The Man with the Golden Colts
Every so often I like to revisit Westerns. Watch again a familiar film. Last night Warlockwas on a British TV channel (which I get here in France by satellite). I reviewed this picture back in April 2011, when I was on a bit of a Fonda kick. But as so often happens, on re-viewing, I find other merits (and occasionally demerits) that I had not commented upon, and other thoughts that cross what passes for my mind, and so here is what you might call Warlock Redux, a few more opinions on what is, after all, a major Fox A-Western of the late 50s, that oh so golden age.
It’s an odd name for a town, Warlock. Doesn’t it mean some kind of male witch? Why would a Western town be named for a thaumaturge? And where is it? There are hints in the dialogue that we are down in the Southwest somewhere, maybe New Mexico or Arizona. The movie was filmed in Utah, round Moab, and has splendid classic Western settings, with a water wagon damping down the orange dust in the town street. Most of the story happens in town, so on sound stages, but there are enough exteriors and shots of surrounding terrain to make it a classic Western, not a low-budget studio-bound affair. It was in CinemaScope and Color De Luxe. The man behind the camera was the excellent Joe MacDonald, who had started photographing our noble genre on Western Union with Fritz Lang and had been DP for John Ford on the visually splendid (and splendid in other ways too) My Darling Clementine in 1946. He had gone on to do Yellow Sky, Broken Lance and The True Story of Jesse James (all for Fox), and even the mighty epic The Fiend Who Walked the West. He would work with director Edward Dmytryk again on Alvarez Kelly in ’66. A great Western cinematographer.
Joseph MacDonald DP
I might get more of the lowdown on the origins of the place name and its whereabouts when I read the Oakley Hall source novel, which has just arrived from amazon (I’ll be reviewing that another day). It was worked up into a screenplay by Robert Alan Authur, who seems to be an author named Arthur but isn’t, a scribbler with 25 screenwriting credits, though this was his only Western, poor fellow.
RA Authur
He got it right though, or maybe Oakley did, because there is a real Western ‘tone’ to the picture and there are some great lines. It was 1959 and the dreaded revisionism was only round the corner but this was still a ‘straight’ and un-self-questioning Western of the old school.
The 1958 novel
Director Dmytryk was Canadian born but grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result, though he later seemed to recant and work again. He did few Westerns, probably the ‘biggest’ being Broken Lance. His last was a picture that some are rude about though I quite like, Shalako. He handles Warlockvery well, I think, building the tension and giving us interesting character development.
Dmytryk
The headline stars were 1. Richard Widmark, 2. Henry Fonda and 3. Anthony Quinn. I’m not quite sure why Widmark got top billing because really Fonda’s character, Clay Blaisedell, is the central figure, an unofficial marshal, what became known as a town tamer. This was not the first or last use of this Western plot device. A recent Western, Appaloosa, for example, is so close in theme that you could almost argue it's a remake. A community is dominated by a ruthless boss/arrogant local rancher and his henchmen, and the citizens call on the services of a tough gunman to clean up the town. As Blaisedell and his gambler sidekick Tom Morgan (Quinn) ride into town, we are reminded most definitely of an Earp/Holliday pairing and Warlock has much in common with the (fictional) Tombstone.
The pair are very Wyatt & Doc-ish
Morgan watches Clay's back
The casting in Warlock was also a bit off-the-wall because the chief badman, the ruthless rancher Abe McQuown, was played by Tom Drake, usually a mild-mannered goody – he was the wholesome boy next door that Judy Garland sang about in Meet Me in St. Louis. He’s actually good, though, as the nasty, thuggish and arrogant man who thinks he owns the town and ought to.
Wholesome Tom Drake...
...is the ruthless bad guy
Widmark plays one of McQuown’s men, Johnny Gannon, who is disgusted by his boss’s loathsome dealings and cowardly back-shooting, and goes over to the other side, taking the job as official deputy, thus finding himself in conflict with both his former employer and the gunslinger hired to restore law ‘n’ order to the place. Widmark was memorable and powerful, and on a Western roll. Warlock came after Yellow Sky, Garden of Evil, Broken Lance, Backlash, The Last Wagon and The Law and Jake Wade, and in all of these he was very good. I also think he was an excellent Al Sieberlater on in the TV movie Mr. Horn. Of course John Ford used him but only when the great director was over the hill: Two Rode Together and Cheyenne Autumn were two of Ford’s last, and weakest, Westerns. And some of the choices of Western roles Widmark made later on were, shall we say, regrettable. Still, overall his Western record s a very good one. In Warlock, Widmark is strong. Gannon seems guilty and remorseful for his earlier crimes, and actually afraid of both Blaisedell and McQuown, but he shows that true courage which is not fearlessness but rather being afraid and doing it anyway. The film actually has much to say about fear.
Dick pins on the badge
As for Henry Fonda, he is, of course, magisterial. To me, Fonda ranks with Gregory Peck, Joel McCrea, James Stewartand the like, right up there with the greats of the genre. Frank James in Jesse James and The Return of Frank James, superb as the decent cowpoke in The Ox-Bow Incident, unforgettable as Wyatt Earp in Ford’s splendid My Darling Clementine, perfect again for Ford as the martinet Colonel Thursday in Fort Apache, utterly authoritative and convincing as the bounty hunter in Anthony Mann’s The Tin Star, it’s hard to say which Western he was best in. True, some of the later pictures he did were pretty dire (I am thinking of such trash as There Was a Crooked Man and My Name is Nobody) but that is true of all big Western stars. Even the greatest of them all, Gary Cooper, had to do those stodgy Warners Westerns of the early 50s like Dallas, Distant Drums andSpringfield Rifle. In WarlockFonda’s Blaisedell is melancholy, disillusioned and unsatisfied. When he rocks back on a chair you can’t help thinking of that scene in Clementine, and of course this Blaisedell is very Earpish.
What could be more classic?
The two female leads are taken by Dorothy Malone and Dolores Michaels. However, in such a male story they get to do little. Blaisedell dallies a little with Jessie (Michaels) and they even get engaged but it becomes clear that he is never going to settle down with a woman. (Quinn’s jealousy when Fonda announces his engagement to her is palpable and furious.) The love of his life is Tom Morgan, even after he dies.
Blaisedell: “I suppose I figured Morgan and I…”
Jessie: “I’m not Morgan.”
Blaisedell: “Maybe I’ll have to find another Morgan.”
Lily (Malone) arrives on the stage with vengeance in her heart, wanting to have Blaisedell shot down, and she develops something of a relationship with Deputy Gannon, but Gannon is, relatively, a minor character and there is little time (even in a movie at 2 hours +) to build this love interest into much.
Ms. Michaels only did three big-screen Westerns, about the best being her part as the poor, abused May in The Fiend That Walked the West. Malone was a much more experienced Western star and one thinks in particular of her Julie in Colorado Territory with McCrea, her Karen with Randolph Scott in The Nevadan, and her splendid derringer-wielding Virginia in Jack Slade. She co-starred with Fred MacMurray twice (At Gunpoint and Quantez) and ended Westerns hovering between Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson in The Last Sunset. She was a fine actress and very beautiful.
Les belles blondes
Another good thing about Warlock is the plethora of old-friend character actors lower down the cast list. There’s Wallace Ford as the irascible Judge Holloway on crutches, DeForest Kelley as a McQuown henchman who sees the light, and the likes of Regis Toomey, Vaughan Taylor and Whit Bissell as townsmen. You can even spot Don ‘Red’ Barry and LQ Jones in bit parts.
Bones is a gunman
We get a lot of gunplay and some traditional showdowns in the street and saloon. A stage hold-up too. The marshal stands down a lynch mob, Earpishly. It’s a classic Western in that regard with many of the tropes and in fact it seems to have been an attempt to comment on the Western archetype and the hollowness of the myth. It also has a whiff of end-of-the-West about it as Blaisedell is already a dinosaur. Civilization is coming to the frontier and there are only a few wide-open towns still to clean up. Warlock is a psychological Western which is also full of action.
There’s a slight tinge of the dime-novel Western here and there. The flashy gold-handled Colts of Blaisedell, for example (in various languages the movie got its title from them, Der Mann mit den goldenen Colts, L'homme aux colts d'or, El hombre de las pistolas de oro, and so on).
Though Blaisedell says they're only for Sunday-go-to-meetin'
There are other dime-novel references. In fact at one point Blaisedell shows Morgan a magazine featuring Morgan, ‘The Black Rattlesnake of Fort James.’
Slightly odd poster
Fonda and Quinn look rather good in their fancy frock coats and they spare little expense on the amenities of life, doing up their saloon into the fancy French Palace and importing rich drapes and Chinese silk sheets from San Francisco. Widmark, though, sticks to his trademark jeans jacket – except when he goes to dinner with Dorothy.
DeForest Kelley told an anecdote about the shooting of this movie while on the Star Trek convention circuit, about the time Princess Sofia of Greece was visiting the set and Kelley flubbed a scene by falling over a chair onto his backside and saying "Oh, shit," in front of the princess. Fonda told him the following Monday not to worry about it because he had danced with the princess over the weekend and ascertained that she had no idea what "shit" meant. This did not stop Kelley from getting a standing ovation at the commissary when the cast and crew broke for lunch.
Dmytryk tells in his biography that Hank Fonda was such a fast draw with his Colt that the director and editor had to slow up the action so the audience could savor it properly.
Everything leads up to the rancher/gunslinger/deputy clash we know must come. There will be the quick-draw showdown in the main street at sun-up. There has to be, and there is. Dymtryk choreographed the finale meticulously. The gunmen approach each other, grim-faced. The camera goes to their hands and their holsters. And then…
Well, you’ll have to watch it.
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