Connie Gilchrist | Through the Shattered Lens

James Stewart is one of the great movie stars of all-time. His work with Frank Capra (MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE) and Alfred Hitchcock (REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO) is legendary. In my household, Stewart’s work with director Anthony Mann is celebrated just as much as those other classics. Mann and Stewart made five classic westerns, beginning with WINCHESTER ‘73 in 1950 and ending in 1955 with THE MAN FROM LARAMIE. I own them all on DVD and watch them quite often. It’s very cold in Arkansas today, so I decided to write about the Yukon-set THE FAR COUNTRY, from 1954.

Jeff Webster (James Stewart) and his crusty ol’ coot of a partner Ben Tatem (Walter Brennan) head North towards Dawson City, in the Yukon Territory, with a herd of cattle. The two men encounter a variety of problems along the way, with the biggest being the corrupt Judge Gannon (John McIntire) of Skagway, Alaska. When Jeff finds himself in front of the judge for killing two cowhands who tried to steal his herd, Gannon acquits him on the charges but decides to keep his herd as payment for the court fees. With their cattle taken away from them, Jeff and Ben sign up to help business lady Ronda Castle (Ruth Roman) take supplies to Dawson City, where she plans to set up shop. After their first day on the trip, Jeff and Ben double back to Skagway and re-take their herd and take off towards Dawson as fast as they can go, with Gannon and his men in hot pursuit. They’re able to make it into Canada, so Gannon and his goons turn back, determined to hang the men if they ever come back through Skagway.

So Jeff and Ben make it to Dawson City with their cattle where they sell them off for $2 per pound to Ronda. Suddenly flush with cash, the two partners buy a gold claim and proceed to find some nice golden nuggets! When they head back into town, they find that Judge Gannon has now come to Dawson City and is in partnership with Ronda. Of course, that bastard immediately starts cheating the miners out of their claims, this time with gunman Madden (Robert J. Wilke) by his side, enforcing his corrupt actions with lead. Jeff and Ben decide they’re going to sneak out of town with their loot, but Gannon finds out about it and sends his men to stop them. Ben is killed in the process and Jeff is seriously injured. Jeff has tried his best up to this point to not get involved with the mess in Dawson City, but with his best friend now dead, he decides it’s time for Judge Gannon and his thugs to be stopped.

James Stewart is just so good as Jeff Webster. The best thing about his work with Mann is how each of the movies would give him a meaty role that capitalized on his basic decency, while simultaneously making him a more complex, layered man, miles away from the likes of Mr. Smith or George Bailey. In THE FAR COUNTRY, he’s as tough as nails, but he really doesn’t want to get involved with the people around him. It takes the death of his best friend for him to finally commit to helping them stand up against the bad guys. Stewart’s work here, and in the other Mann westerns, ranks with his very best.

The remainder of the cast is uniformly excellent. Three time Oscar winner Walter Brennan is always a welcome presence in a movie I’m watching. While he’d pretty much settled into the “old coot” role that would come to personify the later part of his career, his character is a valuable conscience for Stewart a couple of times in the story. I thought that John McIntire and Ruth Roman really stood out in their respective roles as the corrupt Judge Gannon and the stubbornly, independent businesswoman Ronda Castle. Both give excellent performances. The cast is rounded out with a who’s who of character actors like Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Robert J. Wilke, Royal Dano, and Jack Elam. It’s always nice seeing these familiar faces pop up in these old westerns.

I love it when movies are filmed on location in beautiful places. THE FAR COUNTRY was filmed at the Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, which added another interesting element to the film. The final thing I want to say about the film is that the screenplay for THE FAR COUNTRY was written by Borden Chase, who had penned RED RIVER a few years earlier. Not only would Chase write this movie, he would also write the screenplays for WINCHESTER ‘73 and BEND OF THE RIVER, both westerns that paired Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart. Chase was an excellent writer of western material, and his strong work in this group of films is crucial to their enduring success.

Overall, I confidently recommend THE FAR COUNTRY to any person who enjoys westerns or Jimmy Stewart. I might rank THE NAKED SPUR and THE MAN FROM LARAMIE slightly above this one in the Mann / Stewart westerns, but the truth is that you can’t go wrong with any of them.

I’m sharing the trailer for THE FAR COUNTRY below:

Oh Lord, Auntie Mame.

There were two reasons why I watched the 1958 film Auntie Mame.

First off, as I’ve mentioned before, TCM has been doing their 31 Days of Oscar this month. They’ve been showing a lot of films — both good and bad — that were nominated for best picture. Since it’s long been my goal to see and review every single film that has ever nominated for best picture, I have made it a point to DVR and watch every best picture nominee that has shown up on TCM this month. Auntie Mame was nominated for best picture of 1958 and was broadcast on TCM this month so I really had no choice but to watch it.

My other reason for wanting to see Auntie Mame was because, when I was 19, I was cast in a community theater production of Mame. (Mame, of course, is the musical version of Auntie Mame.) Though everyone who saw the auditions agreed that I should have played the role of Gloria Upson, I was cast in the ensemble. (Gloria was played by the daughter of a friend of the director. Typical community theater politics.) As a member of the ensemble, I didn’t get any lines but I still had fun. In the opening party scene, I dressed up like a flapper and I got to show off my legs. And then in another scene, I was an artist’s model and I got show off my cleavage. (If you don’t use being in the ensemble as an excuse to show off what you’ve got, you’re doing community theater wrong.) Towards the end of the play, I appeared as one of Gloria’s friends and whenever she delivered her lines, I would make sure to have the most over-the-top reactions possible. She may have stolen the part but I stole the scene. It was a lot of fun.

But, even while I was having fun, I have to admit that I didn’t care much for Mame. It was an extremely long and kind of annoying show and there’s only so many times you can listen to someone sing We Need A Little Christmas before you’re tempted to rip out the hair of the actress who stole the role of Gloria Upson from you.

So, when I recently sat down and watched Auntie Mame, I was genuinely curious to see if the story itself worked better without everyone breaking out into song. After all, Auntie Mame was the number one box office hit of 1958, it was nominated for best picture, and it was apparently so beloved that it inspired a musical! There had to be something good about it, right!?

Right.

Auntie Mame tells the story of Mame Dennis (Rosalind Russell, attempting to be manic and just coming across as hyper) who is rich and quirky and irrepressibly irresponsible. When her brother dies, Mame suddenly finds herself entrusted with raising his son, Patrick (played, as a child, by the charmless Jan Hadzlik and, as an adult, by the stiff Roger Smith). Mame is a wild nonconformist (which I suppose is easy to be when you’ve got as much money as she does) and she tries to teach Patrick to always think for himself. However, once Patrick grows up and decides that he wants to marry snobby Gloria Upson, Mame decides maybe Patrick shouldn’t think for himself and goes out of her way to prevent the wedding.

Auntie Mame is an episodic film that follows Mame as she goes through a series of oppressively zany adventures. When the Great Depression hits, she’s forced to work as an actress, a saleswoman, and a telephone operator and she’s not very good at any of them. She does eventually meet and marry the wealthy Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (Forrest Tucker). As you can probably guess from the man’s name, he’s supposed to be from the south. (And yet Tucker plays the role with a western accent…) He loves Mame but then he ends up falling off a mountain. So much for Beau.

(In the production of Mame that I appeared in, Beau was played by this 50 year-old guy who simply would not stop hitting on me and every other girl in the cast and who was always “accidentally” entering the dressing room while we were all changing. Whenever Mame mentioned Beau’s death, all of us ensemble girls would cheer backstage.)

Anyway, as a film, Auntie Mame doesn’t hold up extremely well. I can understand, to an extent, why it was so popular when it was first released. It was an elaborate adaptation of a Broadway play and, in 1958, I’m sure that its theme of nonconformity probably seemed somewhat daring. When you watch it today, though, the whole film seems almost oppressively heavy-handed and simplistic. It’s easy to embrace Mame’s philosophy when everyone else in the film is essentially a sitcom creation.

As I mentioned previously, Auntie Mame was nominated for best picture. However, it lost to the musical Gigi.