others rush to form a posse while prodding Owens to lead them. In essence, they have become the same kind of hunters they once scorned. At the McGaffey ranch, after Bogardus has assumed control of the posse, this enraged mob decides to burn down the house. They do so by means of a burning wagon which is pushed into the front of this dwelling in a set-up that visually reprises the attack of the posse on Steve’s ranch in Winchester ’73. The larger point, of course, is the loss of control exhibited by these men and the way in which Bogardus has prompted them into becoming worse than themselves. When the house is ablaze, the villain and the others ride off apparently looking for the McGaffeys, but actually seeking more opportunities for destruction. The futility of this act of mob violence is underscored when Kip, Hickman, and Owens all separately come upon the scene of destruction and then proceed to where the brothers are hiding because the boy pursues a dog there and the men come looking for him. The Tin Star clearly presents a serious theme about the necessity for taking personal responsibility, whether for one’s own actions or to protect the common good. This value is initially implied by the fact that Morgan and Lorna each have become disillusioned by the ways people have treated them in the past. Their revelations of these situations to each other are prompted by the bounty hunter’s comment that Kip looks “part Mexican,” a remark that angers Lorna as she explains that the boy is really part Indian. She assumes that Hickman is racially bigoted and orders him to leave in the morning. On the ensuing day, however, after he has been to town and signed some papers related to the reward money, Hickman returns to the Mayfield house only to be visited by Owens, who has learned that the older man was once a lawman. In an effort to get Morgan to help him, the neophyte sheriff announces that he has secured a room in town for the older man; however, Morgan quietly states that he already has a room and a smiling Lorna obviously forgives him and starts falling in love with him. We then learn that Lorna was the daughter of an Indian agent, married a brave, and then saw her husband killed because of prejudice against redmen. Her story emphasizes that caring for Kip—the need for civilized society to protect children—outweighs such shortsightedness and helps further


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the parental relationship which Morgan has been gradually moving toward. In the past, Hickman has suffered because, even though he was the town marshal, he could get no financial help from those he protected when his wife fell ill; instead, he had to go out and hunt down a criminal for the $1,000 reward which could move his family to a healthier climate. His effort proved to be too little, too late for both his wife and his young son, so Hickman decided to become a full-time bounty hunter. Morgan’s situation resembles the dilemma of Will Kane in High Noon (1952) in that the perfidy of the citizens is consistent in both films. Hickman’s rebirth comes about through his training of Owens, for he moves from being critical and cynical to being the younger man’s partner in the climax of The Tin Star. When Morgan sees the young man playing with his pistols on his first visit to the jail, he can only look on with scorn. A shooting the next day by Bogardus forces Owens to take action, and Hickman watches as the novice commits error after error; however, when the villain hides his hand behind his hat and is about to kill the young man, Morgan shoots the pistol out of his hand. As Owens tries to thank him, Hickman denies he had any noble intentions—all he was trying to do was ensure that he would get paid promptly. However, such tough-mindedness is belied by the protagonist’s then giving the would-be lawman a lecture which ends with the advice, “Take off that tin star and stay alive.” Owens finally convinces the reluctant Hickman to teach him the ways of being a sheriff, largely because he points out that Bogardus will take over if he does not succeed. Morgan is convinced by this argument that a worse man will replace the inept Owens so he takes the latter to a riverside to teach him about shooting. After telling Ben that he lacks confidence, Hickman adds that a lawman must shoot to kill when he decides he must shoot. In a subsequent scene the two men go into a saloon and Hickman teaches Ben to stop trying to act tough, to “learn what to stay out of” when a drunken brawl breaks out, and, ultimately, to learn to study men. In his final lesson the bounty hunter shows Owens how to capture the McGaffeys by flushing them out of their cave by burning prairie grass at its entrance, but he delivers this lesson only after the younger man has gotten himself slightly wounded through attempting to “negotiate” with the hidden outlaws. Toughened by this last experience and now capable of applying Hickman’s teachings, Owens waits out and then puts down an attempt by Bogardus and his mob to lynch the McGaffeys. Ben must overcome the advice of the respectable citizens, who want him to back down, and the apparent indifference of Hickman, who waits to see when the drunken citizens will demand the prisoners be turned over to them. As the two men sit in the jail’s front office and Morgan sagely counsels that the would-be lynchers must get

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“liquored up” before they try anything, Owens offers a tin star to his mentor, but Hickman refuse to wear it. When the broken window and rattling shade reveal that Bogardus and his cohorts are ready to hang the McGaffeys, Ben takes a shotgun into the street and walks confidently toward the crowd as we see Morgan come out to the porch wearing the tin star which he has finally picked up again. While The Tin Star emphasizes the frequent ill treatment of native Americans, this subplot remains subordinate to the master-apprentice story at the center of the film. Bogardus’s insults to Kip in the stable introduce racial prejudice; and the bad man’s initial confrontation with Owens begins with the villain’s dismissal of a killing by urging that the dead man was a “half breed and had it coming!” Later Ben tells Morgan that the McGaffey brothers, who have just ridden past them at the river where the lawmen have been practicing marksmanship, have some “Indian blood,” and Bogardus incites the mob reaction to McCord’s murder by yelling that the brothers are “breeds.” The Tin Star has Owens kill Bogardus and the latter fall backward toward the camera in a signature Mann set-up. To establish his authority, Ben not only disperses the lynch mob but also goads the villain into fighting with him; in essence, he has learned that he must use violence to gain control and so bring peace. These actions establish that the young lawman now embodies the sense of responsibility that Dr. McCord earlier urges upon Millie. The town is once again in safe hands because Owens has replaced Millie’s father as its protector, and we see the restoration of order dramatized in the exit of Hickman with Lorna and Kip. After the boy releases the pigeons he cannot take with him, the new family rides through the main street in town as Morgan assures Ben that he can handle everything on his own. Their passage reverses the visual pattern which brought Hickman on the scene in the first place, and the emotional changes in Morgan are further reflected by his saying that he will find a town of his own and return to being a sheriff.

The Costs of Civilization: Devil’s Doorway (1950) and The Last Frontier [a.k.a. Savage Wilderness] (1955) These films offer more complicated thematic treatments of the issues that rise between individuals and the societies or communities in which they either live or into which they are attempting to be assimilated. While Will Lockhart, an outsider in Coronado in The Man from Laramie, notes the unfriendliness of many of its inhabitants, the difficulties faced by Lance Poole (Robert Taylor) in Devil’s Doorway and Jed Cooper (Victor Mature) in The Last Frontier are more pointed and more pervasive. These protagonists seek to be accepted for different reasons, but the obstacles they encounter raise


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the larger point of individuals deriving major parts of their identities from the communities and people with whom they reside. As aliens—Lance is a Shoshone and Jed a free-spirited trapper—both men yearn to become at one with their societies. Ironically, the nobler and more idealistic Poole, who wants to create a perfect place in Sweet Meadows where all people will be welcome, is killed because of the prejudices he arouses, while the baser and more practical Jed, who only wishes for a life in the army so that he may impress Corinna Marston (Anne Bancroft), lives to triumph both socially and romantically after the death of Colonel Marston (Robert Preston). Mann’s protagonists in these films are military heroes whose prowess in combat is shown by their ability to quickly size up and react to violently changing conditions. Lance leads the war party that defeats the sheepmen’s attempt to bring their herds onto his property; indeed, his knowledge of tactics finds the Shoshones using dynamite to destroy both the animals and the men who have come against them. In the later protracted siege of his ranch by Verne Coolan (Louis Calhern) and the aroused townspeople, Lance’s capabilities as a leader are again apparent when he negotiates a safe conduct for the women and children under his authority. Once he has agreed to scout for the army, Cooper, as the natural man of the forest and mountains, has no difficulty seeking and finding Marston’s beleaguered retreating column or spying on Red Cloud’s camp. We see Jed frequently on the branches of enormous trees or blending into the terrain as he takes Colonel Martson to see where the Indians are encamped or as he returns from his own act of desertion to try to save Gus (James Whitmore) and Marston’s troopers from the ambush that Red Cloud has set up. In this sequence, as the cavalrymen follow their glory-crazed commander to death by charging into the enemy, Cooper rallies the infantry and gets these men back to the safety of Fort Shallan after he has attended his dying mentor. Cooper takes command because no officers are present, battles the attacking redmen deftly and individually, and even carries a fallen comrade during this extended retreat. Jed’s abilities as a man of war are on display when he overpowers one of Red Cloud’s sentries and takes away a cavalry jacket that the fallen warrior was wearing, when he runs out of the stockade in a drunken fury to kill some braves who are nearby, and when he battles with and eventually kills Sergeant Decker (Peter Whitney). Poole also dominates as a fighter when we see him triumph over Ike Stapleton (James Millican) in a bar brawl that Coolan has instigated, when he repulses the sheepmen’s initial foray into Sweet Meadows by wounding its leader Rod MacDougall (Marshall Thompson), and when he sneaks up and silently strangles the crooked lawyer. Ulti-

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mately, the individual courage of these two Mann protagonists is shown when Jed is accepted into the service and in the casual way that Lance mentions during his initial meeting with Orrie Masters (Paula Raymond) that he has received the Medal of Honor. The villains of Devil’s Doorway and The Last Frontier are obvious representatives of society for they stand well within its acceptable limits as far as race and decorum are concerned. Verne Coolan, who has come West for reasons of health, may be a bigot about Native Americans, but he is also a lawyer and so an embodiment of the newer civilized order that is emerging in Wyoming. Colonel Marston, no matter his shortcomings as an officer or a tactical strategist, commands the garrison at Fort Shallan and so represents the order that such forces are inevitably bringing to the wilderness. Coolan and Marston do, however, obviously trade on their respectability and authority to manipulate the situations in which they find themselves. The lawyer does so by inveigling others to do his dirty work and consistently prodding the sheep herders and the irrational townspeople into action. Coolan buys Ike Stapleton’s allegiance and then forces Sheriff Zeke Carmody (Edgar Buchanan) to follow the letter of the law in dealing with the resettlement of Sweet Meadows. While both the gunman and the lawman die in the initial battle with Lance and his warriors, Coolan is appropriately killed later in the dark by Poole. Colonel Marston uses Sergeant Decker as a cat’s paw and then relies on the disciplined loyalty of Captain Riordan (Guy Madison) in dealing with Cooper, and trades on military protocol to checkmate his fellow officers when they question his plans. When Riordan’s request to have the colonel relieved of command is denied, Marston refuses to institute any formal action against his subordinate because, as he says, such a proceeding would not be in the army’s “best interests”; and, even though his obsessive quest for military glory proves futile and costs several lives, Colonel Marston does die heroically in battle. Mann emphasizes fistfights in tight quarters in both films to symbolize the difficult moral and personal conflicts that beset Poole and Cooper. While such encounters invoke the style of film noir, their extended brutality and the sheer exhaustion of the participants are much more in keeping with the director’s larger themes in his westerns. The physical battering that Lance receives during his saloon fight with Stapleton is symbolically prompted by a sign which forbids the sale of liquor to Indians and accompanied by numerous reaction shots of indifferent or gloating spectators. Its finale, in which the protagonist throws a drink in the face of his unconscious opponent, nicely dramatizes what Poole has been fighting for while, at the same time, reemphasizing that the town has turned against him. Cooper’s fatal brawl with Sergeant Decker, prompted by Colonel


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Marston’s oblique hint to his obsequious subordinate to “provoke him,” is rendered as a brilliant stylistic tour de force as we are shown the men battling within the confines of the scout’s room. Cooper and Decker are photographed from an extremely high angle as they grab various objects and attempt to strangle each other within what clearly emerges as a visual reprise of the bear trap into which the colonel had earlier fallen. The fighters then break through the cabin door and take their struggle up to the roof as Mann’s camera tracks along and then reverts to reaction shots of Riordan, Corinna and the initially gleeful and then dismayed Marston. Jed finally throws his antagonist to the ground and his death and, when the colonel orders his arrest for killing a soldier, the protagonist snaps, throws down the cavalry jacket he has been wearing (declaring it to be nothing but a “dirty, filthy blue rag”), and vaults out of the fort. This crisis follows closely upon the traumatic situations that Cooper had to face in the aftermath of his leaving Colonel Marston to die in a bear trap. Jed is stunned when those he thought were his friends and his beloved condemn what he is done, even though the protagonist has come to believe that eliminating the commander is what the others wanted and what is necessary for the preservation of the outpost and its garrison. Jed’s dilemma, over the contradictory values and wishes of the society he wants desperately to belong to and his own wild and free life up until now, is resolved when Mungo (Pat Hogan) meets him after the hero has deserted the fort and tells him that he no longer belongs in the wilderness. The two men then part— the Indian to the life of a trapper and Cooper to the commitments of “civilization” by returning to battle Red Cloud and find a rapprochement with the army and Corinna at the film’s conclusion. The protagonist of Devil’s Doorway rides into town as the credits wind down, dressed as a Union soldier just returned from the Civil War. During the five subsequent years in which Lance builds up his ranch, he conspicuously wears white man’s clothes so that Orrie is initially surprised when he tells her he is a Shoshone. As he is driven to defend his land, Poole adopts a headdress and Indian clothing and, only when he finally surrenders, does he again put on his Union jacket. Indeed, in his walk up to the waiting Lieutenant Grimes (Bruce Cowling) and Orrie, Lance’s mixture of the clothing of the two cultures and his collapse in death symbolizes exactly the forces that have killed Poole. His final words, “We’re all gone,” reemphasize what has happened to his utopian dream for Sweet Meadows as well as that there is little or no place for Native Americans in the face of encroaching white rules and regulations. Orrie Masters and Corinna Marston are conspicuously Eastern women who exemplify the softer and feminine sides of civilization. While she sur-

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Lance Poole (Robert Taylor) realizes he must fight against overwhelming odds in Devil’s Doorway (MGM, 1950). Mann’s film offers a much more sober view of Native American–White relations than does the more heralded Broken Arrow (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1950).

prisingly functions as a lawyer in the predominantly masculine world of Wyoming (a situation that initially startles Lance nearly as much as his being an Indian disturbs her), Orrie characteristically works to bring about peace through compromise to the dangerous situation into which Lance brings her. Her unspoken love for Poole goads her into sending for governmental


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help when Sweet Meadows is besieged because of her abiding allegiance to the rule of law; indeed, because it has been her father’s profession, she essentially insulates herself within its rules in order to have some emotional stability to cling to. Orrie may have deeper feelings for Lance, but she always remains an idealist. In their conversation, she once more urges Poole to surrender, even though he will have to spend the rest of his life in prison. Corinna Marston eschews any overt idealism for, if anything, she is looking for a new life that will either relieve her of being the colonel’s wife or somehow magically transform her spouse into being a human being instead of a martinet. Her loveless marriage is shown in several scenes in which we see her futile efforts to transform their relationship consistently rebuffed by his obsessions with duty and glory. While Corinna can insist that she married a “man” and not “just a uniform,” the colonel can maintain that he is only a man because of wearing a uniform. Her subsequent passion for Jed takes her into his arms and his cabin, but she still insists that she will not trade being the colonel’s wife for being Cooper’s “squaw.” When Jed and Colonel Marston then ride out to survey Red Cloud’s camp, Gus appropriately chastises Corinna by pointing out, “If one of them don’t come back, you can be thanking yourself.” Because Jed Cooper does, ultimately, “come back,” he wins Corinna at the end of The Last Frontier when she appears smiling on a porch after he has dismissed the troops. The reappearance of the film’s title song (which inappropriately sounds far too jaunty) marks this change as the lovers gaze at each other and the camera rises into the snowy skies to bring the movie to its end. This conclusion does, of course, drastically alter the plot of Richard Roberts’ The Gilded Rooster, on which The Last Frontier is based, for in that novel Jed murders the mad commander and is then shunned by the community of the fort while the Riordan character ends up with Corinna. The ending of Mann’s film has often been dismissed as simply “tacked on” due to studio pressures, and one might initially agree that it seems too truncated, too convenient, and probably too “commercial,” given the story that has led up to it. On the other hand, Mann does not supply enough basis for ending the film as the novel does. Since Riordan and Corinna are hardly ever together on screen, a more biting finale would appear way too contrived. It could simply be that the director wanted viewers to remember what Jed has given up to gain the rewards of civilization—Corinna and a uniform. In The Last Frontier, Marston’s death arises out of his megalomaniac drives, and its final scene can be construed as emphasizing that Cooper has lost a great deal in making the choice he has. In keeping with the fact that life-changing decisions produce losses as well as gains, the protagonist will no longer have

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either the companionship or the wisdom of Gus and Mungo and he will have to work to make Corinna happy in civilized ways that will, probably, be as perplexing to him as those he has already encountered. Lance Poole’s misplaced optimism and dour fate are made abundantly clear from the opening scenes of Devil‘s Doorway. His warm reception in the local saloon by its owner (Tom Fadden) and Zeke Carmody is swiftly counteracted by the slight tracking shot which reveals Coolan, who intones about “how sour the air got” when the protagonist entered. Lance ignores the remark because he is quickly distracted by the arrival of his aged father (Fritz Leiber) and Red Rock (James Mitchell). When his parent addresses him in Shoshone, Poole asks if he has forgotten English and proceeds to speak to him in that language. This obvious attempt on the protagonist’s part to assimilate to his society goes for nothing when Lance must ride to town for help for his dying father. The indifference he encounters from Coolan and the physician, Dr. MacQuillan (Harry Antrim), who are playing cards in the saloon, starts Poole’s descent into defeat and death. The conflicting values of father and son are made apparent in the earlier scene when Lance returns to the ranch and tells his parent that he’s got “a saddlebag full of dreams” about the future in Sweet Meadows. The protagonist wants to make their home a place where there is charity for all because of the riches that will arise out of cultivating the range and their herds. This idyllic vision, with its socialist overtones, is immediately countered by the father’s pessimism which begins with his insistence to his son, “You are again an Indian” and then emphasizes Lance’s Shoshone name, Broken Lance. If that title ironically foreshadows the hero’s fate, the depths of the dying old man’s despair emerge even more strongly when he goes on to say, “The truth will kill you. Our people are doomed.” These remarks provoke confusion in Lance, especially when coupled with the benevolent neglect of the physician who only reluctantly rides back from town to pronounce the older Shoshone dead. Poole’s bitter question about what he owes the bigoted doctor points to how Lance will attempt to ameliorate the racist society which has grown up during his absence. In a montage we see him building up a formidable cattle herd and prospering; however, new land laws are enacted that make it impossible for him to retain the title to Sweet Meadows and everything he and the other Shoshones have labored to achieve. In addition, the first “reward” that Lance derives from his new wealth is his brutal encounter with Stapleton in the saloon. Still hoping that moderation will carry the day, Lance turns to Orrie Masters with the idea that the law can somehow work to his advantage. His initial encounter with her provokes shocked reactions not only from these


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principals but also from the girl’s mother (Spring Byington). In a clever subplot, Mann mirrors the younger woman’s acceptance of Lance through the actions of her mother. When Orrie decides that she must visit Sweet Meadows to confer with her client, Mrs. Masters demands to go along and conspicuously brings a shotgun. After a day spent at the ranch, Lance escorts the two women home and bemusedly tells the mother that the next time she takes out a shotgun she should be sure it has a firing pin. By this time Mrs. Masters can laugh at his remark since she has discovered for herself that Poole is anything but a wild savage. This trip to Sweet Meadows is undertaken because Orrie has learned that under the new territorial laws, Broken Lance has no legal standing; indeed, “You’re not an American citizen.” Poole expresses his dismay in rebellious rhetoric, but Miss Masters counters with the inevitable riposte that everyone must obey the law. Like many another protestor, Lance laments the unjustness of such a law in the face of obeying one’s conscience and operating to help real people with real problems. At this point a young Shoshone boy returns from his initiation into manhood. He has been three days in the wilderness, with no provisions, in search of an eagle whose feathers he must bring back to the tribe. As the boy struggles to crawl to the front porch of the ranch, Lance stands aside and tells the horror-stricken Orrie that every Shoshone boy must pass a similar test. The heroine’s idealism becomes even more apparent when she questions whether what the boy has been forced to do and endure isn’t “rather cruel.” Lance’s defense of his tribal ethos not only points up the need to accept the customs and mores of others but also emphasizes the virtue of inculcating self-reliance to the group’s children. His proclivity to deal with the “real” world is then further underscored when Poole allows a group of destitute Shoshones, who have fled the reservation, to stay on his land despite Orrie’s warnings that he is, again, breaking the law. When she asks what he has told the aged, blind chief (John Big Tree) who leads this forlorn band, Lance tells the lady lawyer, “I told them they were home.” Despite her best efforts to broker a compromise between Poole and the sheepherders, who have been induced by Coolan’s promise of abundant fodder for their animals, Orrie is outmaneuvered by her older opponent when she tries to get the townspeople sign a petition in Lance’s favor. Coolan initially circulates a rumor about Miss Masters being in love with the protagonist and then offers to sign her petition after he had learned that Poole has taken direct action against the sheepmen. As events spiral into ever-greater violence, the protagonist emerges in a native headdress and is photographed in deep shadows as he argues with Orrie about how he must fight to protect his property. His outburst is followed by a brief moment in which he almost

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takes her hand, but his failure to do so clearly indicates that Lance cannot be saved through love. The last conversation between Orrie and Lance occurs after his ranch house has been burned and the siege of Sweet Meadows has been taken over by the army. Even though Coolan is dead, the deaths of so many others (Zeke Carmody, Rod MacDougall) have made the hero’s demise virtually certain; Poole echoes his father when he tells the lawyer, “It’s hopeless.” Her urging that he will receive a “fair trial” does nothing to assuage Lance’s bitterness. After he sarcastically tells her to comfort the Shoshone women and children who are being taken to the reservation with such ideas, Lance dismisses Orrie by saying that he cannot accept her “feeling.” He chooses to fight and die rather than to give in to her pleas; at best, he can only wistfully note that love between them might have worked “a hundred years from now.” In addition to the clever ways in which he presents the melancholy relationship of Lance and Orrie, Mann uses other devices to make thematic and plot points in Devil‘s Doorway. A barking dog greets Lance upon his initial entry into the town and, after Coolan’s hostility has been established and the protagonist prepares to ride off with his father and Red Rock, the same animal barks furiously and chases the Shoshones out. In Sweet Meadows, Lance’s father momentarily stumbles in getting up to the porch as a prelude to his ominous and bitter warnings and subsequent death. When the sheepmen arrive in the town, Mann has Poole driving his cattle in at the same time that their flocks enter from the opposite direction; the cattle drive the sheep to the side and then thunder past to foreshadow the conflict between these two groups. Finally, just before his death, we see Lance fondly holding his father’s pipe as a way of conveying the losses—of the past and of his identity—that he has experienced. Familiar elements of the director’s style abound in Devil’s Doorway. The low ceiling in the saloon and its cramped quarters enable Mann to stage a bravura fistfight and, at the same time, to imply that Poole will always be trapped in the white man’s world of social and legal barriers. The tracking shot that reveals the sinister Coolan at the bar was, by now, a veritable given in the director’s work, and the dynamite battle between the Shoshones and the sheepmen features impressive low-angle shots with horses’ legs in the foreground and struggling men in the background. The same kind of camera set-up will reappear in The Man from Laramie when Lockhart and Hansbro fight in the cattle pen in Coronado, while Lance’s rage, seen when he pummels Stapleton and strangles Coolan, foreshadows the emotionally troubled character that James Stewart will portray in Bend of the River. The last rites for Lance’s father, while set in a cave, echo the more extended treatment of Marcus Aurelius’s funeral in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).


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The Last Frontier also embodies a clash of cultures, albeit among characters whose motives are not as intellectually pronounced as those of those of the individuals in Devil’s Doorway. Jed Cooper, Colonel Marston, and Corinna are preoccupied with their own short-run desires: They clearly do not share the philosophical or idealistic outlooks espoused by Lance and Orrie in the earlier film. The only character who has found something to die for is the colonel, and he is essentially dismissed as mad by the other characters. The protagonist, Gus, and Corinna all insist that life, not death, is the greater value—and they are supported by Captain Riordan and Captain Clark (Russell Collins) in their attempts to stop Marston’s mad gamble for glory through defeating Red Cloud. The struggle between civilized and uncivilized characters yields numerous ironies in The Last Frontier, for both sides bring worthy and ignoble motives and traits to this conflict. While Jed Cooper represents the natural man who must be tamed into following society’s ways, those who stand for civilization frequently embody contradictory impulses which the scout cannot understand. Colonel Marston can admire Captain Riordan’s initiative in appealing to the high command to stop his planned attack on Red Cloud, but he is not above sending Sergeant Decker to kill the protagonist. When the men fight and Decker is killed, Marston is quick enough and hypocritical enough to order Riordan to arrest Cooper for killing an American soldier. The captain, who voices many of the lessons which the protagonist must learn to become civilized, has been adamant in holding to the law when Cooper managed to “lose” Marston in a bear trap. However, when the scout leaps over the wall, Riordan cannot bring himself to enforce the law by shooting Jed. Such a duality runs even deeper in Colonel Marston, who has been virtually exiled to Fort Shallan because of his conduct at the battle of Shiloh. His title of “the butcher of Shiloh” was earned when his entire command of 1500 men was annihilated there because he ordered an attack against fortified artillery. Marston’s revelation of this stain on his record is prompted by his visit to the post hospital where he eagerly seeks recruits among the wounded for his expedition against Red Cloud. Captain Clark, the fort’s doctor, reacts when Marston proclaims that “holding actions do not win battles” and presses Riordan to ask their commanding officer about his actions at Shiloh. Earlier we have learned that Marston and Clark have a shared past, for the colonel essentially rebuffs the captain’s initial greeting with an implication that the physician has exhibited cowardice in earlier circumstances. Cooper’s conversion to civilization is represented through plot devices, verbal references, and elements of staging. Upon their arrival at Fort Shallan, the trappers are gradually convinced by Captain Riordan to become

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scouts, and Jed’s eagerness to take on this role is caught when he, Gus, and Mungo are confronted by a flag-lowering ceremony. Cooper imitates the soldiers standing at attention and prevails upon his friends to join him in awkward salutes; however, when the ceremony is finished, the protagonist repeats the command of “dismissed” and then laughs uproariously with his companions. In the film’s last scene, in which snow is flying, we see Riordan ordering the company’s new sergeant to dismiss the troops and Jed, now in full uniform, turns to face the camera and once again barks out “dismissed.” This time he laughs in pleasure before he turns to the porch and the waiting Corinna. Both Cooper and Colonel Marston are referred to as animals by other characters. In their first impromptu meeting, Jed tells Corinna, after he discovers that her husband is at Fort Medford, that she is probably a widow since that garrison will have been wiped out by the Indians. When she does not cry over what he has said, the protagonist pointedly asks Corinna, “What kind of woman are you?” and she reacts by calling him an “animal.” After a later prolonged romantic scene between them, Jed rejoins Gus, who has hobbled out of a sick bed to alert the would-be lovers about impending discovery. When the older trapper tells Cooper that he is a veritable “bear” among the civilized people at Fort Shallan, Jed’s distraught reaction is caught in his desperate plea that “I don’t want to be a bear.” That response reveals Cooper’s emerging desire to be civilized in order to possess Corinna. However, he is even more confused by conversations he then has with Captain Clark and Captain Riordan. By this time everyone is aware of Colonel Marston’s suicidal plan to attack Red Cloud, so the protagonist is not surprised when Clark urges that his commander is “not well” and that something needs to be done to thwart his mad plan. Jed abruptly dismisses Clark’s lament by saying that the physician has a pistol which he can use on the colonel. Cooper then asks Riordan to account for the commanding officer’s obviously barbaric nature. When the captain patiently explains that even in civilization there are uncivilized individuals, he does so by stating that Marston is “an animal among us.” Jed then raises one of the ironic themes of The Last Frontier when he asks, “What’s the good of being civilized?” These conversations and his own desire for Corinna drive Cooper into taking direct action against the colonel when Marston insists on seeing the Indian camp. As they spy on Red Cloud’s village, Marston taunts Jed about his wife and raises the conflict of sexual jealousy between them. When the ever-driven commander then wants to hurry back to Fort Shallan, Jed allows Marston to push on ahead of him and fall into a bear trap. As the furious colonel repeatedly orders “Get me out,” Cooper stands on the edge of the


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pit and calmly twirls a rope as he informs Marston that they must talk. The scout insists that the officer must renounce his plans for attacking Red Cloud or be left in the trap to die. Not surprisingly, despite Jed’s best efforts and use of the rope as a lure, Marston refuses and the scout rides back to the fort. When he gets there and announces that he has “lost” the colonel, Jed is dumbfounded by the reactions of Riordan and Corinna, for in his mind he has simply done what they and all the others wanted him to do. The captain immediately condemns Cooper as a murderer and summarily dismisses him as one who is “not fit to wear a uniform” because he does not understand the need for unquestioning obedience within the military world. Jed then goes to Corinna and points out that the colonel “did it to himself”; however, when she is less than enthusiastic about this explanation, the mystified protagonist insists, “It’s what you all wanted!” Now enraged because he has tried to protect Corinna and been chastised, Jed slaps her and then goes back to retrieve the colonel. After he has hoisted Marston up, the colonel mockingly says, “I know my wife” and, thus, wins a psychological victory over Cooper. Mann’s affection for location work is also clearly displayed in The Last Frontier, especially in the ways in which the interior space of Fort Shallan is photographed and utilized: we are never allowed to forget that the wooden enclosure is full of entries and obstacles, and its physicality is emphasized by the fluid camera trackings that demarcate its architectonics. In addition, the topography of the surrounding wooded area is caught time and time again from the opening sequence in which Red Cloud’s braves waylay Jed, Gus, and Mungo through the final battle in the opening and trees in which Marston is killed and Cooper leads the retreat. The protagonist’s skills in scouting and quietly moving to overpower individual enemies are symbolized by his costumes which camouflage him so that he blends into the landscape. Some other notable stylistic similarities between The Last Frontier and Mann’s other works can be seen in the numerous odd camera angles used in the fight between Cooper and Decker when that struggle is confined to the scout’s quarters, and the reversal in mood achieved when a love scene between Jed and Corinna is interrupted by gunfire and a medium close-up of a trooper with a hatchet lodged in his back. The film also echoes The Tin Star’s apprenticeship theme when Jed silently scales the fort’s wall and puts a knife to the throat of a young sentry with the warning that the boy must learn to use his ears as well as eyes while on guard duty. The symbolic square formed by guards’ shields in The Fall of the Roman Empire appears many times in The Last Frontier, perhaps most noticeably when a drunken and disillusioned Jed countermands Colonel Marston’s orders for marching out to success by telling the assembled troopers to kiss

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their girls goodbye because they will be dead after tomorrow. Jed Cooper also resembles the persona created by James Stewart in his westerns with Mann: If his dismissal of Clark’s request about Marston shows that the protagonist will not take any chances for anyone else, a later scene in the woods finds the hero repeatedly knifing a fallen foe with a look of savage rage and pleasure alternating on his face. A principal theme of The Last Frontier is the conflict between the morally and emotionally settled world of civilized society, as embodied by Riordan and Corinna, and the turbulent and uncertain world of freelance individuals like Gus and Mungo. In this intellectual struggle, Jed Cooper is obviously torn between following what is comfortable and familiar and going over to the more uncomfortable and strange. To its credit, Mann’s film shows virtues on both sides, and in so doing suggests one of the most enduring issues in a genre in which heroes must use violence to achieve peace and barbaric skills to bring about the settled conditions in which civilization can flourish. Unlike so many standard westerns, The Last Frontier locates its protagonist’s motivations not in glorious and pure self-sacrifice but rather in his desire to possess the woman he sees as the embodiment of all the rewards of civilization. While Jed’s struggle to become worthy of Corinna can be seen as a conflict between the uniform (duty) and love (personal indulgence), the hero’s actions eventually promote the greater good, especially after his error in imagining that those around him wanted Colonel Marston murdered. Captain Riordan remains the voice of civilized rationality and military obligation throughout by virtue of his constant insistence that Fort Shallan must be held against Red Cloud, at least until spring when reinforcements will arrive. The captain attempts to convince Marston of this obligation, but to no avail as the colonel simply overrides him as post commander by virtue of his superior rank. Riordan’s allegiance to the army and its ways of doing things prevents him from directly removing his superior; at the same time, he will not act against Cooper when following strict military rules would require him to kill the scout. In classical genre terms Captain Riordan may have right on his side, but he is too civilized to impose his own morality on his surroundings. Only a more savage man, Cooper, can save the situation once Marston has been allowed to blunder into another defeat. Thus, the notion that building and holding a position in the wilderness is more important than the marital or emotional needs of any single individual emerges as a primary theme in the world of The Last Frontier. Jed Cooper must learn the virtue of doing the dirty work of civilization by eschewing the free and wild existence he has lived and become a soldier dedicated to carrying out the orders of his superiors—a change that is foreshad-


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owed in his reporting first to Gus about Red Cloud’s encampments and not going initially to Marston, who had ordered him to undertake this mission. Only when Jed has been rebuked by Mungo as no longer belonging “out there” in the wilderness from which they have emerged, been present to save the remains of Marston’s command, and become a real soldier can he enter the disciplined and emotionally controlled worlds of Fort Shallan, Corinna, and, by implication, civilization itself.

War in the Family: The Furies (1950) and Man of the West (1958) Mann’s roots in the theater and his predilection for classical drama made The Furies and Man of the West projects that he would temperamentally find attractive. These films revolve around the often emotionally explosive psychodynamics of family life and the sobering dictum that the sins of the parents devolve upon their children. Thus, The Furies resembles King Lear in that a shortsighted patriarch must be undone and then redeemed by his children, while Man of the West echoes the Oresteia in that the crimes of an older generation must be expunged by the acts of the younger generation it has produced. Of course, the plots of these films do not rigidly imitate those of Shakespeare and Aeschylus; however, their resolutions do echo those masterpieces while showing how far Mann had come within the western genre. It is surely appropriate that Man of the West offers the most subdued finale not only of any of the director’s westerns but of any of his works. The Furies ends with a conventional romantic fadeout as Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck) and her lover, Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey), take the corpse of T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) back to be buried at the family ranch, the Furies. As they ride, they decide that their first son will be named T.C. as a measure of the reconciliation that has occurred between the cattle baron and his daughter just prior to the patriarch’s death at the hands of Mama Herrera (Blanche Yurka). Man of the West’s more somber conclusion finds Link Jones (Gary Cooper) and Billie Ellis (Julie London) riding away from the scene of the showdown between the protagonist and the savage outlaw patriarch Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb). Link and Billie clearly realize there can be no romantic future for them. He must return to his wife and family and she must live content with having discovered that there is a good man worthy of being loved, if only for a time. Both films feature complicated love triangles that are at the center of their primary thematic concerns. In The Furies, Vance is initially torn between her longstanding feelings for Juan Herrera (Gilbert Roland) and the attraction of newcomer Rip Darrow, neither of whom finds favor in the eyes of

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her father. T.C. manages to show up the gambler by offering him money to abandon Vance, and the old man then hangs Juan in spite of the Herreras agreeing to abandon their “squatter’s rights” on his property. In both cases, the father deliberately acts in front of the daughter to assert his control. These acts, coupled with the arrival of Flo Burnett (Judith Anderson) as T.C.’s wife, drive Vance to seek revenge on her parent. The romantic triangle is much less prominent in Man of the West for we never see the wife that Link Jones has left behind before setting out to find a schoolteacher for his hometown. Nevertheless, this woman’s existence clearly dominates at the end of the film when the protagonist must abandon any hope of a future with Billie. It is, of course, once again a measure of Mann’s growing sophistication that he relies on his audience to remember

Lee J. Cobb (as Dock Tobin), Julie London (as Billie Ellis), and Gary Cooper (as Link Jones) in Man of the West (United Artists, 1958). The mad outlaw patriarch (Cobb) must be killed by Mann’s protagonist (Cooper) but not before he rapes the singer. Mann’s final western sees his main character annihilate the criminal “family” with whom he grew up years before.


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this connection: He has come to understand that one of the basic pleasures for some viewers is actively drawing inferences instead of simply being shown every plot detail. At the same time that he is achieving this level of artistry, Mann is still producing a work that entertains by its immediate on-screen developments. Familiar devices that the director employs include high places to which characters either ascend or from which they descend. The Herrera mountaintop fortress is assaulted in a veritable dress rehearsal for the intricate scaling attacks in Winchester ’73 and The Naked Spur. Only T.C.’s use of dynamite and his own personal bravery turn the tide in his favor in this pitched battle. We even see him stop briefly, despite falling rocks and ricocheting bullets, to scratch his back on a rock and then, after the Herreras have given up, to call out his ranch hands as “my brave lads” as they emerge from various hiding places. At the conclusion of the train robbery in Man of the West, Sam Beasley (Arthur O’Connell) must conspicuously pull himself up to where Link is standing, peering down at him, in a set-up that efficiently shows that Jones must become the other man’s guide and protector. At the climax, Link goes after Dock Tobin, who is on a crest above him. As the crazed villain comes down from this lofty perch, shooting wildly, Link guns down the embodiment of his own evil past. A pair of scissors figures prominently when Vance and Flo have a heated discussion about the latter’s impending marriage to T.C. That exchange occurs in the room of the patriarch’s deceased first wife, which has been preserved as a veritable shrine where T.C. spends at least an hour upon any return to the ranch. His son Clay (John Bromfield) had chided his sister for going in there and actually wearing one of their mother’s dresses just before the old man’s arrival in the opening sequence. Vance is, thus, dismayed that Flo wants to talk in the mother’s room, and she becomes even more upset when Mrs. Burnett announces her engagement to T.C. and their plan to send Vance on a world tour. Vance accuses Flo of simply wanting her father’s money and then picks up the scissors when T.C. enters and confirms what she has been told. Mann’s protagonist then hurls the scissors at her rival for his affections, and disfigures Mrs. Burnett’s face as well as precipitating the lynching of Juan Herrera by the enraged patriarch. The knife that Coaley (Jack Lord) brandishes throughout the “strip tease” scene in Man of the West carries a comparable symbolic weight. In a significant set of gestures, Dock momentarily caresses the singer’s hair and then his underling repeats that movement, only he uses the knife instead of his hand. In the sequence which follows, Coaley orchestrates Billie’s disrobing while holding the knife to Link’s throat and the girl reveals her feelings for the beleaguered protagonist by agreeing to the outlaw’s demands only

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after she sees blood on Jones’s skin. Later, on the trail when Link provokes Coaley into a fight, he taunts the younger man by urging that he needs a knife in order to be brave enough to tussle with him. In a clever juxtaposition, their savage struggle culminates with the protagonist ripping Coaley’s clothes off in a mock reenactment of the humiliation he had earlier imposed on Billie. Mann’s finesse with landscapes is also prominent as his camera records impressionistic shadows and looming cacti as backgrounds in The Furies and the progress from verdant countryside to desolate hills and somber desert in Man of the West. While much of the action takes place in interior locations (the Jeffords ranch house and the bedraggled shack in which the Tobin gang is holed up), the exterior locations lend an obvious grandeur to the tales Mann is presenting. T.C. Jeffords and Dock Tobin ultimately become largerthan-life figures because of their associations with the surrounding terrain. The patriarch of the Furies dominates men and animals in the outdoors, while the mad outlaw calls down his final challenge to Link from a cliff that visually dominates the man and objects below. The screenplays of these films also utilize repeated phrases to mark clear dramatic movements in their plots. Vance refers to her father as the “top man” in her world when T.C. returns with the banker Reynolds (Albert Dekker) after his initial visit to San Francisco. She then uses the same expression with Rip Darrow when she invites him to dance at her brother’s wedding party against the wishes of her parent: her repetition naturally foreshadows the resolution in which Vance will end up as supremely content to obey her gambler/banker husband. Sam Beasley is taken aback when Link merges easily into the outlaw world of the Tobins and remarks to the protagonist that “you’ve changed,” not realizing that the hero has simply reverted to his former life. When Cousin Claude (John Dehner) utters the same line, its repetition underscores how the outlaw has “seen through” Link’s manipulation of Dock and implies that Claude will kill his “cousin” rather than see anything happen to the aged outlaw patriarch. Money also figures prominently as a plot device in both of these movies. In The Furies, T.C.’s need for cash has led him to print up his own currency without regard for how many outstanding obligations he has contracted. When Clay makes a seemingly casual reference to his father’s independent financial excesses in front of Reynolds, the banker opines that he may have to delay completing the negotiated loan between T.C. and his employer’s bank until these matters “can be cleared up.” While his weak son has deliberately acted to injure and undermine him in the only way he can, T.C. has only to threaten to expose Reynolds’ affair with one of the ranch’s servants to get the banker to back down. Later, of course, Vance and Rip undo T.C.


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by paying him in his own worthless scrip after the patriarch has rounded up all the cattle on his range. Link’s money pouch represents the trust that his neighbors have placed in him, even though they know about his past, and so it embodies his reformed identity as a “good man.” His own sense of responsibility is shown early when he carefully packs the pouch into his traveling bag along with his pistol belt. Unfortunately, Sam Beasley discovers Link’s mission and tries to finagle the protagonist into accepting Billie as a schoolteacher, all within the hearing of a Tobin gang member, Alcott (Jack Williams), who is on the train. Not surprisingly, this outlaw takes Link’s traveling bag when the Tobin gang attacks. Link is distraught when he discovers the pouch has been taken from the stolen bag which he finds lying in the barn to which Dock has sent him and Billie. The hero’s restored sense of himself is only fully complete when he finds the money pouch in the dead Dock Tobin’s vest: Killing his outlaw parent has “healed” both the past and the present for Link. The patriarchs in The Furies and Man of the West are both tyrants capable of asserting their arbitrary wills on those around them at a moment’s notice. Each old man can use violence as we see when T.C. orders the hanging of Juan Herrera and when Dock talks fondly of how he and a much younger Link murdered “old Ben Skull” to get $11,000. As the addled outlaw tells it, Link held this victim while Dock took “the top off his head,” a recollection that moves Tobin to proclaim that in that distant time, “we were big.” T.C. Jeffords tempers his viciousness with a ready acceptance of ill fortune—both with Flo and when he must sell his herd for worthless paper— that redeems him. He can even note that he has felt “cold” ever since Juan’s death as a psychosomatic symptom of guilt. While Dock Tobin wears a scarf inside the heated cabin, no such softness can ever be discerned in him. At best, he keeps his outlaw brood under control and kills Coaley when the latter attempts to shoot an unarmed Link. T.C. and Dock also function as “creators” of Vance and Link; however, once again, the contrasts between these characters are more marked than their similarities. Despite his stubborn temper and propensity for cruelty, the elder Jeffords does provide a role model for Vance, and she obviously recognizes this quality at the end of The Furies. Dock’s immersing of Link in killing and thievery is what the protagonist has deliberately set out to escape from, and the only “benefit” that Jones gets from such training is that it enables him to annihilate the Tobin gang, as he realizes he must if he and Billie are to have any chance to survive. Intrusions into the spaces of other characters are also integral to both plots. Rip Darrow’s arrival at the Jeffords’ wedding starts his relationship with Vance and leads to the many love-hate scenes which will gradually

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Walter Huston in his last role (as the aging but headstrong T.C. Jeffords) and Barbara Stanwyck (as his equally determined daughter, Vance) in The Furies (Paramount, 1950). Mann’s western ultimately suffers from too much romantic and psychological angst and scenes too full of dialogue.

reshape the protagonist’s emotions. Flo Burnett’s arrival and her subsequent wounding by Vance lead, of course, to the final protracted conflict between the daughter and her father over who will control the Furies. Link Jones’s entrance into the darkened outlaw cabin, a place from his earlier life he has instinctively found, sets in motion the struggle by which the hero eradicates his past in order to once again live in the present. Vance Jeffords initially functions as the mistress of her father’s ranch; indeed, even Clay ironically refers to her as a “princess.” She is happy being T.C.’s designated heir and being consoled by the platonic love she feels for Juan until she falls immediately for Rip at her brother’s wedding party. Her own inherent proclivity for control collapses when the gambler fails to appear after she has arranged for him to come to the ranch and even baked a cake to show that she can be a “lady.” Angered by Darrow’s cavalier treatment and the accompanying laughter of her father and El Tigre (Thomas Gomez) at her jilting, Vance angrily rides into town to confront the man who has


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humiliated her. Bursting into his room, the headstrong Vance is slapped by Rip and then has her face pushed into a wash bowl. This familiarly styled Mann violence leads to a passionate embrace between them as Rip kisses Vance and she laughs in triumph. At their next meeting Vance openly talks of marriage and Rip reveals that he knows about the $50,000 dowry that T.C. has set aside for his daughter. In a warning that the protagonist chooses to ignore, the gambler insists that he will not “be proposed to”; and this sentiment becomes even more important after he arrives the next day at the Furies. T.C. has decided to offer Darrow a bribe to abandon Vance, and the gambler takes the dowry money much to the dismay of his lover. Darrow rejects Vance because, as he says, “You’re married already ... to the Furies” and she contents herself with complaining to her father after Rip leaves. Vance notes that Darrow is the only man who has ever made her cry, and T.C. knowingly responds, “Welcome home.” When next seen, Darrow appears at the ranch as a representative of the Anaheim Bank that holds the mortgage on the Furies. He and the other bankers have come to warn T.C. that he must drive out the Herreras and the squatters on his land in order for his collateral—the title to his property— to be acceptable to the bank. After this message has been delivered, Vance asks to speak with Darrow alone in order to tell him that all his future dealings with the Jeffords must be done through Scotty Hyslip (Wallace Ford), the ranch’s accountant. Vance then tells Rip, “Don’t ever set foot on the Furies again” before she slaps him. The lovers’ next meeting is an accidental one on the grounds where they originally went on the night of Clay’s wedding. The irate Vance fires a shot at Darrow as he calmly notes, “You’re on the prod.” After she decides to destroy T.C.’s empire, Vance goes to Rip for financing and he, symbolically, gives her the $50,000 dowry which he has deliberately saved. In return for regaining the “Darrow strip,” a piece of land which had belonged to his father, Darrow bankrolls the protagonist; however, his own romantic yearnings come to the surface when he tells Vance that she’s “in love with hate.” In San Francisco, where Vance maneuvers Mrs. Anaheim (Beulah Bondi) in order to set up her father’s final catastrophe, Rip again slaps her and then kisses her, but this time Mann’s protagonist walks out laughing. Their final romantic agony begins as they ride to their favorite trysting place, Rip kisses Vance, and she tells him that too much has happened for them to have any future together, even though he now insists that all he wants is love. T.C.’s death propels Vance back into love with Darrow, and the film’s resigned but happy finale sees them riding to the Furies with all sorts of future plans—all accompanied by an orchestral treatment of the song about her father’s mythical prowess.

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T.C. Jeffords emerges as an almost legendary figure as we see him repeatedly scorning his advanced age by doing things more appropriate to a much younger man. His stormy initial entrance is quickly followed by his extrication of a calf stuck in the mud—a dangerous act because of the Herrera brothers who ride up and momentarily consider killing the “padrone.” Ironically, Juan stops his siblings by pointing out that such a deed, if done in front of Vance, would be barbaric. The patriarch’s confrontations with Rip at the wedding and with Vance, as well as his summary judgment on Juan, underscore the ruthlessness of the man, if also subtly pointing to the kind of character and strength he must have needed to lay claim to the massive area he now commands. His acceptance of Flo’s refusal to help him with his money troubles also sets T.C. apart. When his disfigured socialite wife points out that Jeffords will drop her for a younger woman once he has reestablished his finances, the cattle baron compliments her on being honest. The cattle drive shows T.C. outriding and outworking everyone else. At a campfire with Scotty and El Tigre, the patriarch appears to be sleeping when one of his cowhands starts singing about the mythical rancher and his legendary deeds. The song’s lyrics inspire the patriarch to attempt one last feat as he spots a wild bull grazing near the encampment; when someone mentions that the animal is “the king of the Furies,” T.C. immediately jumps into the saddle and tears out after the beast. As he ropes and, ultimately, overpowers the bull by wrestling its horned head to the ground, the soundtrack emphasizes the song melody and reaches an appropriate crescendo when he declares that “I’m still king!” When he later realizes that Vance and Rip have outsmarted him in the cattle deal, the aged warrior laughingly declares, “I’m back to scratch” and immediately begins making plans for restoring his fortunes. Even though his schemes are cut short by Mama Herrera’s bullet and her triumphant laughter of revenge, the dying T.C. can still praise the skill of his assassin before dying in Vance’s arms. Mann’s increasing sense of artistic compression is readily apparent in The Furies. Thus, when we first see the stern matriarch of the Herrera clan, she is conspicuously armed with a rifle and placed in the foreground of a frame in which Vance and Juan occupy the center. Naturally, when T.C. attacks her mesa home-fortress, Mama Herrera fires gleefully at the attackers and helps to push boulders down on them. The film also relies on portraits of T.C. and his first wife as symbols of the power they exert: His picture dominates the entrance hall of the ranch house, while the dead mother’s image is found in her room which the aged patriarch has kept inviolate since her death. T.C.’s character is further revealed by the bust of Napoleon that adorns his office and the history of that figure he is reading when Rip and Vance come in to see him.


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The movie also features numerous musical cues that deftly augment its plot developments. Given that the music score is by the renowned Franz Waxman, such insightful accompaniment is not to be wondered at; his subtle cues help make The Furies much more thematically significant than it might have been. Typically, when we first see the portrait of T.C. the musical theme which will accompany his character is introduced, while his falling into the mud after rescuing the calf is supported by an appropriately comic cue. Vance’s rage at being stood up by Rip is augmented by an angry “stinger” on the soundtrack, while the theme song becomes thoroughly dominant during the cattle roundup. On the final ride back to the ranch with T.C.’s corpse, Waxman reprises that song in a much slower tempo to provide a melancholy feeling, only to end the film with the song being sung again as the final credits appear. Several other Mann films are either echoed or foreshadowed in The Furies. The battle against the Herrera stronghold clearly resembles Lin McAdam’s killing of his brother in Winchester ’73 and Howie Kemp’s initial capture of Ben Vandergroot in The Naked Spur. In each case, the attackers fight not only against bullets and rocks but also against the very terrain through which they must ascend. T.C.’s use of dynamite in the battle harkens back to the tactics Lance Poole uses against the invading sheepmen in Devil’s Doorway, while the back-scratching requests of the Jeffords patriarch are incorporated into the villain’s characterization in The Naked Spur when Ben has Lena do this for him to distract his captors. The dunking of Vance’s head into a wash basin by Rip is, perhaps, perfected in Spartacus (1960) when the title character (Kirk Douglas) drowns the vicious gladiatorial trainer Marcellus (Charles McGraw) in a vat of soup. Several themes emerge in The Furies, nearly all of which touch on the romantic struggles of its central characters. After Flo Burnett becomes T.C.’s fiancée, Vance goes to her father and points out that her mother was probably too much of a “lady” and not nearly enough of a “woman” for her lusty parent. This dichotomy between the female’s “proper” and “improper” roles spills over into the complex love-hate relationship between Vance and Rip. It is only at the end of the film, in what seems a somewhat hurried ending, that we see the heroine bowing to the hero’s demands and accepting the role of being the “good wife.” Mann also juxtaposes violence and love with these characters who slap, kiss, and taunt each other for most of its running time; and this conflict only begins to dissipate when Vance tells Rip that it’s too late for them, for, in so doing, she finally shows the same understanding he initially brought to their romance. Ultimately, their reconciliation makes the omnipotence of romantic love and its clear superiority over hatred, revenge, or simply getting even

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the primary thematic lesson of the film. In that sense The Furies constitutes the most prolonged and difficult love story in a Mann western, even if its conclusion with Vance and Rip smiling at each other falls well within the conventions of Hollywood soap opera. Link Jones is the most complicated protagonist in any of these westerns, and, as such, the character represents a significant thematic development. While Glyn McLyntock in Bend of the River and Jeff Webster in The Far Country, Howie Kemp, and Jed Cooper are either seeking a communal life or driven to see the importance of such an arrangement in their lives, Link Jones has already established himself within a community. Moreover, in doing so, he has managed to overcome his past, get married, start a family, and become a paragon of the town in which he lives, and in which his fellow citizens are aware of his violent earlier life. In essence, Jones has already solved the problems faced by the other Mann protagonists, but then he is thrown back into the very life which he fought to escape. It’s as though McLyntock, who we learn was a border raider, were to be thrown back into the very Missouri in which he operated as an outlaw. The signal difference is that Jones is not merely thrown into a past environment but back into the outlaw band (or “family”) in which he was an integral member. The protagonist’s uneasiness with the wider world is apparent from the opening scenes of Man of the West, for after he changes clothes in the back of a stable at Crosscut, Link nervously decides to put the money pouch and his guns into his traveling bag. At the railway station, Jones acts like a horse or cow as he jumps aside when the train stops and emits a cloud of smoke. Then he is confronted by the town’s marshal (Frank Ferguson) who suspiciously eyes him and asks if they have ever met; Link says no and tells the lawman that his name is “Henry Wright.” The marshal then asks if Jones has ever heard of Dock Tobin and the protagonist’s hurried denial is followed by an ominously composed shot in which the lawman’s pistol and holster dominate half of the frame. To underscore all these reminders of his past and reemphasize his unease, Link is next shown trying to fit into a train seat that is too small for him. Naturally, all the protagonist’s worst fears are realized after the train pulls away and he finds himself on foot with Sam and Billie. His knowledge of the terrain, the place “where outlaws used to ride” as Beasley had noted earlier, leads Link back to the lonely and bedraggled shack in which he lived during his outlaw life. Jones is initially struck that the old place is “still standing” and, when asked by Billie about his past there and who he was then, he goes on to urge that “I don’t know what I was.” After he finds that Dock and the gang are still ensconced inside, Link must quickly agree that he has come back to rejoin them and resume his previous ways in order to save himself


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and the others. His charade conceals a terrible fear—that he will be swamped by his past and, thus, lose both his present and his future. Link feels definitely trapped when he realizes that the money with which he has been entrusted has been seized by the outlaws, and he laments to Billie that “I can’t go home” because of its loss. The protagonist then realizes that he must kill all the gang members not only to save himself but also to restore the world which he has made for himself. His ruthlessness, which now comes boiling to the surface, represents an epiphany, for Link can take on the traits of the violent sociopaths by whom he is now surrounded. Thus, when Sam complains about how he is being illtreated by Trout (Royal Dano) as he digs a grave for the fallen Alcott, Link simply picks up a shovel and waves it at the mute gunman to scare him. The protagonist’s descent into the violent world of the Tobin gang reaches its climax in his prolonged fight with Coaley; for, after he begins to strip the younger outlaw and asks “How does it feel?” as revenge for what was done earlier to Billie in the shack, Link then starts to strangle his opponent, but he stops short. His insight (“I can’t do it”) is clearly a defining moment for the protagonist. While he can use the methods of the outlaws to destroy them, he cannot indulge his own passions to the extent of enjoying killing another man. Link’s relationship with Billie is also clearly foreshadowed in the film’s opening scene when their paths cross in front of the saloon in which she has been singing. As an old man removes the sign announcing her act, Billie thanks him for not wanting to have his hands all over her and goes on her way. Later, we see Link and Billie cross paths once more at the train station ticket window, and then Sam tries to foist her off on Jones as a schoolteacher inside the train. Billie’s love for the hero emerges during the “strip tease” scene when she realizes that, just as he saved them from the outlaws, she must now save him. When she and Link go to the barn, Billie tells the protagonist, “You’re not like them,” a point that gets further emphasis when the drunken Dock bursts in upon them and Jones comforts her after the mad patriarch goes back to his haunts. In this sequence Mann not only establishes the growing intimate feelings of the characters but also foreshadows Tobin’s rape of Billie while Link is fighting Claude in the ghost town. A scene inside a wagon, as the outlaws proceed on their journey to Lassoo and the robbery of its supposedly rich bank, finds Billie holding and then rubbing her cheek against Link’s hand. While he feels “lost” because of his descent into his old life, she feels that she has finally “found” a decent man and a reason for living. Her elation is drastically tempered by the film’s climax in which Link kills the mad Dock and then, most appropriately, finds the missing money pouch—the object that will enable him to return to his

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married life and which effectively precludes Billie’s ever having a life with him—on the dead man. The heroine realizes this inevitability as she and Link ride away in a buckboard. However, despite there being “no hope for us,” she remains resilient because she wouldn’t change any of the feelings that she has experienced through knowing Link. Dock Tobin embodies one of literature’s and drama’s oldest motifs, for he has been the “creator” of the criminal Link and is now confronted again by his “creation” whom he eagerly takes back because “You were my right arm.” While his malevolent madness is consistently displayed, the old man’s diminishing power is symbolized by the scarf he wears seemingly as a protection against the impending chill of death. His control over the other outlaws is shown when he summarily halts Billie’s “strip tease,” when he vetoes Claude’s plan to kill Link, Sam, and Billie, and then strikes down Coaley who continues to argue, and when he kills the younger outlaw at the end of his fight with the protagonist. Dock’s delusion about the riches of Lassoo precipitates the deaths of Trout, Ponch (Robert Wilke), and Claude; and his own death at Link’s hands resembles a suicide because the outlaw patriarch charges and fires wildly at his opponent. In typical style this final gunfight has the men exchanging taunts as Link gives Dock the news that he has killed all the other gang members and then adds that the old man is a “ghost” who has outlived his time. Cousin Claude clearly represents what Link would have become had he remained with Dock and, as such, he is both the strongest and the most disturbing member of the gang. His initial appearance is underscored with some sinister music, and his avowed purpose in life is to be loyal to the criminal patriarch. Claude sees through Link’s deceit, but he goes along when Dock rejects his plan to kill the protagonist and the other interlopers. Claude subsequently dismisses Link’s remark that Tobin is “out of his mind” to reaffirm his affection for the older man and his willingness to destroy anyone who tries to harm Dock. When Link convinces the others that he should be sent ahead to scout out Lassoo, Claude insists that Trout go along and then, in an aside, tells the latter to kill Jones once they reach the town. Trout’s precipitate killing of the lone Mexican woman in Lassoo leads to his death at Link’s hands. The frightened senora tries to explain that the town has long been deserted, but the pistol she holds unnerves the mute outlaw who shoots her in a reflection of his own limited understanding of the world in front of him. When Trout blindly reacts as he does, the unarmed protagonist grabs the woman’s pistol and guns down his companion. In a remarkable sequence, the dying Trout runs away like an injured animal, loping down the long winding road up which he and Jones came previously and letting out inarticulate cries as he staggers to his death. It is as though his


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character, who has inflicted pain and death on others, has finally experienced the reality of his actions for the first time, and so Trout dies with the expression of a puzzled child on his face. Link takes the dead man’s gunbelt and, more significantly, leaves Trout’s corpse where it has fallen in the middle of the road as a kind of greeting for Claude and Ponch, who ride in shortly after. Their arrival precipitates the most extended gun battle in any Mann western; in its course, Link and Claude verbally taunt each other, Ponch is killed, and each of the cousins is seriously wounded. The final shootout between these rivals finds them on and beneath a porch with each man having trouble moving. As Claude yells, “You’ve got to come to me, Link!,” from below, the protagonist sadly notes that things “could have been different” between them before he throws a pistol on the flooring above his cousin to draw the latter’s fire. Jones then rolls off the porch, kills Claude, and pounds the earth in frustration over what he has had to do. He then carefully arranges the dead man’s hands over his chest in an act of obvious respect which takes on even greater significance given the way he has treated Trout’s corpse and the abrupt manner in which he will walk away from Dock’s body after their final shootout. Stylistic features typical of Mann occur throughout Man of the West. Carefully framed shots turn into plot or mood reversals with slight tracking movements as, for instance, when Link first opens the door to the Tobin shack after he has given Billie the suit coat which represents his post-outlaw life. The close-up of the hand with the gun on the other side of the door immediately emphasizes the dangerous world into which these three good characters are descending. A subsequent shot in which Link and Billie are framed in the barn door with the sinister shack conspicuously in the background reiterates this arrangement even more forcefully considering that, by this time, the Tobins have made each of them suffer either pain or humiliation. In addition, clothing is conspicuously manipulated throughout the film, with the basic contrast being the somber colors worn by Dock, Coaley, and the other criminals and the much brighter costumes of Link, Billie, and Sam. This contrast becomes most apparent in the early morning scene in which the good characters emerge from the barn and walk up to the outlaw conference in which Claude has proposed their deaths. As we have seen earlier, Link’s transformation from respectable citizen to man of violence is signaled by his removal of his suit coat, for without it he once again becomes like the “men of the west” by whom he is now surrounded. Earlier Mann westerns are also stylistically echoed throughout Man of the West. The talking gunfights between Link and Claude, and between the

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protagonist and Dock, take us back to the rock battle between the McAdam brothers in Winchester ’73, while the porch setting and choreography of the Lassoo shootout between the cousins reprises a similar set-up in The Far Country in which Jeff Webster kills Judge Gannon (John McIntire). The prolonged and savage fistfight between Link and Coaley features natural trees and wagon wheels as framing devices to attain the same degree of physical immediacy that we see in a similar struggle between Will Lockhart and Vic Hansbro in The Man from Laramie. Dock Tobin’s wild shots at Link and headlong descent from his mountaintop in the climax echo the assault the nearly blind Alec Waggoman makes on Lockhart in the earlier work. While the patriarchal figure of The Man from Laramie suffers from his impending physical blindness, Dock Tobin suffers from the obvious moral blindness of a sociopath; and, while Lockhart would gently put Alec Waggoman back on his horse not having fired a single shot himself during their confrontation, Link quickly and efficiently destroys the moral monster in front of him with no compunctions about the respect that must be shown to one’s elders. Perhaps the most subtle connection to an earlier work is seen in Link’s goading of Coaley into their deadly fight, for the protagonist’s insults echo the tactics which Ben Vandergroot used to divide his captors in The Naked Spur. Indeed, Jones’s reassumption of the dog-eat-dog morality of the Tobin underworld seems thoroughly completed by his conduct at this juncture. Man of the West’s themes obviously revolve around the relationship between the past and the present in the life of its protagonist. Link must destroy his past in order to survive in the present which he has been able to create for himself. While many of Mann’s earlier western protagonists confront the problems of settling into community life, Link Jones has already made that transition and must now defend the very civilization he has joined against the very barbarism that he has left behind; and much of this struggle takes place within his character and only comes to the surface in his bitter words and strained facial expressions. To win his own internal battle as well as the overt struggle against the outlaws, Jones must destroy his “creator,” Dock Tobin, and his favorite “sibling” Claude, who personifies the same kind of hero-villain dualism that Mann has explored most notably with Emerson Cole in Bend of the River. As Link puts it to Billie, one must “grow up and become human or rot” and in destroying his former family the protagonist clearly chooses humanity. He also chooses to do the “right thing” by leaving Billie and returning to his family; thus, in saving civilization from barbarism and in checking his own impulses, Mann’s final western hero emerges as a truly tragic figure, one whose awareness of the personal and psychic costs of bringing about the


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kinds of peace and order necessary for civilized society to thrive makes him the “man of the west” in the most sobering sense.

Finding a Home: Bend of the River (1952) and The Far Country (1955) These films are the most obvious pair among Mann’s westerns, for commentators have long noted the thematic conflicts between their independent or alienated protagonists and the societies which surround them. Glyn McLyntock (James Stewart) in Bend of the River and Jeff Webster (Stewart again) in The Far Country both come to be accepted by the good and civilized portions of the communities they defend and save; indeed, their heroism represents an initiation that each hero must undergo in order to be accepted into settled (“normal”) society. That both characters are portrayed by James Stewart is but one of the common features of these films. Both works were produced by Aaron Rosenberg, written by Borden Chase, and released by Universal. In addition, they feature such familiar character actors as Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Jack Lambert, Royal Dano, Frank Ferguson, Steve Brodie, Jack Elam, and Robert Wilke, all of whom appear in other Mann films. Arthur Kennedy, as Emerson Cole in Bend of the River, and John McIntire, as Mr. Gannon in The Far Country, also appear in the director’s westerns. Both of these works are also set in what might be called the peripheries of the traditional Hollywood western, for they occur in the Oregon territory and in the Yukon, with The Far Country even being specifically dated as 1896. They also feature extended river journeys with an emphasis on the mechanics of steamboat sailing and naturally cramped quarters. The kindly Captain Mello (Chubby Johnson) and his stereotypical servant Adam (Stepin Fetchit) provide comic relief on both of the boat trips in Bend of the River. In addition, their willingness to help McLyntock move the settlers’ supplies from the Portland wharf and the greedy Tom Hendricks (Howard Petrie) helps to save the upriver settler community from being destroyed. The single boat trip in The Far Country brings Jeff and Ronda Castle (Ruth Roman) together when she impulsively rescues him from the ship’s crew who have been ordered to put the protagonist in irons for the duration of the voyage. The coming of winter also operates as a significant plot element in both films. It is the arrival of that season along with a gold strike and its frenzied hordes of newcomers which precipitate the crisis over supplies in Bend of the River. Because of the need for food to get through the coming season, Jeremy Baile (Jay C. Flippen) has contracted with Hendricks for a shipment to be delivered to the settlement by “the beginning of September”; however, when

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James Stewart and Julia Adams in Bend of the River (Universal, 1952). The initial wagon train trek finds Glyn McLyntock (Stewart) drawn to Laura Baile (Adams). She falls for bad man Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy) before realizing that the protagonist is the right man for her.

the middle of October rolls around with no sign of the promised goods, the community leader and Glyn decide they must return to Portland. Jeff Webster’s troubles in Skagway with Mr. Gannon force him to accept Ronda’s offer to head up a trail drive to Dawson. The protagonist’s subsequent return to take back the cattle Gannon has expropriated from him leads to an extended night chase and gun battle. However, Mr. Gannon cuts this fight short, for his authority stops at the Canadian border which Jeff has crossed. The villain consoles himself by shouting to Jeff that he will “hang him” when he comes back through Skagway once winter sets in. The director’s visual sense of terrain and landscapes is also once more at the fore in Bend of the River: The contrasts between the rocky ground over which Glyn and the wagon train must pass in the film’s credits, and the lush valley in which the settlers plant their crops and build their homes, symbolically establish the ordeals which the protagonist must undergo to gain the position and reputation he seeks. High places are featured when Glyn, Cole,


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and Trey Wilson (Rock Hudson) ambush the pursuing Hendricks and leave him and most of his cohorts dead below, and when the protagonist waylays his former partners after they have left him on the mountain road. The foliage across a river is featured when McLyntock and Cole creep out to exterminate an Indian threat at night; and when Glyn ambushes the wagon train at a point where the river bends below him, he emerges as an unseen (and almost natural) force firing down upon the thieves from a nearby bluff. Vast snow-capped mountain ranges appear as insurmountable obstacles: Two-Mile Pass must be ridden around at the cost of several additional days of travel in Bend of the River; and, only when the emergency of getting the supplies to the settlers becomes acute is Glyn to chance going directly over this barrier. White Horse Pass in The Far Country leads to a temporary parting of the ways for Jeff and Ronda because the protagonist will not drive his cattle across the icy plateau to shorten the time needed to get to Dawson, while the saloon owner is adamant about forging ahead to save time. The resultant avalanche buries most of the animals and goods which Miss Castle was taking north and precipitates a crisis among Jeff and his companions, Ben (Walter Brennan) and Renee (Corinne Calvet), who insist that they must return and help the victims. Both of Mann’s protagonists also live with major regrets about their pasts. McLyntock has prospered as a “border raider” in Missouri and he is trying to live that past down as he heads the settlers’ wagon train to Oregon. Like Link Jones in Man of the West, Glyn has come to see the need for rejecting the outlaw life and settling down among civilized, law-abiding people. Naturally, his illicit past is shared by Emerson Cole, who not only has heard of McLyntock but also remains an outlaw himself; thus, his many jibes at the protagonist represent a temptation for Glyn to resurrect his past. Like Howie Kemp in The Naked Spur, both Jeff and Ronda have suffered romantic rejections which make them cynical about love in The Far Country; however, the saloon owner really falls for Webster and forgets being cautious in a much clearer and convincing manner than the protagonist does with her. Rebellious underlings also abound in Bend of the River and The Far Country. McLyntock hires numerous wharf layabouts to help load Captain Mello’s ship with the supplies that will keep the settlers alive; these drunks and malcontents (Harry Morgan, Jack Lambert, Royal Dano) quickly begin plotting to take over once they are on the trail, confronted with the discipline the hero imposes, and once they hear that food can bring “ten times more” from the desperate miners who have swarmed in because of a nearby gold strike. The initial assault of these thugs upon Glyn is checked by Emerson, but not before the protagonist almost reverts to his former self when he overzealously assaults one of his fallen foes for far too long. When these same

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dregs jump McLyntock at Two-Mile Pass, the conniving Cole only breaks things up when they threaten to kill the battered protagonist. As he says when riding away with the supply train he has paid his debt to the hero. There are two criminal gangs in The Far Country, one that works for Ronda and one that supports Mr. Gannon, but both of these groups ultimately take their orders from the latter. Thus, on the trail to Dawson, we see Ives (Steve Brodie), Ketchum (Harry Morgan), and Luke (Royal Dano) confronting Jeff Webster with questions and challenges to his methods; in Dawson itself we see Madden (Robert Wilke) and Newberry (Jack Elam) as cohorts of Mr. Gannon. The death of another of the villain’s henchmen, a distinctively scarred driver who was rejected by Ronda in Skagway and now appears in a band that is robbing and killing two exiting miners in Two-Mile Pass, underscores the extent of Gannon’s control. The deaths of Madden and Newberry in the street in Dawson set up the final showdown between the protagonist and the arch criminal.

From left: Steve Brodie, Harry Morgan, Jay C. Flippen, Ruth Roman, James Stewart, and Walter Brennan in The Far Country (Universal, 1955). Jeff Webster realizes the importance of being part of a community because of the deaths of Ben and Rhonda.


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Mr. Gannon personifies the corrupt town boss, someone who uses his position as “the law” to impose his arbitrary will on the entire community. His requirement that anyone setting out to seek gold in the north must buy one hundred pounds of food and supplies from his store and the exorbitant fine (taking Jeff’s cattle herd) for “disturbing the peace” show Gannon’s avariciousness; and his arrival in Dawson heralds his seizures of the claims of various miners by using the technicalities of the law and the threat of his hired gunmen. Tom Hendricks changes from a “hail fellow well met” ambassador of good will for his community of Portland into a greedy and ruthless merchant in Bend of the River. The death of the saloon owner Grandy (Frank Ferguson) at the hands of Emerson Cole and the feverish conditions produced by the gold strike conspire to turn Hendricks into the profits-first madman with whom Glyn and Jeremy must deal when they return to Portland. The contrast between the good citizens and the bad citizens, or the good community and the bad community, is clearly established in both films. The madness of Portland, once the heroes have reentered it, illustrates the dark side of this contrast in the earlier release, while the idyllic valley into which Jeremy and Glyn have led the settlers demonstrates what the good life is like. Symbolically, Laura Baile (Julia Adams) and Cole have gone to work in the Portland saloon that Hendricks now owns, and the girl, because of her infatuation with Emerson, now wants no part of a country life. Her subsequent “restoration” to her father and his ways represents one of the major obvious thematic movements in Bend of the River. The good and bad communities are much closer in The Far Country; indeed, they are across the street from each other in Dawson. The hash house run by Grits (Kathleen Freeman) and Hominy (Connie Gilchrist) is where the good people congregate, for there we see both the caring for a dying miner (Guy Wilkerson) and a communal singalong on the part of the proprietors. The rivalry between their world and its counterpart is initially signaled when there is an auction war for Jeff’s cattle which is won by Ronda, who consistently outbids the restaurant owners. Her aim, of course, is to steal their business for her new saloon in which all the bad people congregate once it is up and running. After Jeff has killed Mr. Gannon and Ronda has been gunned down by the villain, the other bad men pour out of the saloon to reassert their power, but they are decisively confronted by the armed citizenry and told to get out of town. Both movies also feature the morally ambivalent characters that Mann is so often praised for presenting in his westerns; the relationships between McLyntock and Cole, and Jeff and Mr. Gannon, expose the common grounds between these characters while implying the literary conceit of the double or

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mirror image. Glyn and Emerson have both been outlaws and can function equally well in deadly circumstances, such as the Shoshone night raid on the wagon train or extricating themselves from Hendricks’s saloon. What distinguishes them is that McLyntock believes in and actively seeks the goodness of other people, while Cole constantly looks to turn things to his own advantage and makes a victim of anyone who gets in his way. When Glyn stops shooting at the retreating posse that Hendricks has brought against them, Cole continues to fire away, seemingly just enjoying killing for its own sake. As he later makes clear to Trey, the young man is “too soft” because he only wounded the saloon owner while Cole shot him down to conceal his own criminal past. Jeff Webster and Mr. Gannon are not quite so overtly paired; however, the older man clearly understands what the protagonist will do and the potential threat he poses to his criminal empire. After he summarily acquits Jeff of the murder charge belatedly brought against him on the dock in Seattle, Mr. Gannon tries to get the protagonist to work for him as a deputy. When Jeff absconds with the cattle herd across the Canadian border, Gannon laughingly promises him death in the Fall, even though he constantly offers the protagonist drinks which Webster accepts. In both plots, though, Mann’s villains overstep themselves and prod the heroes into becoming their active rivals. Glyn pursues the stolen wagon train after Cole leaves him bleeding and bedraggled at the snowy pass, and Jeff becomes hellbent on revenge after Gannon’s gun hands have murdered Ben, stolen their gold, and left him floating in the river seemingly dead. Of all the director’s western protagonists, Glyn McLyntock is the most eager and anxious to be accepted by the community in which he finds himself. Lin McAdam of Winchester ’73, Will Lockhart of The Man from Laramie, and Link Jones of Man of the West all return to their previous (“settled”) lives after their adventures with only the last character showing some regret over what he must abandon to do so. Howie Kemp of The Naked Spur, Jed Cooper of The Last Frontier, and Morgan Hickman of The Tin Star all accept settling down with various degrees of enthusiasm; their motives run a gamut from realizing the futility of trying to restore one’s past to simply wanting some of the “comforts” of civilization. McLyntock, on the other hand, actively seeks to become part of the settlers’ community which Jeremy Baile projects and then brings into existence. He does so in order to overcome his own evil past, and his ultimately successful quest to become a “pillar of the community” resembles what Link Jones might have done to become an upstanding citizen in the back story of Man of the West. McLyntock’s past surfaces after his initial scene with the settlers when he accepts a biscuit from one of them and then proceeds to joke with Laura


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and Marjorie Baile (Lori Nelson) about their cooking and their promise to wash his spare shirt. Scouting ahead, the protagonist next encounters a hanging party in the midst of burned timberland—a situation which Mann characteristically signals by a quick tracking shot that reverses the mood in a moment. After he rescues the beleaguered Cole, Glyn symbolically rubs the rope burns on his own neck to emphasize why he has shown such compassion to a stranger. This “double” relationship between these characters is then made even more overt as Cole not only voices doubts that Glyn can succeed in “going straight” but also exhibits his own cynicism over the way he has been frequently treated by “good people.” In essence, one part of Cole subconsciously wants the same things that McLyntock is trying to get; however, such wishes are ultimately subordinate to an evil nature that gradually emerges in ever stronger terms as the story unfolds. McLyntock embodies many of the same ruthless and violent instincts that govern Cole, as we see when he and the villain kill the Shoshone raiding party and, more notably, when the protagonist ambushes the stolen wagon train after deftly killing three men sent against him during his lone pursuit of Cole and the other thieves. Glyn’s worst moment comes when he puts down the initial uprising of the hands he has hired in Portland, for in overpowering one of them he almost gives in to rage and kills the man; however, just as Link Jones backed away from strangling Coaley in Man of the West, McLyntock is able to stop himself. It is, finally, this act of restraint which separates Mann’s hero from the charming and duplicitous Cole, for in the moral universe of Bend of the River each character must make an individual choice between powerfully attractive alternatives. Laura Baile loses her naïveté during the course of the action. Her initial infatuation with Cole underscores her emotional immaturity, and her taking over the gold scale in Hendricks’s saloon symbolizes her descent into that malevolent world, a point which Mann cleverly makes through having her work inside a cage that resembles a prison cell. Earlier, we see Laura disconsolate because Cole has announced that he will not accompany the wagon train into Portland. Her apprehension over losing Cole plays against McLyntock’s feelings for her—an emotion he signals by rubbing his neck, instead of pleading his own case, when Laura tells him how she feels about Emerson. Naturally, by the time Glyn and Jeremy return to Portland, Laura has no desire to go to the settlement; however, when Cole throws in with Glyn against Hendricks, she finds herself taken along because she has gone aboard the ship to tell her father of her changed plans. Laura is convinced that she can “save Cole” from his sordid past, and she continues in that vein until the villain seizes control of the supply train. When she attempts to shoot Cole, he easily disarms her and then laughingly talks of how he likes a woman

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who “resists”; this oblique reference to the threat of rape underscores Laura’s naïve rejection of McLyntock. Her subsequent releasing of a horse for the pursuing protagonist and her insistence that she can detect him following their wagons point up her altered feelings for the protagonist. The beating that Jeremy receives from Cole as a result of the missing horse further solidifies her changed perception of her former lover. Jeremy Baile is the voice of society and conscience in Bend of the River, even though, like his eldest daughter, he must come to change his mind and see the virtues that McLyntock embodies. The older man is quickly suspicious of Cole, so much so that during the first boat trip he tells Glyn of his dislike in an extended metaphoric speech about how “bad apples” can never be saved and always bring disease to the good ones. During their return to Portland, Jeremy rhapsodizes about the lush country through which he and Glyn are riding and then ominously says that Missouri used to be that way before too many outlaws showed up to ruin it. When he later refuses to sell their supplies to some miners, Jeremy opines that he cannot trade “lives for money” only to be subsequently dismayed when he overhears a nighttime conversation between McLyntock and Cole about the former’s checkered past. When Laura turns against Cole, Jeremy is ecstatic because his daughter has “come back” to him; indeed, the girl plays the prodigal son to his forgiving God the father in echoing the Biblical parable. Jeremy blames himself for the loss of the supply train as Laura urges that she has seen Glyn pursuing them at a great distance. The protagonist’s retaking of the wagons is aided by his being joined by Trey, who had heretofore simply gone along with Cole. The younger man’s “conversion” to the hero’s cause comes about because of Cole’s wounding him and leaving the stylish gambler bleeding and lying impotently on the ground to be tended to by Laura so that he can ride away to get help from the mining camp to resist the unseen, but omnipresent McLyntock. Cole’s return with a gang of ruffians opens the masterful climax of Bend of the River. As Jeremy and Trey beat back the lesser villains, Glyn and Emerson struggle in the back of a wagon, fall into the river, and fight to the death. When McLyntock succeeds in drowning his enemy and Cole’s body is washed away, Trey throws a rope to the exhausted protagonist who clings to it and manages to stumble back to shore. This symbolic rebirth, with the rope and the water standing for key elements in that process, comes full circle when Trey apologizes for the rope burns which he imagines he has put on the hero’s neck, and Glyn rubs his throat once more before announcing that these marks have been there for a long time. While his open acknowledgment of his past might have revolted Jeremy earlier, the older man now


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embraces Glyn and wisely reverses his own verdict by noting that men and apples are “not the same.” Many familiar stylistic devices appear in Bend of the River. An initial segue from the credits to the opening scene establishes a marked contrast between two types of terrain as we move from wagon wheels going ponderously and carefully over stony ground to an open space in which McLyntock expresses his hopes for the settlers and their future community. The same striking contrast arises when Glyn rescues Cole in country marked by a burned tree line and then rides to safety with him among lush pines. A quick reversed shot marks the finale of the silent struggle that McLyntock wages against the Shoshone raiders as a seeming bush suddenly metamorphs into an armed enemy, and a short montage establishes the building of the farming community and then slows down to reveal the food crisis the settlers are facing. Glyn’s appearance at the summit of Two-Mile Pass is different, for he now wears a winter jacket, and this costume change clearly foreshadows the altered role he will have to play once Cole takes over and the hero must become a pursuer. Winchester ’73 is echoed at various times in Bend of the River. The fight against the Shoshones clearly resembles the earlier film’s battle with Young Bull (Rock Hudson) in that Glyn and Cole are the “experts” who not only direct the naïve settlers but also move out against the enemy in order to use their skills to remove that threat. Captain Mello’s remarks about Jeremy and the others being “nice people” reprise Lola’s greeting to Lin and High Spade when they show up in the saloon in Tascosa, while the character of Emerson Cole is obviously modeled on that of Waco Johnnie Dean in the earlier work. Cole’s taunting of Laura after he has revealed his true nature by seizing the supplies and then beating her father echoes the sneering and licentious manner of the earlier figure. Both men are marked by an outward charm which masks their real motives. Borden Chase’s screenplay also adopts a basic plot point from the script he co-authored for Howard Hawks’s Red River (1948). Just as Tom Dunson (John Wayne) pursued the cattle herd that his adoptive son Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) had taken away from him, so does McLyntock come after Cole and the other bad men. Glyn even warns Cole about what he intends to do, just as Dunson threatens Garth, but the cocksure villain dismisses such talk as mere bravado, especially when coming from a man who has been disarmed, beaten to the ground, and only gotten back on his feet with the utmost difficulty. If, like Hawks’s vengeful rancher, McLyntock does keep “coming on,” he does so for much more consistent reasons because there can be no comic sympathetic reconciliation between him and Cole as there was between Dunson and Garth.

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The Far Country is, finally, not as satisfying, perhaps in some measure because its thematic concerns are too often and too openly voiced by its characters. In addition, Jeff Webster exhibits little, if any, of the longing for a settled life that Glyn McLyntock most conspicuously struggles to attain. We see Webster in a compromised light upon his entry into Seattle with the cattle herd in the film’s opening scene, for, after he pays off the two drovers with him and gives them back their pistols, there is a palpable tension. However, neither of the other men draws and, instead, one of them consoles himself by saying, “I’ll live to see you hang!” Ben then notes that two other herders are missing, and Jeff simply says that there was some trouble. Later, in Mr. Gannon’s saloon court, Jeff defends himself against the murder charge sworn out against him in Seattle by his disgruntled drovers by stating that he had to kill the other two men because they were attempting to steal his cattle. Once in Dawson, Jeff becomes an odd mixture of conviviality and alienation, feelings which are most readily seen in his relationships with Ronda and Renee. He shows a marked desire for the saloon owner, most notably after Ben has been killed and the wounded protagonist returns to his shack to try and recover. While Renee has brought him soup and offered to take care of him, Jeff quickly agrees to Ronda’s replacing the French girl. In the romantic triangle of The Far Country, Ronda’s death, given her worldliness and history of disappointed love, assures Jeff’s rise to normalcy and community. However, even when the saloon owner is dying in the street because she has run out there to tell Jeff where Mr. Gannon was and been shot by the villain for her pains, the protagonist can admonish her for risking her life to protect his (“Why didn’t you take care of you?”) as she incredulously asks, “Is that even a question?” For most of The Far Country Jeff Webster consistently shows this kind of self-centeredness and dismisses all those who urge that he be concerned with the well-being of others. The man who could force four other men to do his bidding on the trail can calmly reply, when Renee tells him that she takes care of her physician father because one has got to help other people, “I take care of myself.” Jeff reiterates that sentiment with Ben, after assuring the older man that they can escape on a raft and so avoid Mr. Gannon’s justice: “I take care of me ... and you” but no one else. The protagonist warns against his older sidekick’s natural inclinations to be friendly and part of the mining community in which they find themselves. While Jeff is associated with a wolf, Ben is symbolized by his chatter about the ranch home they will have and the bell they will hang up to announce the arrival of visitors. Jeff works their claim to get rich and away from Dawson, while Ben is content to have his beloved coffee and try to put down permanent roots. The pressures on the protagonist increase when the good citizens of


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Dawson decide they must select a sheriff to keep order because the sole Royal Mountie has his hands full patrolling twenty thousand square miles. Various characters rhapsodize about the possibility of making Dawson a yearround community rather than going south for the winter, but Jeff is clearly dismissive of their vision of a permanent community. When Ben asks his partner why he has refused to become the town marshal, Jeff cynically notes that “law and order costs lives.” At this point the older man worries about Webster’s constant urge to wander in the “far country” and asks what’s the point of always “just going on” when they have enough money and all the friends they could ever ask for in Dawson. Mr. Gannon’s arrival in the mining boom town leads to a crisis as he forecloses on many of the miners’ claims and brings some hired guns to help him enforce his “legal” position. When Madden (Robert Wilke) kills Dusty (Chubby Johnson) in an argument over the latter’s claim in Ronda’s saloon, the acting marshal, Rube (Jay C. Flippen), asks for the gunman’s weapon only to be told that he must come and take it. As the amateur lawman moves toward the hired killer, Jeff intervenes and tells Rube to “go back to the nice people.” Ben’s subsequent remark about Webster’s having shamed Rube is dismissed by the protagonist who cannot understand how anyone can ponder over a choice between shame and death. Naturally, his own recognition of the validity of such a choice occurs after Ben is killed by Gannon’s men and Jeff is left to die in the river. Once he has recovered from his wounds, the protagonist offers to help Renee, whose claim is threatened by Mr. Gannon; however, she quickly rejects his aid by, in effect, turning Jeff’s own reasoning on him. This lesson is repeated when Mr. Gannon throws the good citizens and their current marshal out of Ronda’s saloon with the threat that he is going to run all of them out of Dawson. As they disperse and Jeff futilely tries to rally them, the drunken Rube taunts him with his own cautionary advice. In a bit of familiar plot maneuvering, we know that Webster will act when Ronda tells him they must not do “anything foolish”; however, Jeff’s final challenge of Gannon and his men is based more on a need for personal revenge rather than a wish to help the community. Even after the villains have been killed or routed, Jeff seems content in ringing the bell on his horse’s saddle as a symbolic reminder of his having avenged his dead partner. Thus, it remains moot as to whether Jeff has truly understood what Ben has tried to tell him. In White Horse Pass when the protagonist decides to take the longer, safer route to Dawson, a massive avalanche roars down on Ronda and her party just as Webster said it might. Renee, to whom Jeff conveys that observation, is taken aback because the protagonist does not share his knowledge with those who are taking the more dangerous route, and she

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and Ben become even more agitated when the snow pours down and Webster remains reluctant to go back and look to the needs of others. While he is shamed into doing so, and led into a love affair with Ronda as a result, Jeff seems perfectly content to be solitary at the end of The Far Country for he does not mourn the fallen Miss Castle as the good citizens surround him and the camera tracks in to the tinkling bell on his saddle. For much of the film, Jeff is caught between a good angel (Ben) and a bad one (Mr. Gannon). His aged partner is fighting for Webster to become a human being while the judicial outlaw is looking for an efficient gunman to help him perpetuate his acquisitive and controlling ways. While Ben is murdered because of his human weaknesses, especially his sociability and his seemingly insatiable need for coffee, which cause him to unwittingly reveal their escape plans his example, ultimately, leads the hero to destroy Mr. Gannon and his heartless egotism. The villain has, ironically, simply taken Jeff’s philosophy of only looking out for himself to a higher plane on which he becomes the sole important being in the world. Mr. Gannon provokes Jeff with constant insults and repartee while exuding the same kind of decadent charm we associate with Waco Johnnie Dean and Emerson Cole. In the final gunfight, after Jeff has killed Gannon’s hired killers, the master villain laughingly notes that he knew he would have to kill the hero himself. He comes to this conclusion after opining that he always suspected that Jeff would “turn public-minded” in the end. Mann’s stylistic touches certainly stand out in The Far Country as they do in so many of his films. The stationary credits shot against a snow-capped mountain on the horizon (an image that is cut in at other moments later) serve as an appropriate foreshadowing of the major plot development. Indeed, this initial emphasis on snow prepares the audience for the avalanche in White Horse Pass brought on by spring thaws which will, in turn, lead to the “breaking up” of Jeff Webster, who finally acts after a very long emotional “winter” of his own. The bell on Webster’s saddle links the protagonist, his best friend, and their dream of a settled life; if the final close-up on it serves partly as an exit strategy that glosses over some unresolved plot details, its larger meaning clearly points to some kind of spiritual reconciliation for the protagonist. The reverse shot in which Madden and the other outlaws emerge over a rise as Ben chatters in the foreground prior to being killed, and the cleverly framed shot of Jeff sitting on his bunk with his hanging gun belt as an obvious counterpoint to the injured hand he is trying to move, are compositions that reflect the director’s increasingly powerful visual sense. The Far Country also strongly resembles the plot of Destry Rides Again (1939) once its major characters all arrive in Dawson. Mr. Gannon resem-


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bles the crooked saloon owner Kent (Brian Donlevy) and Ronda stands in for Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich). Jeff Webster’s being forced into action can be nicely juxtaposed to the climax of George Marshall’s earlier work in which Tom Destry (James Stewart) only puts on his guns after the bad guys have killed the beloved “Wash” Dimsdale (Charles Winninger). The two protagonists, both played by the same actor, are slow to anger and exceptionally fond of their older sidekicks, with Jeff often lighting Ben’s pipe and Tom, perhaps more memorably, tucking in the shirt tails of his often perplexed and angry superior. While hardly as comic as the climax of Destry Rides Again, the final battle in The Far Country also finds the townspeople rising up against the bad people of the saloon world and driving them out. Finally, the two films feature love triangles in which the heroes must choose between the attractive and flashy bad girl and the more normal and proper good girl; and, in both cases, the romantic choice ends up tinged with regret on the part of the heroes because the bad girls have been gunned down. The Far Country also echoes and anticipates other Mann westerns. While the river trip to Skagway features some obvious stock footage from Bend of the River, a more important linkage to the earlier film is the character of Rube, whose extended speech on the power of gold to corrupt men’s minds echoes the moral tone of Jeremy Baile’s pronouncements about bad apples and the evils that men visit upon each other because of greed. Even though Rube is reduced to a saloon bum, he continues to function as a voice of conscience (just as Jeremy did) when he throws McLyntock’s earlier “safety first” advice back at the protagonist who is now trying to rally the citizens of Dawson against Mr. Gannon. Once again, the fact that these characters are played by the same actor makes their similarities more apparent while showing how Mann and Chase have used the later film to comment on the themes and conclusions of the earlier one. The wound to his right (shooting) hand which Jeff receives when Ben is killed and their gold stolen resembles that which Will Lockhart endures in The Man from Laramie: In both cases the hero must confront danger with less than his full powers. Lockhart remains heavily bandaged as he unhorses the wild-shooting Alec Waggoman and, more significantly, when he discovers Vic Hansbro with the shipment of rifles and must destroy both the weapons and his antagonist. Jeff’s wound simply delays his seeking revenge on Mr. Gannon in The Far Country, and not even Ronda’s love for him or warnings can stop the protagonist from “doing what a man’s got to do” once his hand is sufficiently healed so that he can again use a pistol with some dexterity. The porch fight between Webster and Mr. Gannon clearly foreshadows the more wrenching confrontation between Link Jones and Cousin Claude in Man of the West, while the wearing of a scarf by the villain antic-

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ipates one of the more memorable pieces of Dock Tobin’s costume in Mann’s final western. Bend of the River and The Far Country have their protagonists’ integrations into their communities as central themes. The acceptance of Glyn McLyntock by Jeremy Baile and, subsequently, the entire settlement in the last scene of the earlier film represents the protagonist’s obvious triumph over his past. McLyntock has proved himself by saving the community through acting against Cole and the other bandits while, at the same time, saving Laura from her shortsighted desires and leading the youthful Trey to abandon his amoral lifestyle. Jeff Webster’s conversion to a settled life comes off as more equivocal because his past is not nearly as dark as McLyntock’s, and he is not nearly as eager to become someone “new.” Webster’s individual actions against Gannon and his cohorts promote an uprising of the good citizens against their oppressors; Jeff appears to content himself with memories of Ben and soothing feelings over how he has “gotten even” for his friend’s murder. Webster is finally persuaded that he must “trust people” as Renee does and as Ben did. This sentiment, which is placed in the mouth of a miner who sells his claim to the protagonist in order to gamble in Ronda’s new saloon, remains unappreciated by the protagonist until the end of The Far Country. Interestingly enough, the same miner appears as Dawson’s newest sheriff in this finale and is instrumental in leading the townspeople against the remnants of Gannon’s gang and saving Jeff. In the same sequence Ronda must die because she has only learned to love the protagonist—and not the community as Renee does. Miss Castle remains compromised until she runs out to warn Jeff of Gannon’s sneaking up a dark alley, and her own top gun hand, Ives, prominently leads the bad men out to kill Webster when the aroused citizenry stop them. Thus, law, order, and human compassion come even to Jeff Webster who appears to be ready to acquiesce to settling down and abandoning any future wanderings in any “far country.”

Mann Without Mann: Night Passage (1957) This project was originally designed for Mann with his familiar leading man James Stewart as yet another hardboiled western protagonist; however, differing interests led to the director’s bowing out just before shooting started and being replaced by James Neilson. According to Mann, the fact that Stewart had insisted on singing and playing an accordion throughout the movie was a deal breaker; and, unfortunately, the two men never worked together again as the actor was not pleased by the director’s defection. One might also speculate that the critical and box office failure of Serenade (1956) made


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Mann more than a little wary of a story that depended on singing as Night Passage does. Indeed, the film’s climax occurs when Grant McLaine (Stewart) serenades his reprobate outlaw brother Lee, a.k.a. the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy), and converts his sibling back to the “proper” life he has abandoned. Despite its checkered pre-production history, Night Passage exhibits many similarities with Mann’s westerns; it can be safely argued that James Neilson closely followed what had been designed for (and by?) Mann once shooting actually started. The film’s crew includes such familiar collaborators as producer Aaron Rosenberg, screenwriter Borden Chase, and cinematographer William Daniels, individuals who had worked on Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, and The Far Country as well as on Thunder Bay and The Glenn Miller Story with the director. In addition, Night Passage features such familiar Mann supporting players as Jay C. Flippen, as railroad owner Ben Kimball; Robert Wilke, as the sadistic outlaw Concho; and Jack Elam, as the equally nefarious Shotgun. Hugh Beaumont, who had starred in Railroaded, returns here as security boss Jeff Kurth, while Dan Duryea reprises his earlier portrait of Waco Johnnie Dean in Winchester ’73 as outlaw gang leader Whitey Harbin. Unfortunately, the fireworks that we saw in that earlier film between Stewart and Duryea are replaced by too much rhetorical jousting between supposed allies Whitey and the Utica Kid. In the final gun battle in Night Passage, Harbin kills the prone Kid, only to die himself when Grant shoots him. Stylistic points that resemble Mann’s other westerns can be seen in the opening credit sequence which features McLaine on horseback against the horizon. This set-up clearly reprises the openings of Winchester ’73 and The Tin Star. The mountain cave’s entrance, through which McLaine goes to save time while traveling between railroad sites, is conspicuously framed to once again emphasize the symbolically transitional nature of such an opening; on the other side of the mountain, the protagonist encounters the brutal Concho attacking the youthful Joey Adams (Brandon de Wilde) and rescues the boy in a sequence reminiscent of what McLyntock did to save Cole at the beginning of Bend of the River. The protagonist’s beloved accordion functions as an obvious, if often logically incongruous, symbol in Night Passage, for this instrument has kept McLaine afloat for the past five years, ever since he has been regarded as persona non grata by Kimball and Kurth. McLaine’s fall has occurred because of his earlier association with the Kid and his romantic involvement with Verna Kimball (Elaine Stewart). While Grant is associated with the easygoing ways in which he provides music, established in the opening sequence at the “end of track,” Kimball and Kurth hire him to secretly convey payroll money to their increasingly forlorn workers. When his accordion is subse-

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quently burned during the saloon gunfight between himself, the Kid, and Harbin’s gang, its destruction foreshadows the “new life” that awaits the protagonist once the action subsides. Night Passage also resembles various Mann westerns in numerous ways. McLaine has a past in which he has been a killer, just like McLyntock in Bend of the River and Jones in Man of the West. In addition, the protagonist has been crossed in love by a woman who chose another man in his place as the unseen female did to Howie Kemp in The Naked Spur. McLaine’s bitterness over his losses bring him to a familiar moral brink that we have seen elsewhere, for in his rescue of Joey he nearly kills Concho, only stopping at the last moment as if some unseen governor had suddenly kicked in. Finally, in his infiltration of the Harbin gang and his private meetings with the Kid and Charlotte Drew (Dianne Foster), McLaine foreshadows similar actions and set-ups in Man of the West after Link and the other wanderers arrive at the Tobin shack. The train robbery sequence in Night Passage also resembles that of Man of the West, especially in having Concho aboard as the outlaw confederate and McLaine carrying, and then hiding, the railroad’s money from the bandits. The oncoming winter, which will stop the railroad builders, is also a familiar plot device that clearly reminds one of similar situations in Bend of the River, The Far Country, and The Last Frontier. Grant’s conversion of the Utica Kid back to the ways of decent society strongly follows the major plot developments of Bend of the River and The Far Country. Even though the repentant outlaw dies, the fact that the protagonist works to “convert” him makes McLaine analogous to the communities of settlers in those films. The suppressed love triangle in Night Passage finds Verna Kimball and Charlotte Drew vying for McLaine, albeit in muted fashion because of their other romantic involvements. While Verna flirts with the protagonist and even kisses him because of seeming boredom with her elderly husband Ben, Charlotte only comes to appreciate her feelings for Grant after the death of the Kid. Prior to that moment she has repeatedly urged the younger man to abandon the outlaw life to no avail, and even gone so far as to dismiss the Kid with the argument that they can never marry because he “will never change.” In her misguided feelings for Grant’s wayward brother, Charlotte closely resembles Laura Baile of Bend of the River, and, like that character, she too realizes by the end of the film where her affections should properly lie. Neilson’s completed work does have some obvious weaknesses that might not have occurred with Mann in charge, or at least might not have been quite so noticeable. Joey Adams perfunctorily thanks Grant after being rescued from Concho, but then the boy insists that he can take of himself—


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and seemingly becomes the kind of alienated character found elsewhere in Mann’s westerns. However, even though Joey has escaped from the Harbin gang, as Link Jones did in Man of the West, his independent streak seems implausible at this point. Naturally, he becomes attached to McLaine and lifted out of his altering between asserting his alienation or his independence—so much so, in fact, that the protagonist appeals to the Kid that he must stop the outlaws in order to “save” Joey from becoming one of them. Audie Murphy constitutes a more intractable challenge in that his acting does little or nothing to convince us that he is either a cynical killer or a genuine convert to his brother’s pleas. Murphy simply remains too sullen throughout for one to believe that he can consistently trade witticisms and insults with Whitey Harbin or be moved by a single song to renounce his criminal ways, especially when he so adamantly turns down Charlotte earlier. Dan Duryea, on the other hand, probably suffers most from Mann’s absence as he turns in an over-the-top rendition of Whitey; there is none of the tempered menace and savage cynicism of the actor’s portrayal of Waco Johnnie Dean in Winchester ’73. Instead, Duryea offers a consistently whiny and overblown reading of a character who, one imagines, would have killed or been killed by the Utica Kid long before we encounter him in Night Passage. A final compromising feature of the completed Night Passage is its insistent musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin—a trait that this composer brought to virtually every western he scored. However, one wonders if much of this musical support, such as when the Kid rides in the hills overlooking the speeding train below or when the menace of Concho is underscored with an obvious stinger, wasn’t added to bolster the film’s sometimes lethargic pace, muddled plot, and occasionally overly theatrical and static camera set-ups. In any event, Night Passage’s principal song about the necessity for a railroad and its use as a plot fulcrum does become cloying, despite James Stewart’s best efforts to sing it. Mann was surely right to look askance at this project with such scenes as the musical conversion of the Utica Kid, in which the brothers not only sing together but also keep time with their feet in the midst of a saloon full of supposedly suspicious and threatening outlaws.

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Mann and the 1950s The 1950s were a traumatic time in Hollywood as the major studios were forced to abandon long-standing contractual practices due to legal rulings and the rising popularity of television. The loss of their monopoly over local movie theaters and the inroads of the new medium caused the Hollywood establishment to retrench, by essentially phasing out the studio system, and innovate, by producing epic films and introducing new photographic processes, in the hope of holding their position in the entertainment spectrum. Movies not only became more physically grandiose but also more supposedly “adult” and “daring.” Such efforts as The Robe (1953) and This Is Cinerama (1956) offered viewers widescreen experiences that television could not match, while films like Baby Doll (1956) and Peyton Place (1957) delved into sexuality in ways that would have been unacceptable on Leave It to Beaver. Hollywood was also heavily influenced by the new acting styles of Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and James Dean. Their portrayals of the protagonists in George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun (1951), Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) and, perhaps most notably, Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955) emphasized the emotions and psychic flaws in these characters. At the same time, George Eastman (Clift), Terry Malloy (Brando) and Jim Stark (Dean) offered a countercultural revolution against many of the middle-class proprieties of the time: there was clearly a chasm between the happy, family-dominated world of Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) and the tormented and isolated universe that these characters occupied. Of course, Hollywood continued to produce formulaic pictures based on familiar generic conventions, and during this decade Anthony Mann showed that he could successfully handle various film types in addition to westerns. The Tall Target (1951), his first non-western release of the decade, combined mystery and suspense with the director’s film noir style, while Thunder Bay (1953), which derived much of its narrative energy from showing the construction of an offshore oil drilling rig, combined romantic troubles for its protagonist with a decided emphasis on the mechanical procedures 166

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found aboard an oil platform. Strategic Air Command (1955) saw Mann and star James Stewart concocting a Cold War–inspired tale of American military prowess which, much like numerous movies made during World War II, was designed to inspire the home front. The Glenn Miller Story (1954) proved, ultimately, to be Mann’s most commercially popular film; however, it is, on the whole, a routine effort. Like many other celebrated action directors, Mann was not as self-assured when confronted with material that lacked sharply etched characters and conflicts. While a success and well-made according to the conventions of musicals, The Glenn Miller Story contains too many “cute” and saccharine moments and few, if any, instances of the kinds of ethical dilemmas that Mann explores in his more characteristic works. Despite such reservations, the biopic of the celebrated wartime band leader is a veritable masterpiece when compared to Serenade (1956), Mann’s other musical of the decade, which was clearly an attempt to reprise the commercial success of his earlier effort in the genre. Serenade is the least inspired effort of the director’s mature period as it abandons the harsh psychology of the James M. Cain novel on which it is based and lapses into a continual medley of Mario Lanza numbers only occasionally interrupted by a totally unbelievable romantic triangle between the singer, his wife (Sarita Montiel) and his former mistress (Joan Fontaine). If Serenade was Mann’s least accomplished effort of the 1950s, his two final non-westerns of the decade completely restored him as a major cinematic artist. Both Men in War (1957) and God’s Little Acre (1958) were made by the director’s own independent company, Security Pictures, and they reflect the kinds of projects that he would have consistently focused on had he become as independent a figure as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, or Howard Hawks. Men in War presents a brilliant variation on the basic plot established by Ford’s The Lost Patrol (1934) in which we follow the deteriorating fortunes of a floundering infantry unit in the early days of the Korean War. It emerges as equal to such films as The Lost Patrol, William Wellman’s The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Lewis Milestone’s Pork Chop Hill (1959), and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998). Mann’s adaptation of Erskine Caldwell’s “steamy” novel, which originally appeared in 1933, was a commercial success and bears comparison with John Ford’s Tobacco Road (1941); however, the changes that Mann and screenwriter Philip Yordan impose on their source are much more in keeping with the director’s proclivities for psychological tension. In both Men in War and God’s Little Acre Mann elicited notable performances from Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray; thus, in addition to all that he had learned and mastered about the various visual, auditory, and thematic aspects of making motion

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pictures, when he had inspiring material Mann could elevate performers so that their characterizations deftly revealed the themes and conflicts he wished to emphasize.

Mann and Machinery: The Tall Target (1951), Thunder Bay (1953), and Strategic Air Command (1955) In these films Mann indulges a penchant for exploring the workings of machinery to the extent that this interest takes over and, at times, almost submerges his storylines. Large sections of these films are devoted to showing workings of a train, an offshore oil drilling platform, and various long-distance flights by the most advanced planes possessed by the United States Air Force. These machines become integral to what the characters perform on or in front of them (with the obviously implied theme of human ingenuity always lurking in the background) in the same way that the landscapes operate in the westerns. If the search for a potential presidential assassin in The Tall Target takes protagonist John Kennedy (Dick Powell) to a train bound from New York to Washington in February, 1861, the vehicle itself becomes a means by which he can confront enemies and avoid capture by suspicious officials. Steve Martin (James Stewart) believes that he has designed the perfect platform for offshore oil drilling, and once he convinces the entrepreneurial Kermit MacDonald (Jay C. Flippen) to finance his scheme, Thunder Bay centers on the trials and tribulations that attend the building and running of the big rig. Indeed, protecting this elaborate ship becomes as important as resolving the romantic conflict between Martin and Stella Rigaud (Joanne Dru) or the oil company’s gaining the trust of the skeptical local shrimp fishermen. This emphasis on machinery reaches its apogee in Strategic Air Command as airplanes and the intricacies of their operations become more important to “Dutch” Holland (James Stewart) than the major league baseball career he has had to abandon or his marriage to Sally (June Allyson). Holland’s love for flying is epitomized when General Hawkes (Frank Lovejoy) lets him see the new B-47 and the hero declares it is “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Naturally, such enthusiasm is governed by the need for America to be vigilant against its Cold War enemies as well as the protagonist’s realization that being part of this ongoing effort is a “responsibility” that he must accept. The Tall Target shows the workings of a train in exacting detail as we see such standard characters as the omnipresent conductor (Will Geer) and the constantly time-bound engineer (Victor Kilian) sparring with various


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passengers and officials as well as each other. Kennedy’s time aboard takes him through the baggage car, onto an end platform, through numerous corridors, inside various passengers’ compartments, and, most dramatically, under the wheels when he fights against the mysterious interloper (Leif Erickson) and to the roof as he evades pursuit. Mann captures all these details with standard emphases on driving train wheels, rising clouds of steam, and many tracking shots of the locomotive and the other cars as they hurtle through the night. The tight internal quarters throw the characters against one another, and as Kennedy delves more deeply into the assassination plot, these cramped spaces create tension and force the audience to wonder how the protagonist will evade capture or death at the hands of the seemingly omnipotent villains. The train’s arrival in Baltimore is accompanied by the interesting fact that it must be taken through the city by horse-drawn wagons because the local residents object to the noise and the dirt created by the railroad machinery. At the same time, Mann utilizes the humidity on the train’s windows to enable the suavely sinister Colonel Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou) to print a message for the idealistic would-be presidential killer Lance Beaufort (Marshall Thompson). Jeffers has figured out that Abraham Lincoln has been clandestinely slipped aboard and uses the haze on a train window to inform his coconspirator that there is still a “target” for him. Naturally, Kennedy also sees this message and is able to overcome the would-be assassin in a fight that leads to the younger man’s death: in essence, the protagonist has avenged the murder of his friend Tim Reilly (Regis Toomey) who was mistaken for him and killed while the train was still in New York. Reilly’s body falls off the train despite Kennedy’s efforts to keep it on the end platform, so now the hero, in pushing Beaufort off the train, throws off the ultimate source of his colleague’s demise. Thunder Bay’s focus on oil exploration begins when Martin and his partner Johnny Gambi (Dan Duryea) show Mr. MacDonald and his skeptical accountant Rawlings (Harry Morgan) their model of an offshore drilling rig. While the numbers man remains doubtful and urges caution to his superior, MacDonald jumps at the chance to “strike it rich.” Subsequent scenes of exploration and setting out marker buoys for driving pilings show the rising consternation of the locals who see the oil men’s endeavor as inevitably polluting the shrimp bed from which they derive their livelihoods. Teche Bossier (Gilbert Roland) is taken aback when Steve supervises the blasting to place the markers, so much so that he turns his boat back and temporarily refuses to have anything more to do with the newcomers. With the arrival of a work crew, Thunder Bay turns to a rapid montage in which we are shown the building of the rig as it goes from model to real-

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Stella Rigaud (Joanne Dru) visits Steve Martin (James Stewart) just before a storm hits the oil rig and the forlorn Philippe Bayard (Robert Monet) attempts to blow up the ship in Thunder Bay (Universal, 1953). The fight on the deck and Steve’s mistaken rejection of Stella are plot high points in another Mann film that seems more focused on machinery than plot or story.

ity. Once it is assembled, the camera pans lovingly over its extent in a silent homage to the ingenuity of Martin and the entrepreneurial drive of MacDonald. Of course, their creation is immediately threatened by a storm, and Steve finds himself having to manage alone when his crew is jailed because of their participation in a bar brawl. When Stella arrives, claiming that she has been unable to get away from the weather and needs shelter, Thunder Bay moves into its most dramatic sequence. Martin and Stella become romantic, but their idyll is interrupted when Steve becomes aware of the arrival of Phillipe Bayard (Robert Monet) who has come out in Teche’s boat to blow up the rig. This besotted young man is angered because of the romantic involvement of Gambi and Stella’s sister, Francesca (Marcia Henderson); indeed, the arranged marriage between him and that girl—a symbol of the old ways of the town—has been undone because of her infatuation with the newcomer. Phillipe and Martin battle on


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iron scaffolding as the storm surges beneath and around them, and the intensity of their struggle reprises highly physical fights in other Mann films; indeed, the choreography between these characters offers stunning visual opportunities because of the balancing act they must perform between grappling and maintaining themselves on the steel skeleton of the rig’s lower quarters. Steve succeeds in dismantling the explosives and overcoming Phillipe; however, he is unable to prevent the younger man from drowning despite plunging into the roiling waters himself. Back aboard, Martin mistakenly attacks Stella as an accomplice in a fit of rage that ties him to such characters as Lin McAdam in Winchester ’73 and Glyn McLyntock in Bend of the River. The protagonist’s break with Stella is followed by a lengthy montage of drilling activity as Steve tries to bring in the well before a three months’ deadline is reached. During this sequence, Martin emerges as a veritable slave driver, perhaps the kind of man Jeff Webster must have been during the cattle drive to Seattle that precedes the opening scenes of The Far Country. Despite warnings from Gambi about everything being too rushed, Steve careens ahead only to be confronted by MacDonald, who has come to announce that his board of directors has voted to shut down the project. When the wildcatter awakens the protagonist, Martin awakens violently in keeping with the pressures he is exerting on himself and the other workmen; and, as if things could not get worse, that moment is followed by a major catastrophe as the drilling operation begins to pump water into the rig’s machinery. As all hands scurry around the deck, Martin and MacDonald manage to get the drill bit out of the Gulf waters, only to be confronted by a stuck valve which must be shut down manually because automated braking devices are jammed. This extended struggle leaves Mann’s characters completely spent, but Steve still has enough energy and anger to ask “Where’s Gambi?” because his partner has gone ashore to be with Francesca at a time when he was most needed aboard. The next morning, after MacDonald has informed the crew of the imminent demise of the project, and Steve has failed to convince the men to stay, Gambi shows up, announces he has gotten married, and is promptly slugged by Martin. Nevertheless, Johnny rallies the men when he sees that his partner will try to work the rig alone, and a chastened Steve gratefully smiles as the men go back to work. Some time later, another intake valve becomes clogged because of the nocturnal invasion of large shrimp, a fact that Martin subsequently puts to good use. By now the villagers are even more upset because Francesca has married an oil man and been taken on board the rig, and her father Dominique (Antonio Moreno), heretofore a skeptic but neutral, stirs up the fishermen to attack the offending platform. Stella simultaneously convinces

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Teche to go out and warn Steve so as to atone for his involvement in Phillipe’s getting killed. When Bossier arrives at the oil rig, Steve casually shows him the shrimp “problem” and Teche proclaims that Martin has unwittingly found the “golden shrimp” which he and the other trollers have been seeking for their entire lives. Before this news can be disseminated the other local fishermen arrive and Steve confronts them alone, after ordering his crew to disconnect the flat deck from the rig and to continue drilling despite anything that might happen to him. As he pleads with Dominique, a gusher conveniently comes in and oil pours down on one and all, with Steve being the most delighted as he rubs the black goo over his face. This eruption solves the immediate conflict between Dominique and the oil men, and Teche’s news about the shrimp bonanza sends everyone away happy. The austere Cold War world of bomber bases dominates Strategic Air Command as Dutch and Sally must learn to accept their roles and their duties in this new environment. Numerous long shots chronicle the unexpected arrival of a commercial plane on the SAC base as fire trucks surround the aircraft and attempt to force it into an appropriate area. When these efforts fail and several troops emerge from the airliner, Jeeps full of armed soldiers quickly arrive to stop this intrusion. Despite this efficient deployment, General Hawkes, who has designed this maneuver to test base security, chides his subordinate officers on their slow response. In a characteristic note, a Military Police commander complains that he lacks the necessary personnel to operate at the level of efficiency the general wants to achieve and is told that his complaint cuts no ice with his stern superior. We are then shown Dutch’s preliminary physical examinations which emphasize the seriousness of the world of the Strategic Air Command. Mann juxtaposes the protagonist’s encounters with the efficient military establishment with Sally’s desperate phone calls, which underscore her naïveté about the importance of what her husband is being asked to do. Things become more orderly when Dutch flies an initial training mission and finds an old comrade, Sergeant Bible (Harry Morgan), is one of the crew. The protagonist also meets dissatisfied navigator Ike Knowland (Alex Nicol) who, like himself, has been recalled to duty and had his civilian life turned upside down. Ultimately, Dutch will inspire the reluctant Ike by making him a part of his crew after the latter was about to be transferred out because of bad performance ratings. Great emphasis is placed on the operations and designs of the planes that Dutch flies in Strategic Air Command. On his initial flight in one of the new bombers as an observer, the protagonist and the viewing audience get a tour of the B-29 from Sergeant Bible; the highlight is an eighty-foot tube


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through which the characters must pull themselves to get to the rear of the ship. Over the course of some ensuing months, signaled by Sally’s advancing pregnancy and the emergency call from his baseball club’s owner offering to get Dutch out in time for the last month of the season, the protagonist restores Ike Knowland to adhering to the “Air Force way” and tests are planned for the squadron’s B29s. A wing fire causes Dutch to crash land in Greenland; however, while he and Ike must confront severe cold, they are rescued by Bible and their other crewmen who had bailed out, after only a couple of days of exposure. At the base to which Colonel Robert “Dutch” Holland (James Stewart) in the cockpit of his jet in they are taken, Dutch learns of Strategic Air Command (Paramount, 1955). the birth of a daughter and, in a Mann’s protagonist learns the necessity for confusion over the wording of a the “better man” to sacrifice personal haptelegram, the little girl ends up piness for the greater good of the Air Force being symbolically named Hope. and the nation at a time of potential atomic Despite his new child and annihilation. increasing pressure from Sally to get out when his tour is done, Dutch becomes more seriously committed to the mission of SAC; indeed, he is so driven that he cuts short a visit to Al Lang Field and his former employer Doyle (Jay C. Flippen). The protagonist now begins to experience shoulder problems and fatigue as well as suffering from the knowledge that Sally is “dying on the inside” because of worry that one day he will not return from a mission. All these elements come to a boil when General Hawkes announces an experimental trial run for the new planes and Doyle calls up with the job offer that Dutch rejects. Significantly, the protagonist makes this decision alone and then informs Sally that he intends to stay in the Air Force and not return to baseball. Dutch argues that he has a new and more important responsibility because the nation is in a “kind of war” and only experienced pilots can insure that the bomber fleet will be ready so as to lessen “the danger of war.”

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Bewildered by his failure to include her in making this decision about their family’s future, Sally breaks down and comes as close as anyone ever does in Strategic Air Command to the tormented characters we have seen elsewhere in Mann’s films. After Dutch leaves to fly his current mission, Sally feels remorse and drives to the base to apologize; she arrives too late and finds herself with General Hawkes and General Castle (James Millican). She rails at them about how Dutch is being manipulated into staying in the service and then defiantly urges, after Hawkes defends his actions because of the country’s need for Dutch, that “I too have no choice.” While such a confrontation might have led to decisive action in many another Mann movie, here the emphasis quickly shifts to Dutch and his mission as we are shown a delicate maneuver in which his B-29 is refueled in midair as well as numerous shots of his cramped cockpit. After finding out that Ike intends to reenlist, the protagonist must confront foul weather conditions and a diminishing fuel supply which force him to perform an emergency landing on Okinawa. In this descent, Colonel Holland loses control of his right arm and must co-pilot the plane to safety with an unseen colleague who takes over half of the protagonist’s duties. Their emergence out of a cloud bank and on to the wet landing strip dramatizes the movie’s overt lesson about teamwork breeding ever greater efficiency. The final scene of Strategic Air Command quickly knits up its various plot threads by having General Hawkes scold Dutch in his office in Omaha before announcing that Holland will no longer be able to fly because of his injury. When he refuses a “desk job” because of his love of flying, Dutch’s decision is completely understood and accepted by his commanding officer who then makes a speech about the personal sacrifices needed to keep America safe. At this point Sally comes in, apologizes for her earlier outburst at General Hawkes, and speaks of how “ashamed” she is now that she has seen the need for the very sacrifices that have just been spoken about. Mann’s film ends with all three characters gazing skyward as a new fleet of bombers passes overhead: General Hawkes will obviously continue the “good fight” while Dutch and Sally will bear their lessons into the society to which they must return. The Tall Target is the most satisfying of these three films, if only because of its tense plot and focus on illustrating some of the historical realities that attended Abraham Lincoln’s trip to Washington as president elect. Mann incorporates numerous stylistic devices from film noir in The Tall Target, most notably an almost constant nighttime atmosphere and the claustrophobia inherent in the tight quarters of the train itself. Inspector John Kennedy is the obsessed figure one finds so often in crime dramas, and his alienation from those around him is marked early on when his report on threats to the newly elected president is dismissed by his New York superi-


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Dick Powell (as undercover agent John Kennedy) enters the train bound for Washington D.C. in The Tall Target (MGM, 1951). Mann combines mystery with a sense of claustrophobia and a characteristic emphasis on the machinery of trains in this well rendered costume drama.

ors. Kennedy becomes so enraged that he turns in his badge so that he can proceed with what he alone sees as the necessity for foiling an obvious plot. He is confronted by a suave villain, Colonel Jeffers, and a headstrong young Southerner, Lance Beaufort, who exemplify the same gang hierarchy that we have seen in Raw Deal and Border Incident. In essence, Jeffers is using his younger cohort because he owns “cotton shares” that will become worthless if war erupts, while Beaufort is the zealot who feels he has been called forth to murder Lincoln and so assert Southern dismay with a democratic election. Jeffers proves the more capable of the two villains, for not only does he have respectable cover as the leader of a regiment of Zouaves but he is also present at the earlier meeting in which Kennedy was shunted aside. When the protagonist discovers Jeffers’s involvement, he cannot convince anyone that the older man is a villain. Kennedy must escape from being arrested as a suspect for the murder of his colleague Reilly, while Jeffers remains free to return to the train and his nefarious plans.

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Again, in keeping with the conventions of a suspense film, Kennedy is confronted by characters who are either suspicious or dislikable as he goes through the train. They range from Mrs. Alsop (Florence Bates), a determined abolitionist, to Thomas Ogden (Will Wright) who openly voices his hatred for the new president and the prospect of war. While such figures serve as a historical chorus, Ginny Beaufort (Paula Raymond) and her slave Rachel (Ruby Dee) play more important roles. Their relationship comes to the fore when Ginny thwarts Rachel’s attempt to provide Kennedy with a gun by disarming and then slapping her servant. This act ironically occurs after Kennedy has spoken rhapsodically of his own admiration for Lincoln and represents the amount of “freedom” Rachel truly enjoys among the Beaufort family. As Lance’s sister, Ginny initially defends her brother until she sees his extremism and, like Laura Baile in Bend of the River, undergoes a conversion after listening to her sibling’s demented argument about how killing Lincoln “will save lives.” Rachel makes Ginny aware of Lance’s secret plans when she reveals that he will only be going as far as Baltimore, and not into the South with them as his sister has confidentially believed. Despite her conversion, Ginny cannot prevent Kennedy’s being taken prisoner by her brother and Colonel Jeffers. The Tall Target then moves to its climax as Kennedy hears that Lincoln’s speech in Baltimore—the source of most of the protagonist’s worries about an assassination attempt—has been cancelled. When he subsequently discovers the message from Jeffers to Lance on the steamed window, Kennedy proceeds to overpower the would-be killer and the film ends with a meeting between the protagonist and Mrs. Gibbons (Katherine Warren), a Pinkerton operative who has managed to conceal Lincoln in her compartment under the guise of his being her sick husband. As the bemused president elect intones about the irony of his having to be concealed on his inaugural trip to Washington, we see the Capitol Dome in the distance and the film fades out. Thunder Bay features some of the thematic concerns to be found in Mann’s westerns—a character with a shady past and the need for the protagonist to become part of a larger community. However, because the basic conflict lies between man and nature, or perhaps more notably between man’s machinery and nature, these problems ultimately become secondary. At best, they are plot conveniences needed to bridge the gaps between scenes of the oil drilling process and Mann’s fascination with those mechanical procedures. The film’s greatest weakness, however, is its lack of a major or formidable villain or antagonist. Phillipe is an angry suitor who emerges and fades out quickly. While Teche, Stella, and Dominique all disagree with the oil


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project and confront Martin at various points, each of them is reconciled fairly easily. Bossier is brought back from his anguish over helping Phillipe by his seeming “discovery” of the shrimp horde under Martin’s rig. Stella is restored from her romantic funk and finally seen for her true self by the protagonist. And Dominique’s fury over losing a daughter is checkmated by the arrival of the gusher which proves that Steve has been right all along. The overcoming of these “rivals” simply underscores the competence of Mann’s hero: Steve can handle machinery and nature, so it is hardly a surprise that he will also be able to handle people. A more subtle note is struck with Stella: Like many of Mann’s characters, she has a compromised past. Her initial appearance finds her wary of Martin and what he brings to the community because she has suffered from too much “man training” to believe that he is genuine in his concerns about the economy and the environment. In the bar, Stella slaps Gambi and announces that she’s “against filth” because, as she implies to Dominique, she has a sullied past. Her fear of genuine commitment is then emphasized as she repels Martin by demanding, “Don’t ever touch me!” Stella advances another of the recurring conflicts in Thunder Bay in a discussion with Francesca when she tells her lovesick sister, “Stay with your own people.” Nevertheless, her own repressed romantic feelings emerge on the night that Phillipe is killed—so much so that we subsequently see Stella actively encouraging and abetting Francesca’s going to the rig to be with her new husband, Johnny Gambi, and then prompting Teche to go out and warn the oil men of the impending attack by her father and the other owners of the shrimp fleet. When the gusher comes in and everyone returns to the town to celebrate its arrival and the prospect of a huge future shrimp haul, Stella has decided to leave and a repentant Steve sets out to bring her back. Their reconciliation in the film’s final scene reprises its opening set-up in which Martin and Gambi are shown trudging down the same road before hitching a ride with Teche. Mann’s film ends with Steve picking up Stella and driving her back to town in a stylistically circular movement that emphasizes the plot direction of Thunder Bay: The strangers have not only been assimilated but they have become the builders of the community, both economically and emotionally. The main characters in Strategic Air Command do not possess such capacities, for, at their best, Dutch and Sally are made better by the military community which they have rather unwillingly had to join. Their devotion to each other offers a striking contrast to the demands of General Hawkes’s world, a difference which clearly implies that most unthinking American citizens need to be protected by the elite corps that is SAC. Sally’s naïveté about military customs and duties makes her subsequent ultimatums to her hus-

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band and his commanding officer ring hollow; indeed, the film sets her up as a kind of straw man who represents the egotistical blindness of most members of the public about their nation‘s security. Her descent into rage puts Sally on the edge of becoming yet another of Mann’s emotionally conflicted characters. However, the plot dynamics of Strategic Air Command assure that Mrs. Holland’s revolt will be quickly stamped out by the stronger forces of love and duty. In this regard, Strategic Air Command suffers because, like Thunder Bay, it simply does not supply an individual villain or a strong enough human conflict to create sufficient tensions so that Mann can probe beneath its characters’ surfaces. In essence, the conventions of the genre—the military training film in which reluctant or even wiseacre individuals must realize that the larger social institution is more important than their private lives—make the characters’ actions predictable. We simply wait until Dutch figures out that his protests over being drafted again and having to cease being the starting third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals become insignificant in the face of protecting his society, and as Sally grasps that she must sustain her man in that duty. In keeping with its formulaic qualities, Strategic Air Command features a musical score by Victor Young that is much more pronounced and consistently employed than what one has experienced heretofore in Mann’s works. While such a style and procedure may have been endemic to the genre and the composer, its appearance clearly foreshadows the prominence that music would assume in Mann’s epic films. At the same time, Young’s elaborate scoring may have been necessary to heighten the drama of the film’s familiar plot line and to underpin the elaborate flying sequences and their paucity of dialogue. Strategic Air Command begins with a song (“Bombers High!”) over its opening credits and ends with the same lyric. This title song represents a familiar trend in 1950s filmmaking (one needs only to think of the haunting main theme from High Noon [1952]) as well as in war movies, and here it functions as both a paean to SAC and a subconscious reinforcement of the message about its protagonist learning to accept his new responsibilities. Young adds a love theme, first heard in the opening sequence when Sally arrives to see Dutch in spring training, and a flight theme, which regularly appears in scenes of takeoffs and landings. In addition, there are numerous shorter cues to emphasize actions and tensions, such as when Dutch’s plane initially gets airborne or when General Hawkes brings in the commercial airliner to test base security. The Tall Target represents a foray into American history as we see with its opening title card about the “disputed journey” of Abraham Lincoln shot


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appropriately against the background of the standing train. The film raises the issues of freedom, in the character of Rachel, and the oncoming struggle over slavery, in the random comments of various passengers as well as Kennedy’s own expression of admiration for the newly elected president. Given its additional nature as a whodunit, The Tall Target stylistically resembles the director’s film noir period in its tight shots of close quarters, its emphasis on the misunderstood protagonist, and its employment of visual reversals, whether seen in the gun that the intruding stranger puts into Kennedy’s back in the middle of a coach, or in the revelation that Colonel Jeffers is the guiding spirit behind the attempt on Lincoln’s life, or when the arch villain appears to kill Kennedy by firing a pistol into his pillow-covered face only to have the protagonist smilingly rise and reveal that the gun was loaded with blanks. Thunder Bay also emerges as an Americana film because of its emphasis on the world of Gulf shrimpers and the tight ethnic community they inhabit. The struggle by Steve and the other oil men to be accepted by the town represents a familiar interest in Mann’s films; however, the usual dynamics, in which the community must teach the individual, are reversed here because Teche, Dominique, and Stella must adapt to a new order of things. The values and virtues that the outsider oil men bring are also less characteristically presented in speeches that Martin makes when confronted by the angry locals, rather than always by physical actions on his part. The same rhetorical flourishes mark Strategic Air Command, an avowedly propagandistic piece designed to inform the public about the Air Force’s ongoing work in the Cold War and the degrees of sacrifice necessary to preserve the peace so shortsightedly being enjoyed by the bulk of America’s citizens. In its emphasis on efficiency and teamwork being arcane skills that only trained professionals can supply, Mann’s Air Force film resembles Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo (1959) with its decided slant about the superiority of the professional over the amateur. Dutch Holland has the skills needed to lead this effort, and General Hawkes’s final speech confirms that fact. Unhappily, one of Anthony Mann’s great strengths as a director, his ability to visualize conflicts and attitudes in ingenious ways, gets preempted by the obvious expositions that one finds throughout Strategic Air Command.

Mired in Musicals (2): The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and Serenade (1956) Mann’s major problems in The Glenn Miller Story and Serenade are endemic to the nature of such films. In essence, these movies are designed to show off the “sound” of a famous band and its leader and the “voice” of

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its leading man, respectively; as such, they present acute problems in staging musical numbers without the benefits of more traditional “musicals” in which plots transitions from dialogue to lyric are much more easily accommodated. While Mann provides some interesting segues in the earlier film, in the later work he largely resigns himself to photographing stationary theatrical and operatic set-ups. While we are never subjected to such inanities as birds singing melodies to Johann Strauss Jr, in The Great Waltz (1938) or performers simply breaking into song as clumsily as they do for the director in My Best Gal or Nobody‘s Darling, even Mann’s greater artistic maturity and facility cannot overcome the inherent drawbacks in the source materials. The Glenn Miller Story is, undoubtedly, the director’s most celebrated and beloved “middlebrow” film, while Serenade, despite its attempt to repeat the success of the band leader biopic, is Mann’s least distinguished work between Desperate (1947) and A Dandy in Aspic (1968). The very wholesomeness of the relationship between Glenn Miller (James Stewart) and his wife Helen (June Allyson) becomes, at best, an idealization particular to the decade in which the film was made and, at worst, a cloying excess of sentimentalized romance that dates the story markedly. Clearly, The Glenn Miller Story would be a much more sober and somber work if undertaken today—for the very nobility and various naivétés of its two principal characters would quickly pall on a contemporary audience. Serenade, despite having a James M. Cain novel as its source, emerges as a confused and confusing soap opera in which the main character Damon Vincenti (Mario Lanza) finds himself caught between his desire for a spoiled rich girl, Kendall Hale (Joan Fontaine), and a down-to-earth fiery Mexican senorita, Juana Montez (Sarita Montiel). While the tenor’s psychosomatically losing his voice because of being rejected in love occurs in both the film and the book, Mann’s movie obviously eschews the latent homosexuality in Cain’s disturbing novel to instead concentrate on giving Lanza numerous chances to display his vocal powers. As a result, and because of the bland dramatic skills of its leading man, Serenade never manages to effectively or smoothly link its turgid sexual plot with its performance numbers. Indeed, these two competing interests co-exist awkwardly as Mann works doggedly to create obvious and overwrought symbolic representations of the central character’s emotions to prevent the film from becoming merely a recital. As with The Glenn Miller Story, there is a cloying decorum throughout Serenade, a quality that can only work against the more obvious and heavy handed symbolic moments that are used. Mann was obviously more comfortable with The Glenn Miller Story, for it exhibits many of his characteristic stylistic flourishes while having James


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Helen (June Allyson) and Glenn Miller (James Stewart) in The Glenn Miller Story (Universal, 1954). The performers again play devoted spouses for Mann in Strategic Air Command (Paramount, 1955).

Stewart as its leading man and such familiar supporting actors as Harry Morgan and Charles Drake as well as such familiar collaborators as producer Aaron Rosenberg and cinematographer William Daniels. The film’s opening shot finds the protagonist walking up a severe incline, after the camera has tracked away from his in-hock trombone, and a comic musical cue accompanies him into the pawnshop of the kindly Mr. Krantz (Sig Ruman). After he redeems his instrument, Glenn asks about a “string of pearls” that he would like to buy for his girl before going outside to join his pal Chummy McGregor (Harry Morgan) and insisting that they must contrive to sneak in a performance of a new arrangement of his at the dance where they have been hired to play. Mann then efficiently offers a shot of a hotel doorway with a bandleader’s name strung on a banner above it as we hear a staid rendition of a tune interrupted by Miller’s more contemporary version of it. When that arrangement quickly breaks off and the first treatment resumes, we know that the protagonist has not been successful. We then return to the film’s initial set-up as Glenn and Chummy learn

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from Mr. Krantz of an audition on a boardwalk for the Ben Pollack Band. Rather than getting his trombone out of hock, Glenn decides that he will attempt to impress the band leader with some of his arrangements because they represent his quest for a “sound” of his own. At the audition the protagonist is politely and quickly dismissed by Pollack; however, when Chummy contrives to have another auditioning musician play one of Glenn’s arrangements, the band maestro immediately hires Miller. Mann arranges this sequence so that Glenn is walking forlornly away as his music begins to be played, stops suddenly when it ceases, and then nods to himself to accept that he has been rejected a second time. Only after he has started walking away once more does Chummy come rushing out to tell him the good news in yet another (mild) example of the director’s penchant for reversal in a sequence. Now flush with money, Glenn returns to Krantz’s shop, redeems his trombone, and buys the string of pearls he inquired about earlier. In Denver, traveling with Pollack’s band, the protagonist calls up Helen Burger, his erstwhile college sweetheart with whom he has not spoken for the past two years. After getting her to agree to meet him that night in Boulder, Glenn appears in the early morning, rouses Helen from sleep, and gives her the ersatz pearls. Still later, after they are blissfully married, the band leader presents her with a set of real pearls as well as a performance of the song with that title. Naturally, Helen has an intuitive feeling for music, so much so that she convinces her husband to keep working on a theme which turns out to be “Moonlight Serenade”; and when they hear it performed in a tawdry style in a nightclub, she insists that he must create his own band so that his music will be played (and heard) as he intends it to be. On their tenth wedding anniversary Glenn presents Helen with a new song “Pennsylvania 6–5000” based on an incident from their earlier whirlwind courtship when he had called her from New York to persuade her to come there and marry him. At the same time, the heroine, who has brought their first adoptive child home apparently as a surprise to her band leader husband, continues to insist that “Little Brown Jug” is her favorite tune despite Glenn’s dismissal of it as a simple, shallow melody. During their anniversary party he gives her a small figurine of that object and insists that is the only time she will ever have anything connected with the tune from him. Naturally, in the final scene of The Glenn Miller Story, after Helen has learned of her husband’s death in a plane crash, she tunes in to his band’s Christmas broadcast from France to be greeted by his new arrangement of “Little Brown Jug”—a present to her for all her love and support. The tune continues as Helen looks longingly at a photograph of her beloved Glenn and


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stares out a window to a (presumably) worthwhile future. The restraint that Mann imposes on this scene and the performance of June Allyson combine to create one of the more sentimentally moving scenes in American movies; clearly, the director, whose own interests were more austere than those of the screenplay, could be masterful in presenting pathos when necessary. Mann also cleverly introduces numerous Miller standards in realistic settings such as a nightclub in which Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa are performing, and to which Glenn and Helen go on their wedding night; on numerous bandstands where the protagonist and his ensemble perform their special sound; and, perhaps most notably, in a recording studio where “Tuxedo Junction” is played to synchronize with a filmed dance sequence which plays behind Miller’s group. In keeping with Mann’s acute sense of pace, this sequence quickly segues through camera tracks to a private conversation between Glenn and Helen in which they discuss his impending commission in the army to the accompaniment of various interruptions concerning the playback of the just-recorded number. While this arrangement underscores the hectic pace of the bandleader’s life, his reluctance to bring up the subject of his leaving and Helen’s already being aware of his plans once again reinforces the idealized symbiotic nature of their marriage. Mann’s arrangements of the song numbers in Serenade is both simpler and less interesting. Damon sings for his co-workers in the vineyards after Tony (Harry Bellaver), his agent, has arranged for him to audition for the famous San Francisco restaurateur Lardelli (Silvio Minciotti). The protagonist performs “O Sorrento” to win a job as a tenor in that establishment and, after being “discovered” by Kendall and musical impresario Charles Winthrop (Vincent Price), he performs “My Destiny” (one of the two original songs by Nicholas Brodzky and Sammy Cahn in the film) to show the famous vocal coach Marcatello (Joseph Calleia) that he truly has a “voice from God.” As a rising star, Damon performs a series of operatic standards leading to an extended passage from Verdi’s Otello in a rehearsal scene with Licia Albanese. His subsequent opening night desertion of the stage in the middle of that opera’s final act is caused by his desperate passion for Kendall. Because she has not attended his big debut—a point Mann establishes by having Damon stare forlornly at the empty seat reserved for her—the protagonist cracks up and, after a quick segue to Mexico City, he discovers that he can no longer sing during an audition for a local opera company when he fumbles an aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Down on his luck and sick with malaria in a hotel on a festival day, Damon is rescued by Juana, who takes him to her uncle’s ranch to rest and recover. As the girl’s attentions begin to bring the protagonist back to health,

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we see him on a parapet strumming a guitar and watching as she emerges below. At this point Vincenti plays an instrumental rendition of the film’s title song (which Lanza has performed at full blast during the credit sequence) that gradually becomes more sinister sounding as he contemplates his emerging feelings for Juana and his still smoldering passion for Kendall. After being able to sing Schubert’s “Ave Maria” when his voice is restored in a church with Juana, Damon decides he must return to San Francisco to start his career anew, and then has his proposal of marriage rejected by the girl who intuits that he is still tied to Kendall. Once again, as he is about to leave, Damon is begged to perform one last song by a horde of enthralled workers and he comes out with a bravura rendition of “Serenade.” Serenade offers Mario Lanza two more chances to shine. He performs Puccini’s “Nessum dorma!” from Turandot during a rehearsal as Juana and Kendall sit in an auditorium and alternately eye each other and him; and, in

Mario Lanza (as Damon Vincenti) and Sarita Montiel (as Juana Montez) in Serenade (Warner Bros., 1956). Numerous operatic numbers cannot compensate for the limited acting abilities of the stars in what is probably Mann’s poorest directorial effort after 1945.


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the movie’s final scene, he reprises “Serenade” as a love song for the injured Juana, whom he has finally learned to adore as the only woman in his life. When Tony rushes backstage and signals to Damon that Juana will be all right—despite being hit by a bus!—the protagonist breaks out into an even more full-throated and lusty rendition of this ballad. Nearly all of Damon’s musical numbers are rendered against stage backdrops or obvious process shots as Mann appears to acquiesce to the movie’s being a “comeback” vehicle for Lanza and directs these sequences in fairly pedestrian fashion. Glenn Miller and Damon Vincenti are driven to succeed as entertainers: Mann’s earlier protagonist only wants to create a “sound” that will properly fit the music he writes and arranges, while his later character must learn about himself emotionally while trying to break into the world of opera. Because Glenn Miller knows he wants to marry Helen long before The Glenn Miller Story actually starts, there is little or no romantic tension; at best, their courtship is played for laughs as the heroine is as taken with the trombone player as he is with her. Damon, on the other hand, must fall for the manipulative Kendall and suffer professional and personal disasters as a result in order to be brought back to life by Juana before he realizes which woman he must choose in Serenade. Because of the romantic tranquility in his life, we see Glenn concentrating on his arrangements and, when he takes on a secure and “safe” position in a movie house orchestra, Helen emerges as his conscience to stir him back to his true musical calling and real self. In addition to her later prompting him to put together his own band, she supplies the start-up money for that undertaking by clandestinely saving all of her apparently careless husband’s pocket change. The couple’s consistent solicitudes for each other—his gifts of jewelry and musical arrangements and her constant watching out for his artistic well being—eventually become cloying, and point to the serious lack of dramatic tension in The Glenn Miller Story. If Mann succeeds in delivering a thoroughly competent and occasionally moving genre piece on the order of The Jolson Story (1946), what we miss here are the kinds of psychological tension that mark the director’s more characteristic films. Serenade, alas, while offering romantic and psychological turns and twists aplenty, is undone by its leading performers as neither Mario Lanza nor Sarita Montiel is capable of delivering the emotional subtleties we see in James Stewart in the westerns, Robert Ryan in Men in War, or Charlton Heston in El Cid. Because Lanza renders Damon’s romantic angst as a tearful form of mild indigestion and Montel chews the scenery whenever she attempts to show Juana’s emotional complexities, Mann is reduced to staging and symbols to convey what these performers cannot. The movie founders additionally because of the professionalism of Fontaine and Price

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who render their characters thoroughly believable in spite of the overwrought material with which they are working. Had Serenade focused on them, instead of the floundering duo at its center, it might have been a much better film. Once Glenn and Helen have launched his first band, disaster strikes in a twofold form: Due to a blinding snowstorm they lose an essential booking in Boston and he must disband the group while she, simultaneously, suffers a miscarriage and learns that she will be unable to have children. However, in true fairy tale fashion, the answers to these problems almost immediately appear with little or no effort on the part of either of the main characters. A repentant Si Schribman (George Tobias) arrives with flowers for the stricken Helen, apologizes for having to cancel the band’s appearance at his club, and then offers to put up money so that Glenn can start another group. Schribman then persuades the proud Miller to create a band because he has an unexpected cancellation. Glenn proceeds to find the “sound” he’s been looking for when a lead trumpet player splits his lip one day before their opening night. Later we see the Millers adopting two children and becoming doting parents as Glenn and his band rocket to fame. The happy couple’s tenth wedding anniversary ratchets up the postcard-like qualities of the Millers’ domestic life, for we see the protagonist worrying excessively about pleasing his unsuspecting wife with a surprise party. His obsequiousness is juxtaposed by the questions of his troubled father (Irving Bacon) who must be reassured that Glenn gets a royalty payment for every one of his records that’s sold before he can become thoroughly comfortable with the lavish preparations in front of him. This comic turn also reflects Helen’s variously naïve actions and questions, all the way from her being furious when Glenn doesn’t initially show up because she does not understand what “later” means to a band performer, to her adjustments to his night life once they are wed. At the same time the audience is asked to believe that she can anticipate her husband’s eventual need for money and his having gotten a wartime commission without his previously telling her. The camaraderie between the band members is also noticeable throughout The Glenn Miller Story, and that quality helps the audience to more readily accept that Miller’s love for music is larger than a simple quest for fame or a need for putting musical notes on paper. Mann’s protagonist composes because he must and because he wants to enrich the lives of all those around him through his music. His wartime tour of duty underlines this idealism as we see Captain Miller mechanically conducting standard military music until he rebels on a parade ground because he feels such fare does not create a proper spirit to help the soldiers be as good as they can be. Fearing a reprimand from his immediate superior, Glenn, like Helen earlier, is saved by a deus ex machina in the person of General Arnold (Barton MacLane) who


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praises what the protagonist has done and then agrees to see if he can get Miller reassigned. Once overseas, Glenn and his band perform numerous Miller hits against a montage of performances and actual footage of buzz bombs roaring across the London sky. Typically, a rendition of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” by Frances Langford and the Modernaires is done before bleachers full of happy soldiers and is quickly followed by the news that the Allies have landed in Normandy. In perhaps the most stirring sequence in The Glenn Miller Story we see the protagonist leading his group in an outdoor performance for convalescing American and British troops who literally surround the bandstand. An air raid siren cuts through the music and soldiers start running for the exits; however, Glenn refuses to be intimidated and continues to conduct so that, without missing a beat, his music rises up after the siren ceases and we hear a distant explosion (signaled by the camera’s being jarred to indicate its impact). As the listeners return to their places, a thunderous round of applause comes from them in tribute to the musicians’ calm. At the same time, Mann’s juxtaposition of band and bomb works out to assert that art and humanity will inevitably triumph over ideology and violence. Serenade relies heavily on foreshadowings and symbolic gestures to cover the thespian deficiencies of its two leading players. In the film’s opening scene Damon encounters Kendall and her latest “conquest,” prizefighter Marco Roselli (Vince Edwards), who stop and ask for directions to San Francisco and, as her flashy Cadillac speeds away, we see that Vincenti has been smitten by the blonde socialite. At Lardelli’s, when Kendall and Winthrop come to hear Damon sing, their interactions are interspersed with shots of a televised championship prizefight which Roselli wins. When the protagonist subsequently goes to Kendall’s apartment for a party at which he meets Marcatello, the enraged fighter bursts in to chide his former lover for missing the bout. His reference to her “empty seat” at the arena sets up the device by which Damon, now totally under Kendall’s control, breaks down during Otello as he sees another symbolically empty seat to indicate that she has jilted him. Kendall’s perfidy has been occasioned by her apparent inability to see her male conquests succeed as well as the emergence of a new man in her life. When Damon learns that she has gone away with this sculptor, he destroys the clay bust of Kendall on which the other artist has been working as Mann shows the protagonist consciously destroying the face of the woman who haunts him in a symbolic sequence that becomes so obvious as to be unintentionally funny. Juana, like many another Mann character, suffers because of her past. Initially she cannot allow herself to fall in love with

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Damon because her matador father seemingly welcomed death in the bull ring after her mother deserted him. As a result, Juana obsesses over the protagonist’s infatuation with Kendall and her own fears to the point that she rejects Damon’s first proposal of marriage. The romantic angst of Damon and Juana takes an even more serious turn when he announces that he is going to return to San Francisco and start over at Lardelli’s and, in spite of her rejection, Juana agrees to drive him to the distant harbor town. A tumultuous rainstorm forces them to stop and wait out the weather in a local church and, as romantic tensions bubble to the surface, Juana flees into the storm only to be stopped when lightning hits a tree branch which falls in front of her. Terrified, she rushes back to Damon and their passionate embrace reverses all the strained verbiage and agonized expressions that have preceded it. While water and rainstorms are used as prominent symbols in Bend of the River and The Naked Spur, the emphasis here on the emergence of pent-up feelings between these characters is, alas, far too obvious and hardly in keeping with the director’s usually more subtle use of such elements. Perhaps Mann felt that he all he could was to invoke an act of God to overcome the incapacities of his performers. Earlier, the heroine’s emotional troubles had been compounded by Philippe, a hotheaded ranch hand who insists she is his girl and tries to act on that premise in a Jeep Juana is driving because he has discerned that she has fallen for Damon. Despite her rebuff of Philippe’s attentions (she slaps him), at a subsequent festival Juana performs the symbolic killing of a bull in an elaborate sequence that ends when she points her sword at Philippe and forces him to run away and out of her life. In New York, after Damon has regained his footing in the world of grand opera and accepted another invitation to yet another party given by Kendall, Juana is confronted by her hostess, who dismissively insists that she is the woman the protagonist truly wants. Mann’s angry but inarticulate heroine responds to this threat to her marriage by agreeing to reprise her matador dance for the drunken partygoers and the insistent Kendall. This time Juana finishes her performance by putting the sword up to Kendall’s neck. When the suave socialite asks, “Do you think that would free him?” she rushes from the apartment. In the thematic climax of Serenade Damon briefly confronts Kendall to announce “You’re dead” and then hurries to find his wife. Thus, the sinister Pygmalion motif which has been associated with Kendall from her initial taking up of the protagonist is laid to rest: Rather than turning on his would-be “creator” as is standard in such relationships, Vincenti shows that he has truly outgrown his passion for the socialite and the amoral world in which she lives. He has discovered that he can prosper as a singer without Miss Hale but that he cannot survive as a human without his wife. In the


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street, though, Damon finds that Juana has been struck by a bus and must be rushed to a hospital. When he subsequently learns that she will be okay, Damon bursts out with a final bravura rendition of the title song to symbolize his love for his Mexican bride.

Artistic and Commercial Successes: Men in War (1957) and God’s Little Acre (1958) Mann as an independent filmmaker is at his best in these works which were produced by his own company, Security Pictures, and released through United Artists.1 While this kind of undertaking was more prevalent during the period just after the end of World War II, when directors like John Ford and Frank Capra tried to become free of the studio system, the director’s foray into such production was a response to the end of that very system. More interestingly, Men in War and God’s Little Acre demonstrate the kinds of stories and the types of stylistic and thematic approaches that were most congenial to Mann by this stage of his career. We see the director mastering two essentially new and different genres (Mann had not made either a strict war movie or an adaptation of a serious literary work) and these films compare favorably with the most outstanding examples of such films in movie history. The production continuities in Men in War and God’s Little Acre are striking, and the contributions of key collaborators once more point to Mann’s increasing ease with and sophistication in making movies. Both films feature veteran cameraman Ernest Haller, celebrated as the officially credited cinematographer on Gone with the Wind, and his outstanding black and white photography in them is equal to his Technicolor prowess with Man of the West. Perhaps the most outstanding cinematic feature of these films is their use of long takes, such as the opening sequence in Men in War in which Haller’s camera rises to reveal burned-out vehicles, then tracks to a single radio operator (Philip Pine) desperately trying to contact “regiment,” focuses even more tightly on a close-up of his mouth, and then rises once more as he crawls over to report his lack of success to Lieutenant Benson (Robert Ryan). Screenwriter Philip Yordan, responsible for both screenplays, also does yeoman work on these films with his adaptations of their original sources. Yordan thoroughly transforms the Van Van Praag novel Combat (a.k.a. Day Without End) (1949), on which Men in War is based by creating more rounded characters in Benson and Sergeant Montana (Aldo Ray), focusing on a single mission, bringing in themes about the nature of war and camaraderie, switching the setting to Korea, and building to a wonderfully sym-

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bolic ending. The Van Praag novel is not only set in World War II Europe but also features a swarm of characters who function as a chorus on the nature of warfare and who nearly all die, often offstage and almost incidentally. The novel’s main character, Roth, is a weak protagonist who ends up wounded and shipped home, unlike Benson and Montana who must live to fight yet another day. Men in War and God’s Little Acre also feature distinctive music provided by Elmer Bernstein, who had scored The Tin Star. The composer’s themes are carefully orchestrated and manipulated, especially in Men in War which Bernstein would later regard as one of the very best scores he ever did. While the music also features appropriately attention-getting stingers and dissonances, Bernstein’s treatments of the mine field sequence in Men in War, with its eerie use of a xylophone to subtly underscore the terror each of the soldiers inevitably feels, and his unsettling piano background to the climactic sequence inside the textile mill in God’s Little Acre, in which Will Thompson (Aldo Ray) is killed, are truly outstanding. In each of these films Mann is also greatly aided by the acting of Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray, whether they are in conflict with each other over the purpose of the mission in Men in War or portraying equally obsessed dreamers in God’s Little Acre. Benson and Montana quarrel over the conflict between the sergeant’s loyalty to his wounded colonel (Robert Keith) and the lieutenant’s need to save the bigger unit by getting its men to safety. These confrontations ultimately raise the larger issue of what it takes to win a war, a question that contemporaries might well have framed in Cold War terms by asking whether Americans had to become like their enemies in order to defeat them. Ty-Ty Walden (Ryan) and Will Thompson are driven by unrealistic dreams in God’s Little Acre: Walden in trying to preserve his family by, at long last, finding the mythical gold which his grandfather allegedly buried on his farm, and Will in dedicating his life to restoring the abandoned textile mill which was the basis of the economy of Peach Tree Valley. Thompson’s drive to “turn on the power” ultimately derives from his vibrant character and becomes intertwined with his lifelong passion for Griselda (Tina Louise) despite being married to Ty-Ty’s daughter Rosamund (Helen Westcott). Will’s actions represent Yordan’s method of recasting the rampant sexuality of the character as presented in the Caldwell novel into physical movements that symbolize his repressed lusts. Having Will die alone in the textile mill (rather than as part of a mob uprising as in the book) leads to the powerful wake scene in which Ty-Ty finally recognizes that he must abandon an illusion and become a productive farmer. This conclusion again seriously alters the original source in which


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Buck Walden (Jack Lord), Pluto Swint (Buddy Hackett), Ty-Ty Walden (Robert Ryan) and Griselda (Tina Louise), in God’s Little Acre (Security/United Artists, 1958). In Mann’s film the tensions between Buck and Griselda are finally resolved, and Pluto and Ty-Ty both emerge as far stronger and more insightful characters than in Erskine Caldwell’s novel.

Buck Walden (Jack Lord) kills his brother Jim-Leslie (Lance Fuller), and TyTy is simply reduced to a fatal acceptance of his inability to effect any changes whatsoever. Ryan and Ray capture the anguish and the passions in these characters, and Mann visually links them rising arm in arm from the newest digging on the Walden farm after Will and Buck have fought over Griselda, and Ty-Ty has managed to break things up before anything serious could happen. Lieutenant Benson, the protagonist of Men in War, clearly resembles previous leading men in Mann’s films in his bordering on disgust, potential hysteria, and anguish. He must try to command men who are foolhardy, fearful, and naïve by turns, in a situation where he finds his outfit cut off from any serious support. Benson clings to the hope that he and his men will find their way back to the rest of the retreating American forces by rigor-

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ously following the orders they have been given. Thus, we see him driving his subordinates to the hill they have been commanded to take in spite of his greater uncertainties about being surrounded or needing the savage professional skills of Montana. Benson is not above expropriating the Jeep that carries the sergeant and the mute colonel because, as he sees it, the greater number of lives at risk within his command supersedes Montana’s desire to take one man to safety. The conflict between these two strong-willed characters begins when they meet and Montana informs the lieutenant that he has decided to opt out of the war in order to save the only man who has ever treated him like a “son.” While he embodies all the steely qualities of a killer (or fighting man), Montana wants to flee in order to ensure that he and the colonel can find some other “duty” that will enable them to survive. His cold professionalism is seen very early when a sniper fires on the convoy’s Jeep and Benson yells that he needs a prisoner; in spite of that command, Montana not only manages to wound the enemy but also machine guns him to death. When an enraged Benson comes upon the scene, the sergeant calmly explains that such snipers often carry pistols in their hats and, sure enough, the lieutenant finds one on the corpse. While Benson had told Montana earlier, when expropriating the Jeep, that no individual soldier is greater than the group, Mann’s weary protagonist now concedes, “You’re not expendable”—a phrase that marks his newfound, if rueful, respect for the surly non-com. Later Benson and one of his riflemen, Sam Davis (L.Q. Jones), speculate on the type of individual needed to win the war in which they find themselves. Davis openly questions the need to have Montana while Benson urges that the sergeant is essential; however, their debate is cut short when a sniper’s bullet tears a picture out of the rifleman’s hand and the whole outfit finds itself under artillery fire. In this way Mann shows that the demands of war and the individual’s desire to survive its horrors make such intellectual arguments futile. Benson acquiesces to most of Montana’s tactics because they work and help him accomplish his mission of simply “keeping one man alive”; however, even the lieutenant cannot accept everything that his antagonist does. As they cross the mined forest clearing, Benson orders Montana to assist him in probing for these deadly objects and the sergeant reiterates that the lieutenant’s army is not the “same one” that he and the colonel are in. At the base of Hill 465—their objective—Benson’s men are greeted by apparent Americans cheering on the hillside; nevertheless, Montana guns down these figures without any compunction because he knows “they’re fakes.” When these corpses are revealed as North Koreans, Benson resignedly notes, “You’re always right”; however, his disgust then gets the better of him and he drives


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James Edwards (as Sergeant Killian) and Robert Ryan (as Lieutenant Benson) in Men in War (Security/United Artists, 1957). Killian’s stylized death in high grass and flowers and Benson’s doggedness inspire two of the many outstanding performances in Mann’s war film.

Montana out while declaring, “God help us if it takes your kind to win this war!” Being free to go, Montana is now confronted by his colonel who, despite being shell-shocked, rises to the call of battle when Benson and his men begin their assault on the hill. When the colonel frees himself from a restraining seatbelt, Montana is delighted, but this exultation is quickly lost as his commander unilaterally decides to join the attack in spite of all his subordinate’s ramblings about their future life stateside. Symbolically, Montana reveals his soft side when he reminisces about how much he derived from the colonel’s calling him “son,” so, naturally, when he comes upon his dying superior later, the only word that the colonel says is “son” as he dies. A similar sequence will appear in God’s Little Acre when Rosamund reacts to Will’s death and, more notably as we have seen, when the dying Trout goes screaming through the deserted main street of Lassoo in Man of the West. By the end of the first assault on Hill 465, only Benson and Montana appear to have survived. Each character has lost what was most important

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to him, yet their despair is forgotten when the sergeant convinces the lieutenant to continue the attack. After he ironically suggests that he may be the one man Benson has sought to keep alive, Montana boasts that the two of them can take the enemy position because they are “lucky” and the lieutenant goes along because of his ingrained commitment to duty. Their subsequent assault is a huge success as Montana uses a flame thrower to annihilate their enemies, and Riordan, the radio operator of the film’s opening scene, suddenly comes crawling up to their new position after having also survived the earlier effort. While Benson briefly grins over this small triumph, he and Montana quickly fall asleep. On the ensuing morning, Montana wakes Benson and the latter apologizes (“I was wrong”) as a sign of his recognition that it will, indeed, take individuals like the sergeant to win the present war. They then realize that they have re-established contact with the main body of American forces, and Benson asks Montana if he still has the medals which his colonel had intended to posthumously award. When Montana says he does, Benson begins reading the names of the fallen members of his command as the sergeant symbolically throws the medals down the hill on which these “men in war” have perished. The film’s main musical theme then rises and segues into its lyrical version as the camera tracks into a close-up of the notebook in which Benson has recorded the names of the soldiers we have just seen die. This melody is rendered in more muted tones at the end of Men in War than it is elsewhere, and its sung version is thoroughly in keeping with the 1950s trend started by High Noon (1952) in which a ballad serves as a veritable commentary on the action. Elmer Bernstein also contributes notably to the sequence in which Sergeant Killian (James Edwards) meets his death with a somber melody rendered by a solo flute to undercut the seeming idyllic set-up in which the soldier pauses to pick flowers and arrange them in his helmet despite being the last man in the column. As Killian arranges the flowers, Mann’s camera moves to a close-up of his foot which twitches frantically after Bernstein supplies a brief short cue to signify that the soldier has been bayoneted. A jazzy syncopation of the film’s main theme accompanies the starting of the Jeep and its being pushed through enemy artillery fire by Benson and Montana, while the colonel’s reversion to his fighting self finds that same theme alternately rendered as nostalgic and martial. The tone of Men in War is quickly established by its very opening. A drum roll precedes this sequence which features individual credits against a single background of soldiers’ faces and helmets; appropriately enough, all of these figures look alike to stress the relative anonymity of the infantrymen suggested by the movie’s title. This association becomes even more apparent when we read a title card which says that the story of the foot sol-


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dier is the real story of all wars; however, Men in War then informs us that what follows starts on “September 6, 1950.” Such specificity and the subsequently rapid introduction of the men in Benson’s outfit—by showing them eating, scratching, and sleeping—undermines the generalized pronouncement by causing us to begin caring about the distinct individuals we see in front of us. In doing so and with such brevity, Mann reveals himself as a master filmmaker at work, for he has gone from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic with deft strokes all executed within a few moments of screen time. His directorial prowess continues as we are shown the nervous Sergeant Lewis (Nehemiah Persoff) scuttling down an incline from guard duty to awaken his seemingly sleeping relief. When Lewis cannot arouse this man, he turns him over to discover he has been stealthfully killed during the past few hours by enemies that the sergeant was totally unaware of—a realization that immediately unnerves him and causes him to go off running and shouting through the encampment in order to warn Benson. This precipitate act, in turn, breeds panic among the other men who begin to fire wildly until the lieutenant orders them to stop. Despite being told that he needs to set an example for the lower ranks, Lewis later breaks down completely when he realizes the forest clearing has been mined and, in his haste to again try and run away from danger, he is blown to pieces. Sergeant Killian’s death, which subtly contrasts the worlds of nature and war, represents one more striking example of Mann’s reversing the mood within a scene. The very beauty of the surrounding flowers enraptures Killian into thinking he is safe enough to decorate his helmet and rub his aching feet. But as the camera tracks among the lush and billowing grasses behind and to the soldier’s left, two camouflaged and crouching enemies become visible in the foliage. Another suspenseful sequence occurs when the men enter the forest and the camera rises to reveal a frightened enemy sniper (Sen Yung) again altering the seeming tranquility into which the characters have marched. When Benson subsequently sends the prisoner ahead of his unit in climbing up Hill 465 and he is gunned down by his own troops, we are thrown once more into the heartlessness of war—and the necessity for sacrificing one human life to protect greater numbers of human lives. Men in War also utilizes symbols, many of which augment the character of and the themes embodied by Lieutenant Benson. In addition to the colonel’s medals which he and Montana distribute at the end of the film, Benson conspicuously collects the dog tags of his fallen men with the implied purpose of making some kind of a report when he has gotten to a relatively safe place. He keeps these objects in his breast pocket along with the notebook in which he dutifully records the names of the deceased and from which he reads during the finale. Benson’s own longings for peace and home are

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embodied in the photo of his wife and children which he carries in his helmet and at which he glances from time to time. The tragic nature of combat is further emphasized when we see a similar family picture on a dead North Korean. While individual wars may or may not be justified, the end result on the battlefield is that individuals with personal family and emotional ties are killed. A more obvious symbol is Killian’s helmet which Benson finds after the sergeant has been killed and which he then gives to the cowardly Zwickley (Vic Morrow). An earlier scene has established that Killian was looking out for the younger soldier by reminding Zwickley to be sure to wear his own helmet; and so, after registering his dismay at his friend’s death, the young man casts away his own helmet and replaces it with Killian’s. Later, during the storming of the hill, Zwickley volunteers to operate a bazooka (instead of hauling ammunition for the others) and Benson, seeing a new determination in the former coward, lets him do so. In essence, Zwickley has become a fighting man because the spirit of Killian has been transferred to him. Men in War repeatedly emphasizes the emotional costs of combat. In addition to the rampant fear that sweeps over Benson’s men when Lewis initially breaks down, we listen to bravura-sounding conversations between pairs of soldiers as they await the cessation of enemy shelling so they can cross the area under artillery fire, and the whispered fears they quickly share once they realize the floor of the forest has been mined. All these moments show that Mann’s dogfaces are always trying to preserve themselves first and foremost. At the same time, a need for heroism is answered by these same men as we see them dying in the initial attempt to capture the occupied hill. There is a code of honor which even a slacker like Zwickley follows when a real crisis is at hand. Perhaps the most obvious dramatization of this need for “men in war” to do their duty comes about when Benson and Montana must push the supply-laden Jeep, with its driver, Zwickley, and its passenger, the colonel, through the path on which enemy artillery fire is being concentrated. Mann’s two principal characters operate, of course, out of different individual motives, with the sergeant being almost solely concerned with getting his colonel to safety and the lieutenant striving to ensure that the ammunition gets to his men on the other side of the targeted area. Neither man enjoys the task at hand, but their courage and skill emerge in the efficient ways by which they handle the obstacles they encounter during this dangerous passage. Benson and Montana reaffirm the democratic notion that leaders emerge because challenges arise—a premise underscored in the American military’s order that, in the event of an officer’s death in battle, the highest ranking survivor takes over and leads.


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While it exhibits much of the same artistic cohesiveness as Men in War, God’s Little Acre is, finally, not nearly as satisfying. As with Serenade, this film suffers from trying to be two different things at the same time, and, while some of its duality can be attributed to inherent standards of what was permissible in movies at the time, the Mann film, in its attempt to yoke comic and serious material and still come up with a “happy ending,” is perplexing. Had the movie simply stayed with Ty-Ty and his various schemes to find his ancestor’s treasure, God’s Little Acre would have been a comic romp among characters whose libidos and illusions outrun their good sense. Even the patriarch’s religiosity would have come across as a simple-minded way of salving his conscience. Alas, with the introductions of Will Thompson and Jim-Leslie, Mann’s film takes on an entirely different tone, for now comic lust gets replaced by licentious and genuine passions that lead to tragedy. Darlin’ Jill (Fay Spain) and her teasing of the inept but addled Pluto Swint (Buddy Hackett) is replaced by Jim-Leslie’s crude sexual enticements to Griselda and the latter’s tortuous relationship with Will Thompson. While Caldwell’s novel finished such conflicts—by having Will killed in a battle in the closed textile mill and Jim-Leslie murdered by Buck in a jealous rage, Mann’s film, because of contemporary censorship standards, had to come up with different resolutions. Thus, while Will is shot in the silent factory, only he dies on the pavement as the sole individual willing to risk his life to reopen the mill. And, while Buck attacks Jim-Leslie after Thompson’s funeral (and Ty-Ty gets struck down trying to stop this fight), all ends well. Once again, Mann is ably assisted by Elmer Bernstein who provides both a jaunty theme song and thoroughly appropriate cues to mark out the individual sections of God’s Little Acre. When the Waldens go to town we hear jazzy background music which is in sharp contrast to the more consciously Southern- and rural-sounding cues we hear when the action is set on Ty-Ty’s farm. Bernstein underscores the scene in Will’s house when the would-be restorer of the town’s industry comes home drunk, ogles Darlin’ Jill, and then collapses on the kitchen floor with the last musical cue virtually mimicking Will’s physical action in what is commonly referred to by film composers as “Mickey Mousing.” Because of the kinds of melodies and orchestration that Bernstein uses in this sequence, viewers are reassured that such actions are to be seen as comic and not truly dangerous or threatening (again in contrast to the novel in which Will has sexual intercourse with the girl in front of his wife). Much of the sexual tension between Griselda and Will during their nighttime rendezvous in Ty-Ty’s yard is supplied by the musical cues which begin with a stinger as the girl notices her former lover is staring at her and

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then segue into an intensely romantic theme that suggests the passions these characters feel for each other. Bernstein supplies more consciously dissonant and “eerie” music when Will sets out to restore the power in the textile mill and Griselda goes with him. As she gives in to her longings for Thompson and tries to seduce him from his mad quest, the music of their earlier meeting is reprised. However, when Will sees the expectant crowd and breaks away to go back and “turn on the power,” Bernstein’s more ominous figures take over again on the soundtrack. The composer’s jaunty main theme, which is played and sung over the film’s credits, gradually comes to represent the major plot thrust of God’s Little Acre, for it is featured prominently in the resolution section in which Ty-Ty finally agrees to give up his addled quest for treasure and become what Uncle Felix (Rex Ingram) had earlier maintained he was—a farmer. After JimLeslie flees from his father’s house and Ty-Ty is gotten back on his feet, Bernstein’s music functions as a means by which restoration of order is effected in the film. Mann’s final sequence, in which Pluto is happily engaged to Darlin’ Jill, the sullen Shaw (Vic Morrow) is contently plowing, and Griselda is joyfully bringing a drink of water to a grateful Buck, finds the main theme gradually rising in volume and then being rendered once more as a song as the film comes to its end. Of course, Mann employs some of his familiar stylistic tricks as well. He changes the tone of the film very economically when Pluto and Darlin’ Jill arrive at Rosamund and Will’s city house, having been sent to bring these relatives back to the Walden farm. Ty-Ty has once again become convinced that he will find the elusive treasure—this time because he has kidnapped an albino (Michael Landon) whose special powers will show him exactly where to dig. When his emissaries enter the Thompson house, Rosamund’s crying alerts the audience to a decided change in mood which will now dominate God’s Little Acre until its idyllic final sequence. Naturally, Will’s subsequent arrival at the diggings infuriates the jealous Buck and, after a fight between them with shovels, Griselda’s husband becomes hysterical in the same way that Coaley (Jack Lord once more) does when defeated by Link Jones in Man of the West. Rosamund becomes terrified when she and Will return to the mill town because she knows that she can no longer control her husband whose intertwined desires, for opening the mill and having Griselda, are now raging out of control. At the same time, because she genuinely loves Thompson, Rosamund urges Griselda to go with Will as he sets out to restore the only industry in Peachtree Valley. When Griselda agrees and rushes after the determined Will, Rosamund decisively slams her front door to symbolize that she realizes she has been replaced in her husband’s affections. Later, after he has


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been killed and the others come to inform her, Rosamund simply looks up and says she already knows in yet another movingly understated moment. During his foray into the factory Will, at one point, asks Griselda to help him in his quest, a sentiment that Mann will more brilliantly employ in El Cid when the protagonist (Charlton Heston) similarly implores Chimene (Sophia Loren) to help him lead his army in the morning, even though he will be dead. While the dual aims of its script lead God’s Little Acre into what appears to be a contrived happy ending that would be in keeping with contemporary Hollywood mores, many of the characters’ overt thematic statements too often eliminate the need for more subtle and cinematic ways of presenting its messages. In clearly eschewing the graphic sexuality and the stupidity of many of the characters in Caldwell’s novel, Mann’s film presents a consistently loquacious and “philosophical” Ty-Ty who typically explains why he must set aside an acre “for God” on his land. The protagonist then goes on to note, when asking Jim-Leslie for money and basically being treated like a country bumpkin, that “You act like you’re ashamed of me” in what seems a hopelessly obvious and clumsy bit of dialogue because it is promptly followed by Ty-Ty’s throwing an expensive vase to the floor to register his ire at his citified son’s condescending attitude. The same kind of overt moralizing occurs later when Ty-Ty confronts the continuous rage of Buck, which erupts at Will’s wake when the young man notices Jim-Leslie’s open desire for Griselda. The patriarch launches into a conciliatory speech about the “things inside” that really “matter” because he had earlier lamented, “I don’t seem able to keep my family together.” In attempting to make Buck see reason, Ty-Ty urges that time will make the younger man more accepting and less violent; indeed, such a passage will teach Buck patience and forgiveness because he, like his father, will come to realize that “I got sense you don’t know about, son.” Given such a reliance upon dialogue, many of the scenes in God’s Little Acre take on a redundant quality as the actors proceed to perform what, in essence, has already been told to the audience. One notable exception is when Pluto is asked by Buck about what happened in Peachtree Valley on the night Will Thompson was killed. Like the more memorable moment in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) when Marlow must “lie” to Kurtz’s Intended, this sequence shows a character ignoring the literal truth in order to provide a greater good by telling a “little white lie.” When Pluto says that he didn’t notice anything unusual between Will and Griselda on that night, he may ultimately fail to reassure the blindly jealous Buck but he does round out his own, flat character. Up to this point Swint has been the butt of several jokes, whether having dirt thrown on him,

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falling into one of Ty-Ty’s holes at night, or being teased and cuckolded by Darlin’ Jill. His selfless act reveals an intelligence and a compassion heretofore missing while once again demonstrating Mann’s enduring interest in portraying characters whose “mixed motives” make them appear all too human.

6

Mann and Epic Films The final genre that Anthony Mann mastered was that of epic film— highly expensive and generally historical offerings that rely on costuming and mise-en-scène for many, if not most, of their effects. While epic films are difficult to define with the same precision as film noir or westerns, they can be initially distinguished as “spectacles” or expensive entertainments in which we can readily see that a film’s budget has been spent on what is visible on screen. Costumes, buildings, armaments, cultural symbols, and archaically crafted language all serve to distinguish films set in the past; however, the epic raises these elements to a scale that is designed to overawe through the sheer accumulation and weight of supporting details. A major critical fault line in epic films arises from the often dualistic nature of such undertakings. On the one hand, the epic generally has to be aware of the social and historical realities of the place and period in which it is set, while, on the other hand, it must also embody enough of a personal story to avoid coming off as merely an expensive documentary. A serious costume epic must attempt to convey some sense of what historical life might have been like while simultaneously engaging the audience in an intriguing story with distinctive individual characters. Of course, epic films will take liberties with actual historical facts, as we shall see in both El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964): They are apt to telescope lengthy periods (often several decades) and large social groups to achieve even more grandeur. It has also been widely noted that epic films, like so many other costume genres, offer implicit comments on and themes that focus around the contemporary concerns of the audiences for whom they were originally intended. At the same time, such films often unhappily embody the social and sexual mores of their own times so that we see a greater sexual freedom in epics made in the later 1950s and 1960s such as Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (Warner Brothers, 1955) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s notorious Cleopatra (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1963) than in such works as Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack’s The Last Days of Pompeii (RKO, 1935) and Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis (MGM, 1951). 201

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While the best epics successfully amalgamate their social and private plot requirements, the poorer ones often do not or, perhaps even more lamentably, often strike overtly anachronistic notes by being too “modern” in their treatments of characters and language. One perhaps reaches a nadir in this regard with Kevin Reynolds’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Warner Brothers, 1991) when the irate Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman) orders his minions to “cancel Christmas”—a remark that might have been appropriate in a contemporary comedy coming from a Scrooge-like business executive, but one that seems wildly out of place in twelfth-century England. Clearly, epic films, given their enormous budgets and resultant financial risks, have been helped along considerably by the Hollywood star system which provided readily recognizable figures for audiences to identify with in place of character actors attempting to bring life to unfamiliar personages in remote eras. Richard Burton, Victor Mature, Robert Taylor and, probably most importantly, Charlton Heston have all figured prominently in this process. At the same time, numerous supporting actors, such as Finlay Currie, Ralph Truman, Frank Thring, and Henry Wilcoxon have appeared in numerous epics and become almost equally familiar to movie audiences. The interplay between the heroic protagonist and the secondary characters is also consistently exploited in epic films. The main character often mistakenly puts his personal desires above the greater needs of his society, and these lesser figures then serve either to remind him of those obligations or to foreshadow how historical forces will test the hero in the future. In addition, the main character, whether the title character in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (Universal, 1960) or Marcus (Russell Crowe) in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (Universal, 2000) must discover or even create a supportive community that is more “human” than the oppressive society in which he initially finds himself. At the same time, the epic protagonist must also struggle against the internal or external tyranny by which he and his new society are confronted. The hero’s enemies often expose or embody major thematic concerns in their conversations with the protagonist; however, the latter does not always get a chance to directly confront or destroy his major opponents, as we can see in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (Paramount, 1949) and Victor Saville’s The Silver Chalice (Warner Brothers, 1954).1 In the DeMille epic, Samson (Victor Mature) destroys the Philistines and their ruler (George Sanders) but there is never any direct confrontation between the two men; in the turgid and overly stylized Saville effort, the youthful Greek sculptor (Paul Newman) must overcome his own doubts about the validity of Christianity without ever raising a hand against the wicked magician (Jack Palance) who tries to surpass the miracles of Christ with his own tricks.

6. Mann and Epic Films

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The epic’s purposes and parameters have been notably defined by Derek Elley, who argues, “[T]he epic form transfigures the accomplishments of the past into an inspirational entertainment for the present, trading on received ideas of a continuing national or cultural consciousness. Myth—the projection of a people’s beliefs on a fictional past—allows scope for allegory based on moral, religious or political qualities pertinent to the audience.”2 We shall be on solid ground if we use Elley’s formulation in attempting to evaluate Mann’s purposes as an epic filmmaker; indeed, with this background, the director’s own generic variations will become even more apparent. Like film noir and westerns, epic films have enjoyed a lengthy, if not always successful, history beginning with such silent works as D.W. Griffith’s Judith of Bethulia (1913) and the Babylon sections of Intolerance (1916). DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) and King of Kings (1927) as well as Fred Niblo’s Ben-Hur (MGM, 1925) set the standards for silent epics; however, the coming of sound to movies and the Great Depression saw Hollywood largely eschewing such pictures. While DeMille would produce epics throughout the intervening period, it was not until MGM remade Quo Vadis in 1951 that the epic reemerged as a major Hollywood genre, in no small measure because of the advent of television and the obvious challenges it posed to the movie business. The epic enjoyed its halycion period from the appearance of Quo Vadis through the release of The Fall of the Roman Empire in 1964. Such ancienthistory blockbusters as Henry Koster’s The Robe (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1953), Hollywood’s first CinemaScope offering; Delmer Daves’s Demetrius and the Gladiators (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1954); and Robert Rossen’s Alexander the Great (United Artists, 1956) highlighted this period. Richard Thorpe’s Ivanhoe (MGM, 1952) and Knights of the Round Table (MGM, 1953) as well as Richard Fleischer’s The Vikings (United Artists, 1958) offered medieval spectacles during that same time, while Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1995) and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator have been much praised in recent years. These last two epic films underscore some of the inherent practices and pitfalls of the genre. The William Wallace saga plays somewhat loosely with historical details, perhaps most notably in its telescoping of the time differential between its protagonist’s execution and Robert Bruce’s decisive confrontation with the English. Gladiator exhibits some of the same problems while, at the same time, presenting an unconvincing romantic triangle between its hero, his murdered wife, and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). We are hard-pressed to accept Marcus’s conversion into a Roman patriot because of the influence of Commodus’s sister whom he had rejected in love years before the start of the action. In addition, Gladiator, by suggesting a return

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to Republican Rome in its finale, clearly does more than lightly tamper with history—for no such revival ever took place following the assassination of Marcus Aurelius’s dissolute son. Commentators widely acknowledge that the two most influential figures in epic filmmaking have been Cecil B. DeMille and producer Samuel Bronston. The former largely specialized in presenting spectacular historical pageants from 1930 until his death in 1958. Whether his story was set in ancient times (e.g. The Sign of the Cross [Paramount, 1932]), medieval times (e.g. The Crusades [Paramount, 1935]), or modern times (e.g. The Greatest Show on Earth [Paramount, 1952]), DeMille filled the screen with gargantuan sets, lavish costumes, and hordes of extras in keeping with the standards of epic opulence. In addition, he frequently served as the narrator of his works or appeared onscreen to formally introduce them. Samuel Bronston, after a checkered career as a Hollywood producer, was able to establish himself as an epic filmmaker in Europe beginning in the late 1950s. While he was able to build a major studio in Spain by this time, Bronston would ultimately succumb to a popular weariness with the epic form, poor accounting, and his own nonchalance about his associates’ often cavalier ways with corporate monies, to go into bankruptcy shortly after the release of The Fall of the Roman Empire. Like DeMille, Bronston insisted on epic expenditures on costumes and three-dimensional standing sets, and his films combined these grandiose elements with recognizable Hollywood stars supported by bankable European casts. Elaborate second unit work, often under the supervision of legendary stuntman turned specialist director Yakima Canutt, abounds in Bronston’s productions as do notable music scores by Max Steiner for John Farrow’s John Paul Jones (1959), Miklos Rozsa for Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1962), and Dimitri Tiomkin for Ray’s 55 Days at Peking (1962) and Henry Hathway’s Circus World(1964). While they feature the best scores written by Rozsa and Tiomkin for any Bronston productions, El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire are the producer’s most celebrated works, in no small degree because of the contributions of Anthony Mann. However, before the director was able to achieve those great successes, he had to experience both an apprenticeship and some serious failure in the epic genre.

Trial Runs: Quo Vadis (1951) and Spartacus (1960) Mann’s involvements with Quo Vadis and Spartacus are not nearly as clear as one would wish. That he worked on both films is openly attested and accepted; however, the actual degrees to which he participated and the specific scenes in the finished productions for which he may be responsible are mat-


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ters of some conjecture. He was briefly employed (sources suggest up to three weeks) on the earlier film as a kind of second unit director, and he is variously credited with filming two of Quo Vadis’s more striking sequences: the triumphal entry into Rome of the victorious commander Marcus Vinicius (Robert Taylor) and the spectacular burning of the city as ordered by the mad Emperor Nero (Peter Ustinov). The director was Universal’s choice to supervise Spartacus; indeed, in return for the studio’s helping with the financing of his epic production, Kirk Douglas had to accept Mann. But Mann was found wanting for several (somewhat contradictory) reasons and dismissed after only a few weeks of shooting. Whether he was fired because of unnamed Universal executives’ displeasure with the early rushes of Spartacus, or because of having offended Douglas by making Peter Ustinov, who plays the unctuous slave dealer and gladiatorial entrepreneur Batiatus look too good, will probably forever remain one of Hollywood’s historical enigmas. While the director was paid his full salary for the picture and left with few or no hard feelings after being canned by its producer-star, Mann is generally credited with working on the first third of the film, especially those sequences in the Libyan desert and the gladiatorial school. Even though his exact contributions cannot be ascertained, several features in each work are characteristic of Mann’s style elsewhere; whether he originated such effects or was influenced by having worked on these films, there are clearly camera set-ups and scene stagings in Quo Vadis that are echoed in El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. To begin with, we are brought into Quo Vadis through a narrator (Walter Pidgeon) who describes the oppressive weight of Roman power and Rome’s being in the hands of the mad Nero. This technique will be employed to much greater effect in Mann’s epics, for his narrators will not only set the tone for what we are about to see but also comment most tellingly on what he have seen. When Marcus is finally allowed to ride through the streets of the capitol in triumph, panoramic camerawork emphasizes the huge set from on high with Nero as a framing device. We then see an elaborate dance sequence, shouting mobs, vestal virgins, and a muted emphasis on fire—all elements that will be put to similar uses during the scenes in which Lucilla (Sophia Loren) enters Rome to attempt to save Livius (Stephen Boyd) from her brother Commodus (Christopher Plummer) in The Fall of the Roman Empire. In Quo Vadis we subsequently see Nero and his court walking through marbled halls with an emphasis on the elaborate designs on the palace floors, and Mann seemingly reprises this arrangement when he shows the newly installed emperor Commodus literally dancing over a map of his dominions in The Fall of the Roman Empire.

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Finlay Currie plays the Apostle Peter in Quo Vadis and, in doing so, serves as a “voice of history” whether in preaching to the Christians at a midnight meeting in the catacombs, commenting on the overtly sinful Nero to ordinary Roman citizens, or realizing, because of a beatific vision, that he must return to Rome and join the other martyrs in dying because of Nero’s need for scapegoats to conceal his burning of the metropolis. Currie returns in The Fall of the Roman Empire as Caecina, an aged senator who rises to support the plan of Livius and Timonides (James Mason) to settle barbarians on Roman land; his intervention turns the tide against Commodus at this point, even though the old man’s hope the Empire will change with the times proves ultimately misplaced. Lines of shields are featured in Quo Vadis and reprised to much greater effect in The Fall of the Roman Empire when Livius and Commodus have their final duel within the massive set of the central forum of Rome. When the perplexed Nero must face his own demise in Quo Vadis, we see him wandering through various large rooms in the imperial palace, and Mann later shows the same kind of isolation within grandeur in his Roman epic. In the scenes in which Commodus initially enters the capitol and then retreats to a temple, in which he symbolically lays his crown before the statue of a god and then grins gleefully, and then supinely receives Livius in the same location, before restoring him to command against the Eastern rebellion, Mann exploits the same kind of isolation within grandeur to even more telling effect. The city-burning sequence in Quo Vadis features some set-ups that are characteristic of Mann’s direction elsewhere. Amid howling masses and crumbling walls, we see Marcus trying to move against tides of humanity in order to find his beloved Lygia (Deborah Kerr) and then, finally, taking command of the situation by herding these distraught people into the city’s sewer system. While the use of such a location inevitably reminds us of the elaborate underground pursuit staged in He Walked by Night (1948), Marcus’s pushing aside of the Praetorian Guards, who are blocking the escape route on Nero’s orders, underscores his conversion to the more compassionate ways of Christianity. Indeed, the hero’s rescue of a lost little girl and restoration to her frantic mother clearly foreshadow the Roman commander’s final acceptance of the pacific lifestyle of Lygia. Spartacus also begins with a voiceover that establishes the immediate location (the mines of Libya) and the lineage of the main character (Kirk Douglas), albeit without the same kinds of reference to Roman decadence or ineptitude as found in Quo Vadis. Indeed, those notes have already been established by the film’s credits with their line drawings of Roman sculpture and architecture culminating in the cracking image in the final credit; this


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sequence is accompanied by Alex North’s strident sounding music which ironically establishes the sense of Roman savagery and oppression. In the opening scene we find Mann regular Robert Wilke as the supervising Roman guard, and a struggle between Spartacus and another Roman soldier is characteristically presented by the protagonist’s being kicked down an incline toward the camera and then shown hamstringing his pursuer. Naturally, leading man Douglas is on screen throughout this rugged sequence. When the film moves to the gladiatorial school of Batiatus in Capri, the action is dominated by another of the director’s favorite performers, Charles McGraw as Marcellus, the sadistic principal trainer of “those who are about to die.” At various points the trainer tests Spartacus by challenging him to combat, using him to illustrate the various ways to wound or kill an opponent, or mocking him when he is too gentle with Varinia (Jean Simmons) who has been sent into his cell as a prostitute. In all these moments, McGraw performs as memorably as he did in T-Men and Border Incident. Like the conventional villains in so many westerns, Marcellus functions as the evil spur that eventually goads the hero to rise up and assert the morality of human society. In Spartacus that moment of resorting to violent action to achieve justice occurs when the protagonist sees Varinia being taken away after Batiatus has sold her to Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier) in the aftermath of the death of Draba (Woody Strode). Naturally, the always pugnacious Marcellus cannot resist tweaking Spartacus about the loss of his beloved. We have seen this growing feeling between the protagonist and the slave girl conducted in brief whispers and furtive touches and smiles during meals; however, the arrival of Crassus and his party at the school precipitates the crisis that leads to Spartacus becoming the leader of a slave revolt that will spread to all of Italy. The resultant fight to the death between the hero and Draba is a wedding gift that the obscenely wealthy and overly sophisticated Crassus purchases to amuse his sister (Joanna Barnes) who is about to marry a Roman commander (John Dahl). The gladiators’ fight, which results in Spartacus being overcome and then unexpectedly spared by his opponent, occurs within the confined space of a courtyard with walls and steel fences enclosing the combatants. The gladiators also enter through a doorway from a hut, and Mann conspicuously films the initial combat between Crixus (John Ireland) and another fighter from within the enclosed space in which Spartacus and Draba sit and watch. In their own combat, like many another fight in a Mann film, the actors do all the actual swordplay and grappling within a confined space that foreshadows similar moments in El Cid, in which the protagonist will be confined by his own mounted troops as he rides in circles lamenting the fate of his wife and children, and The Fall of the Roman Empire, in the struggles between

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Romans and barbarians inside a cave and at the climax between Livius and Commodus. When the suddenly enraged Draba turns against his Roman “buyers,” hurls his trident at the balcony on which Crassus and his guests are seated, and then starts climbing the wall up to them, Crassus cuts the slave’s neck and blood symbolically spatters over the Roman aristocrat’s face. Such concentrated and overtly violent action is, of course, characteristic of Mann and suggests that Spartacus might have ultimately been better paced with the director in charge for the entire production. It is, however, the final breaking out of the gladiators from Batiatus’s school that represents the clearest instance of Mann’s work on Spartacus. When Marcellus goads the protagonist over his loss of Varinia and then hits him for talking out of turn, Spartacus leaps to the attack and proceeds to drown his tormentor in a vat of soup. The slave-gladiator twists the trainer’s left arm behind him while using his own right arm to push Marcellus’s head into the cauldron; the positioning of these characters clearly recalls the memorable attack on Waco Johnnie Dean (Dan Duryea) by Lin McAdam (James Stewart) in Winchester ’73. In the ensuing struggle between the escaping slaves and the school’s guards, the gladiators scale an iron fence which collapses frontally on some of these defenders, and Spartacus kills another guard in a pool which reminds us of the climactic river struggle between Glyn McLyntock (James Stewart) and Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy) in Bend of the River.

Soap Opera as Epic: Cimarron (1960) Mann’s involvement with Cimarron poses different problems from those which arise from his work on Quo Vadis and Spartacus. While his exact contributions to those finished films must remain probably forever unclear, his work on the Edna Ferber–inspired tale of settling the Oklahoma territory was augmented by other directorial hands. According to various accounts, MGM executives were either disappointed with Mann’s handling of the romantic aspects of the plot or were driven by cost considerations to deny the director’s request for location work in favor of less costly studio-bound shooting. While Mann wanted to make an outdoor epic that would trace what he saw as the rise of modern America and which would resemble his westerns in style, the studio increasingly saw the project as a woman’s picture which could and should be done on a sound stage. Cimarron undoubtedly was scheduled for release in 1960 as a follow up to MGM’s mammoth success of 1959, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur; indeed, the same formula—of remaking a previously successful movie—was invoked, albeit with a new script that would, hopefully, update some of the more


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turgid moments and dialogue of Wesley Ruggles’s 1931 Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Unfortunately, these transitional problems were not well handled so that Mann’s Cimarron emerges as one of the least satisfactory of his later films. The inherent dichotomy of the original Ferber novel, in which the wanderings of Yancy Cravat and the patient sufferings of his wife Sabra are pitted against each other, was better handled in the earlier version. Mann’s remake succumbs to its original source in becoming a woman’s picture similar to George Stevens’s far more successful Giant (Warner Brothers, 1956). Certainly the basic ingredients for an epic story are present in Cimarron with its combination of historical pageantry played out against the family, social, and marital dynamics of the Cravats. This kind of plot balance is, alas, not achieved in the finished film, for the emotional turmoil and travails of Sabra (Maria Schell) all but completely overshadow the activities of Yancy (Glenn Ford). Historical events and processes such as the opening of the Cherokee Strip and the discovery of oil in Oklahoma are alluded to; however, they are given essentially short shrift so that the domestic problems of Sabra, whose son marries an Indian and whose husband leaves home for years at a time, can dominate the second half of Cimarron’s running time. Mann’s work does not lack the kind of production finish or large expenditures that characterize the epic genre. Its substantial and rousing musical score by Franz Waxman is appropriately invoked to accompany the Cravats as they set out in prairie schooners to get to Oklahoma for the Cimarron Strip rush, and it becomes even more prevalent once they join the other land seekers. Waxman’s main theme is variously modulated throughout so that, in addition to serving under rambunctious sequences, it also emerges in a much gentler form when Yancy returns to find that Sabra has just given birth to their son. Such sequences as Yancy’s impulsive decision to join the later Cherokee Strip rush and the montage which establishes that Tom Wyatt (Arthur O’Connell) has become an oil baron receive appropriate musical treatments, as does the film’s final shot of a statue of Yancy as the symbol of the pioneering spirit that has made a civilization out of what was, heretofore, an untamed wilderness. As is probably to be expected, Cimarron’s natural locations and studio interiors often clash stylistically, so that the initial trek across the prairie with its real backgrounds is offset by the artificiality of the campsite and pool setting into which the youthful badmen, the Cherokee Kid (Russ Tamblyn) and his sidekick Wes (Vic Morrow), intrude upon the bathing Sabra. The same obvious juxtaposition accompanies the shootout between these wild young men and Yancy within the town: The hero walks through a very realistic exterior location only to gain entry into a highly artificial-looking

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schoolroom set that appears to be more a false front than a genuine building. While Mann’s version retains many of the incidents from the Ruggles original, the Arnold Schulman screenplay omits the sermon that Yancy (Richard Dix) preaches before shooting it out with Bob Yountis (Stanley Fields) and replaces it with a gunfight between these same characters at the site where Yountis (Charles McGraw) has just lynched an Indian husband. Moreover, while the Yountis character torments the Jewish peddler Sol Levy in both films, the Mann version also makes the villain the embodiment of anti–Indian prejudice in order, perhaps, to play down the obvious anti–Semitism of the earlier work. In addition, Mann’s protagonist emerges as both a less patient and a more moralistic character than in the original film; thus, while Yancy can laugh at the arrival of the Cherokee Kid and Wes at his campsite and Sabra’s displeasure at their appearance in 1931, by 1960 the character has come to react much less generously as he enters with a drawn pistol to bring a halt to the shenanigans of the two young men. Glenn Ford’s Yancy preaches the good life to the unrepentant Cherokee Kid and becomes an ever more strident advocate for the rights of the Native Americans as Mann’s version proceeds. The final half-hour of Cimarron seems rushed as Yancy repeatedly runs away to adventures, whether in the Spanish-American War, various gold fields, or World War I, and the film stays doggedly with Sabra Yancey Cravat (Glenn Ford) embraces his emas she contents herself with battled wife Sabra (Maria Schell) in the remake of Cimarron (MGM, 1960). Studio second guess- making their newspaper ing led to Mann’s outdoor action epic being into a major metropolitan transformed into a veritable soap opera. daily, playing with her


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grandchildren as she comes to accept her daughter-in-law, and longing always to hear from her husband. While the original version retained Ferber’s big sentimental finale in which Sabra is reunited with the dying Yancy in the oil fields, Mann’s version opts instead for a shot of a telegram announcing Yancy’s death on the Western Front, leading into a montage in which Sabra remembers earlier happier moments with him and the film then segues to its final shot of the hero’s statue. Mann apparently wanted to film the original ending in which Sabra would hear of an expiring man in the oil field, intuit that he was her longlost beloved, and go to his side for their final words together; and certainly such a sequence would have accorded well with the director’s feel for location shooting and his fascination with machinery. In any event, this version of the finale was jettisoned in favor of the summary conclusion; and, while this is hardly the same degree of tinkering that accompanied the postproduction phase of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (RKO, 1942), it leaves viewers with a much less satisfied feeling than the Wesley Ruggles original does. Despite such qualms, Mann’s final scenes, replete as they are with Sabra’s nobility and self-sacrifice, bring about a fitting conclusion to the family drama that is at the heart of Cimarron by showing the enduring qualities of frontier women in the face of the physical and emotional hardships that they had to endure. By making Yancy more socially conscious and openly outspoken against abuses and political cronyism, Mann’s Cimarron only serves to make this mysterious character even more enigmatic than he appears in the novel or the earlier film version. We initially see him in his in-laws’ kitchen delivering an enthusiastic description of the Oklahoma territory by means of flour and utensils. His presence there serves to emphasize his alienation from Sabra’s parents, who are concurrently imploring their daughter not to leave for a wild frontier with her new husband. On the trail it becomes ever more apparent that everybody knows Yancy (or “Cim” as many of them call him) whether they be rambunctious roustabouts like the Cherokee Kid or Wes, or the long-established and upstanding citizens like the Peglers (Robert Keith and Aline MacMahon). All of these people also know about Yancy’s penchant for being a wanderer, and they are all taken slightly taken aback by his having a wife—none more so than Dixie Lee (Anne Baxter), who introduces another aspect of the protagonist by implying that he has been sexually free and easy before meeting Sabra. Yancy turns down Sam Pegler’s offer to become his partner in the newspaper because the protagonist wants to stake a claim and settle down; however, when Yancy is tricked out of getting the property by a ruse of Dixie’s, he changes his mind. Returning to Sabra with the news that he failed

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to stake out their dream home, Yancy is confronted by the death of Sam during the land rush; and, after the imploring of the publisher’s widow, he symbolically picks up and contemplates the dead man’s glasses before agreeing to take over his newspaper, the Wigwam. While Yancy quickly becomes a crusading editor, and Sabra and the faithful typesetter Jesse Rickey (Harry Morgan) manage the newspaper’s more mundane functions, Cravat is caught up in the demise of the Cherokee Kid. Seeing a wanted poster for the young desperado, Mann’s male protagonist gives Sabra a lecture on how circumstances have conspired to drive the Kid into a life of crime. In this instance, and in his constant acceptance of and support for the local Indians, Yancy emerges as the proper liberal conscience of the community. After the schoolroom shootout in which Wes kills the Kid, and Yancy promptly kills Wes, the protagonist shows his feeling for the younger man in an even more dramatic fashion. Despite the protestations of Sabra about what could be done for their son, Yancy tears up a check he has received as reward money for ridding the community of the Cherokee Kid with the argument “I don’t take money for killing a man.” The rift between Yancy and Sabra then widens when he heads for the Cherokee Strip, despite promising her that he will not, and then to Cuba to fight the Spanish without returning home for five years. When news of his homecoming arrives, Sabra and her friends congregate at the railway station to greet the returning hero, only to be disappointed when Yancy doesn’t show up; however, he then quietly arrives at home to embrace Sabra and take up his long-neglected roles of husband and father. Despite the unlikelihood of such a gregarious character wanting to return with no fanfare, Mann’s film moves on to show Yancy failing in the new oil business—in sharp contrast to the massive success of Tom Wyatt—and then trying to intercede to protect the mineral rights of the Native Americans only to be checkmated by Wyatt, who has taken out options on all their lands. In a final attempt to fit into society and to please the long-suffering Sabra, Yancy agrees to become the first governor of the new state of Oklahoma and goes to Washington to get the approval of Congressional and party bosses. On New Year’s Eve we see Sabra blissfully preparing for an elaborate party which she believes will signal the start of her and Yancy’s life together in politics. The protagonist has, of course, not abandoned his idealistic aims or temperament and, while he wants to please Sabra, the demands of the new job must accord with his values. At a meeting with his potential political backers, Yancy discovers that they are controlled by Wyatt and that, as a result, he will have to accommodate the moneyed interests from which he has become increasingly alienated. After he has refused the offer to be governor, Yancy returns to the party


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and attempts to explain his actions to the still ecstatic Sabra; he goes so far as to remind her of how she took a chance and ran off with him to the territory years before. However, his refusal represents the proverbial last straw for his distraught wife, who loudly announces, “I’m just through”; and, for the remainder of the movie, Yancy is not seen until the final scene in which he is resurrected as a statue. One leaves Cimarron dismayed because its central male character is missing from so much of its running time and, more seriously, because his constant wanderings are belied by his various quests for justice and the excessively apologetic tone he so frequently employs with Sabra. Mann’s film would have been more coherent if it had either shown us Yancy in his various adventures or given more convincing explanations for his frequent desertions of his family and Sabra. The enigma of the male protagonist’s motivations definitely undermines the effectiveness of Cimarron. A different set of problems and weaknesses arise when Sabra becomes the film’s primary focus. Mann was certainly not helped by the casting of Maria Schell, whose noticeable accent gets explained away at one point by the remark that she grew up “in the old country.” However, his greater problem is that the screenplay centers too much of its attention on a character who is long-suffering and naïve. It would be as though Gone with the Wind were focused on Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland) instead of on Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh). Mann, like many another action director, falters with such a character as his centerpiece. While the director could succeed with a masculinized Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck) in The Furies, Sabra Cravat proved too much for him. Because her energies are centered on propriety and respectability, Sabra comes off as somewhere between simply being spoiled and disingenuous. She starts promisingly enough by turning her back on her conventional upbringing in her parents’ “safe” home to go west with Yancy, but, unlike other frontier heroines, she never completely adjusts to the demands of the new life into which she is thrown. Her verbal bigotry toward the Indians mirrors the outright hatred of a Yountis and becomes even more overt when her son marries a Native American and decides to strike out on his own. All Sabra can say when the young couple announces their intention to go to Oregon is “throw your life away” to her own child. In essence, she has become her own sorrowful mother (Lili Darvas), albeit without the latter’s brief touch of grace when she watched from an upstairs window as the heroine departed on her own marital adventure. For most of Cimarron, Sabra works diligently at running the newspaper and trying to bring more civilization to the town in the form of afternoon teas. Despite such activities, she remains madly in love with Yancy. At

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one point, desperate for news of him, she even goes into Dixie Lee’s brothel to inquire of her (seeming) romantic rival about her spouse’s whereabouts; however, this single daring episode is compromised throughout by Sabra’s alternately pleading with the hero or chastising him for his lack of practicality. Sabra cannot fathom that “a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” especially when such obligations threaten her family. She can romanticize Yancy in death and be thoroughly loyal to him in life, but she cannot provide enough dramatic interest to keep Mann’s film from capsizing. Indeed, with the deaths of Yountis and the young outlaws, Cimarron becomes as much a soap opera as the second (post–Civil War) section of Gone with the Wind does. Unfortunately, the supporting female characters are more engaging than Sabra, because in some considerable measure they can take charge of either their own lives or those of their men. Thus, Dixie not only defeats Yancy in the race for the best land but she is also not averse to being the sexual aggressor with him later in a sequence in which he turns her down, as a good man should. Sarah Wyatt (Mercedes McCambridge) proves much more resilient than her knockabout husband Tom, for, on the day of the first land rush, he falls out of a stage on which he has booked passage and can only look tearfully at the horizon and his disappearing hopes, while she stakes out the land in the foreground so that her family will have somewhere to live. If anything, the women of Cimarron, in addition to being dedicated to bringing about a greater degree of civilization and shaping the future through their maternal instincts, exist to protect and encourage the dreams of the men they love. In the period which Cimarron covers, from 1889 to the mid–1920s, civilization clearly arrives in its political and technological forms as statehood and motor cars replace rule by gun play and horses. Whether it also comes in the form of greater tolerance and understanding remains more doubtful in spite, or perhaps because, of Sabra’s final acceptance of her racially “mixed” grandchildren at the surprise anniversary party thrown for her and the newspaper. Since we never see any prior reconciliation between the embittered mother and her son and daughter-in-law, this development occurs too abruptly and probably constitutes yet another instance of the studio’s apparent rush to finish the production. While Yancy stands firmly against the forces of prejudice and greed embodied by Yountis and Tom Wyatt, Sabra never demonstrates the same moral clarity. Instead, she consistently dramatizes one of the film’s (and the novel’s) most enduring concerns—that of female loss and the ability to handle it in a way that does not, ultimately, compromise either one’s character or one’s basic commitments to love and family. This theme is also artfully


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shown in Mrs. Pegler, who mourns over the grave of her beloved husband before setting off to find a new life elsewhere; by the stoic Indian widow whom Yancy rescues after he has revenged her husband by killing Yountis; and by Dixie, who accepts her rejections by the hero and goes on to survive as a rancher and then a bordello madam. These striking vignettes are, alas, obscured and undone by the central place that Sabra occupies in the film. While she feels the loss of her man most deeply, she never really transcends her circumstances to emerge as heroic or complex enough to engage the audience. That she does not is, finally, the basic reason why Cimarron fails to satisfy. While the experience of making the film undoubtedly taught Mann many things about epic logistics and formulae, he could not make enough of Cimarron focus on plot and character elements which would have provided greater opportunities for the exercise of his own stylistic strengths. His avowed purpose of tracing the historical and social developments of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, ultimately, undone as much by the screenplay’s pronounced emphasis on soap opera as by the studio executives who wanted to cut costs.

Epic as Political Philosophy: El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) Serious political issues are rarely addressed in any extended way, let alone dramatized in any depth, in epic films. Indeed, such debates as how power should be transferred or the extent to which the individual owes loyalty to the state are generally reduced to melodramatic sequences dominated by romantic or ideological feelings or predispositions. In epic films, political disputes, which would have had an unpredictability for their participants, are often comfortably and rapidly handled by the characters’ omniscience about their historical futures. Too often epic screenwriters and directors seemingly forget that hindsight is always one hundred percent accurate, as opposed to foresight which can only be based on what an individual currently knows without the benefits of later information. Typically, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) predicts the defeat of the Confederacy, and Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) intuits the same result but goes along anyway in Gone with the Wind on the very day that they learn about war having been declared. Epic filmmakers consistently present historical and political conflicts as personality-driven, so that psychological and romantic motives, which are obviously easier to grasp and to dramatize than large social movements, dominate their plots. In essence, the personal storyline swamps the social background. While regional, national, or private political

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loyalties are often invoked, such concerns hardly ever serve as immediate sources for ongoing conflicts in epic films. Thus, Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953), and Ben-Hur (1959) present the inhabitants of the Roman Empire as either mindlessly devoted or adamantly opposed to receiving the distracting pleasures or executing the shortsighted policies of their imperial masters. Ultimately, Rome’s world order is built on force rather than justice, and armed might rather than ethical probity or political allegiances. Unbalanced and egocentric tyrants like Nero (Peter Ustinov in Quo Vadis) and Caligula (Jay Robinson in The Robe) rule through terror over a bifurcated society made up of idle libertines and unquestioned robotic soldiers devoted to suppressing any and all dissent. In such historical epics, the perplexing political problem of why rational individuals would obey such unstable madmen is usually sidestepped by focusing on the rise of Christianity and its message of “rendering” unto Caesar and God what is appropriately theirs. The horrors of contemporary Rome are transcended by the protagonists’ acceptance of the new religion’s teachings about love and charity. Marcus and Lygia happily escape into a safe and private Christian life at the end of Quo Vadis; Marcus (Richard Burton) and Diana (Jean Simmons) literally rise to Heaven as martyrs to the strains of a “celestial choir” (supplied by composer Alfred Newman and his long-time associate Ken Darby) in The Robe; and even the Jewish hero Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) finally embraces the new faith after witnessing the Crucifixion and the subsequent miraculous healing of his mother’s and sister’s leprosy in Ben-Hur. Spartacus portrays the cruelty of Roman rule without the amelioration of Christianity; however, its protagonist’s desires for individual, familial, social, and romantic freedoms puts the film on ideological grounds that are familiar and acceptable to American audiences. Political intrigues in Spartacus are diffused into romantic and personal rivalries as the wealthy patrician Crassus is spurned, first by the artistic slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) and then by Varinia, before being finally outwitted by his elderly senatorial rival Gracchus (Charles Laughton). Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956) raise the issue of personal versus public loyalty. Samson finally redeems himself as the leader of his people by destroying the Philistine temple after being betrayed because of his love for Delilah (Hedy Lamarr); Moses (Charlton Heston) transcends the private lure of the flesh (Anne Baxter) and sublimates the obligations of family (Yvonne de Carlo) to bring the Chosen People out of bondage. Epics like Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) and The Silver Chalice (1954) more typically reduce political issues to matters of unquestioning personal loyalty, whether to benevolent or malevolent rulers


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or the redeeming powers of Christianity. Knights of the Round Table (1953) and The Vikings (1958) illustrate the same reductive process in medieval trappings: in both films, romantic and personal conflicts clearly count for more than political issues. El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire embody a thematic seriousness that sets them apart from nearly all other epics. In combining generic forms with serious political subtexts, these two films show the thematic and artistic skills and subtleties of Mann at this point in his career; and so, El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire emerge as spectacles worthy of more serious critical attention than has usually been extended to works in this genre. Such a view does not accord with most critical thinking and commentary about the director which categorizes and praises him as, at best, an inspired maker of film noir and westerns and a superb technician with the medieval Spanish work. Critical praise for El Cid and critical dismissals of The Fall of the Roman Empire are initially perplexing since both epics were made by essentially the same technical crews; in effect, some very talented people had apparently lost their cunning when making the later film. In addition to Mann and producer Samuel Bronston, both epics credit cinematographer Robert Krasker, second unit director Yakima Canutt, editor Robert Lawrence, set designers Venerio Colasanti and John Moore, and lead writer Philip Yordan—and subsequent scholarly research has established that an uncredited Ben Barzeman worked on El Cid as well as The Fall of the Roman Empire. The only major technical difference between the two works is the substitution of Dimitri Tiomkin for Miklos Rozsa as composer, a change that hardly represents a drastic alteration since both men were well established for creating music in traditional Hollywood styles. Because mammoth cost overruns on The Fall of the Roman Empire led, ultimately, to the demise of Bronston’s Spanish-based film studio and the producer’s falling into bankruptcy and professional obscurity, that film has suffered from the stigma so often attached to such box office “turkeys” as Joseph Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963) and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980). One wonders if its financial history has loomed too large in the minds of too many of its critics. Mann’s epics are clearly linked by title sequences designed to create the illusion of historical distance for their audiences. Both films’ credit sequences play out against drawings by Maciak Piotrowski that illustrate settings and situations that will feature prominently in what follows. The designs for El Cid present the major events in its storyline while those for The Fall of the Roman Empire are more generalized, as if to present the very process of decline and decay which is the film’s overarching concern. In essence,

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Piotrowski’s illustrations point up the dynamic and static worlds which Mann subsequently presents, and these visual “overtures” are cleverly augmented by Rozsa’s and Tiomkin’s scores which also provide strikingly different tones for these films. Rozsa’s music for the credits of El Cid features themes for the hero (A) and the lovers (B) developed in an A-B-A pattern.3 Significantly, the Cid’s theme surrounds and, finally, replaces that associated with his feelings for Chimene (Sophia Loren) to imply that his public role must prevail over the claims of his private life. The timing of this musical pattern also foreshadows the plot by shifting from (A) to (B) over a drawing of the Cid arriving at the three crosses on his flight into exile from the court of Alfonso (John Fraser). In the film, this sequence represents the reconciliation between the protagonist and his heretofore alienated wife, and so Rozsa’s score takes up its most romantic theme. The subsequent shift of the love theme (B) in the credits back to the hero’s melody (A) occurs against a drawing which represents the siege of Valencia to, again, suggest how the Cid’s allegiances—to love and the nation of Spain—must be valued. Chimene’s urging of the hero to do his duty and ignore what might happen to her and his children also underlies this change of mood. Clearly, El Cid’s title designs include such distinct points as the joust at Calahorra, the meeting of the lovers, and the siege of Valencia as foreshadowings that prepare the audience for what is to come. Tiomkin’s music for the credits in The Fall of the Roman Empire is much more unitary in mood, tone, and design. While it sounds properly grandiose with its stridently blaring brass meant to symbolize the amoral might of the Roman state, choral effects and prominent organ passages quickly reverse that militaristic ambience as well as the motivic style usually employed in an epic film. Piotrowski’s title designs, which seem to employ the entire course of Roman art from its classical Greek origins to its more ethereal and mystical Byzantine finale, do not significantly preview specific incidents from the story that is to unfold. Instead, they emphasize the opulent, static, and terminal conditions of the Roman Empire by recreating the kinds of broken objects we associate with archaeological digs; characteristically, many of these drawings, like so much Roman art, emphasize gigantic buildings and statuary designed to overawe the viewer and reaffirm the power of the state. Tiomkin’s chorus and organ lend a “Christianized” aura, as if to suggest that the historically secular world of the film will be finally replaced by other forces, in keeping with its title. Thus, the music in The Fall of the Roman Empire’s credit sequence establishes the downbeat themes of an epic in which heroic personal actions will prove inadequate to stem the tide of larger historical forces. While the atmosphere of El Cid is one in which heroic possi-


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Rodrigo (Charlton Heston) and Chimene (Sophia Loren) greet the silent waiting army after their night of love in the barn in El Cid (Bronston/Allied Artists, 1961). The title character realizes that he cannot have a private life with his beloved but must continue to fight for Spain.

bilities are suggested by Rozsa’s rousing and Spanish-styled themes, the less hopeful world of Rome in the second century A.D . is clearly implied by Tiomkin’s funereal sounding organ in support of Piotrowski’s drawings of stationary and archaic objects. While El Cid ends with a rousing organ passage as the protagonist rides out to victory, and to becoming a “legend” as the narration declares, The Fall of the Roman Empire uses the same instrument to convey an atmosphere imbued with sadness and loss. Voiceover narrators start the action in both films. The spokesman in El Cid begins by giving a date (1080 A.D.) for the action, but all we really need to know is that it’s the eleventh century in Spain since real historical chronology is either ignored or blurred throughout much of what follows.4 Mann’s narrator proceeds to introduce the Moorish militarist Ben Yussef (Herbert Lom) in a scene in which the Moslem leader rides down a ramp to his assembled co-religionists from Spain. The sound effects for this sequence, which emphasize the sound of his horse’s hooves on cobblestones with no other noises, will be reprised when the dead protagonist rides down to lead his forces against Ben Yussef at the film’s finale; in this way, Mann visually

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Anthony Mann inspects a model of ancient Rome during the production of The Fall of the Roman Empire (Bronston/Paramount, 1964). Despite initially being a box office disaster, the film has emerged as one of the high points of Mann’s career.

reverses his two characters to once again underscore the progress of his plot and their struggles. Later, the narrator returns to introduce Ben Yussef’s visit to Valencia to rally the effete and treacherous Al Kadir (Frank Thring). In the conclusion, the narrator’s voice makes Mann’s highly impressionistic and subjective camera treatment of the Cid’s final ride more believable by introducing it in such an “unrealistic” fashion: The hero rides into mythical status through the gate of Valencia accompanied by both Rozsa’s swelling organ chords and the narrator’s tone as the “voice of history.” The narrator in The Fall of the Roman Empire is also featured at the film’s beginning when he calls attention to two of history’s “greatest problems”—how to account for the rise and fall of Rome. His academic tone dramatically introduces the more sober and reflective qualities of Mann’s vision here. The narrator is then not heard again until the film’s final moments


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when he announces that, in the wake of Livius’s (Stephen Boyd) rejection of the imperial throne and the subsequent bargaining between the gruff Victorinus (George Murcell) and the sycophantic courtiers Julianus (Eric Porter) and Niger (Douglas Wilmer), the fall of the Empire has truly begun. The only other brief voiceovers are those of Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness), who alternates soliloquy and internal narration as he contemplates his own death, and Lucilla (Sophia Loren), whose trip through the nightmarish and mobbed streets of Rome in search of her captured lover Livius leads her to internally cry out over the fate of her country. In keeping with the requirements of his plot, Mann shows Marcus Aurelius ending his plea for additional time to make a universal peace for Rome by shrugging and accepting that his fate is in the hands of the gods, while the distraught Lucilla, finally realizing that her father’s dream is not possible and there can be no life apart from Livius, rushes to join him at the stake where he has been chained by order of her demented brother Commodus (Christopher Plummer). El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire consistently pit loyalty to love against allegiance to the political order. The male and female protagonists in both works find themselves torn between the demands of their hearts and their societies. Rodrigo (El Cid) loves Chimene but is driven from her by family and state obligations; Livius and Lucilla must sacrifice their feelings to the demands of the good emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and the well ordering of their society. In both films the heroines carry the thematic movement of ultimately adjusting to and accepting the conflicting demands and realities of self and society in the times in which they live. Chimene, who experiences her father’s death and then swears to seek revenge on his killer who is the man she loves, spends the first half of El Cid plotting against the hero. She schemes to kill him with the help of Count Ordonez (Raf Vallone), and when that effort fails, she confronts Rodrigo with the prospect of a loveless marriage on their wedding night, after the protagonist has demanded their union as a “gift” from a grateful King Ferdinand (Ralph Truman). Chimene’s denial of Rodrigo’s (and her own suppressed) love causes her to flee to a convent where she is advised by the prescient Abbess (Barbara Everest) that her real life is in the world. The Princess Urraca (Genevieve Page) then orders Chimene back to the court at Burgos in the hope that she will prevent the Cid from making a serious breach of medieval political ethics. Following the struggle between his sons over the dead Ferdinand’s throne, the Cid demands that Alfonso publicly swear that he played no part in the assassination of his brother Sancho (Gary Raymond). Urraca, who orchestrated the murder with Ben Yussef’s unseen help, believes that Chimene’s mere presence will dissuade Rodrigo from an open confrontation

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Charlton Heston in El Cid (Bronston/Allied Artists, 1961). The hero’s final ride against his Moorish enemies is captured in one of the most stunning photographic sequences in all of Mann’s films.


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with his new monarch. Such is not the case, however, as Chimene remains silent while watching the protagonist openly humiliate Alfonso by pressing the ruler’s hand to a Bible before offering his own fealty. Mann’s treatment of this confrontation, with its panning shot to Rodrigo standing alone among Alfonso’s kneeling subjects and its ever-tighter framing of the conflict between the two men once the protagonist has crossed the square to submit his ruler to an oath, boldly asserts his epic style. Chimene’s romantic reconciliation with Rodrigo occurs only after she has overheard Alfonso’s plan to send the hero into exile. The neophyte ruler egotistically seeks redress for what he perceives as a personal insult, and the heroine, whose intense close-up fills half the screen while Alfonso and his cohorts in deep focus occupy the other half, reacts in horror. Her estranged husband’s demand that the new monarch publicly swear to his innocence has revealed Rodrigo’s genuine concerns for justice and social order: She can forgive him for killing her father because she sees that his virtues show him incapable of ever acting ignobly. Chimene restores and sanctifies their private life by joining the Cid in a symbolic landscape, in which he has shared water with a leper who recognizes him and beneath three wooden crosses which resemble Calvary, and becoming his wife at last. Their night of love in a peasant’s barn leads to an idyllic dawn on which they awaken to speak hopefully of finding a “private place” where they can become anonymous and happy. Even Rodrigo temporally feels that love now outweighs duty; however, when he and Chimene emerge to be greeted by a silent army of his followers, the protagonist, now once more the Cid, recognizes his higher calling. This powerful example of reversal of mood within a scene lays bare the basic conflicts in El Cid in a way that, again, emphasizes Mann’s mastery. Chimene can only scream that her husband has done enough and must not be forced to lead this army in exile; the Cid knows that his adherents embody the political idea and ideal of “Spain” and that he must act in the public arena despite his private longings. Symbolically, the Cid returns Chimene to the sanctuary of the convent as she bemoans the separation they must now face. When he subsequently returns to see his beloved and their twin daughters, the heroine has accepted his view of the world, for she insists that their family’s interests, as well as the nation’s, demand that Ben Yussef be defeated. Her love is now based on the necessity of her husband’s leading Spain’s army; like him, and many another hero of romance or legend, Chimene has learned that her romantic feelings must be grounded on higher allegiances to honor and duty. It is, of course, another of the visual highlights of El Cid when Mann dramatizes the hero’s need for Chimene by later showing the protagonist in anguish on the beach before Valencia when he learns that his family has been

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sent to the dungeon by Alfonso. In a remarkable scene, the Cid rides in a circle within a square of mounted troops while crying out that he should be able to think of his own feelings for once. Thus, we see that public and private roles are never permanently settled but remain a struggle, for in El Cid individual and political morality are ongoing quests. Mann’s own evolution from the world of the theater and the stage to that of motion pictures is once more powerfully demonstrated by his ingenious choreographing and photographing of such a scene. Chimene’s ethical growth is further dramatized when she confronts the wounded Alfonso, who has lost a battle to Ben Yussef and blames the Cid’s not joining him for this defeat. After he has a wound sutured by a red-hot knife, the youthful and headstrong ruler boasts of his endurance, but Chimene sagely replies that it takes “more than courage to make a king.” Her judgment shows her to be on an equal moral footing with the Cid, for they have become the teachers to Spain’s young princes—even when, as in this case, their lessons are not heeded. Earlier, the Cid had been admonished by King Ferdinand to teach Sancho the ways of a monarch; and Rodrigo does so most dramatically by sparing the treacherous Ordonez after being ambushed by Al Kadir and rescued by Moutamin (Douglas Wilmer). In essence, the hero insists that personal restraint and not the more immediately satisfying use of revenge must guide a ruler (“Only a king can give life!”). Chimene’s equally valid teaching is ignored as Alfonso condemns her and the Cid’s children to be imprisoned— a juxtaposition that contrasts markedly with Timonides’s (James Mason) reaction to being tortured with fire in The Fall of the Roman Empire. After bemoaning his own lack of faith after he has touched the pagan statue of Wotan to stop his suffering, Timonides quickly rallies from personal anger and says that Rome does indeed want to help the barbarians. Chimene’s escape from Alfonso’s dungeon and her reunion with the hero follows a scene in which she tells the still lovestruck Ordonez that she would gladly sacrifice her life and those of her children if such an act would prevent her husband from abandoning the siege of Valencia to try and rescue her. The count sees, for the first time, that Chimene’s love for the Cid is as great as his own for her and then agrees to help her and the children escape. Once again, the lovers are reunited at a junction in a road, only this time the hero’s redemptive and inspirational powers are more heavily emphasized when Ordonez asks if he can now fight at the protagonist’s side and the hero agrees by saying, “We have need of such men.” The public demands on the Cid are, however, almost immediately reasserted as he and the others now hear the drums of Ben Yussef’s army and, after a ride through some rocky country, they come upon the Moorish fleet


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disembarking hordes of black-clad enemy warriors. From this point on, Mann’s hero must dedicate himself to his public role, both in taking and defending Valencia. On his final night, after being fatally wounded, Rodrigo makes Chimene swear that she will enable him to “leave” his life meaningfully by appearing at the head of his troops in the morning. In making his beloved swear to do so, and by stressing that he wishes to be remembered by her and his children as riding to battle “with my king,” the protagonist sacrifices his private world to save and be sanctified by his public world. The lovers in The Fall of the Roman Empire completely reverse this pattern, for their reconciliation occurs only when they become aware that there are no useful public roles for them to play, let alone to give their lives to preserve or protect. Loyalty to the state and to differing visions of what the Empire can and should be are uppermost for Livius and Lucilla through much of the film. The heroine even dismisses her love for the hero when her father, Marcus Aurelius, decrees that, in the interests of future political stability, she must wed the Armenian ruler Sohames (Omar Sharif). Despite their conversation about a life without requited love (shot skillfully by arranging Lucilla, Marcus Aurelius, and a bust of Faustina, her mother and his unfaithful wife in three distinct planes in deep focus), Mann’s heroine agrees that political duty and adhering to her father’s wishes must come before personal feelings. While Lucilla tries to shape the Empire after her father’s death through direct persuasion of her brother Commodus, Livius follows the teachings of Timonides who urges that there are other ways of bringing about the former ruler’s vision of a world state at peace. Livius, despite Marcus Aurelius’s wish that he be his successor, decides he must hail Commodus as “undoubted Caesar” during the visually stunning wintry funeral sequence. He then oversteps himself when he defies his erstwhile friend and now ruler by persuading the Senate to settle German tribesmen as free citizens on Roman land. At the same time, by showing that he could rationally appeal to public opinion, Livius has clearly failed to realize that such assumptions about consensus decision making count as nothing to the demented Commodus. To forestall Livius’s proposal being taken to the Senate, Commodus tries to bribe the hero with Lucilla, who has returned to Rome as an emissary from the beleaguered Eastern provinces. When the mad ruler sends the hero into his sister’s room, Mann reprises another set-up from El Cid: The scene is shot from a bird’s eye view as the sleeping Lucilla is awakened by her lover’s kiss as a circular pool of light from an opening in the roof bathes them. Mann then cuts to an intense close-up of the lovers and we hear Lucilla urge Livius to pursue his political aims, regardless of any cost to their per-

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Commodus (Christopher Plummer) and Verulus (Anthony Quayle), his real father, fight as Lucilla (Sophia Loren) looks on in The Fall of the Roman Empire (Bronston/Paramount, 1964). Set directors Venerio Colasanti and John Moore provide an almost overwhelming opulence to this and many other scenes.

sonal happiness, because she still believes that doing what is best in public life will ensure their private happiness. Her optimism, which echoes Chimene’s message to the Cid to save their family by besieging Valencia, is quickly tested when Livius is punished by the enraged Commodus, who sends his former commander-in-chief into a frontier exile and orders his sister to return to her Armenian husband. When the Eastern provinces revolt under the leadership of Sohames, Livius is brought back from garrison duty on the Northern frontier. The arrival of Commodus’s envoys follows a sequence in which the hero conspicuously fails to persuade some Germanic tribesmen to accept Roman rule and protection; thus, we see that his personal defeat has accelerated the Empire’s greater failure to insure the peace that Marcus Aurelius sought. In yet another skillful exchange of dialogue, Polybius (Andrew Keir) asks the protagonist


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if he would be so discouraged if Lucilla had been with him for all these intervening years, and Livius simply touches his friend’s horse as a way of recognizing the truth of what he has just heard. Back in Rome, Mann’s hero only reluctantly accepts Commodus’s commission to pacify the East, and the film’s political conflicts become even more pronounced. In Asia, Livius discovers, to his horror, that Lucilla is at the center of the uprising and he cannot refrain from chiding her for attacking Rome and its social continuities of order and law. She counters that she has dared much “out of love,” presumably for him and the vision of the state bequeathed to her by her father. However, Livius, embodying the traditional Roman and military virtues of loyalty and duty as being central to personal honor, must follow his public self and can only indulge his private self by urging Lucilla to flee before his army annihilates their opponents. After the revolt has been subdued and Sohames killed, Mann signals the transformation of his heroine through clever staging and juxtapositions. The now-despondent Lucilla is initially seen being carried back to Rome while lying prone in a litter and being oblivious to the concerned Livius. Her position strongly resembles that of the fatigued (and soon-to-be-murdered) Marcus Aurelius in an earlier scene when they talked of her future happiness, the duplicity of her mother, and the emperor’s acceptance of no real companionship in his own life. At the same time, Lucilla’s gradual reconciliation with Livius is signaled by her rising from that helpless position, a progress which is nicely juxtaposed by the earlier scene in which, supine before the statue of Zeus, Commodus had sent the male protagonist to defeat the rebellion. The recurrent visual emphasis on the statue of their mother, Faustina, is reprised in the final scene between Lucilla and her sibling. That bust becomes the focal point once more as Lucilla enters the palace and then attempts to kill a seated figure she mistakenly takes to be her demented brother. By now Livius has been made a prisoner by Commodus, who has also shrewdly recognized that the hero’s troops assembled outside the gates of Rome will be moved more by gold than by idealism or loyalty to their commander. Lucilla’s attempt at murder is thwarted by the gladiator Verullus (Anthony Quayle), who has been contemplating the statue of the woman with whom he conceived Commodus. When the mad ruler enters after overhearing this admission from Verullus, he kills his father as Lucilla flees into the streets of Rome. In the midst of frenzied and mindless crowds, the heroine now realizes that “glory, wisdom, honor”—the virtues that built the state which her father and his generation wanted to perfect—are gone and that only love remains. She now prefers dying with Livius to living in the new, decadent, and amoral Roman

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Empire, and she joins him by fighting her way through the crowd to the platform on which he is chained, only to be shackled herself after revealing her feelings to him. Thus, over the course of The Fall of the Roman Empire, Lucilla reverses Chimene’s movement from private love to public concern in El Cid. By rejecting the Empire’s leaders, who are madmen, and its citizens, who are sycophants, Lucilla affirms her private relationship with Livius as the only worthwhile source of moral values or joy in the corrupt world of her times. The hero’s earlier urging that they go away from Rome and find a private life, which he voiced when he heard of Lucilla’s betrothal to Sohames, proves to be the ultimate wisdom. In this sense, Livius resembles Chimene for, like her, he would opt for love over public obligations. In keeping with the gloomier atmosphere of The Fall of the Roman Empire, Livius never finds any motive, whether for revenge, settlement of the barbarians, or his own advancement, that transcends his feelings for Lucilla. Mann’s male leads in both epics are constant in waiting for his heroines to grow or change. Chimene comes to realize that love (the private world) can only exist within the larger context of the state (the public world): Lucilla learns that love and political loyalty are inextricably at odds within a world order which neither she nor Livius is capable of changing. Mann’s artistry in El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire is continuously seen in the visual and character juxtapositions between the two works. One set of paired sequences matches the treason trial of Rodrigo and the entrance of Commodus into Rome; in both cases a rising and descending camera track takes us from a frenzied public exterior to a seemingly more sedate private interior. However, these alternate worlds are not mutually exclusive as they reveal that society will impact on the protagonist in the earlier film and the ways that the antagonist will impact on his society in the later effort. In El Cid the court dispute over Rodrigo’s release of his Moorish prisoners collides against his first romantic meeting with Chimene. Waiting under a brilliant skylit dome, the protagonist is joined by his beloved in a strikingly photographed sequence that initially features their hands touching and clasping in close-up. Although he has been charged with treason, Rodrigo argues that centuries of warfare between Spain’s Christians and Moors have solved nothing. Chimene, who appeared earlier as an impatient and lovestruck bride-to-be, says that nothing which her beloved has done could ever be treasonous; however, she becomes more perplexed when she hears that he has released his Moorish prisoners. While the composition and camerawork suggest a movement from danger to safety at this point as the lovers embrace, the political debate before


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the court heats up. When Count Gormaz (Andrew Cruikshank), Chimene’s father, challenges Don Diego (Michael Hordern) to a duel, the discord of the public world inevitably intrudes upon the world of the lovers. After Gormaz has slapped Don Diego (an effect that is given a distorted auditory emphasis on the soundtrack), a second series of shots of Rodrigo and Chimene is strikingly angled to imply that their lives have gone askew. This sequence clearly foreshadows the duel between Gormaz and Rodrigo which divides the lovers and leads to their long term of trial before they can reconcile the private world of love with the public world of politics, honor, and duty. The related sequence in The Fall of the Roman Empire finds Commodus entering the Temple of Zeus ostensibly to offer thanks for his arrival in Rome and his coronation as emperor. Before he goes alone into that sanctuary to do obeisance to the god, there has been a lengthy procession through the Roman Forum in which Commodus has been hailed by the populace. At its inception Lucilla appears briefly with her new husband, Sohames, but Livius, who has been given the supreme command of all Roman armies, is not present. Thus, this long spectacular parade through a massively constructed set shows that the irrational Commodus has, indeed, become the center of the new political order. His entrance into the temple begins with the camera descending from the top of a skylit dome strikingly similar to that seen above the lovers in El Cid. The silent interior also recalls the earlier film’s aura, but there is no one here with whom Commodus has come to communicate. Instead, he removes his crown and places it on the god’s altar before he begins to grin with satisfaction over having actually become Rome’s supreme ruler. These visually similar sequences dramatically illustrate the thematic differences between Mann’s two epic masterpieces: El Cid offers its characters the possibility of love and happiness within their society, while The Fall of the Roman Empire presents a world in which such hopes can only be achieved through escaping from society. Commodus flaunts his eccentricity and his power even more overtly when he dances over a mosaic map of the Empire to the delight of his sycophantic courtiers just before announcing that he has decided to double the taxes on the Eastern provinces. Mann, in a set-up that reminds us of his early musicals, shows the mad ruler’s feet in close-up as he walks, skips, and then breaks out into a dance before going to a medium shot when he makes his announcement to the provincial governors of Egypt, Virgilianus (Norman Woodland), and Syria, Marcellus (Virgilio Texera). Commodus later sits in the Senate as Livius’s complains about his conduct as ruler of the Roman world are ignored and scorned by the subservient members of that body.

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The mad ruler was conspicuously absent during the film’s lengthy debate sequence over the settlement of the Germans on Roman land, but by the time Livius has returned from the East, Commodus has gained a stranglehold over an ever more obsequious legislature. Throughout The Fall of the Roman Empire, Mann’s villain is either at or descends to eye level with his supporters in a striking visual contrast to Marcus Aurelius, who is often shown in high places to which other characters must ascend to speak with him. These compositional juxtapositions clearly imply the differences between the two rulers and how the audience is to judge them: The mad Commodus, who wants to be worshipped as a god, never towers over anyone while his supposed father, who exhibits no desire to be personally worshipped, has gained that kind of status among his loyal subjects. Upon his initial entrance into Valencia, the Cid ascends public stairs to address his followers who are urging him to take the crown in place of the feckless Alfonso. The hero chooses instead to send the crown of Valencia to the very man who has recently jailed his wife and children; his selfless behavior causes Moutamin to remark on the protagonist’s genuine nobility as compared to the shortsightedness of his king. Later, after he has been fatally wounded, the Cid reappears in the same position above his supporters to assure them that he will, indeed, ride with them in the morning. After he has finished this speech, he must be all but carried back to his sickbed when out of sight of the crowd below. A long reception scene in The Fall of the Roman Empire utilizes the same visual design, for Marcus Aurelius and his court greet the representatives of the Empire while looking down on them from a rostrum. While there is an extensive parade of chariots, colorful displays of various native costumes, and much verbal byplay between the emperor and Timonides, Marcus Aurelius’s address to his subjects sets forth his vision of Rome as a universal state well “within their grasp.” Significantly though, the dying ruler can barely finish his oration before hurrying away with the excuse that he is only suffering from a pain in his side and a barely audible remark about the necessity to “let it be soon” for his hopes. The contrast here again underscores the darker tone of the later film, for while the Cid will physically die after his final address to his followers, he will be mystically “reborn” and ride with them to victory on the following morning. The Spanish knight can achieve heroic deeds even in death because of the better world he has helped to create by balancing his public and private desires. The Cid rides to glory at the side of the reformed King Alfonso, and his death ensures the future as symbolized by the film’s final shot which significantly rises to show Chimene and the protagonist’s daugh-


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ters smiling benevolently on his victory over Ben Yussef and then tracks higher to reveal a beautiful cloudless blue sky. Marcus Aurelius, who pleads for another year of life from the gods in order to finish his political work, finds only treachery among his attendants after he delivers his oration to the allies and provincial governors. There is, finally, death from a poisoned apple for him and the defeat of their fondest political hopes for Lucilla and Livius. Thus, the concluding shot in The Fall of the Roman Empire also features a rising camera track, but this time we move across the rostrum (on which the Empire’s political future is being auctioned off) to see symbolic rising smoke which suggests the very end (by fire) that the slain Timonides has prophesied for Rome. In the world of the decadent capitol, Lucilla and Livius can only flee after finally accepting the awful lesson that noble ends and means do not inevitably lead to political success. The transfer of power is also contrasted in the two films by sequences that again share startling visual similarities. The death of King Ferdinand in El Cid precipitates a dynastic struggle between his sons, Alfonso and Sancho, which is manipulated by their sister, Urraca. Both male heirs are shown briefly together as a funeral dirge is intoned over their parent’s corpse; however, their animosity and lack of respect quickly spill over as they grapple with knives just outside the death chamber. Sancho overpowers his younger brother and then orders Alfonso taken to prison—a plan which is foiled by the Cid, who cannot divide his loyalty between the two young men. The protagonist singlehandedly rescues Alfonso from an armed escort, an act which causes the would-be ruler to ask, “What kind of man are you?” This pointed question, which is also posed in slightly varied forms by Ordonez and Sancho, illustrates how the Cid inspires moral growth in others. For Alfonso, increasingly under the sway of his sister, such progress only comes about painfully. He benefits unknowingly from Urraca’s successful plot to kill Sancho and, after sending the Cid into exile, becomes more and more involved with her. While an incestuous relationship between them is implied, Alfonso’s dream about cutting off his own right arm obviously alludes to his foolish policy in regard to the protagonist. Finally, Alfonso casts off his sister when the Cid sends him the crown of Valencia; the example of the good subject finally prompts the king to join the hero in the besieged city. There the dying hero refuses to let the young ruler kneel to him and, in a gesture that reverses his public questioning of the monarch earlier, proclaims that Alfonso has, indeed, become a worthy king. The death of Marcus Aurelius is solemnized by a magnificent burial sequence in the snow in The Fall of the Roman Empire. The emperor’s funeral bier is brought forth as ranks of troops moan from behind their shields. It is, however, the confrontation between Livius and Commodus which quickly

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becomes central to this sequence. While they have nearly killed each other in a chariot race through the forest, and while Commodus has been enraged by the news that his father did not want him to succeed to the imperial throne, these characters reconcile because of Livius’s nobility. Since there is no written proof of Marcus Aurelius’s intentions concerning the succession, Mann’s hero will not plunge the Empire into a civil war, and so he proclaims Commodus “undoubted Caesar” much to the dismay of Lucilla, who flees from the scene. Livius follows the more rational advice of Timonides and shows that political considerations carry more weight with him than does personal aggrandizement. However, the fallacy of such considerate behavior is immediately made apparent as Commodus, after proclaiming his long-time friend as supreme commander of all Roman armies, takes the torch from Livius to start the funeral fire. His gleeful expression as he eagerly rams the lighted torch into the bier reinforces the sinister aura that he has emitted since his first appearance. Ironically, Livius has failed by doing what is ethically and theoretically correct in direct contrast to the Cid who followed these same principles and won. Among a host of natural settings and elements that Mann juxtaposes in El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire (rocky landscapes, swords, rectangular arenas of combat, the wind), fire stands out. In the earlier epic this element is less prominent, although we see it in the opening scene as Rodrigo rescues a burning cross, and it offers a brief visual highlight when the protagonist has his fatal duel with Count Gormaz and the end of his sword is tipped by a flame. Alfonzo’s test by fire offers the most obvious contrast with The Fall of the Roman Empire where it is reprised with Timonides and the captured barbarians. The Spanish king’s immediate moral failure in sending Chimene to his dungeon is redeemed by his coming to Valencia to fight with the Cid; Timonides’s optimistic faith about settling the Germans is undone by the whim of Commodus, who orders that the peaceful and prosperous barbarian village be destroyed once he learns that Livius will not accede to his demands about punishing the restored Eastern provinces. The attack on Balomar’s village begins, appropriately enough, with a musician being killed by a flaming arrow. Mann’s ability to dramatically shift the mood within a scene comes once more to the fore as a dancing holiday quickly turns into a slaughter replete with a dying Timonides shot against a background of burning huts. El Cid has both unreasonable and redeemable characters who resist its hero. Ben Yussef, like Commodus, is a political madman, albeit one dedicated to conquest rather than merely luxuriating in a decadent status quo.


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His initial appearance, in which he exhorts the assembled emirs of Spain (including Al Kadir and Moutamin), ends in a freeze frame of this zealot making an almost Nazi-like salute and declaring that conquering “the world” is his ultimate goal. Clearly, his forces are the barbarians of El Cid; and, in contrast to the Germans in The Fall of the Roman Empire, resistance to them becomes the political and moral obligation of all civilized men in Spain, whether Christians or Moors. Balomar’s people, on the other hand, are victims of the same capriciousness by which Commodus rules everyone else. The German chieftain and his wife Helva (Lena von Martens) die in flames not for what they have done but for what they have represented to the psyche of a mad ruler. Ben Yussef appropriately perishes under the hoofs of the charging defenders of Valencia, justly undone by the very powers he has challenged. As an out-and-out villain, Ben Yussef hatches clandestine plots to destroy his enemies that stand in the sharpest contrast to the tactics of the Cid. While the hero triumphs through example and compassion, the Moorish chieftain sets about breeding dissension through assassination. Thus, Ben Yussef, in sending the treacherous Dolfos (Fausto Tozzi) to Urraca, becomes the counterpart of the conspirators who poison Marcus Aurelius in The Fall of the Roman Empire. While the Moorish leader’s physical and spiritual austerities are offended by the indulgent Al Kadir, they are appropriate allies, for the ruler of Valencia can also only return evil for good, as seen when he gives his oath of fealty to the Cid and then quickly repudiates it. Al Kadir personally leads the ambush of the Cid and Sancho that has been planned by Ordonez and Chimene. The Moorish emir’s malevolence and sycophancy emerge even more strongly when, on his knees, he eagerly extols Ben Yussef’s plan for having Dolfos assassinate the young Spanish ruler. His cowardice and hypocrisy are then shown during the siege of Valencia when he puts aside his own food long enough to order out his private guards to suppress his hungry subjects. The citizens’ uprising, which has been precipitated by the Cid’s bombardment of the beleaguered city with bread instead of missiles, leads to Al Kadir’s demise as his own subjects force him to jump to his death as they welcome their liberators—a sequence in which Mann features a sword cutting across the frame to stop the fleeing emir in mid-stride and which he ends by keeping his camera at a discreet distance and focused on a ceremonial vase as Al Kadir plunges to his doom. Count Ordonez is on another level, for, while madly in love with Chimene, he comes gradually to realize that he must follow the Cid and sublimate his own wishes to higher political ends. The birth of his conscience takes considerable time, for Ordonez’s initial appearance finds him, as the

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spokesman for King Ferdinand, demanding that the protagonist surrender the Moorish prisoners he has brought to Bivar. At this point, despite Ordonez’s boasting about where these emirs will be executed, Rodrigo offers leniency to the Moslem chieftains and receives their obeisance. After threatening the hero with royal displeasure, Ordonez travels to Burgos to tell Chimene of her lover’s “treason,” while proclaiming his own undying passion for her. When Ordonez and Chimene next speak, they hatch the assassination scheme against the Cid, now Ferdinand’s champion after winning the joust at Calahorra. In this sequence, Ordonez bluntly states that he is willing to sacrifice honor for love. When the ambush fails and the hero refuses to kill him, Ordonez ponders what type of man the protagonist must be. However, we next see him as a faithful courtier at Alfonso’s side when exile is pronounced against the Cid. It is only later, with the imprisonment of Chimene, that Ordonez begins to understand the larger imperative of placing Spain above self. This dawning sense of compassion prompts the count to join forces with his former romantic rival; when Ben Yussef captures and kills Ordonez, the Moorish leader does so in a setting replete with Christian symbols. After he has listened to the captured Spaniard’s praises for the Cid, Ben Yussef strikes a deadly blow that is marked by a tearing sound amplified on the soundtrack. This wrenching auditory effect matches the way that Mann amplified Lucilla’s state of mind when she realizes that her father is dead in The Fall of the Roman Empire. Ordonez’s martyrdom—he is nailed to a tree in a manner that resembles Jesus on the Cross—symbolizes his having finally learned that private desires only become worthwhile when the individual is willing to die for a cause larger than personal pleasure. In The Fall of the Roman Empire, Sohames outwardly resembles Ordonez in his relationship to the heroine; however, political arrangements rather than personal passions control him. The Armenian ruler proves treacherous when he allies himself with the Persians against Livius’s army. Sohames temporarily gains the physical prize of Lucilla but, unlike Ordonez, he is never redeemed as is shown in his using a flag of truce to camouflage the Persians’ sneak attack. Sohames’s treachery is comparable to the murder scheme hatched by Julianus, Niger, and Cleander (Mel Ferrer) which settles the throne on Commodus, and he proves just as intractably villainous as they are. After being bested by Livius in hand-to-hand combat, Sohames reveals that he has arranged for Lucilla’s execution in the event of his own death; and, when a spear kills the Armenian, Livius must rush to the heroine’s rescue. In acting so as to avenge himself on the future, Sohames foreshadows the moment when the dying Commodus orders the burning of the chained


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prisoners. If Livius again manages to save Lucilla, the fiery deaths of the rest of the captives illustrate the limitations of Mann’s protagonist in The Fall of the Roman Empire. Confidants also exhibit the thematic and atmospheric differences of these two epics, for their rewards are in keeping with the overall tones of these works. Moutamin, who swears undying allegiance to the Cid, proves the most steadfast of allies. While the Moorish leader casts an apocalyptic gloom at Bivar when he warns of the coming of Ben Yussef, Moutamin has been so genuinely moved by Rodrigo’s mercy that he renames the hero as the Cid (El Seid), one who leads by courage and compassion. When Moutamin rescues the protagonist from Al Kadir’s ambush, the contrast between the good ruler (who keeps his word) and the bad ruler (who breaks his oath) becomes painfully obvious. The Cid’s nationalistic dream for Spain is reinforced when he states that he has been “betrayed by a Christian; saved by a Moor” after Moutamin has rescued him and Prince Sancho. The later meeting between the protagonist and Moutamin in a river again symbolizes the kind of political syncretism that sets the Cid apart from his contemporaries. Mann cleverly signals the difference between his two epics by casting the same actor, Douglas Wilmer, as Moutamin in El Cid and as the sycophantic Niger, who delivers Commodus’s bribe to Livius’s army and then bids for the imperial throne after the tyrant’s death, in The Fall of the Roman Empire. Such casting, by which one of the supporting heroes of the earlier work becomes one of the minor villains of the later film, points up the shift from optimism to pessimism in Mann’s two films. Timonides, of course, plays the primary confidant in The Fall of the Roman Empire with both Marcus Aurelius and Livius. After he is tested by Balomar’s fire, Timonides illustrates Caecina’s (Finlay Currie) lesson about the necessity for change and political compromise—a notion seemingly more in tune with American democratic than Roman imperial ideals. As a pacifist, Timonides urges that hatreds never die when he argues before the Senate in favor of Rome’s co-opting Balomar’s tribe. Timonides then, naturally, emerges as the model and spokesman for the transplanted Germans with whom he subsequently lives. Thus, when their bread is distributed to Rome’s starving citizens, in a sequence that recalls the Cid’s friendly bombardment of Valencia, Timonides calls the people’s attention to the fact that living in harmony can create bounties for everyone. This lesson, which flies in the face of the destruction bred by Commodus’s shortsighted policies, is offset when Timonides is cut down amid the burning of Balomar’s village. Clearly, words (and so philosophy which is Timonides’s way of dealing with the world) will no longer suffice; and, while Livius can later swear that blood will answer for

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the Greek’s murder, even his anger proves impotent within the decadence of contemporary Rome. Finally, there are the contrasts Mann supplies between the ordinary citizens in these epics, often dramatized by crowds who stand in for these entire societies. The people of Bivar, while initially eager to kill the captured Moorish chieftains, accede to Rodrigo’s wishes about his prisoners. When the Cid weds Chimene, a crowd, eager to catch a glimpse of the hero and his bride, rushes into the church only to fall silent because of the solemn spectacle before them. Such respect and essential goodheartedness carries over into the celebrated barn sequence when the Spanish people, this time represented by those who have chosen exile with the Cid, greet the hero and Chimene after their night together. The sustained silence of this crowd, which has gathered and waited unbeknownst to the principals, again reveals the respect which the protagonist commands. Mann also uses a small girl to hail Rodrigo and Chimene and lead them to her father’s barn to further emphasize the legendary aura that now attaches to them. Although initially saying that she and her family will be punished if they openly aid the Cid, the little girl then goes on to suggest that under the cover of darkness her father’s barn will become accessible, even to exiles. That such a message is delivered by a child is thoroughly in keeping with the overall political optimism of El Cid; indeed, the birth of the twin daughters and their final photographic prominence with Chimene make it apparent that the society for which the Cid lays down his life contains the possibility of a future. Subjects willing to share the risks that rulers must run are largely absent from The Fall of the Roman Empire. Ultimately, Rome is not a community but only disparate individuals and cliques seeking their own temporary advantages at the expense of the state. Such social fracturing is underscored by the arrival of Commodus and his gladiators at Marcus Aurelius’s Danubian fortress. Verullus boasts that his veterans of the arena will show the regular Roman soldiers how to fight and kill, a claim that is, of course, both immediately resented and then dispelled in the ensuing forest battle with Balomar. Once Commodus ascends the throne, the only dependable citizenry that we see are the reformed barbarians under the German leader and Timonides, a group which at least works for the greater good of society. In contrast, the inhabitants of Rome seem capable only of bemoaning their fate, accepting any dole that comes their way, and acquiescing to whatever Commodus wants—whether killing productive villagers or having himself adored as a god. The Roman populace, in scenes of orgiastic dancing juxtaposed to their ruler’s buying off Livius’s army and murdering Verullus, shows itself unworthy; and so, Livius and Lucilla’s final decision to abandon


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such subjects is obviously justified. Instead of a worthwhile citizenry, the Roman state produces sycophants eagerly begging Commodus to rename Rome for himself; and the old order, which produced Marcus Aurelius, Timonides, and Livius, is simply incapable of being resurrected. The new order, to which Commodus has served as a bridge, is personified by Julianus, Niger, and Victorinus, who place gold above personal, political, or ideological loyalties. Mann’s two epics clearly offer contrasting political visions. El Cid chronicles the exploits of a hero who builds a state through his actions which, finally, serve as lessons to its young ruler. The protagonist proceeds from love to a sense of the greater importance of a civilized political order; indeed, as Chimene comes to see, it is only in the attainment of such a society that individual love can survive or prosper. The possibilities of the future are symbolized through the prominent roles played by children in this film, the transformation of erstwhile enemies into allies (as with Ordonez and Alfonso), and the appearance of a people worth saving. Thus, the hero through his allegiance to various ideals—kingship, honor, the nation—saves the community from the outside forces that would destroy it. The hero in The Fall of the Roman Empire is also trying to preserve a political order that is endangered. Here, however, the threats come from within the society and prove insuperable. While Livius believes that romantic love is the only “reality” in life, he pursues duty partly out of respect for Marcus Aurelius and to repress his feelings for Lucilla. Eventually, Livius discovers that his political struggles are useless, for there is no society worth saving and no future, save one in isolation with the heroine, for which to strive. Livius ultimately lacks comrades whose loyalty makes them worth fighting for; and the absence of children further symbolizes the Roman Empire’s gloomy future. Moreover, Livius’s conduct never significantly halts Commodus’s mad course; indeed, the bad ruler’s demise only gives way to the prospect of even worse successors at the conclusion of The Fall of the Roman Empire. Mann’s contrasted and serious political visions may have run contrary to popular expectations about historical epics, with their all-conquering heroes and their escapist projections of a better life, usually through the emergence or adoption of Christianity, and thus caused The Fall of the Roman Empire to fail at the box office. Yet his pessimistic political themes seem, if anything, more thoughtful now than when the film initially appeared. Mann clearly utilizes the dramatic conventions of the celluloid epic to explore perennial political problems, and, in doing so, he makes the genre far more intellectually challenging than normal, certainly no small feat within the confines of commercial cinema. While both El Cid and The Fall of the Roman

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Empire have been recognized as sophisticated artistic treatments of form and content within the epic genre, when taken together, these works set up and then reverse audience expectations to explore recurring individual and social dilemmas. The scenic transitions and the pacing of El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire also clearly point to Mann’s skills as a filmmaker: Effects and reactions are never overstated and shots are never held too long as these complicated plots are worked through. Indeed, at times, especially in the first third of the earlier film, the segues from one scene to another are virtually seamless and call no attention to themselves. Unlike a more celebrated stylist like David Lean in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Mann’s effects never stand out as brilliant in their own right, for they are all designed to augment the storyline and the thematic concerns of the director. In part because of such unobtrusive skill, in El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire he creates epics that are decidedly more thought-provoking than comparable works by his Hollywood contemporaries. The thematic and artistic coherence of these works strongly suggest that they, rather than Mann’s more often celebrated forays into film noir and westerns, represent his most mature and sophisticated achievements.

7

Mann and the Century of Total War: The Heroes of Telemark (1965) and A Dandy in Aspic (1968) Anthony Mann’s final two films focus on contemporary times, and, like El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire, they reflect a growing pessimism on the director’s part. While The Heroes of Telemark is cast in an epic mold and is full of characteristic stylistic touches that mark it as indelibly Mann’s work, A Dandy in Aspic touches on long-term themes that in many ways make it the more revealing work. These films not only fall into obvious movie categories but also reflect current Hollywood fashions within those genres. The earlier work obviously resembles The Guns of Navarone (Columbia, 1961) in being structured around a wartime mission (to rid the world of a super weapon) undertaken by a small group against seemingly overwhelming odds. A Dandy in Aspic reflects the spate of spy films turned out in the early 1960s, starting with the first James Bond entry, Dr. No (1962). Mann’s film, with its cast of double-dealing Cold War agents, is more serious in that its protagonist, Eberlin (Laurence Harvey), is ultimately outmaneuvered by his more cynical superiors. The Heroes of Telemark is based on the actual World War II Allied raid on the German heavy water factory at that Norwegian location—an event that is widely cited as preventing the Nazis from completing the development of an Atomic Bomb before they were decisively defeated. Despite such historically significant material, Mann’s film falters because its character conflicts are too quickly resolved, while its larger moral and philosophical issues remain either muted or so overwhelming as to be beyond any satisfactory resolution. The protagonist, Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas), is quickly transformed from a laboratory physicist, who doubts the worth of any Norwegian resistance to the Nazis, to an enthusiastic proponent of destroying the installation at Telemark whatever the costs in human lives or German reprisals. 239

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Pedersen and resistance leader Knut Stroud (Richard Harris) initially disagree on tactics, whether concerning the feasibility of a full-scale aerial assault on the heavy water facility or killing the intruding Jensen (Roy Dotrice), but they always come rapidly to an understanding. Indeed, there is far too little of the tension we see between Shears (William Holden) and Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) in David Lean’s Bridge on the River Kwai (Columbia, 1957) or between Captain Mallory (Gregory Peck) and Corporal Miller (David Niven) in The Guns of Navarone. As a result, The Heroes of Telemark is driven back to its Nazi commanders, Terboven (Eric Porter) and Major Frick (Anton Diffring), to supply conflict; however, they are either too histrionic or too enigmatic to provide the kinds of tension we witnessed in Mann’s westerns, with their frequent double relationship between good guy and bad guy, or in the struggle between El Cid (Charlton Heston) and Ben Yussef (Herbert Lom) or Livius (Stephen Boyd) and Commodus (Christopher Plummer) in the epics. Terboven quickly becomes the caricature Nazi who orders civilians to their deaths as reprisal against the Norwegian underground and rants against the scientists and subordinates whom he continuously drives through the picture. If he is all blustering verbal sadism, Major Frick is all silent menace that never rises to any efficiency; indeed, all Frick can do in the lengthy ski chase of Pedersen and Stroud is huff and puff and, finally, hang back when Jensen sets out alone to catch the protagonist. The stature of these villains is further reduced by the conclusion of The Heroes of Telemark, for neither of them is shown on the ferry that gets blown up; thus, we do not experience the visceral satisfaction of seeing them deKirk Douglas (as Dr. Rolf Pederson) in The stroyed. Such an omission Heroes of Telemark (Rank/Columbia, 1965). points to the open-endedMann’s epic saga chronicles the Norwegian resisness of Mann’s film and its tance’s destruction of Nazi Germany’s heavy water treatment plant and features magnificent (perhaps) greater accuracy snowy vistas and sobering arguments about per- as a portrayal of historical sonal and community sacrifices. realities; however, in the

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commercialized world of Hollywood filmmaking, such qualities are not generally either immediately valued or likely to attract mass audiences. The Heroes of Telemark must, as a consequence, rely on big issues for its ongoing conflicts, and such difficulties—the choice of sacrificing the inhabitants of the town of Telemark for the greater good of humanity, the inexorable facts of atomic energy’s supplying the basis for ever more catastrophic weapons—prove, finally, simply too daunting to be resolved within the donneés of a popular medium such as commercial filmmaking. However, by simply eschewing the certainties of melodrama usually attached to war movies, The Heroes of Telemark emerges as a much rarer kind of work: one that approaches the more disturbing qualities traditionally associated with theatrical tragedy. A Dandy in Aspic, which was completed by leading man Laurence Harvey after Mann’s untimely death during shooting, stays well within familiar thematic and character preoccupations of the director by presenting a central conflict between Eberlin and Gattis (Tom Courtenay) that harkens back to such rivalries as those between Glyn McLyntock (James Stewart) and Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy) in Bend of the River (1952) or Link Jones (Gary Cooper) and Cousin Claude (John Dehner) in Man of the West (1958). Eberlin and Gattis’s mutual destruction on the airfield in the finale serves as an apt conclusion to Mann’s fascination with the mixtures of good and evil within so many of his characters. Because it conforms to contemporary conventional wisdom about the relativistic morality of the opposing forces in the Cold War, A Dandy in Aspic seems more up-to-date than The Heroes of Telemark; however, such a perception belies and obscures the essential nihilism of all the film’s characters. There is no one to comfortably root for in Mann’s final film, and there is not even the consolation of history’s being open-ended and so capable of, perhaps, producing better people to console the viewer. Numerous plot situations in The Heroes of Telemark recall earlier Mann films; indeed, these many instances clearly stamp the film as thoroughly in keeping with the director’s style and vision. An initial segue from the film’s credit sequence to its opening scene finds the camera tracking up from a road on which a German convoy is proceeding to the top of an overlooking hill on which Knut Stroud and some Norwegian resistance fighters are about to release a boulder on the unsuspecting Nazis below. When the rock breaks free and sends an armored car plunging into a gorge, we are reminded of the rockslides that distinguished siege sequences in The Furies (1950) and The Naked Spur (1953). Here, of course, there is no successful storming of these heights for, in keeping with the eventual success that the local resistance

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fighters will enjoy against the Nazis, any such triumph would be incongruous with the requirements of the plot. The Heroes of Telemark also features lengthy sequences on board ships when Pedersen, Stroud, and their cohorts commandeer a Norwegian vessel and order it to England; when the scientist turned warrior zealot and the resistance leader go aboard the ferry to plant explosives; and when Rolf goes back aboard to save Sigurd’s (Jennifer Hilary) baby and the other children from the unknown danger they face. The use of such crowded and cramped settings echoes episodes in Bend of the River and The Far Country (1955); however, given Mann’s visual emphasis on the machinery and designs of the ships in The Heroes of Telemark, we are even more strongly reminded of the great affinity shown for the workings of intricate mechanisms in Thunder Bay (1953) and Strategic Air Command(1955). When they arrive in British waters, the Norwegian resistance fighters must confront floating mines, and so we see Stroud exploding one with a well-placed shot and Pedersen deftly fending another away from the ship by going over the side and gently pushing it out of the way. Mann’s attention to the means by which each hero undertakes and completes his task is thoroughly in keeping with emphases elsewhere. At the same time, the threat is reminiscent of the haunting sequence in Men in War (1957) when Lieutenant Benson (Robert Ryan) and Sergeant Montana (Aldo Ray) led the way through a North Korean minefield. Two physical struggles are also rendered in typical Mann style. When Pedersen and Stroud disagree about the advisability of ordering a British air raid on Telemark in the hope of destroying the heavy water plant, the resistance leader presses his scientific ally about just exactly what is so important about the facility to warrant the killing of his own friends and neighbors. Rolf’s exasperated response is to write out the scientific formula for heavy water and hand it to Knut—an act of arrogance that causes Stroud to begin choking the physicist. Their fight inside the cabin of Anna (Ulla Jacobson) and her uncle (Michael Redgrave), like many another visceral and realistic-looking brawl in a Mann film, not only emphasizes the close quarters in which the men must operate but also clearly shows the actors (and not stuntmen) doing the work in a decidedly non-choreographic style. This last extended fight scene from the director recapitulates many other struggles such as those between Will Lockhart (James Stewart) and Vic Hasbro (Arthur Kennedy) in The Man from Laramie (1955), and Jed Cooper (Victor Mature) and Sergeant Decker (Peter Whitney) in The Last Frontier (1955). A shorter struggle ensues in The Heroes of Telemark when Rolf and Knut are interrupted as they set the explosives and their timing devices in the hold


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of the ferry on which the Germans are about to ship the precious heavy water back to their homeland. As they are looking to get away, Mann’s heroes are faced by a single Nazi guard who inadvertently stumbles upon them. Their rapid overpowering of this individual ends with Rolf submerging the soldier’s head into a sink and drowning him in a style that resembles what Lin McAdam (James Stewart) did to the ruthless Waco Johnnie Dean (Dan Duryea) in Winchester ’73 (1950) . Once again, the protagonist twists the left arm of his opponent behind his back and then pushes his enemy’s head into liquid in a manner that was used so effectively in Spartacus (1960) when the title character (Kirk Douglas) killed his nemesis Marcellus (Charles McGraw) in the gladiatorial school. Mann’s artistic control and sophistication also abound throughout The Heroes of Telemark, perhaps nowhere so noticeably as in the dominant color schemes he employs. While much of the action occurs against the wintry backgrounds of open country and breathtakingly angled hillsides, this predominantly white terrain, which is augmented by the Norwegians’ white ski outfits, is thrown into contrast by the somber and muted colors we see within the town and the industrial plant. Indeed, there is a predominance of blacks and grays within the nighttime worlds of the city and the military installations that surround the factory, tones which are augmented by the austere uniforms of the Germans. All these muted colors help to make the landscape appear even colder. Mann adds to this ambience with an emphasis on the sound of the roaring winds that accompany his characters whenever they go through the open or enclosed terrain of the country and the factory grounds: we are never allowed to forget the physical difficulties against which these men must operate. The sheer physicality of the location work is brilliantly rendered. Like many another film, The Heroes of Telemark features exterior shots that raise it above run-of-the-mill studio fare. Just as one must come to respect the exterior realism of such Howard Hawks efforts as The Big Sky (RKO, 1952) and Land of the Pharaohs (Warner Brothers, 1955), despite their often inane plots and less than subtle character drawing, so the same respect is engendered by a viewing of Mann’s World War II opus. Other notable stylistic moments include the director’s opening tracking shot up the hillside to alter the viewer’s initial perceptions. This tactic is reprised when Rolf and Anna, who are pretending to be vacationing skiers, go through the outskirts of the factory installation at Telemark to scout its defenses. They see a rabbit hopping through the snow and smile benignly as the tiny creature disappears into some foliage, only to be greeted by an exploding mine which has been presumably set off by the animal. Another significant reversal occurs when a British plane flies over the assembled Nor-

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wegian resistance fighters, who have been eagerly expecting the arrival of the fifty commandos aboard who will help them destroy the Telemark factory. Seeing that the plane will land at some distance from their encampment, Stroud and the others begin skiing toward the descending plane, only to stop when it crashes and bursts into flames. Mann presents this entire sequence in long shot so that we see the skiers stopping in unison to symbolize that their common hopes have been dashed by the distant emerging fireball. Such understatedness comes to the fore again in Mann’s use of symbols in The Heroes of Telemark. The most obvious of these meaningful devices consists of repeated shots of the dripping water assemblage inside the factory which we first see when Terboven gleefully watches as it produces drops of heavy water with an amplified sound effect for their falling. Because this collecting apparatus dominates the foreground of the frame as the zealous Nazi looks into it from the rear, its importance is clearly established; and, as the story unfolds, recurrent shots from the same angle underscore the race against time in which the heroes are engaged. The continual dripping is what must, ultimately, be stopped if civilization is to be saved, and the magnified sound of the ticking clocks that Pedersen and Stroud attach to their explosive devices in the ferry’s hold serves as the appropriate counterpoint to the auditory effects of the production apparatus. The presentation of the larger military struggle through juxtaposition can also be seen in the musical contrast between the singing German troops at the university to which Stroud goes to enlist Pedersen’s help, and the joyful tune that Knut and his comrades sing around a fire in the open wintry vastness as they await the arrival of their British allies. While the marching Nazis remain largely faceless in the first instance because they parade away from the camera, we see all the individual countenances of the Norwegian patriots; in essence, a grim impersonal totalitarian force and its marching song are, finally, going to be replaced by the more lyrical music of free men fighting together to remove the German plague from their homeland. Mann often employs a tilted camera within the factory at Telemark whenever the Nazi officials are there on screen. Thus, during the opening sequence inside the plant in which Terboven and Frick arrive with some German scientists to monitor progress and order the beleaguered supervisor, Nilsson (Ralph Michael), to speed up production, these slanted shots underscore the turmoil that the Germans have brought upon Norway and, especially, upon those who must produce the heavy water needed for even more destructive weapons. When Rolf and Knut arrive at their supposedly safe haven after they return from England, they come upon a burned-out dwelling and Mann economically shows what has happened by a brief tracking shot to a frozen hand emerging from the snow. Like so many other accomplished


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directors, he had learned by this point in his career to let the camera “speak” as often as possible. One other set of gestures occurs in The Heroes of Telemark which is reprised at a crucial point in A Dandy in Aspic. Rolf, Knut, and Anna attend Christmas Eve services at a church in town to get information from Nilsson, who is seated next to Anna’s uncle. The microfilm of the interior of the heavy water plant is passed to Rolf in a hymnal in which the strip of film is set as a bookmark. While the book is fingered briefly by Major Frick, who comes upon Rolf and Anna within a ski cabin, the conspirators are able to move it to safety. Interestingly enough, when Eberlin complains to his Soviet operators about wanting to return to Russia, he is told by Pavel (Per Oscarsson) that he will find their response inside a hymnal in a local church. When the double agent opens the book, he finds a tiny square on which the only word is “no”; however, while the pattern is similar, the later rendition gains a greater resonance when we recall that Eberlin, the main character in Mann’s last film, is a thoroughly secular creature being placed incongruously within a religious setting. Mann’s character drawing in The Heroes of Telemark is also subtle and challenging: His figures, like the movie itself, become more interesting with the passage of time and the demise of contemporary cinema into computergenerated spectacles and frequently implausible plots. Jensen, the mysterious interloper who comes upon the Norwegian resistance fighters and then subsequently offers to help the Nazis capture them, and Anna’s uncle are delineated primarily in symbolic ways. Thus, Jensen is conspicuously costumed in black throughout, a color which makes him stand out against the Norwegian snow and the white-uniformed resistance fighters. Jensen’s character becomes more sympathetic and understandable when Rolf kills him on the slopes; after he has wounded his pursuer, Pedersen asks Jensen why he has collaborated and the dying man says he had to, to protect his Jewish wife. Anna’s uncle, who jokingly notes that his niece and Rolf spent nearly all their time in the bedroom when they were married, emerges as a stolid and faithful adherent of the resistance as he dies fighting to delay the German patrol which has finally discovered where suspicious radio signals have been coming from. In order to give Anna, Rolf, and Knut more time to get to the ferry and set the explosives within its hold, the uncle calmly sits waiting as the Nazis break into his home and then asks that they shut the outside door to prevent a draft from pouring in. He then rises and takes up a shotgun to kill two of these intruders, only to be gunned down himself as he struggles to grasp additional cartridges from a shelf over his head. The character dies standing up with arms outstretched, appearing as though pinned to a horizontal crossbeam—an arrangement that reprises Christ on the Cross.

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Anna moves away from the coldness she exhibits toward Rolf, her exhusband, in their first intimate scene together when she rejects his amorous advances, to again being in love with him. This transformation occurs when she and Pedersen convince Major Frick that they are simply looking for a place to enjoy a romantic tryst when, in fact, they are trying to get away with Nilsson’s microfilm of the Telemark factory. After the Nazi officer has accepted their explanation, unnervingly handled the hymnal with its incriminating microfilm, and left, Mann’s camera tracks to a close-up of Anna symbolically locking the door to the hut as a sign that she and Rolf will engage in lovemaking. Later, Anna risks compromising the entire underground operation when she sends out radio signals in an effort to find out what has happened to her beloved. In doing so, she raises the ire of Stroud, who eventually orders her to stop sending out any signals. Before that, however, Knut realizes that Anna is in love with Pedersen and, in some dialogue that alludes to his having been physically involved with her, we learn that she has come to appreciate “love” while he, in a bit of sobering realism, indicates that he thinks of her in terms of “lust.” Naturally, given the thematic concerns of The Heroes of Telemark, both characters ultimately realize their feelings or concerns cannot be indulged at the expense of the greater goal of making the world safe from the threat of Nazi atomic weaponry. The emergence of Rolf Pedersen as a thorough-going Norwegian resistance fighter clearly embodies the primary thematic development in Mann’s film; indeed, like the male protagonists of El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire, this character must wrestle with the demands of political and personal life to arrive at his better self. We meet Dr. Pedersen in his university laboratory when Stroud bursts in upon him and his “lab assistant” with whom he has been necking. Despite the eagerness of Knut to convey a highly secret scientific formula to him, Rolf is initially reluctant to become involved because of his dismay over the numbers of civilians who are killed as reprisals for what the resistance has been doing. However, after he examines the document and grasps its significance, Rolf eagerly agrees to accompany the resistance leader to England. On their subsequent voyage, the professor proves to be every bit as resourceful, daring, and efficient as Stroud, as we see when he kills the Gestapo supervisor on board when the Norwegians seize control of the ship. While such sudden changes are commonplace in action films, Pedersen now emerges as an even more zealous fighter, perhaps because he is the proverbial newest convert to the cause. In a thorough reversal of his earlier feelings, Pedersen goes so far as to urge that Telemark be bombed with no warning of its citizens in order to destroy the Nazi threat, while Knut and


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Anna argue that innocent lives must not be so callously sacrificed. After the two men fight, they agree to call for a British commando raid on the installation.1 When that effort is ruined because of the crash of the transport plane, Stroud urges that their small band of resistance fighters attack the factory anyway and, after some initial resistance, Rolf goes along with this scheme and performs magnificently in wiring the charges that blow up the heavy water apparatus. His resignation to the inevitable human costs of war then finds him announcing to the others that Arne (David Weston), the father of the baby Rolf will eventually rescue from the German ferry, has been killed during the raid. His sense of the greater cause is then exposed again when he kills Jensen after hearing the man’s rationale about trying to save his wife; indeed, Rolf savagely dismisses the dying man’s argument as trivial when compared to what he and the others are trying to achieve. Mann’s protagonist cannot accept that any personal demand or feeling, however deeply experienced by an individual, outweighs the moral obligation to struggle for the benefit of humankind. Pedersen continues to exude this attitude until he sees Sigrid about to embark on the ferry with the explosives. At that moment the more human side of the character comes out as he buys a ticket and then maneuvers the young widow, her infant, and the other children on board to the rear of the vessel and eventually to safety. In doing so, Rolf becomes a character beset by many of the same contradictory impulses normal people experience. While he could take the death of the baby’s father in stride, he cannot allow the death of the child so he, like the lovestruck Anna, puts the entire mission at risk in order to assuage his feelings. While Pedersen succeeds in getting the children off the sinking and burning ship and also manages to swim to the launch that Knut and Anna have brought to the scene of the wreckage, Mann’s final rising shot leaves viewers to wonder just what will happen, given that numerous German forces remain on the shoreline. The Heroes of Telemark thus ends with a scene which implies that history inexorably goes on, and Mann’s refusal to add a more obviously happy resolution, in which the audience would see that Rolf and Anna were safely reunited and Knut about to go with his comrades into a seemingly better future, gives the film the same sense of historical unpredictability that we find at the end of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in which Pierre must face a dangerous future. In some ways The Heroes of Telemark is Mann’s most unsettling film because it ends with a more sobering atmosphere in which the customary plot tidiness that viewers have come to expect is not delivered. Perhaps the overwhelming psychic dilemmas bred by the Cold War had so permeated the time and the director’s own views that he could no longer offer the

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customary “rounded off” resolution. In a contemporary world in which there appeared no end in sight to the conflict between West and East, providing such a conclusion would have rung false. Mann’s final film, A Dandy in Aspic, certainly matches the sobering ending of The Heroes of Telemark in its overall depressed and despairing mood; however, with Eberlin and Gattis, and the world of espionage and betrayals which they inhabit, there is, literally, no one to root for nor even any selfless human reaction such as what Rolf Pedersen experiences when he re-boards the ferry in the earlier film. Despite its being largely set in London and Berlin, A Dandy in Aspic reflects the contemporary cynicism that arose in America because of the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, and the protracted Cold War in a style that is clearly recognizable as the director’s. The film’s opening and closing credits, with their shots of flopping and, ultimately, collapsing puppets, represent one of the least subtle of any such sequences in a Mann film. While we might accept such a design at the beginning, the fallen marionette at the end, when coupled with the film’s final freeze frame death scene between Eberlin and Gattis, seems far too obvious.

Designer Pierre Cardin with Mia Farrow and Laurence Harvey on the set of A Dandy in Aspic (Columbia, 1968). Russian double agent Alexander Eberlin (Harvey) finally betrays the love of the naïve Caroline (Farrow) in Mann’s final film.


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However, the opening scene in which British Intelligence agents bury one of their own cleverly juxtaposes the solemnity of that occasion with our emerging awareness that the supposed mourners feel little, if anything, for their fallen comrade. At the same time, this scene becomes even more subtle when we learn that Eberlin, one of the men lowering the casket, is responsible for killing the man he is helping to inter. The random comments and questions we hear during this sequence are briefly interrupted when we are shown the truth in a quick cut in which “Nightingale” is shot while diving into a pool by the protagonist who recalls it when he learns (apparently for the first time) the identity of the man they are burying. In this rapid exposition, Mann establishes the personal anonymity and the human indifference that will be the film’s operative norms. When Eberlin is shown a picture of himself, taken at the pool in Morocco by Caroline (Mia Farrow), he smiles and asks if he can have the photo as a keepsake; however, once outside the lovestruck girl’s apartment, the double agent burns the incriminating evidence as quickly as he can. Eberlin’s relationship with the naïve Caroline is, of course, a convenience and not a commitment for him, for in spite of some conventional romantic dialogue between them, Mann’s protagonist discards the girl and defeats the audience’s natural predisposition to believe in the efficacy of romance. Before that event occurs we see Caroline prominently posed before yet another mirror in a Mann work as she chatters about her “voluptuousness” after Eberlin has learned that she earlier wished to be a model instead of a photographer. The best that can be said for the protagonist is that he finally realizes the girl is a genuine innocent; however, her naïve sweetness only serves to throw his own cynicism and despair into sharper relief. Indeed, what we come to realize is that Mann’s final leading man is capable of few human feelings because his clandestine career has made him wary of the dangers to which sentimentality can lead. It is wonderfully ironic that when Eberlin breaks up with Caroline at the motor racetrack, he does so by saying, “I don’t need you any more”—a remark that can be seen as either an act of kindness from a man who suspects he’s “dead” or a genuine expression of his lack of feeling. Certainly Eberlin shows more emotion when he is denied entry into East Berlin by a police official who toys with him as a puppet master might with a marionette. Their cryptic interview leads the protagonist to believe that he has been given the coveted permission to cross the border, but a rapid reversal, in which his progress is halted by the interrogator’s opening a door to block his path, shows his error. Even though Eberlin then futilely tries to run across the checkpoint, he is stopped by East German border guards who fire warning shots perilously close to him. The character’s cherished hope of

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being able to return to Russia is squelched in this sequence, as are any possibilities of his being clever enough or brave enough, like a James Bond, to transcend circumstances and prevail on his own terms. While this kind of reversal has occurred throughout Mann’s films, we realize that Eberlin is the most helpless and hopeless of the director’s protagonists. In keeping with the dour mood of the Cold War and the gray atmospheres of London and Berlin, the double agent, unlike such driven figures as Howie Kemp and Glyn McLyntock, will not be able to save even himself, let alone anyone around him. Through such moments Mann makes the final suicidal “shootout” between Eberlin and Gattis thoroughly probable and appropriate. In essence, we see that his main character has virtually nothing to live for and yet, paradoxically, is clinging desperately to life—a contradiction that brilliantly undercuts all his verbal and supposed worldly sophistication. The first scene between Eberlin and Gattis also makes the film’s climax all but inevitable while establishing the bitter hatred between them. Interestingly enough, while each man clearly senses the other’s presence, they do not directly confront each other. Instead, in what emerges as the most strikingly directed sequence in A Dandy in Aspic, Eberlin and his secretary are called down to a pistol range where Burgess (Calvin Lockhart) is initially shown firing at a target and being graded by Gattis, who is obscured from view by a wooden wall. After Eberlin arrives and exchanges some cryptic words with Burgess, an exchange that emphasizes the mercenary nature of the whole intelligence operation, he is invited to try his hand with a pistol and his deliberately placed shot tears the wood just above Gattis’s head. Mann cleverly places the antagonist at the front of the frame to lend him an obvious visual dominance and to indicate that he will prove an equal match for the protagonist. Gattis reacts, but only for a moment, to Eberlin’s seemingly accidental shot. However, when the double agent has left, the younger man displays his rage by destroying the target with some well-placed shots and then making it clear to Burgess, who has obviously been his stooge, that he will kill him at the slightest provocation. In this way we come to understand that Gattis embodies the thoroughly gray and malignant world of espionage seen everywhere in A Dandy in Aspic. The emphasis in his world is on killing the other man before he kills you, and only hatred, self-righteousness, and zeal can assure survival within such an environment. Eberlin understands the amoral values of the world which he and his rival inhabit; however, unlike Gattis, he has lost all sense of moral certitude that would give him the same kind of zeal. While his foe’s emotions are close to the surface and readily apparent, the protagonist must suppress his feelings in order to survive. Thus, he watches as a fellow Soviet agent is pursued


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by his British colleagues and drowns under the stern of an outgoing pleasure boat—a reaction and a set-up that echoes T-Men (1947) and the death of agent Gennaro (Alfred Ryder). This killing drives Eberlin to seek out Pavel, his immediate contact with the higher echelons of Soviet intelligence, in order to plead that he be allowed to return to Russia and so turn his back on the sordid world of espionage to which he is shackled. While Pavel does not encourage the protagonist’s hopes because he believes that, after eighteen years of operating within British intelligence, Eberlin is too valuable to be replaced, he does agree to contact his superiors and have an answer within a day. Appropriately enough, when Eberlin opens the prayer book and finds a refusal, the soundtrack is replete with audio distortions that remind us of the moment in El Cid when the initial meeting of the lovers was juxtaposed by the angry court scene between their fathers. At the same time, Eberlin’s dismay is registered by off-kilter camera angles and his own bewildered image shown in fragmented glass reflections. Mann augments this entire episode by previously showing the audience that Sobakevich (Lionel Stander), the protagonist’s unknown immediate superior, has manipulated Eberlin in the same way a puppeteer does his toy figures. The protagonist’s world caves in more drastically when Frasor (Harry Andrews), his British superior, convinces him that there is a Soviet mole within the agency who must be removed and that he, Eberlin, is the best man for that job. Frasor gives the infiltrator’s name, “Krasnevin,” which is Eberlin’s real name, and then proceeds to show the protagonist a film on which Pavel is misidentified as that individual; thus, Eberlin is being asked to kill one of his own fellow Soviet agents. When Eberlin goes to Pavel’s apartment and reveals his new mission and the British conclusion about who Krasnevin is, his stunned colleague realizes he is a “dead man” and even begs the protagonist to kill him. Eberlin cannot bring himself to do so, and leaves. Once outside, the double agent’s own sense of self-protection takes over and he rushes back to Pavel’s room, bursts in, and fires several shots into his comrade’s bed—only to discover that Pavel is being whisked away by some other men who knock Eberlin down and leave him in the street when he attempts to follow them. While the set-up of the protagonist firing into Pavel’s bed clearly reminds us of the scene in which Colonel Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou) thought he was killing John Kennedy (Dick Powell) in The Tall Target, the captured Russian spy will be killed by his captors. While resorting to violence has, of course, been a notable trait of many of Mann’s characters, here its less noble motivation is emphasized by Eberlin’s initial fury and then frustration when he realizes he has not been able to kill the false Krasnevin and so protect himself, the real Krasnevin. When the action moves to Berlin, the protagonist seeks to find a scape-

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goat whom he can kill after devolving his own compromised identity on that unfortunate soul. The protagonist finds himself being followed by a mysterious figure, Henderson (John Bird), in the German capital. After he beats up this “shadow” and leaves him in a hotel bathroom, Eberlin becomes increasingly embroiled with Gattis, who has been dispatched by Frasor to work with him in apprehending Krasnevin. The plot becomes even more convoluted when Eberlin tries to frame another British agent, Copperfield (Norman Bird), as Krasnevin only to discover that individual murdered in a phone booth. Eberlin and Gattis then waylay Henderson, and the protagonist contrives to have the mystery man attempt to escape so that he can kill him and try to palm him off as the mole. However, this incident is followed by a confrontation between Mann’s two leading characters and Sobakevich, who insists he will reveal Krasnevin’s true identity for a large amount of money. Gattis agrees to the swap and the next day he and Eberlin learn that they will be informed by the Russian spy about Krasnevin on the following day. Before that happens, Gattis insists on stopping at an auto racing track and speaking privately with one of the drivers. The next day, Eberlin and Gattis return to the track where a major race is in progress. The protagonist abruptly and cruelly dismisses Caroline, who happens to be there, and a major crash causes most of the spectators to run toward the scene of the accident. In this melee, Gattis calmly murders Sobakevich. Eberlin, after once again being turned back at the East German border, ends up arrested by the British. At this point the elaborate plot of A Dandy in Aspic is unraveled as Eberlin learns from a hurried phone conversation that he has been double-crossed by his British handlers. Like the protagonist (Richard Burton) in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (Paramount, 1965), Mann’s main character has been tricked into removing individuals who were dangerous to those who sent him out, ostensibly, on a different mission. The British have long known of Eberlin/Krasnevin’s real identity, a fact made known at the airport by the lecherous Prentiss (Peter Cook). Given this minor character’s sexual amorality, he appropriately represents the final nail in the protagonist’s coffin—and the final sorry verdict on the alienated world of Cold War espionage. Eberlin realizes that facing off against the temperamental Gattis, who awaits him in a sports car at the end of the runway, is the only logical thing to do; and Prentiss, in perhaps his only human gesture, discreetly looks the other way as the two rivals rush to their mutual doom. The final freeze frame of A Dandy in Aspic visually reinforces Gattis’s earlier remark to Caroline, after he has forced Eberlin to leave the naked girl in a hotel bed and join him in the hunt for Krasnevin. With a slightly disgusted smirk on his face, Gattis, the man who seemingly lives only to kill,


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sagely notes, “You haven’t got a past and he hasn’t got a future.” Thus, Mann’s plot climaxes with the agents’ mutual destruction; however, the earlier dichotomy of good-badman and bad-badman, which was so prevalent in the director’s westerns, is thoroughly blurred here, for each of these characters is fatally compromised on moral grounds. Their earlier experiences with Copperfield and Henderson also recast that customary moral and plot distinction. Perhaps nowhere else does Mann make the morally absurdist world of his final film more apparent than with these two minor characters, who are played by brothers so there is an ongoing confusion as to which one is which. In killing them, the opposing forces reduce the historical conflict of the Cold War to a matter of destroying equally faceless bureaucratic operatives. Clearly, A Dandy in Aspic abandons even the tenuous moral ground of The Heroes of Telemark in portraying a modern world in which sheer survival requires all the individual’s wits, strength, and ability to renounce traditional moral codes.

8

Mann and the Critics Mann’s films were regularly reviewed by contemporary commentators, as we have seen in Chapter One; however, systematic treatments of either the director or his entire output have been few and far between. By comparison with the amounts of criticism and commentary devoted to such contemporaries as Elia Kazan, Samuel Fuller, Douglas Sirk, and Nicholas Ray, a 2002 verdict that Mann is “almost critically neglected today” does not greatly overstate the case. Such neglect derives, at least in part, from the director’s having died before film scholarship could create the kinds of oral history that would have placed Mann’s career and artistic outlooks more prominently on display. Critical and scholarly writing on the director is dominated by either quick overview introductions intended for viewers unfamiliar with Mann (and usually found on Internet sites) or focused articles on individual films or his work within a particular genre. Despite such enthusiasts as the youthful Jean-Luc Godard and the celebrated American director Martin Scorsese, who has been instrumental in restoring El Cid, and retrospectives by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York and the Turner Classic Movie channel, Mann still remains a peripheral figure in cinema history. He is most likely to turn up in critical treatments of film noir and westerns, where he is recognized as one of the distinctive stylists in those genres. French critical theorists, who championed the auteurist theory of film creation in which the primary influence on the finished product was held to be its director, praised Mann’s works during the 1950s in the celebrated Cahiers du Cinéma. That influential journal’s editor, film theorist André Bazin, singled out the director’s westerns for intense analysis in the 1956 article “Beauty of a Western.” The critic began this piece by urging that conventional responses to westerns, whether to praise their physicality, to dismiss their plots as tendentious, or to argue that they were “pretexts” for commentary on modern times, were simply inadequate to understanding them. For Bazin, such films possessed an “essence that only taste can uncover”1; indeed, westerns are comparable to music in that the sheer lyricism of their 254

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physical locations and cinematography were their primary sources of pleasure. He then went on to say that Mann possessed an understanding of “this musical truth, to the highest degree,” so much so that “every one of his Westerns that we have seen has been extraordinary.” Bazin felt that The Naked Spur was the best constructed of these efforts, while The Far Country had “an avalanche story that was much too cumbersome for my taste” and The Man from Laramie unfortunately put the onus of villainy on the wrong character. Mann eschewed psychological explanations for the characters’ actions, according to the critic, in favor of being true to the aesthetics of the genre in a way quite different from the approach found in (for example) High Noon; if he could still resort to stock types, such as “the old trapper” Charlie (Wallace Ford) in The Man from Laramie, these figures were only important because they added to viewers’ immediate aesthetic pleasure. Bazin found the landscapes in Mann’s westerns were “stripped of ... dramatically picturesque effects” and scaled to the human actors and actions that play out against them. This feature ultimately helped the director to reveal his own thoughtful attitudes toward what he was filming both as to its generic perfections as well as its portrayals of the human condition. While capable of showing sudden and striking violence, Mann’s westerns were becoming less dependent on that quality because the director “watches his heroes struggle and suffer, with tenderness and sympathy” in order to achieve “a wisdom of more depth than can be attributed to the organic elements of the genre alone.” Bazin’s article appeared two years before Man of the West, and one wonders if his lyrical and almost Olympian characterization of Mann’s aims leans too much on his argument that the town brawl between Lockhart and Hansbro in The Man from Laramie is “a long fight with no winner.” Andrew Sarris’s seminal The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 offers one of the earliest and most influential arguments for Mann as a major auteurist figure. After sarcastically offering that Mann must “not be confused” with namesakes “dreary Daniel and Delbert,” Sarris assigns the director to a category which he calls “The Far Side of Paradise.”2 Sarris then argues that this group is made up of individuals “who fall short ... either because of a fragmentation of their personal vision or because of disruptive career problems.” Thus, while Mann is not a “Pantheon Director” like Chaplin, Ford, Hitchcock, or Welles, he is in the second of the critic’s eight tiers for excellence, along with Capra, Minnelli, and Mann’s one-time mentor Preston Sturges. Mann’s reputation has suffered because mainstream critics generally ignore genre directors and such standard studio fare as westerns in favor of more obviously intellectual and serious films that emphasize ideas and dialogue.

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While he recognizes and respects Mann’s facility for directing western and action movies, Sarris argues that the director’s manner dominates over his matter; indeed, for the critic, “it is impossible to detect a consistent thematic pattern in his work.” The eight collaborations between Mann and James Stewart revolve around the “uneasy relationships” of men and women in the face of the unpredictably violent worlds in which they find themselves in these films. Mann, in Sarris’s view, was at his peak from 1947 and T-Men to 1958 and Man of the West; the critic even speaks of the “ultimate decadence” of El Cid. Certainly this treatment of the director’s career was prescient for its time as well as instrumental in assessing Mann’s status. However, in its dismissal of the director’s last years, it reflects a difficulty of perspective that all historical commentators or critics face—that of being too close to what they are studying or commenting on. Jim Kitses offers the first, and in many ways still the best, study of Mann as a director of westerns in Horizons West (1969). For him, the director’s accomplishments in the genre represent an “archetypal response” to the “extreme men” normally found in westerns—staunch individuals living on frontiers where their own capacities for violence and direct action must guide their moral choices and supply them with senses of honor.3 While Mann stumbled into the genre by virtue of his work on Border Incident which merged film noir with obviously western locations, he was able “to weld together themes, structure and style to produce his most personal works” from Winchester ’73 to Cimarron. Kitses believes that the best Anthony Mann directing Gary Cooper in embodiments of this directorial Man of the West (United Artists, 1958). Mann’s final western has gained critical synthesis can be seen in The acclaim since its initial release, and is now Naked Spur, The Last Frontier, considered among the director’s finest and Man of the West. works. What sets Mann’s westerns


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distinctly apart are their heroes and villains. The good guys are out for revenge, but this quest boomerangs on them because they must learn that such wishes are signs of their own weak humanity; they are chivalrous, but they lose this quality under stress; and they are, ultimately, defeated when they accept or return to civilization. Their most intriguing qualities are that such heroes are distrustful of idealism and skeptical about generalizations because they believe that real knowledge or wisdom only comes through suffering. Kitses attributes much of their character drawing to Borden Chase who scripted three of Mann’s westerns and dealt with hero–patriarchal villain situations in Red River (1948) and Backlash (1956). Mann’s villains are “unbalanced” versions of his heroes, capable of using violence to effect change or power but not equipped with their moral ambiguities that force the good guys to accept and protect others. Figures like Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker) in The Naked Spur and Judge Gannon (John McIntire) in The Far Country are rational badmen openly seeking wealth or power; the cretinous members of the Tobin gang in Man of the West are irrational and seek only the pleasures of the moment; Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) in The Naked Spur and Sam Beasley (Arthur O’Connell) in Man of the West are simply “harmless scoundrels.”4 For Kitses, Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb) is not only a villain “frozen in time” but also heroic in the way he confronts Link Jones at the climax of Man of the West.5 The community in Mann’s westerns is actually a family, and often microcosmically “malignant” as in The Naked Spur where the five characters constitute a dysfunctional unit or in Man of the West once the protagonist stumbles upon his outlaw past.6 Larger societies, such as townspeople, in keeping with generic convention, are “powerless” and so need the hero to save them; at the same time, these larger communities are capable of reshaping a character like Jed Cooper to fit their idealistic (and often hypocritical) self-images. Kitses also notes that the director’s landscapes are “correlative” for character drives and conflicts, and that high places often imply the “reach and conflict of characters.”7 In his concluding pages, Kitses argues that Mann’s western heroes are “scapegoats” who must pass the “test” of violence: In using it, they must resist its ultimate fascination as the villains clearly do not.8 He notes that the director never cuts for effect, preferring instead to use panning and tracking shots. Mann’s larger contribution to the western was that his “tragic world [darkened] the genre as no one else has” because his sensibility “was a peculiar one: highly modern in its preoccupation with psychology and violence; oddly anachronistic in its fascination with the austere morality and art of Classical Greece and Elizabethan England.”9 Kitses sees the final phase of Mann’s career in the 1960s as an instance of an artist “losing his way”; and

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the director’s projected western based on King Lear implied that even Mann understood his missteps.10 David Thomson’s brief discussion of Mann, while replete with the kind of information one expects to find in a “biographical dictionary,”11 offers a distinctly critical take on the director. As with all first-rate directors and their works, Mann’s films must be seen in order to understand what he was trying to convey thematically: The medium and the message are clearly fused in his work. Thomson argues for the “savage economy” of Mann’s noir films, states that his personality emerged much more fully during the 1950s, and finds a “heroic openness” in his later efforts. Men in War, Man of the West, and El Cid are Mann’s best films, with the Korean War drama and the Spanish epic representing “disguised westerns.” For Thomson, The Tin Star is Mann’s “most intriguing failure” because it points to the director’s tendency “to be clinical” with his characters and plot situations. While he can stress the need for seeing Mann’s films, Thomson is, ultimately, drawn to the more openly didactic and thematically overt of the director’s works at the end of his career. Thomson can insist that even Mann’s westerns are “too neat” because of the director’s seemingly archetypal approach to their characters as types rather than as distinct individuals. In doing so, Thomson puts forth an argument that will please those who respect, but do not passionately like, Mann’s work—just as T.S. Eliot soothed those who dislike Hamlet with his seminal essay “Tradition and Individual Talent.” That Thomson has done so within the spatial limitations of a reference book is, of course, to be envied. The most thorough and intriguing study of Anthony Mann is Jeanine Basinger’s seminal work which originally appeared in 1979 and was expanded and reissued in 2007. For anyone seriously studying the director or any of his works, Basinger’s book is not only essential but also invigorating in its admiration for and evaluation of its subject. Clearly, she cares passionately about Mann and his stature for, as she notes, his “reputation is still not what it should be.” At the same time, Basinger brings a wonderful curiosity to her analyses: She clearly believes that the importance of her subject’s works, like all enduring art, can never be exhausted by any single commentary.12 The publishing history of her book clearly supports Basinger’s argument that, when it was originally published, “I lamented the fact that Anthony Mann’s work was not fully known or appreciated, and I looked forward to the time when that would change. I’m still looking.”13 Basinger is convinced that Mann possessed “cinematic genius” and, despite the contributions of numerous gifted individuals, was the auteuristic spirit ultimately guiding (and responsible for) the finished films.14 She argues that Mann clearly understood that movies are not merely filmed the-


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ater, so that, in order to succeed as a filmmaker, he had to place “pictorial qualities” above language and overemphasized stage business. He learned the “language of cinema” in his first ten films, none of which is outstanding and all of which place “effects” above cohesion; however, by the time Mann came to the western, after perfecting his craft still further in film noir, he was able to transform a film genre through his artistic sensibility. This remarkable achievement of Mann’s is among the greatest in all of film. Because its nature is primarily emotional for the audience and technical in terms of presentation, it has been totally overlooked by critics and scholars attuned only to intellectual, political, or sociological achievements on film.15

While later critics have commented on Mann’s visual style (often in detail), Basinger’s assessment is the clearest argument on aesthetic grounds for the director’s importance as a maker of westerns. Mann’s evolution as a “visual storyteller” began with his apprentice B musicals and suspense films, an arena in which he learned to use swish pans, backgrounds for narrative meaning, benign objects for violence, and composition for plot and thematic. For Basinger, Strangers in the Night is the earliest foreshadowing of the director’s future sophistication during this time. Her extended analysis of this film also sagely notes that the “bad character”—the demented Hilda Blake (Helene Thimig)—is the most interesting figure in the work and a clear anticipation of the many colorful villains that appear in later Mann films.16 The director’s film noir period brought forth other techniques such as the reduction of light, extreme black and white contrasts, spatial distortions through special camera lenses, and jarring juxtapositions in which safe places are quickly transformed into dangerous traps for the beleaguered protagonists. Basinger notes that “everything fell into place” for Mann with T-Men, while the characters of Pat (Claire Trevor) and Ann (Marsha Hunt) in Raw Deal prefigure the male doublings seen in the westerns.17 According to Basinger, Mann achieved his own style after 1950 and Winchester ’73, and his works in the western genre can be divided into five stages: (1) “Transition,” in which, in The Furies and Devil‘s Doorway, Mann utilized the elements of film noir to get his bearings within the genre; (2) “Exploration and Resolution,” in which, in Winchester ’73, the director explored numerous standard plot situations within the genre to achieve “a new simplicity”; (3) “Definition,” in which, in Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country and The Man from Laramie, Mann and leading man James Stewart evoked a new persona for the actor and explored issues of revenge and (re)-assimilation for men who must use violence; (4) “Inversion and Abstraction,” in which, in The Last Frontier and The Tin Star, the director explores

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his earlier conflicts—the man with the guilty secret about his past and the psychological dualism of hero and villain—from decidedly altered perspectives; and (5) “Culmination,” in which, in Man of the West, Mann returned to his thematic concerns in an even more “stripped down” fashion to create “one of the greatest westerns ever made.”18 Throughout her extended discussions of each of these films, Basinger introduces and consistently applies categories of character types and basic plots as she does subsequently when discussing Mann’s epic films. Like everyone else who has written about it (or seen it), Basinger can make nothing out of Serenade; indeed, for her, it is an “inexplicable” entry in the Mann canon and she laments that it was a “truly impersonal film” for a great cinematic stylist.19 Such is certainly not the case when she discusses El Cid which she argues embodies “the ultimate journey for a hero a la Anthony Mann”: she believes that the epic has eight plot movements, in each of which the director supplies an action-decision-ordeal-heroic reward pat-

Anthony Mann (center) with Alec Guinness (Marcus Aurelius) and Sophia Loren (Lucilla) on the set of The Fall of the Roman Empire (Bronston/Paramount, 1964).


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tern.20 Thus, typically, the protagonist is asked by his cohorts to lead them despite his having been sent into exile (action); the Cid recognizes his higher calling in leading them “for Spain” (decision); he must abandon a normal family relationship with Chimene (ordeal); and he emerges as the mystical leader of all Spaniards (heroic reward). Basinger is also convinced that El Cid succeeds where nearly all other epics fail, for it perfectly blends the personal story, (the love of Rodrigo and Chimene), with the historical narrative (Spain must be saved from the invading Moors). El Cid is Mann’s last epic masterpiece, for, while she can praise The Fall of the Roman Empire for its grandiose elements, that work ultimately “loses its human focus” in its social and political details.21 The Heroes of Telemark, on the other hand, suffers because it needs to be seen on a motion picture screen so as to get some sense of its physical accomplishments. Basinger sees the earlier works God’s Little Acre and Men in War, which she treats in her last extended chapter, as “major” accomplishments for Mann. The Caldwell adaptation incorporates character types and stylistic devices that are familiar to the director’s critics; however, by presenting a sobering tale of willful individuals who must either change or perish, he does not pander to the kind of audience that would have responded to the film’s suggestive advertising. Men in War, with its dual heroes Benson and Montana and its questions about what it takes to win in combat, emerges as “one of the greatest war films ever made” and yet another shining example of its director’s artistic prowess.22 Basinger concludes her study with a brief summation and evaluation of Mann’s works. For her, they are “journeys undertaken by a hero in which he crosses a landscape and emerges with a new understanding of himself.” In the same way, Mann developed as a filmmaker throughout his career because he came to “understand himself as a great storyteller/myth-maker”: His protagonists come to embody a mythic world of archetype in which their struggles “all represent man himself.” Basinger’s final and strongest claim for Mann is that his films “will stand the test of time” because “they speak to the essential concerns of life.”23 Anthony Mann’s time seems (finally) to have arrived as seen by the recent resurgence in DVD releases of many of his most admired works.24 The new enhanced editions of El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire, with their intriguing biographical and critical selections devoted to the director, his producer, the composers, and the art direction that went into these mammoth undertakings, are not only models of how such efforts should be done but also witnesses to the depth and breadth of what Mann accomplished in these epic films. In addition, new DVDs of Man of the West and The Furies, which includes a final interview with Mann, have also recently become available.

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Given this commercial resurgence, the larger issue of the director’s stature, initially broached by Andrew Sarris, will also (one hopes) be reexamined and re-evaluated. Mann’s critical reputation, as has been noted, suffers because of his untimely death and the frequently dismissive attitudes of commentators about popular film genres. The same biases which summarily dismiss John Wayne or Clint Eastwood as serious actors, and war movies and westerns as mindless variations on simplistic themes, color much thinking on directors like Mann who worked almost exclusively within well-established generic forms. All too often, such individuals are pejoratively dismissed as “action directors”—a stigma that is, of course, not attached to a “suspense” director like Alfred Hitchcock or a “comedy” director like Frank Capra. In some ways Mann’s ability to handle different genres also works against his critical reputation: He is undervalued because, as the adage has it, he was a “jack of all trades but master of none.” This perception, or some variant of it, underlies too much commentary on various film arts and is too easily dismissive of the kinds of talent necessary to succeed within commercial filmmaking. In the same way as too many classical music enthusiasts dismiss most film music as hack work, too many critics and commentators underestimate the artistry and skill involved in working successfully within familiar genres. To judge Mann reasonably we must appreciate his films for what they are and not fault him or them for failing to meet some theoretically utopian criteria of excellence. To dismiss Mann’s work as not equal to the accomplishments of such figures as Billy Wilder or Frank Capra is comparable to arguing that a performer in the decathlon is not as good at pole vaulting as the Olympic winner in that single event. It is all but impossible to imagine either Wilder or Capra directing, say, Bend of the River or El Cid, although it is not quite as improbable that Mann could have done interesting things with, say, Double Indemnity (1944) or It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Clearly, Mann was adept in more genres than many more celebrated directors; indeed, we gain a better appreciation of his talent when we compare his outstanding noir films, westerns, and epics with the most celebrated works in these categories in movie history. Thus, while Billy Wilder is obviously an outstanding director in film noir, with Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951) along with Double Indemnity to his credit, Mann’s efforts in the genre, especially Raw Deal, He Walked by Night, and T-Men, raise him to a comparable level with his more celebrated contemporary. Indeed, given the kinds of budgets, scripts, and performers that he was given, the fact that such a comparison can even be made speaks additionally in Mann’s favor. Mann’s westerns, generally considered to be among the elite efforts in


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the genre, are certainly equal to the works of Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks in this category. Indeed, if anything, movies like The Naked Spur and Man of the West are more intellectually profound than They Died with Their Boots On (1941) or Red River (1948); and, while individual tastes will inevitably vary on how entertaining each of these films is, Mann’s westerns emerge as more coherent and more in tune with contemporary sensibilities than Walsh’s sentimentalized and romanticized version of the Custer–Little Big Horn story or Hawks’s mixture of rigorous cattle drive and screwball comic finale. Mann westerns are also more satisfying than those of Budd Boetticher who is often cited as a singularly distinguished western director. Boetticher’s celebrated series featuring Randolph Scott are models of tightly constructed plots that deal with archetypal conflicts and characters in a manner that resembles Man of the West; however, the protagonist’s persona in these films is much more static than what we see in James Stewart’s five performances for Mann. Scott’s characters are uniformly taciturn and often bitterly wise older men seeking revenge or simply trying to get along. The variations in their motives, whether in Decision at Sundown (1957) where the hero must learn his quest for revenge is based on a misunderstanding, or in The Tall T (1957) in which the central character must destroy the outlaws who have abducted him simply to get back to his ranch, are not nearly as dramatic or unsettling as those in Mann’s protagonists. At the same time, Mann’s characters exhibit more pressing and immediate human motivations than one finds in the westerns of Sam Peckinpah. While Ride the High Country (1962) has characters willing to die for honor and Major Dundee (1965) explores some of the same themes we find in The Last Frontier, The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) are exhausting explorations of nihilistic characters and amoral societies. Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his cohorts may exhibit a tribal loyalty that some will find admirable, but this supposed virtue is belied by the ease with which they kill anyone around them. The fatalistic Garrett (James Coburn) simply lives for the moment and only realizes his own death is impending after he has gunned down Billy (Kris Kristofferson). The prominence of such immoral and unreflective characters reduces these films to exercises in style unredeemed by any interesting or challenging ideas. One needs only to think of the emotional agonies of Howie Kemp in The Naked Spur to realize that Mann has a much more profound grasp of as well as more intriguing ideas about perennial human problems and conditions. Mann’s westerns can appropriately be compared to those of John Ford, the all-but-universally recognized master of the form. While Mann largely

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eschews the kinds of sentimentality that one finds, say, at the end of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and the knockabout comedy that one finds elsewhere in Ford’s westerns, he provides a much more intriguing portrayal of evil than we see in the older director. One needs only to compare the melodramatic Clantons of My Darling Clementine (1946) to the savage sociopaths of the Tobin gang in Man of the West to see that evil, for Ford, is largely the absence of good. Mann, on the other hand, by virtue of such compromised characters as Emerson Cole and Glyn McLyntock in Bend of the River, presents evil as the result of a struggle within individuals who feel its attractions and have then consciously chosen to follow or reject its temptations.. The compromised moral nature of Mann’s protagonists only surfaces in Ford with Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in The Searchers (1956) and, even more obviously, with Guthrie McCabe in Two Rode Together (1961), a character played appropriately enough by James Stewart. Mann’s epic films, El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire, are far ahead of such works as Richard Thorpe’s Knights of the Round Table (1953) and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) if only because they combine personal stories with larger historical issues. Mann’s originality in these films can be seen even more strikingly when one realizes that Gladiator is an amalgamation of his Roman epic with plot bits brought in from Spartacus (1960) and Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1935). While Scott’s work was honored with the Best Picture Academy Award, its mystical and fanciful ending in which the hero arrives in Nirvana and the Roman Empire is about to be saved by being restored to its pristine Republican form, make it appear almost ludicrous when compared with the sober realities of politics and power Mann captures in The Fall of the Roman Empire. Cecil B. DeMille’s lengthy career in epic filmmaking resulted in a distinct style, one characterized by nearly all the actors being overly busy in group scenes and declaiming (rather than speaking) in self-conscious tones. All too often, as when Nefertiti (Anne Baxter) tries to seduce a mud-spattered Moses (Charlton Heston) in The Ten Commandments, we realize that the personal story has overwhelmed the historical one. The director’s notorious penchant for showing all kinds of sexual misbehavior for several reels and then scourging it in the final moments as well as his often stentorian tellings of what his films are supposed to mean, are other traits that reveal the superiority of Mann’s approaches to the genre. He compares most favorably with David Lean, whose best epics—Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962)—present the same kinds of compromised heroes that we find in Winchester ’73 and The Far Country. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) in the first film and the title


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character (Peter O’Toole) in the second would fit comfortably in The Man from Laramie or Men in War. The most apparent difference between Lean and Mann (in addition to the fact that one can hardly imagine the Englishman directing a western) is that the former indulges in photographically brilliant sequences that last longer than they should, while the latter never loses his sense of pace. Even though he compares favorably to such luminaries as Wilder, Ford, and Lean, Mann is not without his faults. As we have seen, he has trouble when a female character is either the protagonist, as with Sabra Cravat in Cimarron, or simply the center of attention, as with the June Allyson characters in The Glenn Miller Story and Strategic Air Command. He has even more trouble when the major plot emphasis becomes romantic angst as with Serenade. Mann also utilizes an obvious kind of humor in his films, one which is made up of pratfalls by comic stooges (Jack Norton as a drunk) or reactions that try to laugh off calamities (as with the honest café owners in The Far Country who are outbid for the protagonist’s cattle herd). What we miss is wit; however, such verbal byplay would clearly work against the visually told and sobering themes that fascinate Mann. His stature must, finally, rest on his ability to tell a story well and, at the same time, supply it with ideas that are worth serious attention in their own right. Mann can entertain on an immediate level and, like Wilder, Ford, Lean, and others, give the audience more to think about than just what meets the eye. His ability to quickly adapt to and, at the same time, enlarge upon generic plots and characters is nowhere better illustrated than in Men in War which compares favorably with such recognized accomplishments as Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1945), and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (2000). Like composer Franz Waxman and cinematographer William Daniels, who both worked on his films, Mann was enough of a craftsman to prosper in many different types of film; indeed, his versatility sets him apart from nearly all of cinema’s other widely heralded directorial luminaries. A close examination of Mann’s movies reveals the depths and the subtleties of his artistry, for he understood that film speaks most powerfully through its images and its progressions. Thus, Mann presents characters and situations in which dialogue is often pared down to a minimum so that the conjunctions of performers and settings can be visually exploited to supply meaning. One needs only to think of the various landscapes in Man of the West and the actions played out against them (e.g., the ghost town shootout; the death of Dock Tobin) to see the director’s brilliance in this regard. At the same time, Mann’s use of reversal, in which the opening tone of a scene is rapidly altered by either a camera track or the juxtaposition of a

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concurrent action, underlies one of his general philosophical principles. Such moments as the angry court scene between the fathers interrupting the lovers’ initial meeting in El Cid, or the even more moving sequence in which the protagonist’s army greets him in the morning and he agrees he must lead them in spite of wanting to be with his wife, reveal the myriad possibilities of human life that mark Mann’s characters throughout his films. It is this thinking man’s approach which renders Anthony Mann all but unique among major filmmakers. His works are like vintage novels in that one can return to them time and again and discover challenging situations and new aesthetic and intellectual delights. Works like Raw Deal, The Naked Spur, Men in War, Man of the West, El Cid, and The Fall of the Roman Empire transcend their own times by still offering insights on problems and conditions that remain relevant today. Mann’s art, like that of the most celebrated painters, composers, and writers, endures because it addresses perennial human issues on perennial philosophical grounds. While he worked in a popular medium, the director was able to fashion many of its forms to explore larger issues in the guise of entertainment. After working on El Cid, Charlton Heston saw Mann as someone who was desperately trying to be a serious artist.25 Examining his films reveals that Anthony Mann was a film director who clearly became just that.

Filmography Dr. Broadway (Paramount, 1942; 67 minutes; B&W)

Wade Boteler (Joe Clark), Sergio Orta (Martinez), Jack Norton (Drunk), Hugh O’Connell (Charlie), Robert Homans (Mac)

PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel and E.D. Leshin SCREENPLAY: Art Arthur (based on a story by Borden Chase) MUSIC: Robert Emmett Dolan, Paul Sawtell; Irvin Talbot (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Theodor Sparkuhl EDITOR: Arthur Schmidt SETS: Hans Dreier, Earl Hedrick CAST: Macdonald Carey (Dr. Timothy Kane), J. Carrol Naish (Jack Venner), Eduardo Ciannelli(Vick Telli), Jean Phillips (Connie Madigan), Richard Lane (Patrick Doyle), Joan Woodbury (Margie Dove), Warren Hymer (Maxie, the Goat), Frank Bruno (Marty Weber), Sidney Melton (Louie La Conga), William Haade (Dynamo), Olin Howland (The Professor), Mary Gordon (Broadway Carrie), Jane Randolph (Fake Margie Dove)

Nobody’s Darling (Republic, 1943; 71 minutes; B&W) PRODUCERS: Herbert Yates, Harry Grey SCREENPLAY: Olive Cooper (based on a story by F. Hugh Herbert) MUSIC: Walter Scharf (music director); Nick Castle, George Blair (choreography) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jack Marta EDITOR: Ernest Nims SETS: Russell Kimball, Otto Siegel CAST: Mary Lee (Janie Farnsworth), Louis Calhern (Curtis Farnsworth), Gladys George (Eve Hawthorne/Farnsworth), Lee Patrick (Miss Pennington), Jackie Moran (Chuck Grant), Lloyd Corrigan (Mr. Grant)

My Best Gal (Republic, 1944; 67 minutes; B&W)

Moonlight in Havana (Universal, 1942; 63 minutes; B&W)

PRODUCERS: Herbert Yates, Harry Grey SCREENPLAY: Olive Cooper, Earl Felton (based on a story by Richard Brooks) MUSIC: Morton Scott (music director); Dave Gould (choreography) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jack Marta EDITOR: Ralph Dixon SETS: Russell Kimball, Gano Chittenden, Earl Wooden CAST: Jane Withers (Kitty O’Hara), Jimmy Lydon (Johnny McCloud), Frank Craven (Danny O’Hara), Fortunio Bonoanova (Charlie), George Cleveland

PRODUCER: Bernard Burton SCREENPLAY: Oscar Brodney MUSIC: Charles Previn (music director); Dave Franklin (songs); Edward Prinz (choreography) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Charles Van Enger EDITOR: Russell Schoengarth SETS: Jack Otterson CAST: Allan Jones (Johnny Norton), Marjorie Lord (Patsy Clark), William Frawley (Barney Crane), Don Terry (Eddie Daniels), June Frazee (Gloria Jackson),

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Filmography

(Ralph Hodges), Franklin Pangborn (Mr. Porter)

Strangers in the Night (Republic, 1944; 56 minutes; B&W) PRODUCERS: Herbert Yates, Rudolph E. Abel SCREENPLAY: Bryant Ford, Paul Gangelin (based on a story by Philip MacDonald) MUSIC: Morton Scott (music director), Joseph Dill CINEMATOGRAPHER: Reggie Lanning EDITOR: Arthur Roberts SETS: Gano Chittenden, Perry Murdock CAST: William Terry (Johnny Meadows), Virginia Grey (Dr. Leslie Ross), Helene Thimig (Hilda Blake), Edith Barrett (Ivy Miller), Anne O’Neal (Nurse Thompson)

The Great Flamarion (Republic, 1945; 78 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCER: William Wilder SCREENPLAY: Anne Wigton, Heinz Herald, Richard Weil (based on a story by Vicki Baum) MUSIC: Alexander Laszlo, Raoul Pagel; David Chudnow (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: James S. Brown EDITOR: John F. Link ART DIRECTION: F. Paul Sylos, Glenn P. Thompson CAST: Erich von Stroheim (Flamarion), Mary Beth Hughes (Connie Wallace), Dan Duryea (Al Wallace), Stephen Barclay (Eddie), Lester Allen (Tony), Esther Howard (Cleo), Michael Mark (Night Watchman), Joseph Granby (Detective), John R. Hamilton (Coroner)

Two O’Clock Courage (RKO, 1945; 66 minutes; B&W) PRODUCER: Ben Stoloff SCREENPLAY: Robert Kent, Gordon Kahn (based on a novel by Gelett Burgess) MUSIC: Roy Webb

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jack Mackenzie EDITOR: Phillip Martin, Jr. SETS: Darrell Silver, William Stevens, Albert D’Agostino, Lucius O. Croxton CAST: Tom Conway (The Man), Ann Rutherford (Patty), Jane Greer (Helen), Richard Lane (Haley), Lester Matthews (Mark Evans), Roland Drew (Maitland), Emory Parnell (Brenner), Jean Brooks (Barbara)

Sing Your Way Home (RKO, 1945; 72 minutes; B&W) PRODUCERS: Bert Granet, Sid Rogell SCREENPLAY: William Bowers (based on a story by Edmund Joseph and Bart Lytton) MUSIC: Roy Webb; Constantin Bakaleinikoff (music director); Herb Magidson and Allie Wrubel (songs) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Frank Redman EDITOR: Harry Marker SETS: Albert D’Agostino, Al Herman, Darrell Silvera, Harley Miller CAST: Jack Haley (Steve), Marcy McGuire (Bridget), Glenn Vernon (Jimmy), Anne Jeffreys (Kay), Emory Parnell (Captain), Ed Gargan (Jailer), Donna Lee (Terry), Patti Brill (Dottie)

Strange Impersonation (Republic, 1946; 68 minutes; B&W) VHS PRODUCER: William Wilder SCREENPLAY: Mindret Lord (based on a story by Anne Wigton and Lewis Herman) MUSIC: Alexander Laszlo (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Pittack EDITOR: John F. Link SETS: Sydney Moore CAST: Brenda Marshall (Nora Goodrich), William Gargan (Stephen Lindstrom), Hillary Brooke (Arline Cole), H.B. Warner (Dr. Mansfield), Lyle Talbot (Inspector Mallory), George Chandler (J.W. Rinse), Ruth Ford (Jane Karaski), Mary Treen (nurse)

Filmography

The Bamboo Blonde (RKO, 1946; 68 minutes; B&W) PRODUCERS: Herman Schlom, Sid Rogell SCREENPLAY: Olive Cooper, Lawrence Kimble (based on a story by Wayne Whittaker) MUSIC: Leigh Harline, Paul Sawtell and Roy Webb; Mort Greene and Lou Pollack (songs); Constantin Bakaleinikoff (music director); Charles Curran (choreography) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Frank Redman EDITOR: Les Millbrook SETS: Albert D’Agostino, Lucius O. Croxton, Darrell Silvera CAST: Frances Langford (Louise Anderson), Ralph Edwards (Eddie Clark), Jane Greer (Eileen Sawyer), Russell Wade (Patrick Ransom Jr.), Iris Adrian (Montana), Richard Martin (Jim Wilson),Glenn Vernon (Shorty Parker), Paul Harvey (Patrick Ransom Sr.), Regina Wallace (Mrs. Ransom), Jean Brooks (Marsha), Tom Noonan (Art Department), Dorothy Vaughan (Mom)

Desperate (RKO, 1947; 73 minutes; B&W) VHS PROCUCER: Michael Kraike SCREENPLAY: Harry Essex, Martin Rackin (based on a story by Dorothy Atlas and Anthony Mann [uncredited]) MUSIC: Paul Sawtell, Roy Webb; Constantin Bakaleinikoff (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: George Diskant EDITOR: Marston Fay SETS: Albert D’Agostino, Walter Keller, Darrell Silvera ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Nate Levinson CAST: Steve Brodie (Steve Randall), Audrey Long (Ann Randall), Raymond Burr (Walt Radak), Douglas Fowley (Pete), William Challee (Reynolds), Jason Robards (Lt. Ferrari), Freddie Steele (Shorty), Lee Frederick (Joe Daly), Paul Burns (Uncle Jan), Ilka Gruning (Aunt Klara), Larry Nunn (Al Radak)

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Railroaded (Producers Releasing Corporation, 1947; 72 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCER: Charles F. Riesner, Ben Stoloff SCREENPLAY: John C. Higgins (based on a story by Gertrude Walker) MUSIC: Alvin Levin, Emil Cadkin, William Kernwell, Charles Hortimer; Irving Friedman (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: Guy Roe EDITORS: Louis Sacklin, Alfred DeGaetano (supervisory) SETS: Perry Smith, Armor Marlowe, Robert P. Fox CAST: John Ireland (Duke Martin), Sheila Ryan (Rosa Ryan), Hugh Beaumont (Mickey Ferguson), Keefe Brasselle (Cowie), Jane Randolph (Clara Calhoun), Ed Kelly (Steve Ryan), Charles D. Brown (Captain McTaggart), Clancy Cooper (Jim Chubb), Peggy Converse (Marie), Hermine Sterler (Mrs. Ryan), Roy Gordon (Ainsworth)

T-Men (Eagle Lion, 1947; 91 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCERS: Edward Small, Aubrey Schenck, Turner Shelton SCREENPLAY: John C. Higgins (based on a story by Anthony Mann, Virginia Kellogg) MUSIC: Paul Sawtell; Irving Friedman (music director); Emil Cadkin (orchestrations) CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Alton EDITORS: Fred Allen and Alfred DeGaetano (supervisory) SETS: Edward C. Jewell, Armor Marlowe CAST: Dennis O’Keefe (Dennis O’Brien), Alfred Ryder (Tony Genaro), Wallace Ford (Schemer), June Lockhart (Mary Genaro), Charles McGraw (Moxie), Reed Hadley (Narrator), Mary Meade (Evangeline), Jane Randolph (Diana Simpson), Art Smith (Gregg), Herbert Heyes (Chief Carson), Jack Overman (Brownie), John Wengraf (Shiv), Jim Bannon (Lindsay), William Malten (Paul Miller) John Newland (Jackson Lee), Trevor Bardette (Rudy),

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Filmography

Tito Vuolo (Pasquale), Anton Kosta (Vantucci), Keefe Brasselle (Cigar Attendant), Frank Ferguson (Secret Service Man)

The Black Book [a.k.a. Reign of Terror] (Eagle Lion, 1949; 89 minutes; B&W) DVD

Raw Deal (Eagle Lion, 1948; 79 minutes; B&W) DVD

PRODUCERS: William Cameron Menzies, Walter Wanger, Edward Lasker SCREENPLAY: Phillip Yordan, Aeneas Mackenzie (based on their story) MUSIC: Sol Kaplan, Irving Friedman; Charles Previn (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHY: John Alton EDITOR: Fred Allen SETS: Edward Ilou, Armor Marlowe, Al Orenbach CAST: Robert Cummings (Charles d’Aubigny), Richard Basehart (Robespierre), Arlene Dahl (Madeleine), Arnold Moss (Fouche), Charles McGraw (Sergeant), Richard Hart (Francois Barras), Beulah Bondi (Grandmother), Ellen Lowe (Farmer’s Wife), Jess Barker (Saint Just), Norman Lloyd (Tallien), Wade Crosby (Danton), William Challee (Bourdon), George Windsor (Cecile), John Doucette (Farmer), Dan Seymour (Innkeeper), Russ Tamblyn (Child), Victor Kilian (Jailer)

PRODUCER: Edward Small SCREENPLAY: Leopold Atlas, John C. Higgins (based on a story by Arnold Armstrong, Audrey Ashley) MUSIC: Paul Sawtell; Irving Friedman (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Alton EDITOR: Alfred DeGaetano SETS: Edward Ilou, Armor Marlowe, Clarence Steensen CAST: Dennis O’Keefe (Joe Sullivan), Claire Trevor (Pat/Narrator), Marsha Hunt (Ann Martin), John Ireland (Fantail), Raymond Burr (Rick Coyle) Curt Conway (Spider), Chili Williams (Marci). Regis Toomey (Fields), Tom Fadden (Taxidermist), Richard Fraser, Whit Bissell, Cliff Clark

He Walked by Night (Eagle Lion, 1948; 79 minutes; B&W) DVD DIRECTOR: Alfred Werker (Mann uncredited) PRODUCERS: Bryan Foy, Robert Kane SCREENPLAY: John C. Higgins, Crane Wilbur, Harry Essex, Beck Murray [uncredited] (based on a story by Wilbur) MUSIC: Leonid Raab, George Antheil, Emil Cadkin; Irving Friedman (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Alton EDITOR: Alfred De Gaetano SETS: Edward Ilou, Armor Marlowe, Clarence Steensen CAST: Richard Basehart (Morgan), Scott Brady (Sergeant Marty Brennan), Roy Roberts (Captain Breen), Whit Bissell (Reeves), Jack Webb (Lee), Reed Hadley (Narrator), Jimmy Cardwell (Chuck Jones), Bob Bice (Detective Steno), John Dehner (Assistant Chief), Byron Foulger (Avery), Kenneth Tobey (Detective), Dorothy Adams (Housewife)

Border Incident (MGM, 1949; 93 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCER: Nicholas Nayfack SCREENPLAY: John C. Higgins (based on a story by Higgins and George Zuckerman) MUSIC: Robert Franklyn, Dave Kahn, Alexander Laszlo, Fred Steiner, Miklos Rozsa, John Lance, Alfred Ralston; Andre Previn (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Alton EDITOR: Conrad Nervig SETS: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters, Edwin Willis, Ralph Hurst CAST: Ricardo Montalban (Pablo Rodriguez), George Murphy (Jack Bearnes), Howard Da Silva (Owen Parkson), Arnold Moss (Zopilote), Alfonso Bedoya (Cuchillo), Charles McGraw (Jeff Amboy), John Ridgely (Mr. Neley), Sig Ruman (Hugo Wolfgang Ulrich), James Mitchell (Juan Garcia), Teresa Celli (Maria), Jose Torvay (Pocoloco), Arthur Hunnicutt

Filmography (Clayton Nordell), Harry Antrim (John Boyd), Jack Lambert (Chuck), Otto Waldis (Fritz)

Side Street (MGM, 1949; 83 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODCUER: Sam Zimbalist SCREENPLAY: Sydney Boehm (based on his story) MUSIC: Lennie Hayton, Miklos Rozsa CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joseph Ruttenberg EDITOR: Conrad Nervig SETS: Cedric Gibbons, Daniel Cathcart, Edwin Willis, Charles de Crof CAST: Farley Granger (Joe Norson), Cathy O’Donnell (Ellen Norson), James Craig (George Garsell), Paul Kelly (Captain Walter Anderson/Narrator), Jean Hagen (Harriet Sinton), Charles McGraw (Stanley Simon), Adele Jergens (Lucille “Lucky” Colner), Whit Bissell (Harold Simpson), Edmon Ryan (Victor Backett), Paul Harvey (Emil Lorrison), Ed Max (Nick Drummon), Harry Bellaver (Larry Giff), Harry Antrim (Mr. Malby), King Donovan (Gottschalk)

Winchester ’73 (Universal, 1950; 93 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCER: Aaron Rosenberg SCREENPLAY: Robert L. Richards, Borden Chase (based on a story by Stuart Lake) MUSIC: Jesse Hibbs, Daniele Amfitheatrof, Charles Previn, Milt Rosen, Hans Salter, Paul Sawtell, Leith Stevens, Walter Scharf, Frank Skinner; Joseph Gershenson (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels EDITOR: Edward Curtiss SETS: Bernard Herzbrun, Nathan Juran, Russell Gausman, A. Roland Fields CAST: James Stewart (Lin McAdam), Shelley Winters (Lola Manners), Dan Duryea (Waco Johnnie Dean), Stephen McNally (Dutch Henry Brown), Millard Mitchell (High Spade Frankie Wilson), Charles Drake (Steve Miller), John McIntire (Joe Lamont), Will Geer (Wyatt Earp),

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John Alexander (Jack Riker), Jay. C. Flippen (Sergeant Wilkes), Rock Hudson (Young Bull), Steve Brodie (Wesley), James Millican (Wheeler), Abner Biberman (Latigo Means), Tony Curtis (Doan), James Best (Crater), Ray Teal (Marshal Noonan), Chuck Roberson (Long Tom), Guy Wilkerson (Virgil Earp), Ian MacDonald (Deputy), John Doucette (Roan Daley), Edmund Cobb, Bud Osborne

The Furies (Paramount, 1950; 109 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCERS: Hal Wallis, Jack Saper SCREENPLAY: Charles Schnee (based on the novel by Niven Busch) MUSIC: Franz Waxman, Percy French, Walter Leopold, Victor Young CINEMATOGRAPHY: Victor Milner EDITOR: Archie Marshek SETS: Hans Dreier, Henry Bumstead COSTUMES: Edith Head CAST: Barbara Stanwyck (Vance Jeffords), Wendell Corey (Rip Darrow), Walter Huston (T.C. Jeffords), Judith Anderson (Flo Burnett), Gilbert Roland (Juan Herrera), Thomas Gomez (El Tigre), Beulah Bondi (Mrs. Anaheim), Albert Dekker (Mr. Reynolds), Wallace Ford (Scotty Hyslip), Blanche Yurka (Mama Herrera), Louis Jean Heydt (Bailey), Frank Ferguson (Dr. Grieve), Arthur Hunnicutt (Cowhand), John Bromfield (Clay Jeffords)

Devil’s Doorway (MGM, 1950; 84 minutes; B&W) PRODUCER: Nicholas Nayfack SCREENPLAY: Guy Trosper MUSIC: Daniele Amfitheatrof, Andre Previn CINEMATOGRAPHY: John Alton EDITOR: Conrad Nervig SETS: Cedric Gibbons, Leonard Vasian, Edwin Willis, Alfred Spencer CAST: Robert Taylor (Lance Poole), Louis Calhern (Verne Coolan), Paula Raymond (Orrie Masters), Marshall Thompson (Rod MacDougall), James Mitchell (Red Rock), Fritz Leiber (Mr. Poole), Chief John Big Tree (Thundercloud),

272

Filmography

Edgar Buchanan (Zeke Carmody), Rhys Williams (Scotty MacDougall), Spring Byington (Mrs. Masters), James Millican (Ike Stapleton), Bruce Cowling (Lieutenant Grimes), Harry Antrim (Dr. MacQuillan)

The Tall Target (MGM, 1951; 78 minutes: B&W) PRODUCER: Richard Goldstone SCREENPLAY: Art Cohn, George W. Yates, Joseph Losey [uncredited] (based on a story by Yates and Geoffrey Homes [Daniel Mainwaring]) MUSIC: Bronislau Kaper CINEMATOGRAPHY: Paul Vogel EDITOR: Newell Kimlin SETS: Cedric Gibbons, Eddie Imazu, Edwin Willis, Ralph Hurst CAST: Dick Powell (John Kennedy), Paula Raymond (Ginny Beaufort), Adolphe Menjou (Colonel Caleb Jeffers), Marshall Thompson (Lance Beaufort), Ruby Dee (Rachel), Will Geer (Homer Crowley), Richard Rober (Lieutenant Coulter), Katherine Warren (Mrs. Gibbons), James Harrison (Allan Pinkerton), Florence Bates (Mrs. Charlotte Alsop), Victor Kilian (John K. Gannon), Leif Erickson (Stranger), Regis Toomey (Tim Rielly), Will Wright (Thomas Ogden), Tom Powers (Simon Stroud), Peter Brocco (Fernandina), Leslie Kimmell (Abraham Lincoln), Dan Foster (WellDressed Man)

Bend of the River (Universal, 1952; 91 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: Aaron Rosenberg SCREENPLAY: Borden Chase (based on the novel Bend of the Snake by Bill Gulick) MUSIC: Hans Salter, Frank Skinner CINEMATOGRAPHY: Irving Glassberg EDITOR: Russell Schoengarth SETS: Bernard Herzbrun, Nathan Juran, Russell Gausman, Oliver Emert CAST: James Stewart (Glyn McLyntock), Arthur Kennedy (Emerson Cole), Julia

Adams (Laura Baile), Rock Hudson (Trey Wilson), Jay C. Flippen (Jeremy Baile), Stepin Fetchit (Adam), Harry Morgan (Shorty), Frances Bavier (Mrs. Prentiss), Cliff Lyons (Willie), Jack Lambert (Red), Royal Dano (Long Tom), Frank Ferguson (Don Grundy), Lori Nelson (Marjorie Baile), Chubby Johnson (Captain Mello), Howard Petrie (Tom Hendricks), Frank Chase (Wasco)

The Naked Spur (MGM, 1953; 91 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: William H. Wright SCREENPLAY: Sam Rolfe, Harold Jack Bloom MUSIC: Bronislau Kaper CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Mellor EDITOR: George White SETS: Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm Brown, Edwin Willis CAST: James Stewart (Howard Kemp), Janet Leigh (Lena Patch), Robert Ryan (Ben Vandergroat), Ralph Meeker (Roy Anderson), Millard Mitchell (Jesse Tate)

Thunder Bay (Universal, 1953; 103 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: Aaron Rosenberg SCREENPLAY: Gil Doud, Michael Hayes (based on a story by Hayes with additional ideas from George E. George, George F. Slavin) MUSIC: Frank Skinner, Milt Rosen CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels EDITOR: Russell Schoengarth SETS: Alexander Golitzen, Richard Riedel, Russell Gausman, Oliver Emert CAST: James Stewart (Steve Martin), Joanne Dru (Stella Rigaud), Gilbert Roland (Teche Bossier), Dan Duryea (Johnny Gambi), Jay C. Flippen (Kermit MacDonald), Harry Morgan (Rawlings), Antonio Moreno (Dominique Rigaud), Marcia Henderson (Francesca Rigaud), Robert Monet (Phillipe Bayard), Fortunito Bonanova (Sheriff), Louis Chigizola (Mario Siletti)

Filmography

273

From left: Frank Chase (crew), Dan Duryea (Johnny Gambi), Antonio Moreno (Dominique Rigaud), James Stewart (Steve Martin), Anthony Mann, Jay C. Flippen (Kermit McDonald), Gilbert Roland (Teche Bossier), Alan Pinson (crew) and Dale Van Sickel (crew) on the oil rig set for Thunder Bay (Universal, 1953). Once again, the machinery becomes more intriguing than the story line to Mann.

274

Filmography

The Glenn Miller Story (Universal, 1954: 115 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: Aaron Rosenberg SCREENPLAY: Valentine Davies, Oscar Brodney MUSIC: Henry Mancini, William Lava, Frank Skinner, Herman Stein; Joseph Gershenson (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels EDITOR: Russell Schoengarth SETS: Alexander Golitzen, Bernard Herzbrun, Russell Gausman, Julia Heron CAST: James Stewart (Glenn Miller), June Allyson (Helen Burger Miller), Charles Drake (Don Haynes), George Tobias (Si Schribman), Harry Morgan (Chummy McGregor), Barton MacLane (General Arnold), Sig Ruman (Kranz), Irving Bacon (Mr. Miller), Kathleen Lockhart (Mrs. Miller), Frances Langford (Herself), Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, Ben Pollack (Themselves), Carleton Young (Adjutant General), James Bell (Mr. Burger), Katherine Warren (Mrs. Burger); The Modernaires; The Archie Savage Dancers; Trummy Young (trombone); Barney Bigard (coronet); Cozy Cole (drums); Arvell Shaw (bass); Marty Napoleon (piano)

The Far Country (Universal, 1955; 96 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: Aaron Rosenberg SCREENPLAY: Borden Chase MUSIC: Milt Rosen, Oliver Drake, Herb Frederick, Hans Salter, Frank Skinner, Herman Stein; Joseph Gershenson (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels EDITOR: Russell Schoengarth SETS: Bernard Herzbrun, Alexander Golitzen, Russell Gausman, Oliver Emert CAST: James Stewart (Jeff Webster), Ruth Roman (Ronda Castle), Corinne Calvet (Renee Vallon), Walter Brennan (Ben Tatem), John McIntire (Mr. Gannon), Jay C. Flippen (Rube), Harry Morgan (Ketchum), Steve Brodie (Ives), Royal

Dano (Luke), Connie Gilchrist (Hominy), Jack Elam (Newberry), Robert Wilke (Madden), Kathleen Freeman (Grits), Chubby Johnson (Dusty) Gregg Barton (Rounds), Guy Wilkerson (Tanama Pete), Chuck Roberson (Latigo), John Doucette (Miner)

Strategic Air Command (Paramount, 1955; 114 minutes; Color) VHS PRODUCER: Samuel Briskin SCREENPLAY: Valentine Davies, Beirne Lay (based on a story by Lay) MUSIC: Victor Young; William Clifton, Ned Washington (songs) CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels EDITOR: Eda Warren SETS: Hal Pereira, Earl Hedrick, Sam Comer, Frank McElvy COSTUMES: Edith Head CAST: James Stewart (Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Dutch” Holland), June Allyson (Sally Holland), Frank Lovejoy (General Ennis C. Hawkes), Barry Sullivan (Lieutenant Colonel Rocky Samford), Alex Nicol (Captain Ike Knowland), Bruce Bennett (General Espy), Jay C. Flippen (Doyle), Rosemary De Camp (Mrs. Thorne), Harry Morgan (Sergeant Bible), Strother Martin (Airman), James Millican (General “Rusty” Castle), James Bell (Reverend Thorne), Enos Slaughter, Stan Musial, “Red” Schoendienst, “Peanuts” Lowrey, Memo Luna (St. Louis Cardinals baseball players as themselves)

The Man from Laramie (Columbia, 1955; 104 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: William Goetz SCREENPLAY: Philip Yordan, Frank Burt (based on a story by Thomas Flynn) MUSIC: George Duning; Morris Stoloff (music director); Lester Lee and Ned Washington (song); Arthur Morton (orchestrations) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Charles Lang EDITOR: William Lyon

Mann (right) directing James Stewart in Strategic Air Command (Paramount, 1955) as an unidentified crew member (left) looks on. This Cold War effort ultimately focuses more on the planes and mechanics of flying than on its somewhat turgid plot. SETS: Cary Odell, James Crowe CAST: James Stewart (Will Lockhart), Arthur Kennedy (Vic Hansbro), Donald Crisp (Alex Waggoman), Cathy O’Donnell (Barbara Waggoman), Alex Nicol (Dave Waggoman), Aline MacMahon

(Kate Canaday), Wallace Ford (Charlie O’Leary), Jack Elam (Chris Boldt), James Millican (Sheriff Tom Quigby), Frank Darrow (John War Eagle), Gregg Barton (Fritz), Boyd Stockman (Spud Oxton), Frank DeKova (Padre)

276

Filmography

The Last Frontier [a.k.a. The Savage Wilderness] (Columbia, 1955; 97 minutes; Color) DVD

Men in War (Security Pictures/ United Artists, 1957; 104 minutes; B&W) VHS

PRODUCER: William Friedman SCREENPLAY: Philip Yordan, Russell Hughes, Ben Maddow [uncredited] (based on The Gilded Roosterby Richard Roberts) MUSIC: Leigh Harline; Morris Stoloff (music director); Lester Lee and Ned Washington (songs); Arthur Morton (orchestrations) CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Mellor EDITOR: Al Clark SETS: Robert Peterson, James Crowe CAST: Victor Mature (Jed Cooper), Guy Madison (Captain Glenn Riordan), Robert Preston (Colonel Frank Marston), James Whitmore (Gus Rideout), Anne Bancroft (Corinna Marston), Peter Whitney (Sergeant Major Decker), Pat Hogan (Mungo), Russell Collins (Captain Clarke), Manuel Donde (Red Cloud), Mickey Kuhn (Luke), Guy Williams (Lieutenant Benson), William Calles (Spotted Elk)

PRODUCER: Sidney Harmon SCREENPLAY: Philip Yordan, Ben Maddow [uncredited] (based on the novel Combat by Van Van Praag) MUSIC: Elmer Bernstein; Alan Alch (song lyrics) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ernest Haller EDITOR: Richard Meyer SETS: Frank Sylos CAST: Robert Ryan (Lieutenant Mark Benson), Aldo Ray (Sergeant Joseph “Montana” Williamette), Robert Keith (The Colonel), Vic Morrow (Zwickley), James Edwards (Sergeant Kilian), Nehemiah Persoff (Sergeant Nat Lewis), Philip Pine (Riordan), Adam Kennedy (Maslow), Scott Marlowe (Meredith), L.Q. Jones (Sam Davis), Walter Kelly (Ackerman), Race Gentry (Haines), Robert Normand (Christensen), Anthony Ray (Penelli), Michael Miller (Lynch), Sen Yung (North Korean Prisoner)

Serenade (Warner Brothers, 1956; 121 minutes; Color) VHS PRODUCER: Henry Blanke SCREENPLAY: Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts, John Twist (based on the novel by James M. Cain) Music: Ray Heindorf (music director); Nicholas Brodzky and Sammy Cahn (songs); Giacomo Spadoni (opera supervisor); Walter Ducloux (consultant); with selections from Tosca, La Boheme, Turandot (Puccini); Otello, Il Trovatore (Verdi) CINEMATOGRAPHY: J. Peverell Marley EDITOR: William Ziegler SETS: Edward Carrere, William Wallace CAST: Mario Lanza (Damon Vincetti), Joan Fontaine (Kendall Hale), Vincent Price (Charles Winthrop), Joseph Calleia (Maestro Marcatello), Vince Edwards (Marco Roselli), Sarita Montiel (JuanaMontes), Harry Bellaver (Monte), Silvio Minciotti (Lardelli), Frank Puglia (Manuel), Licia Albanese, Jean Fenn (Themselves)

The Tin Star (Paramount, 1957; 93 minutes; B&W) DVD PRODUCERS: William Perlberg, George Seaton SCREENPLAY: Dudley Nichols (based on a story by Barney Slater, Joel Kane) MUSIC: Elmer Bernstein CINEMATOGRAPHY: Loyal Griggs EDITOR: Alma Macrorie SETS: Hal Pereira, Joseph M. Johnson, Sam Comer, Frank McElvy COSTUMES: Edith Head CAST: Henry Fonda (Morgan Hickman), Anthony Perkins (Ben Owens), Betsy Palmer (Nona Mayfield), Michael Ray (Kip Mayfield), Neville Brand (Bart Bogardus), Richard Shannon (Buck Henderson), James Bell (Judge Thatcher), John McIntire (Doc McCord), Lee Van Cleef (Ed McGaffey), Russell Simpson (Clem Hall), Mary Webster (Millie Parker), Peter Baldwin (Zeke McGaffey)

Filmography

277

From left: Aldo Ray (as Sergeant Montana) towers over Robert Ryan (as Lieutenant Benson) and L. Q. Jones (as Sam Davis) in Men in War (Security/United Artists, 1957). Montana and Benson embody the conflict in the film, a work that questions the characteristics needed for victory in war and shows the loneliness and fatigue experienced by men in combat.

God’s Little Acre (Security Pictures/United Artists, 1958; 112 minutes; B&W) VHS PRODUCER: Sidney Harmon SCREENPLAY: Philip Yordan (based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell) MUSIC: Elmer Bernstein CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ernest Haller EDITOR: Richard Meyer SETS: John S. Poplin Jr. CAST: Robert Ryan (Ty-Ty Walden), Aldo Ray (Will Thompson), Tina Louise (Griselda), Buddy Hackett (Pluto Swint), Jack Lord (Buck Walden), Helen Westcott (Rosamund), Lance Fuller (Jim Leslie), Fay Spain (Darlin’ Jill), Vic Morrow (Shaw Walden), Rex Ingram (Uncle Felix), Michael Landon (Dave, the albino), Rus-

sell Collins (Claude, the factory watchman)

Man of the West (United Artists, 1958; 103 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: Walter Mirisch SCREENPLAY: Reginald Rose (based on The Border Jumpers by Will C. Brown) MUSIC: Leigh Harline; Bobby Troup (song) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ernest Haller EDITOR: Richard Heermance SETS: Hillyard Brown, Ed Boyle CAST: Gary Cooper (Link Jones), Julie London (Billie Ellis), Lee J. Cobb (Dock Tobin), Arthur O’Connell (Sam Beasley), Jack Lord (Coaley), John Dehner (Claude Tobin), Emory Parnell (Gribble), Royal

278

Filmography

Dano (Trout), Robert Wilke (Ponch), Frank Ferguson (Marshal), Jack Williams (Alcott), Guy Wilkerson (Conductor), Chuck Roberson (Rifleman), Tina Menard (Mexican Woman), Joe Dominguez (Mexican Man)

Cimarron (MGM, 1960: 140 minutes; Color) VHS PRODUCER: Edward Granger SCREENPLAY: Arnold Schulman, Halstead Welles [uncredited] (based on the novel by Edna Ferber) MUSIC: Franz Waxman; Paul Francis Webster (song lyrics); the Robert Wagner Chorale; Leonid Raab, Edward Powell (orchestrations) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Surtees; A. Arnold Gillespie, Lee LeBlanc and Robert Hoag (special effects) EDITOR: John Dunning SETS: George W. Davis, Addison Hehr, Henry Grace, Hugh Hurst, Otto Siegel ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Ridgeway Callow (shot additional footage after Mann left production) CAST: Glenn Ford (Yancey Cravat), Maria Schell (Sabra Cravat), Anne Baxter (Dixie Lee), Arthur O’Connell (Tom Wyatt), Russ Tamblyn (the Cherokee Kid), Mercedes McCambridge (Sarah Wyatt), Vic Morrow (Wes), Robert Keith (Sam Pegler), Charles McGraw (Bob Younitis), Harry Morgan (Jesse Rickey), Aline MacMahon (Mrs. Pegler), Edgar Buchanan (Neal Hefner), Royal Dano (Ike Howes), L.Q. Jones (Mills), David Opatoshu (Sol Levy), Lili Darvas (Felicia Venable), Mary Wickes (Mrs. Hefner), Vladimir Sokoloff (Jacob Krubeckoff)

El Cid (Bronston/Allied Artists, 1961; 180 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCERS: Samuel Bronston, Michael Waszynski, Jaime Prades SCREENPLAY: Philip Yordan, Frederick Frank [credited]; Ben Barzman, Diego Fabri, Basilio Franchina [uncredited] MUSIC: Miklos Rozsa

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Krasker; Mario Berenguer (second unit); Alex Weldon, Jack Erickson (special effects) EDITOR: Robert Lawrence SETS/COSTUMES: Veniero Colasanti and John Moore SECOND UNIT DIRECTOR: Yakima Canutt TECHNICAL CONSULTANT: Dr. Ramon Menendez Pidal CAST: Charlton Heston (Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, “El Cid”), Sophia Loren (Chimene), John Fraser (King Alfonso), Raf Vallone (Count Ordonez), Genevieve Page (Queen Urraca), Gary Raymond (King Sancho), Herbert Lom (Ben Yussef), Douglas Wilmer (Moutamin), Barbara Everest (Mother Superior), Frank Thring (Al Kadir), Ralph Truman (King Ferdinand), Michael Hordern (Don Diego), Massimo Serrato (Fanez), Hurd Hatfield (Count Arias), Gerald Tichy (King Ramiro), Andrew Cruickshank (Count Gormaz), Fausto Tozzi (Dolfos), Tullio Carminatti (Priest), Christian Rhodes (Don Martin), Carlo Giustini (Bermudez)

The Fall of the Roman Empire (Bronston/Paramount, 1964: 188 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCERS: Samuel Bronston, Michael Waszynski, Jaime Prades SCREENPLAY: Philip Yordan, Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina MUSIC: Dimitri Tiomkin CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Krasker, Cecilio Paniagua (second unit) EDITOR: Robert Lawrence, Magdalena Paradell SETS/COSTUMES: Veniero Colasanti, John Moore SECOND UNIT DIRECTOR: Yakima Canutt DIRECTOR OF SECOND UNIT OPERATIONS: Andrew Marton (shot one or two sequences) CAST: Sophia Loren (Lucilla), Stephen Boyd (Livius), Alec Guinness (Marcus Aurelius), James Mason (Timonides), Christopher Plummer (Commdous), Anthony Quayle (Verulus), John Ireland (Ballomar), Mel Ferrer (Cleander), Omar Sharif

Filmography (Sohames), Douglas Wilmer (Niger), Finlay Currie (Caecina), Eric Porter (Julianus), Peter Damon (Claudius), Andrew Keir (Polybius), George Murcell (Victorinus), Lena von Martens (Helva), Gabrielle Lucudi (Barbarian Prostitute), Rafael Luis Calvo (Cleander’s Assistant), Norman Woodland (Virgillianus), Virgilio Texera (Marcellus), Michael Gwynn (Cornelius, Praetorian Leader), Guy Rolfe (Marius)

The Heroes of Telemark (Rank/ Columbia, 1965; 131 minutes; Color) VHS PRODUCER: S. Benjamin Fisz SCREENPLAY: Ivan Moffat, Ben Barzman (based on Knut Haukelid’s Skis Against the Atom, John Drummond’s But for These Men and the Titus Vibe Muller, Jean Dreville film La Bataille de l‘Eau Lourde [1947]) MUSIC: Malcolm Arnold; Niel Herms (song) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Krasker; Helge Sloylen (second unit) EDITOR: Bert Bates SETS: Tony Masters, Jack Maxstead, John Hoesli, Bob Cartwright, Ted Clements SECOND UNIT DIRECTOR: Egil Woxhalt CAST: Kirk Douglas (Dr. Rolf Pedersen), Richard Harris (Knut Straud), Michael Redgrave (Anna’s Uncle), Ulla Jacobson (Anna), Roy Dotrice (Jensen), Anton Diffring (Major Frick) Eric Porter (Terboven), Mervyn Johns (Colonel Wilkinson), Barry Jones (Professor Logan), David Weston (Arne), Ralph Michael (Nilssen), Jennifer Hilary (Sigrid), Maurice Denham (Hospital Doctor), Faith Brook (Woman on Bus)

A Dandy in Aspic (Columbia, 1968; 107 minutes; Color) VHS CO-DIRECTOR (UNCREDITED): Laurence Harvey (completed the film after Mann’s death) PRODUCER: Anthony Mann SCREENPLAY: Derek Marlowe (based on his novel)

279

MUSIC: Quincy Jones; Ernie Shelton (song) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Challis EDITOR: Thelma Connell ART DIRECTION: Carmen Dillon, Patrick McLoughlin CAST: Laurence Harvey (Alexander Eberlin), Tom Courtenay (Gatiss), Mia Farrow (Caroline), Lionel Stander (Sobakevich), Harry Andrews (Chief Fraser), Peter Cook (Prentiss), Per Oscarsson (Pavel), Barbara Murray (Heather Vogler), John Bird (Henderson), Norman Bird (Copperfield), Calvin Lockhart (Brogue), Richard O’Sullivan (Nevil)

Other Film Projects Follow Me Quietly (RKO, 1949; 60 minutes; B&W) PRODUCER: Herman Schlom DIRECTOR: Richard Fleischer SCREENPLAY: Lillie Hayward (based on a story by Mann, Francis Rosenwald) MUSIC: Leonid Raab, Paul Sawtell, Roy Webb, Leigh Harline, Mort Greene; Constantin Bakaleinikoff (music director) CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert De Grasse EDITOR: Elmo Williams SETS: Albert D’Agostino, Walter Keller, Darrell Silvera, James Altwies CAST: William Lundigan (Grant), Jeff Corey (Collins), Nestor Paiva (Benny), Dorothy Patrick (Ann), Frank Ferguson (McGill), Charles D. Brown (Mulvaney), Paul Guilfoyle (Overbeck), Edwin Max (The Judge), Marlo Dwyer (Waitress), Michael Brandon (Dixon), Douglas Spencer (Phony Judge) Besides crediting Mann for the story idea, some commentators believe he may have directed parts of the film.

Quo Vadis (MGM, 1951; 171 minutes; Color) VHS PRODUCER: Sam Zimbalist DIRECTOR: Mervyn LeRoy SCREENPLAY: John Lee Mahin, S.N. Behrman, Sonya Levien (based on the novel by Hendryk Sienkiewicz)

280

Filmography

MUSIC: Miklos Rozsa CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Surtees, William Skall EDITOR: Ralph Winters SETS: Cedric Gibbons, Edward Carfagno, William Horning CAST: Robert Taylor (Marcus Vinicius), Deborah Kerr (Lygia), Peter Ustinov (Nero), Leo Genn (Petronius), Patricia Laffan (Poppaea), Finlay Currie (Peter), Felix Aylmer (Plautius), Ralph Truman (Tigellinus), Abraham Sofaer (Paul), Marina Berti (Eunice), Buddy Baer (Ursus), Nora Swinburne (Pomponia), Norman Woodland (Nerva) Mann is variously credited with directing Marcus’s triumphal entry to the city and with the burning of Rome sequences.

Night Passage (Universal, 1957; 90 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCER: Aaron Rosenberg DIRECTOR: James Neilson SCREENPLAY: Borden Chase (based on a story by Norman Fox) MUSIC: Dimitri Tiomkin; Ned Washington (song lyrics) CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels EDITOR: Sherman Todd SETS: Alexander Golitzen, Robert Clatworthy CAST: James Stewart (Grant McLaine), Audie Murphy (The Utica Kid), Dan Duryea (Whitey Harbin), Brandon de Wilde (Joey Adams), Jay C. Flippen (Ben Kimball), Robert Wilke (Concho), Ellen Corby (Mrs. Feeney), Hugh Beaumont (Jeff Kurth), Jack Elam (Shotgun), Paul Fix (Mr. Feeney), Olive Carey (Miss Vittles), Dianne Foster (Charlotte Drew), Elaine Stewart (Verna Kimball), Donald Curtis (Jubilee), Herbert Anderson (Will Renner) The film was originally set to be directed by Mann, but he and star Stewart

differed about the latter’s performance and Mann “jumped” to The Tin Star.

Spartacus (Universal, 1960; 196 minutes; Color) DVD PRODUCERS: Edward Lewis, Kirk Douglas DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick SCREENPLAY: Dalton Trumbo (based on the novel by Howard Fast) MUSIC: Alex North CINEMATOGRAPHY: Russell Metty EDITORS: Robert Lawrence, Robert Schulte, Fred Chutzak PRODUCTION DESIGN: Alexander Golitzen ART DIRECTION: Eric Orbom CAST: Kirk Douglas (Spartacus), Laurence Olivier (Marcus Crassus), Charles Laughton (Gracchus), Tony Curtis (Antoninus), Jean Simmons (Varinia), Peter Ustinov (Batiatus), John Gavin (Julius Caesar), Nina Foch (Helena Glabrus), Herbert Lom (Tigranes), John Ireland (Crixus), John Dall (Glabrus), Charles McGraw (Marcellus), Woody Strode (Draba), Joanna Barnes (Claudia Marius), Harold J. Stone (David), Robert Wilke (Guard Captain in Libya), Nick Dennis (Dionysius), John Hoyt (Caius) Mann is credited with directing the opening desert scenes all the way through the revolt in the gladiatorial school. One explanation for his removal is that starproducer Kirk Douglas felt that Peter Ustinov was being too showcased and fired Mann in a fit of pique. Certainly the visual style up to the slave uprising is thoroughly in keeping with Mann’s work elsewhere. Some of the violence in the latter sequence—especially Spartacus drowning Marcellus in a vat of soup in a visual reprise of Lin McAdam’s ferocious assault on Waco Johnnie Dean in the saloon in Winchester ’73—is decidedly more characteristic of Mann than of Kubrick.

Chapter Notes Chapter 1

29. New York Times, 4/20/55. 30. Variety, 1/26/55; New York Times, 2/13/55. 31. Variety, 6/29/55; New York Times, 8/31/55. 32. Eliot, 301–03. 33. Variety, 12/14/55; New York Times, 12/7/55. 34. Variety, 3/14/56; New York Times, 3/23/56. 35. Variety, 10/16/57; New York Times, 10/24/57. 36. Variety, 1/23/57; New York Times, 3/19/57. 37. Variety, 5/14/58. 38. Variety, 9/17/58; New York Times, 10/2/58. 39. Christopher Husted’s liner notes for the 2004 FSM edition of Franz Waxman’s score for Cimarron offers the best explanation of Mann’s involvement with the film. 40. New York Times, 2/16/61. 41. Gilbert, 359. 42. Basinger, 12–13. 43. Martin offers the best explanation for Bronston’s meteoric rise and fall. 44. Variety, 12/6/61; New York Times, 12/15/61. 45. Variety, 3/25/64; New York Times, 3/27/64. 46. Variety, 11/3/65; New York Times, 3/10/66. 47. Variety, 4/3/68; New York Times, 4/3/68.

1. Her remarks are included in “Behind the Camera: Anthony Mann and El Cid,” a documentary found in The Miriam Collection DVD of El Cid (2008). 2. New York Times, 11/1/33. 3. New York Times, 5/20/36. 4. New York Times, 9/23/36. 5. New York Times, 10/3/38. 6. Thomson, Showman, 248. 7. Spoto, 171. 8. Variety, 5/6/42; New York Times, 6/24/42. 9. Basinger, 25. 10. New York Times, 1/14/45. 11. Variety, 4/18/45; New York Times, 4/13/45. 12. Variety, 6/19/46. 13. Variety, 5/14/47. 14. Variety, 10/8/47. 15. Wikipedia website. 16. Variety, 12/17/47; New York Times, 1/22/48. 17. Variety, 11/10/48; New York Times, 12/10/48. 18. Variety, 8/31/49. 19. Variety, 5/17/50; New York Times, 11/10/50. 20. McGilligan, 350–55. 21. Eliot, 248–54. 22. Variety, 6/7/50; New York Times, 6/8/50. 23. Variety, 6/28/50; New York Times, 8/17/50. 24. Variety, 8/1/51. 25. Variety, 1/23/52; New York Times, 4/10/52. 26. Variety, 1/14/53; New York Times, 3/26/53. 27. Variety, 5/6/53; New York Times, 5/20/53. 28. Variety, 1/6/54; New York Times, 2/11/54.

Chapter 3 1. Silver and Ward, 2. 2. Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick (Universal, 1973) uses a similar plot device in that the bulk of the film shows the protagonist trying to return to the Mafia money which he has unwittingly stolen.

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Chapter 4

Chapter 7

1. NBC-Universal remade Winchester ’73 in 1967 for television in a much simpler and more plodding version. Lin McAdam (Tom Tryon) must avenge the killing of his father (Paul Fix) by his worthless nephew Daykin McAdam (John Saxon). In spite of the pleadings of the latter’s father (Dan Duryea), Lin and his brother trail Daykin to Tascosa where the final shootout occurs. By this time Daykin has also wounded his own father, who now sees the boy for what he is. In addition to Duryea, Mann regulars John Doucette and Jack Lambert are featured as is John Dehner, who plays “High Spade Johnny Dean” and conflates three characters from Mann’s original. This version, directed by Herschel Daugherty, retains the opening shooting contest, the meeting at the cantina, and the finale in Tascosa, but there is no chase and rock battle between the dueling cousins.

1. The Heroes of Telemark offers a debate over the issue of sacrificing one’s friends and neighbors for a “higher cause,” and we get some sense of the anguish that goes into having to confront such dilemmas. No such overt difficulties attach to more celebrated films that broach the same issues: In Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), Rick (Humphrey Bogart) recognizes he must give up Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) on his own; in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996), the protagonist (Ralph Fiennes) sacrifices his friends and country with hardly a second thought in order to stay with his beloved (Kristin Scott-Thomas).

Chapter 5 1. The 1959 release Day of the Outlaw (United Artists/Security Pictures) has all the earmarks of a project that had been prepared with Mann in mind. This tale of the effects of an outlaw gang which rides into a decidedly wintry town was nicely directed by Andre de Toth. In addition to its production company and producer Sidney Harmon, we find Robert Ryan and Tina Louise as the featured love interest as well as Lance Fuller—all of whom are featured in Mann’s God’s Little Acre. Even Jack Lambert appears as yet another badman.

Chapter 6 1. Paul Newman was so dismayed by his performance in The Silver Chalice that he took out newspaper ads to apologize after the film was initially shown on television some years after its theatrical release. 2. Elley, 13. 3. Allen Cohen’s liner notes to the 1996 Koch release of Miklos Rozsa’s score for El Cid offer a most insightful analysis of both film and music. 4. Fletcher offers the best treatment of the Cid as a historical (rather than literary) figure.

Chapter 8 1. All quotes are from Bazin, 165–67. 2. All quotes are from Sarris, 98–99. 3. Kitses, 29. 4. Kitses, 47. 5. Kitses, 55. 6. Kitses, 59. 7. Kitses, 63. 8. Kitses, 68. 9. Kitses, 73. 10. Kitses, 77. 11. All quotes are from Thomson, Dictionary. 12. Basinger, xiii. 13. Basinger, xiv. 14. Basinger, 4. 15. Basinger, 9. 16. Basinger, 21. 17. Basinger, 38. 18. Basinger, 71. 19. Basinger, 141. 20. Basinger, 147. 21. Basinger, 162. 22. Basinger, 179. 23. Basinger, 181. 24. Mann was nominated for directorial awards by the Directors Guild of America for The Glenn Miller Story, Men in War, and El Cid, and for a Golden Globe for El Cid. He was honored as a “Top Director” by the Laurel Awards in 1958; that same year, he was nominated for a Golden Lion by the Venice Film Festival for God’s Little Acre. Mann was also honored with a star on the Walk of Fame at 6225 Hollywood Blvd. 25. His remarks are included in “Behind the Camera: Anthony Mann and El Cid,” a documentary in the Miriam Collection DVD of El Cid (2008).

Selected Bibliography Film Noir. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998. Sarris, Andrew. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. Searles, Baird. Epic! History on the Big Screen. New York: Harry Abrams, 1990. Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1979. Spoto, Donald. Madcap: The Life of Preston Sturges. Boston: Little Brown, 1990. Telotte, J.P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Thomson, David. A New Biographical Dictionary of Film. New York: Knopf, 2002. _____. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Knopf, 1992. Wright, Will. Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

Basinger, Jeanine. Anthony Mann, new and expanded edition. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2007. Bazin, Andre. “Beauty of a Western.” Translated by Liz Heron. Cahiers du Cinema 55, January 1956. Reprinted in Jim Hillier, ed. Cahiers du Cinema: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 165–68. Coursodon, Jean-Pierre, and Pierre Sauvage. American Directors. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983. Eliot, Marc. Jimmy Stewart: A Biography. New York: Harmony Books, 2006. Elley, Derek. The Epic Film: Myth and History. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Fenin, George, and William K. Everson. The Western from Silents to the Seventies. New York: Grossman, 1973. Fletcher, Richard. The Quest for El Cid. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Gilbert, Julie Goldsmith. Edna Ferber: A Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978. Hitt, Jim. The American West from Fiction (1823–1876) into Film (1909–1986). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990. Hooper, Finley A. Roman Realities. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979. Kitses, Jim. Horizons West: Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: Studies of Authorship within the Western. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969. Martin, Mel. The Magnificent Showman: The Epic Films of Samuel Bronston. Albany, Ga.: Bear Manor Media, 2007. McGilligan, Patrick. Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of

Articles on Specific Films On Dr. Broadway: Variety, 5/6/42. New York Times, 6/25/42. On Moonlight in Havana: Variety, 10/14/42. On My Best Gal: Variety, 4/12/44. On The Great Flamarion: Slide, A. “The Great Flamarion.” Magill’s Survey of Cinema: First Series, Volume II. Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, 1980, pp. 923–25. Variety, 1/17/45. New York Times, 1/15/45. On Two O’Clock Courage: Variety, 4/18/45. New York Times, 4/14/45.

283

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On Sing Your Way Home: Variety, 11/14/45. On The Bamboo Blonde: Variety, 4/19/46. On Desperate: Gifford, B. “Unforgettable Films.” Projections no. 8: 126–51, 1999. Silver and Ward, pp. 87–88. Variety, 5/14/47. On Railroaded: Silver and Ward, p. 238. Variety, 10/8/47. On T-Men: Silver and Ward, pp. 279–80. Variety, 12/17/47. New York Times, 1/23/48. On Raw Deal: Renov, M. “Raw Deal: The Woman in the Text.” Wide Angle 6: 18–22, n. 2, 1984. Petlewski, P. “Complication of Narrative in Genre Film.” Film Criticism 4: 18–24, n. 1, 1979. Silver and Ward, pp. 238–39. Variety, 5/19/48. New York Times, 7/9/48. On He Walked by Night: Silver and Ward, pp. 121–23. Variety, 11/10/48. New York Times, 2/7/49. On Border Incident: Silver and Ward, pp. 39–40. Variety, 8/31/49. New York Times, 11/21/49. On The Black Book: Grinden, L. “Hollywood History and the French Revolution: from ‘The Bastille’ to ‘The Black Book.’” Velvet Light Trap n. 28: 32–48, Fall 1991. Silver and Ward, pp. 329–30. Variety, 5/18/49. New York Times, 10/17/49. New Yorker, 10/15/49. Newsweek, 12/5/49. On Side Street: Black, J.F. “Side Street.” Scarlet Street n. 34: 56, 1999. Silver and Ward, pp. 256–57. Time, 4/10/50. Variety, 12/28/49. New York Times, 5/24/50. On Devil’s Doorway: Hearne, J. “The ‘Ache for Home’ in Anthony Mann’s Devil’s Doorway.” Film and History 33: 18–29 n. 1 (2003). Petlewski, P. “Devil’s Doorway and the

Use of Genre as Disguise.” FSU Conf. 6: 39–46, 1981. Time, 10/9/50. Thomas, Tony. The West That Never Was. New York: Citadel Press, 1989, pp. 142–47. Variety, 5/17/50. New York Times, 11/10/50. On The Furies: Newsweek, 9/4/50. Time, 8/21/50. Morton, L. Hollywood Quarterly 5:2: Winter 1950, 178–81. Variety, 6/28/50. New York Times, 8/17/50. On Winchester ’73: Vanderlaan, M. “Winchester ’73.” Magill’s Survey of Cinema: First Series, Volume IV. Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, 1980, pp. 1848–52. Newsweek, 7/3/50. Time, 6/19/50. Variety, 6/7/50. New York Times, 6/8/50. On Bend of the River: New Yorker, 4/19/52. Newsweek, 2/25/52. Time, 3/24/52. Variety, 1/23/52. New York Times, 4/10/52. On The Naked Spur: Arnold, J. “Why Old Movies Inspire Me.” Moviemaker n.45: 74–75, Winter 2002. Cohen, H. “Men Have Tears in Them: The Other Cowboy Hero.” Journal of American Culture 21: 57–78, n. 4, 1998. Lucas, B. “The Naked Spur.” Magill’s Survey of Cinema: First Series, Volume IV. Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, 1980, pp. 1704–09. Newsweek, 3/2/53. Saturday Review, 2/14/53. Time, 2/2/53. Variety, 1/14/53. New York Times, 3/26/53. On The Far Country: Thompson, R. “On The Far Country.” Film Comment 13: 36–45, May-June 1977. Variety, 1/26/55. New York Times, 2/14/55. On The Man from Laramie: Bodian, A. Village Voice, October 26, 1955, 6. Thomas, Tony. The West That Never

Bibliography Was. New York: Citadel Press, 1989, pp. 181–87. Meyer, William R. The Making of the Great Westerns. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1979, pp. 250–61. Variety, 6/29/55. New York Times, 9/1/55. On The Last Frontier: Variety, 12/14/55. New York Times, 12/7/55. On The Tin Star: McReynolds, O.J. “Taking Care of Things: Evolution in the Treatment of a Western Theme.” Literature/Film Quarterly 18: 202–08, n. 3, 1990. Gow, G. Films and Filming 4:4: January, 1958, 27. Variety, 10/16/57. New York Times, 10/24/57. On Man of the West: Menello, R. “Letters: Man of the West.” Sight and Sound 59: 70–71, n. 1, 1989– 1990. Peary, Danny. Cult Movies. New York: Dell, 1981, pp. 223–26. Newsweek, 10/6/58. Time, 10/6/58. Baker, P. Films and Filming 5:4: January, 1959, 24. Variety, 9/17/58. New York Times, 10/2/58. On The Tall Target: Newsweek, 9/3/51. Variety, 8/1/51. New York Times, 9/3/51. On Thunder Bay: Films in Review 4:6, June-July, 1953, 297–98. Variety, 5/6/53. New York Times, 5/21/53. On Strategic Air Command: Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing. New York: Pantheon, 1983, pp. 64–69. Hart, H. Films in Review 6:5: May, 1955, 237. Hill, D. Films and Filming 1:11: August 1955, 17. Sarris, A. Film Culture 1:4: Summer, 1955, 26. Variety, 5/30/55. New York Times, 4/21/55. On The Glenn Miller Story: Chapin, J. Films in Review 5:8: October, 1954, 437–38. Films in Review 5:1: January, 1954, 36. Life, 3/1/54.

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Look, 1/26/54 New Yorker, 2/20/54. Newsweek, 2/1/54. Saturday Review, 2/27/54. Time, 3/1/54. Variety, 1/6/54. New York Times, 2/11/54. On Serenade: Mannock, P.L. Films and Filming 2:9: June, 1956, 25. Variety, 3/14/56. New York Times, 3/23/56. On Men in War: Anger, C. “The Big Mann.” Cahiers du Cinema n. 499, 2/16/96. Phipps, C. Films in Review 8:4: April, 1957, 176. Kemp, P. “‘The Story of All Wars’: Anthony Mann’s Men in War.” Film Comment 32: n. 4 (July-August 1996), 50–54. Variety, 1/23/57. New York Times, 3/20/57. On God’s Little Acre: Howard, W.L. “Caldwell on Stage and Screen.” Southern Quarterly 27: 59–72, n. 3, 1989. Life, 5/5/58. Newsweek, 6/2/58. Time, 6/2/58. Baker, P. Films and Filming 4:12: September, 1958, 24. Gillett, J. Sight and Sound 27:6: Autumn, 1958, 318. Phipps, C. Films in Review 9:5: May, 1958, 270–71. Variety, 5/14/58. New York Times, 10/14/58. On Cimarron: Durgnat, R. Films and Filming 7:6: March, 1961, 26. Winfield, G. Films in Review 12:1: January, 1961, 41–42. Variety, 12/7/60. New York Times, 2/17/61. On El Cid: Jancovich, M. “‘The Purest Knight of All’: Nation, History, and Representation in El Cid.” Cinema Journal 40: 79–103, n. 1, 2000. Williams, D.J. “Looking at the Middle Ages in the Cinema: An Overview.” Film and History 28: 8–19, n. 1–2, 1999. Williams, D.E. “Wrap Shot.” American Cinematographer 80: 144, April, 1999.

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Wiseman, S. “El Cid.” Magill’s Survey of Cinema: Second Series, Volume I. Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, 1981, pp. 458–61. Newsweek, 12/18/61. Saturday Review, 12/23/61. Time, 12/22/61. Elley, pp. 157–59. Thomas, Tony. The Great Adventure Films. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1980, pp. 240–47. Baker, P. Films and Filming 7:9: June, 1961, 14–15; 36. Mifflin, W. Films in Review 13:1: January, 1962, 45–46. Strick, P. Films and Filming 8:5: February, 1962, 30–31. Variety, 12/6/61. New York Times, 12–15–61. On The Fall of the Roman Empire: Hogan, D.J. “The Fool Was With Him: Part Two.” Filmfax n. 83: 53–64, February-March 2001. Elley, D. “The Fall of the Roman Empire.” Films and Filming 22: 18–24, February, 1976. Elley, pp. 105–09. Solomon, Jon. The Ancient World in the Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 83–87.

New Yorker, 4/4/64. Newsweek, 4/6/64. Saturday Review, 4/4/64. Bean, R. Films and Filming 10:8: May, 1964, 22. Horvath, J. Films in Review 15:4: April, 1964, 245–46. Sarris, A. Village Voice 9:28: 4/30/64, 15. Variety, 3/25/64. New York Times, 3/27/64. On The Heroes of Telemark: Newsweek, 2/14/66. Time, 7/18/66. Eyles, A. Films and Filming 12:4: January, 1966, 25–26. Variety, 11/3/65. New York Times, 3/10/66. On A Dandy in Aspic: Life, 4/29/68. Time, 4/12/68. Austen, D. Films and Filming 14:10: July, 1968, 35. Comerford, A. Films in Review 19:5: May, 1968, 311–12. Farber, S. Film Quarterly 22:1: Fall, 1968, 72–73. Variety, 4/3/68. New York Times, 4/3/68.

Index Numbers in bold italics indicate pages with photographs. Ace in the Hole 262 Acosta, Rodolfo 95 Adams, Dorothy 71 Adams, Julia 150, 153 The Adventures of Martin Eden 21 Aeschylus 135 The Alamo 94 Albanese, Licia 183 Aldrich, Robert 17, 92, 94 Alexander, John 106 Alexander the Great 203 All Quiet on the Western Front 265 Allen, Lester 50 Allyson, June 168, 180, 181, 183 Alsberg, Henry 6 Alton, John 10, 11, 12, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 70, 75, 7, 82 The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1965 255 An American in Paris 11 And Then There Were None 21 Anderson, Judith 136 Andrews, Harry 251 Ankrum, Morris 6 Antrim, Harry 128 Armstrong, Louis 183 Arrowhead 95 Astor, Mary 48 Atkinson, Brooks 6, 7 Atlas, Dorothy 9 Auer, Mischa 96

Bart, Jean 6 Barzeman, Ben 217 Basehart, Richard 11, 67, 69, 72, 83, 89 Basinger, Jeanine 1–2, 258–261 Bates, Florence 176 Baxter, Anne 211, 216, 264 Bazin, André 254–255 Beaumont, Hugh 68, 163 Bedoya, Alfonso 75, 77 Belasco, David 6 Bellaver, Harry 64, 183 Ben-Hur (1923) 203 Ben-Hur (1959) 208, 216 Bend of the River 14, 30, 71, 130, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154–157, 161, 162, 163, 164, 171, 176, 188, 208, 241, 242, 259, 262, 264 Bend of the Snake 14 Bennett, Joan 11 Bernstein, Elmer 18, 190, 194, 197, 198 Best, James 106 Bickford, Charles 94 The Big Blow 7 The Big Country 94 The Big Heat 49 The Big Sky 94, 243 Billy the Kid 92 Bird, John 252 Bird, Norman 252 Bissell, Whit 66, 68 Black, Jean Ferguson 6 The Black Book (a.k.a. Reign of Terror) 3, 10, 11, 50, 81–89 The Blue Angel (1930) 50 The Blue Peter 6 Bochanius, Dion 6 Body Heat 48 Boetticher, Budd 92, 97, 263 Bogart, Humphrey 48 Bondi, Beulah 84, 141 Border Incident 9, 10, 12, 30, 67 74, 76, 77, 80, 86, 90, 91, 175, 207, 256 The Border Jumpers 20 Boyd, Stephen 23, 39, 205, 221, 240 Bracker, Eddie 6

Baby Doll 166 Backlash 257 Bacon, Irving 186 Baldwin, Peter 109, 117 The Bamboo Blonde 9, 26, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38 Bancroft, Anne 123 Barabbas 90 Barclay, Stephen 50 Barker, Jess 83 Barlow, Howard 6 Barrett, Edith 38 Barrymore, Ethel 10

287

288

Index

Brady, Scott 69 Brand, Neville 109 Brando, Marlon 1, 166 Brasselle, Keefe 68 Braveheart 203 Bray, Robert 62 Brennan, Walter 152 The Bride the Sun Shines On 6 The Bridge on the River Kwai 240, 264 Brodie, Steve 9, 49, 60, 98, 149, 152 Brodzky, Nicholas 183 Broken Arrow (1950) 12, 95 Bromfield, John 137 Bronston, Samuel 21, 22, 23, 204, 217 Brooke, Hillary 42 Brooks, Jean 41 Brown, Charles D. 68, 90 Brown, Kay 7 Brown, Will C. 20 Buchanan, Edgar 124 Bundsmann, Bertha (nee Waxebaum) 5 Bundsmann, Emil Theodore 5 Burgess, Gelett 40 Burns, Paul 61 Burr, Raymond 9, 30, 55, 60 Burton, Richard 24, 202, 216, 252 Byington, Spring 129 Cahiers du Cinéma 254 Cahn, Sammy 183 Cain, James M. 167, 180 Caldwell, Erskine 167, 190, 199 Calhern, Louis 35, 123 Calleia, Joseph 183 Callow, Reggie 20 Calvet, Corinne 151 Canutt, Yakima 204, 217 Capra, Frank 13, 189, 255, 262 Cardin, Pierre 248 Cardwell, Jimmy 64 Carey, Macdonald 6, 7, 27 Carnovsky, Morris 6 Chandler, George 45 Chandler, Jeff 95 Chandler, Raymond 27 Chaplin, Charles 255 Chase, Borden 14, 149, 163, 256 Chase, Frank 273 Chase, Mary 12 Cherokee Night 6 Chinatown 48 Christie, Agatha 21 Ciannelli, Eduardo 27 El Cid see under El Cimarron (1960) 3, 20, 39, 208–215, 256, 265 Cimino, Michael 217 Circus World 22, 204 Citizen Kane 38 City Without Men 21 Clair, Rene 21 Cleopatra (1963) 63, 201, 217

Cleveland, George 34 Clift, Montgomery 94, 157, 166 Cobb, Lee J. 39, 100, 135, 136, 257 Coburn, James 95, 263 Coca, Imogene 6 Cody, Buffalo Bill 92 Colasanti, Venerio 217 Collins, Russell 131 Columbia Pictures 21 Combat 18, 189 Conrad, Joseph 199 Converse, Peggy 72 Conway, Tom 40 Cook, Peter 252 Cooper, Gary 20, 83, 93, 112, 135, 136, 241, 256 Cooper, James Fenimore 92 Cooper, Merian 201, 264 Corey, Jeff 90 Corey, Wendell 39, 135 Corrigan, Lloyd 35 Cosmatos, George P. 93 Cotton, Will 6 Courtenay, Tom 241 Cowling, Bruce 125 Craig, James 64 Crane, Jeanne 97 Craven, Frank 35 Crawford, Joan 42 Crisp, Donald 101 Cromwell, Richard 6 Crosby, Wade 83 Crossfire 49 Crowe, Russell 202 Crowther, Bosley 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 23 Cruikshank, Andrew 229 The Crusades 204 Cummings, Robert 82, 89 Currie, Finlay 202, 206, 235 Curtis, Tony 106, 216 Curtiz, Michael 93 Dahl, Arlene 84 Dahl, John 207 A Dandy in Aspic 5, 24, 25, 55, 180, 239, 241, 245, 248, 250–253 Daniels, William 163, 181, 265 Dano, Royal 145, 149, 151, 152 Darby, Ken 216 The Dark Corner 45 Darrow, Frank 99 Darvas, Lili 213 Da Silva, Howard 74 Daves, Delmer 12, 92, 95, 203 Davis, Bette 42 Dean, James 166 Dear Ruth 38 de Carlo, Yvonne 216 Decision at Sundown 263 Dee, Ruby 176 de Havilland, Olivia 213

Index Dehner, John 71, 138, 241 Demetrius and the Gladiators 203, 216 de Mille, Cecil B. 202, 203, 204, 216, 264 Desperate 9, 59–63, 66, 67, 86, 91, 180 Destry Rides Again 13, 96, 160 Detour 45 Devil’s Doorway 10, 12, 122, 124, 128–130, 131, 143, 259 de Wilde, Brandon 163 Diana Productions 11, 12, 13 Dickinson, Angie 17 Dietrich, Marlene 96, 161 Diffring, Anton 240 Dix, Richard 210 Dmytryk, Edward 95 Dr. Broadway 3, 6, 7, 26, 27–31, 81 Dr. No 239 Dodge City 93 Don Giovanni 183 Donlevy, Brian 96, 161 Double Indemnity 41, 48, 49, 54, 262 Douglas, Kirk 21, 24, 93, 143, 205, 206, 239, 240, 243 Drake, Charles 98, 181 Dru, Joanne 168, 170 Duel in the Sun 96 Duryea, Dan 51, 100, 163, 165, 169, 208, 243, 273 Duvall, Robert 95 The Dybbuk 6 Eagle-Lion Pictures 9, 12, 74 Earp, Wyatt 92 Eastwood, Clint 95, 96, 262 Edwards, James 193, 194 Edwards, Ralph 34, 38 Edwards, Vince 187 El Cid 1, 3, 21, 22, 23, 24, 86, 199, 201, 204, 205, 207, 217, 218, 219, 221, 223, 225, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 246, 251, 254, 256, 260, 262, 264, 266 Elam, Jack 78, 99, 149, 152, 163 Eliot, T.S. 258 Elley, Derek 203 Elliott, Sam 93 Enright, Ray 94 Erickson, Leif 169 Everest, Barbara 221 Fadden, Tom 55, 128 The Fall of the Roman Empire 1, 3, 23, 24, 25, 39, 81, 130, 133, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 217, 218, 219, 221, 224, 225, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 246, 261, 264, 266 The Far Country 14, 17, 30, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 158–162, 163, 164, 171, 241, 255, 257, 259, 264, 265 Farrow, John 22, 95, 204 Farrow, Mia 248, 249 The Fastest Gun Alive 97

289

Ferber, Edna 20, 21, 208, 209 Ferguson, Frank 144, 149 Ferrer, Mel 234 Fetchit, Stepin 15, 149 Fields, Stanley 210 55 Days at Peking 22, 23, 204 Film Society of Lincoln Center 254 Firecreek 95 Fleischer, Richard 11, 50, 90, 203 Flippen, Jay C. 99, 149, 152, 159, 163, 168, 173, 273 Flynn, Errol 93 Follow Me Quietly 3, 11, 50, 89–91 Fonda, Henry 18, 108 Fontaine, Joan 167, 180, 185 Ford, Bryant 38 Ford, Glenn 20, 39, 48, 97, 209, 210 Ford, John 14, 92, 93, 95, 96, 167, 189, 225, 263, 265 Ford, Ruth 45 Ford, Wallace 74, 101, 141, 255 Fort Apache 96 Foster, Diane 97, 164 Foster, Stephen 113 Foulger, Byron 71 Fowley, Douglas 61 Fraser, John 218 Frazee, Jane 32 Frederick, Lee 60 Freeman, Kathleen 153 Freeman, Morgan 95 Fuller, Lance 191 Fuller, Samuel 17, 254 The Furies 14, 39, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 213, 241, 259, 161 Gable, Clark 215 Gangelin, Phil 38 Gargan, William 39, 42 Geer, Will 102, 168 George, Gladys 34 Geronimo: An American Legend 95 Giant 209 Gibson, Mel 203 Gilchrist, Connie 153 Gilda 48 The Gilded Rooster 127 Gish, Dorothy 6 Gladiator 202, 203, 264 The Glenn Miller Story 15, 17, 25, 36, 37, 47, 163, 167, 179, 180–183, 184, 186, 187, 265 Godard, Jean-Luc 254 God’s Little Acre 3, 18, 167, 189, 190, 193, 197–200, 261 Gomez, Thomas 140 Gone with the Wind 7, 81, 189, 213, 214, 215 Gordon, Mary 28 Gordon, Roy 68 Grainger, Edmund 20 Granger, Farley 63, 64 The Great Flamarion 8, 50–54, 57, 77, 86

290

Index

The Great Waltz 180 The Greatest Show on Earth 204 Greer, Jane 32, 40, 41, 49 Grey, Virginia 38 Griffith, D.W. 203 Gruning, Ilka 61 Guinness, Alec 23, 221, 260, 264 Gulick, Bill 14 The Guns of Navarone 24, 239, 240 Hackett, Buddy 18, 191, 197 Hackman, Gene 95 Hadley, Reed 76 Hagen, Jean 66 Haley, Jack 32, 34 Haller, Ernest 18, 189 Hamlet 258 Harris, Richard 24, 240 Hart, Richard 83 Harvey 12, 13 Harvey, Laurence 25, 239, 241, 248 Harvey, Paul 32, 65 Hathaway, Henry 22, 204 Hawkins, Jack 240 Hawks, Howard 92, 93, 94, 157, 167, 179, 243, 263 He Walked by Night 9, 10, 11, 12, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 90, 91, 206, 262 Heart of Darkness 199 Heaven’s Gate 217 Helen of Troy 201 Henderson, Marcia 170 The Heroes of Telemark 24, 25, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 253, 261 Hervey, Irene 96 Heston, Charlton 23, 95, 185, 199, 202, 216, 219, 222, 240, 264, 266 Heydt, Louis Jean 6 Hickok, Wild Bill 92 Higgins, John C. 9, 11, 12, 54, 56, 67, 74 High Noon 93, 121, 178, 194, 255 Hill, Walter 95 Hillary, Jennifer 242 Hitchcock, Alfred 13, 14, 167, 255, 262 Holden, William 94, 240, 263 Hondo 95 Hooper, Finley A. 1 Hordern, Michael 229 Horizons West (book) 256 The House on 92nd Street 11, 64 Howard, Esther 53 Howard, Leslie 215 Howard, Ron 96 Howland, Olin 28 Hud 94 Hudson, Rock 15, 98, 151 Hughes, Howard 12 Hughes, Mary Beth 8, 50 Hull, Henry 6 Hunnicutt, Arthur 74 Hunt, Marsha 11, 54, 55, 259

Huston, John 48 Huston, Virginia 49 Huston, Walter 135 Hymer, Warren 28 Ingram, Rex 198 Intermezzo 7 Intolerance 203 Ireland, John 30, 55, 67, 73, 207 It’s a Wonderful Life 262 Ivanhoe 203 Ives, Burl 94 Jack London 21 Jacobson, Ulla 242 James, Jesse 92 Jeffreys, Anne 32 Jergens, Adele 65 Jesse James 94 John Big Tree 129 John Paul Jones 22, 204 Johnny Guitar 96 Johnson, Ben 95 Johnson, Chubby 149, 159 Johnson, Van 6 The Jolson Story 185 Jones, Allan 32 Jones, L.Q. 192, 277 Judith of Bethulia 203 Kasdan, Lawrence 95 Kazin, Elia 166, 254 Keir, Andrew 226 Keith, Brian 97 Keith, Robert 18, 190, 211 Kelly, Ed 68 Kelly, Grace 93 Kelly, Paul 66 Kendall, Cy 62 Kennedy, Arthur 17, 30, 71, 99, 100, 149, 208, 241, 242 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald 24 Kenyon, Mildred 7, 17 Kerr, Deborah 206 Kilian, Victor 168 King, Henry 94 King Lear 107, 135, 258 King of Kings (1927) 203 King of Kings (1962) 22, 204 Kitses, Jim 256–258 Knights of the Round Table 203, 217, 264 Koster, Henry 203 Krasker, Robert 23, 217 Krasna, Norman 35 Kristofferson, Kris 263 Krupa, Gene 183 Kubrick, Stanley 21, 202 Kutzho, Anna 24 Ladd, Alan 94 Lake, Stuart 12, 13

Index Lamarr, Hedy 216 Lambert, Jack 77, 149, 151 Land of the Pharaohs 243 Landon, Michael 198 Lane, Richard 27, 40 Lang, Charles 16 Lang, Fritz 11, 12, 13, 38, 42 Langford, Francis 32, 35, 187 Lanning, Reggie 38 Lanza, Mario 17, 167, 180, 184, 185 The Last Days of Pompeii 201, 264 The Last Frontier (a.k.a. Savage Wilderness) 17, 122, 124, 131–135, 154, 164, 242, 256, 259, 263 The Last Train from Gun Hill 93 Laughton, Charles 216 Lawrence, Robert 217 Lawrence of Arabia 238, 264 Lean, David 238, 240, 264, 265 Leave It to Beaver 166 Le Carre, John 24 Lee, Mary 32 Leiber, Fritz 128 Leigh, Janet 108, 110 Leigh, Vivien 213 LeRoy, Mervyn 14, 201 Life 18 Little Caesar 48 Lloyd, Norman 83 Lockhart, Calvin 250 Lockhart, June 76 Lom, Herbert 219, 240 London, Jack 21 London, Julie 135, 136 Long, Audrey 60 Lord, Jack 30, 137, 191, 198 Lord, Marjorie 32 Lord, Mindret 6 Loren, Sophia 23, 199, 205, 218, 219, 221, 226, 260 The Lost Patrol 167 Louise, Tina 18, 190, 191 Lovejoy, Frank 168 Lubitsch, Ernst 10 Lundigan, William 90 Lydon, Jimmy 32 MacLane, Barton 186 MacMahon, Aline 103, 211 MacMurray, Fred 49, 95 Madison, Guy 124 The Magnificent Ambersons 211 Major Dundee 95, 263 The Maltese Falcon (1941) 48 Mamoulian, Rouben 6 The Man from Laramie 17, 30, 78, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 122, 130, 137, 138, 139, 148, 154, 161, 255, 259, 265 Man of the West 17, 18, 30, 39, 83, 100, 112, 135, 144–149, 151, 154, 155, 161, 164, 165, 189, 193, 198, 241, 242, 255, 256, 257, 258, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265, 266

291

Mankiewicz, Joseph 201, 217 Mann, Anthony 16, 104, 220, 256, 260, 273, 275 Mann, Anthony, Jr. 7 Mann, Nicholas 24 Mann, Nina 5, 7 Marcy, Everett 6 Mark, Michael 50 Marlowe, Derek 24 Marshall, Brenda 39, 42, 43, 44 Marshall, E.G. 7 Marshall, George 13, 96 Marvin, Lee 49 Mason, James 23, 206, 224 Mate, Rudolph 97 Matthews, Lester 40 Mature, Victor 122, 202, 242 Max, Edwin 65, 91 Mayer, Louis B. 12 McCambridge, Mercedes 214 McEveety, Vincent 95 McGraw, Charles 30, 74, 78, 84, 143, 207, 210, 243 McGuire, Marcy 32 McIntyre, John 30, 98, 119, 149, 257 McNally, Stephen 98 Meeker, Ralph 109, 257 Men in War 1, 18, 167, 189, 190, 191–196, 197, 242, 258, 261, 265, 266 Menjou, Adolphe 169, 251 Menzies, William Cameron 81 Merkel, Una 98 Meyer, Emile 94 MGM 14 Michael, Ralph 244 Milestone, Lewis 21, 167, 265 Millican, James 98, 99, 123, 174 Milner, Victor 14 Minciotti, Silvio 183 Minnelli, Vincent 255 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 13 Mitchell, James 74, 128 Mitchell, Millard 98, 111, 257 Mitchum, Robert 49 The Modernaires 187 Mohr, Gerald 30 Monet, Robert 170 Montalban, Ricardo 74 Montiel, Sarita 17, 24, 167, 180, 184, 185 Moonlight in Havana 8, 31, 32, 34, 37 Moore, John 217 Moran, Jackie 32 Moreno, Antonio 171, 273 Morgan, Harry 149, 151, 152, 169, 172, 181, 212 Morley, Christopher 6 Morrow, Vic 196, 209 Moss, Arnold 75, 77, 82, 84 The Motion Picture Guide 31 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 183 Muni, Paul 48

292 Murcell, George 221 Murphy, Audie 163, 165 Murphy, George 74, 75 My Best Gal 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 180 My Darling Clementine 264 Naish, J. Carrol 27 The Naked Spur 15, 53, 71, 81, 87, 89, 108, 109, 111–116, 137, 143, 148, 151, 154, 164, 188, 241, 255, 256, 257, 259, 263, 266 The Narrow Margin 90 Neilson, James 162, 163 Nelson, Lori 155 New Faces of 1936 6 New York Times 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25 The New Yorker 11 Newman, Alfred 216 Newman, Paul 202 Newsweek 11, 18 Niblo, Fred 203 Nichols, Dudley 18 Nicol, Alex 17, 30, 99, 172 Nielsen, Connie 203 Night Passage 3, 17, 18, 162–165 Niven, David 240 Nobody’s Darling 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 180 Nolan, Lloyd 95 North, Alex 207 Norton, Jack 34, 40, 265 Oakie, Jack 95 O’Connell, Arthur 137, 209, 257 O’Donnell, Cathy 65, 98, 100 O’Keefe, Dennis 11, 54, 74, 78 Olivier, Laurence 207 On the Waterfront 166 One-Eyed Jacks 1 Oscarsson, Per 245, 251 O’Sullivan, Maureen 97 Otello 183 O’Toole, Peter 265 Out of the Past 41, 49 Overman, Jack 79 Page, Genevieve 23, 221 Page, Geraldine 95 Paiva, Nestor 91 Palance, Jack 94, 202 Pale Rider 96 Palmer, Betsy 108 The Papacy 21 Paramount Pictures 7, 26 Parnell, Emory 40 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 263 Pate, Michael 95 Paths of Glory 21 Patrick, Dorothy 91 Patrick, Lee 35 Peck, Gregory 94, 240 Peckinpah, Sam 94, 95, 263

Index Perkins, Anthony 109, 117 Persoff, Nehemiah 195 Petrie, Howard 15, 149 The Petrified Forest 48 Peyton Place 166 Phillips, Jean 27, 29 The Picture of Dorian Gray 39 Pidgeon, Walter 205 Pine, Philip 189 Pinson, Alan 273 Piotrowski, Maciak 217, 218, 219 A Place in the Sun 166 Plummer, Christopher 23, 205, 221, 226, 240 Point Loma (California) 5 Polansky, Abraham 94 Pork Chop Hill 167 Porter, Eric 221, 240 Powell, Dick 168, 175, 251 Powers, Tom 49 Pratt, Theodore 7 Preston, Robert 123 Price, Vincent 183, 185 Producers Releasing Corporation 9 Puccini, Giacomo 184 Quayle, Anthony 226, 227 Quo Vadis 14, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 216 Railroaded 9, 30, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 81, 90, 163 Randolph, Jane 28, 67, 73, 77 Raw Deal 9, 10, 11, 30, 54–59, 76, 175, 259, 262, 266 Ray, Aldo 18, 167, 189, 190, 242, 277 Ray, Michael 108 Ray, Nicholas 19, 22, 96, 166, 204, 254 Raymond, Gary 221 Raymond, Paula 124, 176 Rebecca 7 Rebel Without a Cause 166 Red River 94, 157, 257, 263 Redgrave, Michael 242 Republic Pictures 26, 31 Reynolds, Kevin 202 Richards, Silvia 13 Rickman, Alan 202 Ride the High Country 263 Rio Bravo 93, 179 Ritt, Martin 94 RKO 9, 12, 20, 26, 31 Robards, Jason 34, 42, 62 Robards, Jason, Jr. 1 The Robe 166, 203, 216 Roberts, Richard 127 Roberts, Roy 68 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves 202 Robinson, Edward G. 48, 49, 97 Robinson, Jay 216 Roland, Gilbert 135, 169, 273 Roman, Ruth 149, 152

Index Rooney, Mickey 166 Rope 13 Rose, Reginald 20 Rosenberg, Aaron 149, 163, 181 Rosenwald, Francis 89 Rossen, Robert 203 Rouse, Russell 97 Rozsa, Miklos 204, 217, 218, 220 Ruggles, Wesley 209, 211 Ruman, Sig 77, 181 Run of the Arrow 17 Rutherford, Ann 40 Ryan, Edmon 64 Ryan, Robert 18, 49, 71, 108, 185, 189, 190, 191, 193, 242, 277 Ryan, Sheila 68 Ryder, Alfred 11, 74, 251 Samson and Delilah 202, 216 Sanders, George 202 Sarris, Andrew 255–256, 262 Saville, Victor 202 Saving Private Ryan 167, 265 Scarface (1932) 48 Scarlet Street 11 Schaefer, Jack 27 Schary, Dore 12, 76 Schell, Maria 20, 39, 209, 210, 213 Schenk, Nicholas 12 Schoedsack, Ernest 201, 264 Schubert, Franz 184 Schulman, Arnold 20, 210 Scorsese, Martin 254 Scott, Randolph 97, 263 Scott, Ridley 202, 203, 264 The Searchers 96, 264 The Secret Beyond the Door 12 Security Pictures 18, 167, 189 Selznick Studio 7 Serenade 2, 162, 167, 179, 180, 183–185, 187– 189, 197, 260, 265 Shane 94 Sharif, Omar 1, 23, 225 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 95, 264 The Shootist 96 Side Street 63–67, 80, 91 Siegel, Don 96 The Sign of the Cross 204 The Silver Chalice 202, 216 Silverado 95 Simmons, Jean 207, 216 Sing Your Way Home 9, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37 Sirk, Douglas 254 So Proudly We Hail 6 Spain, Fay 197 Spartacus 3, 20, 21, 143, 202, 204, 206–208, 209, 216, 243, 264 Spencer, Douglas 91 Spielberg, Steven 167, 265 The Spoilers (1942) 94 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold 24, 252

293

The Squall 6 Stagecoach (1939) 93 Stander, Lionel 251 Stanwyck, Barbara 39, 41, 42, 49, 97, 135, 140, 213 Steiner, Max 204 Stevens, George 94, 166, 209 Stewart, Elaine 163 Stewart, James 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 53, 78, 79, 89, 96, 98, 100, 104, 108, 110, 130, 134, 149, 150, 152, 161, 162, 163, 165, 168, 170, 173, 180, 181, 185, 208, 241, 242, 243, 256, 259, 263, 264, 273, 275 The Story of G.I. Joe 167 Strange Impersonation 9, 26, 39, 42–47, 58, 81 Strangers in the Night 9, 26, 38–40, 259 Strategic Air Command 3, 15, 25, 47, 167, 168, 172–174, 177–178, 241, 265 A Streetcar Named Desire 2 Streets of New York 6 Strode, Woody 207 Sturges, John 93 Sturges, Preston 7, 255 Sullivan’s Travels 7 Sunset Boulevard 9, 262 T Men 9, 10, 11, 30, 67, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80, 85, 86, 90, 91, 207, 251, 256, 259, 262 Talbot, Lyle 45 The Tall T 97, 263 The Tall Target 3, 14, 166, 168, 169, 174–176, 178–179, 251 Tamblyn, Russ 209 Taylor, Robert 12, 122, 126, 202, 205 Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here 94 The Ten Commandments (1923) 203 The Ten Commandments (1956) 216, 264 Tension at Table Rock 17 Terry, William 38 The Texas Rangers 94 Texera, Virgilio 229 Theater Guild 6 Theosophical Society of San Diego 5 They Died with Their Boots On 93, 263 They Were Expendable 265 Thimig, Helen 38, 259 This Is Cinerama 166 Thompson, Marshall 123, 169 Thomson, David 258 Thorpe, Richard 203, 264 A Thousand Clowns 1 Thring, Frank 202, 220 Thunder Bay 15, 25, 163, 166, 168, 169–172, 176–177, 178, 179, 241 Thunder on the Left 6 Thurston, Templeton 6 Time 18 The Tin Star 18, 108, 109, 116–122, 154, 163, 190, 258, 259 Tiomkin, Dimitri 165, 204, 217, 218, 219

294

Index

Tobacco Road 167 Tobias, George 186 Tolstoy, Leo 247 Tombstone 93 Tone, Franchot 6 Toomey, Regis 169 Torvay, Jose 77 Touch of Evil 48, 56 Tourneur, Jacques 53 Treen, Mary 43 Trevor, Claire 11, 54, 259 Triangle Theater 5 Trosper, Guy 12 Trotsky, Leon 21 Truman, Ralph 202, 221 Turandot 184 Turner, Frederick Jackson 92 Turner Classic Movies 254 Two Flags West 93 Two in the Dark 40 Two O’Clock Courage 9, 26, 40–42 Two Rode Together 14, 264 Uncle Vanya 6 United Artists 189 Universal 12, 26, 31, 149, 205 Ustinov, Peter 21, 205, 216 Vallone, Raf 221 Van Cleef, Lee 109, 117 Van Praag, Van 18, 189, 190 Van Sickel, Dale 273 Variety 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25 Vera Cruz 17, 94 Verdi, Giuseppe 183 Vernon, Glen 32 Vertigo 14 Vidor, King 94, 96 Viertel, Joseph 6 The Vikings 90, 203, 217 The Violent Men 97 The Virginian (1929) 92 VistaVision 15 von Martens, Lena 233 von Sternberg, Josef 50 von Stroheim, Erich 8, 9, 51 Vuolo, Tito 76 Wade, Russell 32, 33 Waldis, Otto 78 A Walk in the Sun 21 Wallace, Regina 32 Walsh, Raoul 92, 93, 263 Wanger, Walter 11, 12

War and Peace (novel) 247 Warlock 95 Warner, H.B. 46 Warren, Charles Marquis 95 Warren, Katherine 176 Wasserman, Lew 13 Waxman, Franz 143, 209, 265 Wayne, John 93, 94, 95, 96, 157, 262, 264 Webb, Jack 68 Webb, Roy 41 Webster, Mary 119 Welles, Orson 38, 48, 56, 211, 255 Wellman, William 167 Wengraf, John 77 Werker, Alfred 11 Westcott, Helen 190 Westinghouse Electrical 5 Weston, David 247 Whitmore, James 123 Whitney, Lynn 77 Whitney, Peter 123, 242 Wilcoxon, Henry 202 The Wild Bunch 94, 263 Wilde, Oscar 39 Wilder, Billy 48, 262, 265 Wilke, Robert 146, 149, 152, 159, 163, 207 Wilkerson, Guy 153 William, Warren 6 Williams, Jack 139 Wilmer, Douglas 23, 221, 224, 225 Winchester ’73 12, 13, 14, 15, 79, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 114, 120, 137, 143, 148, 154, 157, 163, 165, 171, 208, 243, 256, 259, 264 Winninger, Charles 161 Winters, Shelley 98, 104 Wise, Robert 93, 201 Wister, Owen 92 Withers, Jane 32 Woman in the Window 11, 38, 42 Woodland, Norman 229 WPA Ford Theatre 7 Wright, Will 176 Wycherly, Margaret 6 Wyler, William 94, 208 Wynn, May 97 Yankee Doodle Dandy 15 Yordan, Philip 18, 19, 23, 87, 167, 189, 190, 217 Young, Victor 175 Young Hebrew Men’s Association 5 Yung, Sen 195 Yurka, Blanche 135 Zinnemann, Fred 93

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