Star in the Dust (1956, directed by Charles F. Haas)

Posted on December 2, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the late 1800s and the place is the town of Gunlock. Gunlock is split between the ranchers and the farmers, with the ranchers eager to buy all of the land around the town and the farmers refusing to sell. Trying to keep the peace is Sheriff Bill Jorden (John Agar), who not only wants to keep war from breaking out in Gunlock but who also wants to live up to the example of his legendary father.

There’s a prisoner in the Gunlock city jail. Sam Hall (Richard Boone) is a notorious gunman who has been convicted of killing three farmers. He’s due to hang at sunset but everyone in town believes that Sam will somehow escape the executioner. (They’re even taking bets down at the local saloon and casino.) Everyone knows that Sam was hired by the ranchers but Sam has yet to name which rancher specifically invited him to come to town. The farmers want to lynch Sam. The ranchers want to break him out of jail and arrange for him to be killed in the resulting firefight. Meanwhile, Sheriff Jorden insists that he’s going to carry out Sam’s sentence by the letter of the law. Complicating matters for Jorden is that he’s engaged to Ellen Ballard (Mamie Van Doren), the sister of the main rancher, George Ballard (Leif Erickson).

I was really surprised by Star in the Dust, which turned out to be far better than I would normally expect a John Agar/Mamie Van Doren western to be. Though Agar, Boone, and Van Doren get top-billing, Star in the Dust is really an ensemble piece, with several different people responding to the possible hanging of Sam Hall in their own way. Sam’s girlfriend, Nellie Mason (Colleen Gray), tries to figure out a way to keep Sam alive. One of the ranchers, Lew Hogan (Harry Morgan), is morally conflicted about whether or not to honor his word to help Sam escape, especially after he finds out that Sam tried to rape his wife (Randy Stuart). Even the old deputies (played by James Gleason and Paul Fix) get a few minutes in the spotlight before the shooting begins. The town of Gunlock comes to life and everyone, from the villains to the heroes, has a realistic motivation for reacting in the way that they do to Sam’s pending execution.

Mamie van Doren’s role is actually pretty small. She doesn’t have enough screen time to either hurt or help the film overall. John Agar is as stiff as always but, for once, it works for his character. Sheriff Jorden isn’t written to be a bigger-than-life John Wayne type. Instead, he’s just a small town lawman trying to do his job and keep the peace. Not surprisingly, the film is stolen by Richard Boone, who brings a lot of unexpected shading and nuance to the role of Sam Hall. Hall may be a killer but he has his own brand of integrity and, if he’s going to die, he’s determined to do it his way.

Produced by the legendary Albert Zugsmith, Star in the Dust is a surprisingly intelligent and well-acted B-western. If you watch carefully, you might even spot Clint Eastwood playing a ranch hand named Tom who wants to know if he should put money down on Sam Hall being hanged. Though he was uncredited in this tiny role, Star in the Dust was Eastwood’s first western.

Man of the People: John Ford’s THE LAST HURRAH (Columbia 1958)

Posted on February 5, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

This post has been preempted as many times as tonight’s State of the Union Address!

John Ford’s penchant for nostalgic looks back at “the good old days” resulted in some of his finest works. The sentimental Irishman created some beautiful tone poems in his 1930’s films with Will Rogers, and movies like HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY and THE QUIET MAN convey Ford’s sense of loss and wistful longing for simpler times. The director’s THE LAST HURRAH continues this theme in a character study about an Irish-American politician’s final run for mayor, running headfirst into a new era of politics dominated by television coverage and media hype instead of old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground handshaking and baby-kissing. It’s not only a good film, but a movie buff’s Nirvana, featuring some great older stars and character actors out for their own Last Hurrah with the Old Master.

Based on Edwin O’Connor’s 1956 novel, the…

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Shattered Politics #14: The Last Hurrah (dir by John Ford)

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Down here in Dallas, we have a county commissioner named John Wiley Price. Even if you don’t live in Texas, you might have heard about him. A few years ago, Price stormed out of a commissioners meeting while shouting, “All of you are white! Go the Hell!” It was a popular YouTube video for a while and attracted all of the usual type of comments that you see online. It even made the national news.

Nobody down here in Dallas was surprised by Price’s outburst. To us, that was just John Wiley being John Wiley. For that matter, nobody was particularly surprised when it was reported that he was being investigated by the FBI. Everyone always took it for granted that John Wiley Price was taking bribes and receiving kickbacks. That’s just the way that things are done down here in Dallas, by politicians both white and black. (Of course, most of the white politicians who do it don’t get publicly investigated by the FBI.)

Now, if you ask the majority of people in Dallas county what they think about John Wiley Price and they’ll probably say something negative. I’ll admit that I would probably be among them. But the thing is — John Wiley Price’s constituents love him. John Wiley Price was first elected to the commissioner’s court before I was even born and, as long as he’s on the ballot, he will be reelected. Even if Price is convicted on corruption charges, he will still be reelected.

I can still remember the night that it was announced that John Wiley Price was on the verge of being arrested by the FBI. All across his district, emergency meetings were held in churches and ministers stood behind the pulpit and, while the TV cameras rolled, they called upon everyone to pray for John Wiley Price. In Price’s district, he’s known as “our man downtown,” the idea being that John Wiley Price is standing up to the rich and white Dallas establishment and, if he makes some money for himself in the process, so be it. As long as he’s doing right for the people who elected him, who cares how he does it?

And, as much as we may want to judge the John Wiley Prices of the world, the fact that of the matter is that he’s a part of a long American political tradition. That political tradition is also the driving force behind today’s final entry in Shattered Politics.

First released in 1958 and directed by John Ford, The Last Hurrah tells the story of Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy), the mayor of an unnamed city in New England that’s obviously meant to be Boston. Skeffington is the flamboyant head of a large and powerful (but, as the film makes clear, aging) Irish-American political machine. He’s preparing to run for his fifth term for mayor, a campaign that he says will be his last.

Whether Frank Skeffington is a good mayor or not depends on who you ask. The poor and the disenfranchised love him. Skeffington, after all, is the son of Irish immigrants. He was born poor. His mother worked as a maid and was even fired by a member of the wealthy and influential Force family. They know that Skeffington has had to cut corners and that he’s gone out of his way to reward his cronies but they also know that Skeffington is on their side. Though the phrase is never used in the film, Skeffington is “their man downtown.”

Meanwhile, the wealthy and the upper class see Frank Skeffington as being a crook, a man who has run a corrupt administration and who uses class warfare to keep the city divided against itself and to make himself and his cronies rich. Newspaper editor Amos Force (John Carradine) has thrown his considerable influence between Skeffington’s opponent, a wealthy but dull man named Kevin McCluskey.

Reporter Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter) is in an interesting position. On the one hand, he is Skeffington’s nephew. On the other hand, as a journalist, he works for Amos Force. Skeffington invites Adam to follow and record his final campaign for posterity.

It’s interesting to compare The Last Hurrah to films like The Boss or All The King’s Men. Whereas those two films came down squarely on the sides of the reformers, The Last Hurrah is firmly on the side of Frank Skeffington. It presents Skeffington as being a sentimental figure, the type of old-fashioned, populist politician who won office by going out and meeting the people face-to-face and personally giving them a reason to vote for him. As Skeffington himself points out, he’s the type of politician that will soon be made obsolete by television and modern campaigning.

And it’s impossible not to enjoy The Last Hurrah‘s refusal to pass judgment on its lead character. It helps, of course, that Spencer Tracy plays Skeffington with a twinkle in his eye while all of his opponents are played by villainous and aristocratic character actors like John Carradine and Basil Rathbone. Yes, the film says, Skeffington may have been corrupt but at least he wasn’t boring!

Finally, I enjoyed the film because all of the “good” guys were Irish Catholic and all of the bad guys most definitely were not.

So, with that last hurrah, we conclude Shattered Politics for today. We’ll be back tomorrow, when we’ll start to get into the 1960s.

Sláinte!

Shattered Politics #7: Meet John Doe (dir by Frank Capra)

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I cannot stand the phrase “pay it forward.”

The idea is that somebody does something nice for you and then they say, “Pay it forward” and suddenly, you are magically required to go out and do something nice for someone else. For one thing, I hate the obligation of it all. I have this fear that as soon as I finally get finished paying it forward, some stranger is going to hand me a Coke and say, “Pay it forward,” and suddenly I’ll have to do it all over again! And really, honestly, I shouldn’t have to pay it forward just because someone gives me a Coke. If you’re going to tell me to pay it forward, at least give me a car or a Victoria’s Secret gift card or something.

Ultimately, “pay it forward” is something that people say to make themselves feel good but it’s actually a pretty shallow concept.

The same thing can be said about John Doeism, the philosophy that rests at the center of the 1941 film Meet John Doe, our latest entry in Shattered Politics. John Doeism is a grassroots political movement that is based around the slogan, “Be a Better Neighbor.” Much like “Pay it forward,” “Be a better neighbor” sounds good and it’s easy to say but its main appeal is that it doesn’t require that much thought. If anything, it sounds like the first step on the road to serfdom…

That said, I still like the film.

Meet John Doe opens with lay-offs at a major metropolitan newspaper. (These lay-offs are signified by a handsome young man who points at people and then runs his finger across his throat.) Among those laid off is columnist Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck). However, before Ann is officially let go, she is told to write one final column. Understandably angry over her treatment, Ann responds by making something up. She writes and prints a fake letter from a man calling himself “John Doe.” John Doe explains that he’s unemployed and that he will be committing suicide on Christmas Eve.

Well, quicker than you can say twitter death hoax, everyone in the entire country reads John Doe’s letter and demands to know who he is. The newspaper’s editor, Henry Connell (James Gleason), rehires Ann and puts her in charge of finding the real John Doe.

When numerous unemployed and homeless men start to show up at the newspaper, claiming to be the real John Doe, little do they realize that they are, in fact, auditioning. Ann finally decides that Joe Willoughby (Gary Cooper) has what it takes to be the public face of John Doe. Not only does he have a compelling personal story (he’s a former baseball player whose career was ended by an arm injury) but he looks and sounds like Gary Cooper.

(And, as I typed that last sentence, it suddenly occurred to me that Meet John Doe managed to predict American Idol…)

Joe is soon a celebrity, reading speeches that have been written for him by Ann and encouraging people across the nation to be a better neighbor. And Ann is falling in love with Joe. However, Joe is not comfortable with his new role. For one thing, he doesn’t like being a hero for telling a lie. Secondly, he knows that rival newsmen are eager to expose him as being a fraud. And finally, there’s a sinister publisher named D.B. Norton (played by Edward Arnold, who previously played corrupt Boss Taylor in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington) who is eager to be President of the United States. He wants to turn John Doeism into a fascist political movement and, unless Joe endorses him, he’ll reveal that Joe’s a fraud…

Meet John Doe was Frank Capra’s follow-up to Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. It features many of the same themes as Mr. Smith, with the main difference being that Meet John Doe is a lot more preachy. Whereas Mr. Smith saved its big speech for the end, Meet John Doe has several big speeches spread throughout its running time. (There’s also a scene where a guy named Bert tells the story of how he was inspired by John Doe and, I swear, it literally goes on forever.)

So, no, Meet John Doe is definitely no Mr. Smith Goes Go To Washington but I still liked it, mostly because of the chemistry between Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. I wanted to be Barbara Stanwyck’s character. Seriously, watching a film like Meet John Doe, leaves me convinced that I was born several decades too late. If I had been born in 1918, I could have been a quick-witted, cynical, and secretly romantic intrepid girl reporter at a major metropolitan newspaper.