Western Star of the Week #4: Henry Fonda

Star: Henry Fonda
1905-1982
Type: Hero
Height: Tall
Era: Classical Hollywood
Politics: Liberal
Go-to Director: John Ford
AFI Male Star Ranking: #6
Historical Importance: High

When John Ford made a movie, the odds were pretty good that John Wayne was gonna play the lead. But Ford also had his famous "stock company" of character actors (Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Harry Carey Jr, Woody Strode, etc) who could take the lead if necessary. But before Wayne joined the company, and even after, there was one other actor who consistently took leading roles in Ford's movies: Henry Fonda

Like all the other actors we've discussed so far, Henry Fonda had a distinct persona. His character was the most fundamentally decent of all of them. For Ford he played a stalwart revolutionary soldier in Drums Along the Mohawk, one of literature's most sympathetic characters, Tom Joad, in The Grapes of Wrath, and the greatest political hero in American history in Young Mr. Lincoln. In each of these roles, his plain-spoken manner, his earnest delivery, and his sympathetic humanity shone through. If John Wayne represented the rugged, hulking Western hero, Fonda was a gentler model - the searcher you'd actually allow in your house after his journey was done.

But as with Wayne and Stewart, Fonda made his greatest Westerns when he defied audience expectations. As with Stewart, Westerns were a place where Fonda could be a bit more troubled; his Western characters were frequently, in the great Western tradition, not immediately willing to stand up for the good and the true. And like Wayne, his greatest role asked him to go to a well of savagery that had never before been apparent.

The Movies:

1. Once Upon a Time in the West
Sergio Leone revolutionized the Western with his Clint Eastwood Man with No Name Trilogy, but his final Western was his greatest. In this movie, Jason Robards gets to play the outlaw with a heart of gold, and Charles Bronson plays the nameless hero. But it's the 63 year old Fonda who steals the whole movie as Frank. We're introduced to Frank when he brutally murders a homesteader and his children. Leone gives us the haunting closeups of Fonda's face that we're used to - the closeups to emphasize his fundamental decency - but this time, Fonda's blue eyes radiate not earnestness but hate. Frank is without a doubt the greatest villain in the entire history of Western movies; he's a vicious, power-hungry outlaw who rapes, tortures, and murders with absolutely no signs of remorse. And worst of all: he's played in an utterly convincing manner by the man we know as Wyatt Earp, as Juror #8, as Abraham Lincoln.

2. Fort Apache
The consensus seems to be that the best Ford-Fonda Western is My Darling Clementine. Although I love that movie, I much prefer the first entry in the Ford-Wayne cavalry trilogy, Fort Apache. Wayne plays his standard persona: a wise executive officer who honors the cavalry's Indian enemies and seeks peace between cultures. Fonda, on the other hand, once again breaks from his traditional role: his Colonel Owen Thursday is a thinly veiled version of General Custer, which means he's vain, foolhardy, and driven by a thirst for glory. Just as Frank gives Fonda a chance to show us what a great man looks like if he's driven by hate, Thursday shows us a driven man whose only motive is personal accomplishment. The results are predictably tragic.

3.The Ox-Bow Incident
Finally, a movie where Fonda plays Fonda. The Ox-Bow Incident, directed by William Wellmann, is one of the many anti-lynching movies produced by Hollywood, like Fury, except it's actually good. Fonda plays Gil Carter, who is neither a lynchee or a lyncher. He's just a cowboy who happens upon the impending disaster and witnesses it. He's our representative; we see the lynching through his eyes, and the fact that he neither participates in it nor risks himself to stop it is an indictment of us. Again, Fonda's status as the best of us makes this role what it is: of course none of us condone the lynching, and Fonda's face reflects that. But his inability to stop it, or even to put his life on the line, condemns us as well. Like High Noon, The Ox-Bow Incident was made as a political critique; unlike High Noon, it was a box office bomb. Fonda and Wellmann didn't care: The Ox-Bow incident was a masterpiece, and they knew it. It's also an antidote to the conservatism of Hawks, Ford, Wayne, Stewart, Cooper, and most of the other Western masters.

Other Westerns:
My Darling Clementine - the best Wyatt Earp story ever told
Jesse James - a fun outlaw story, with Fonda as Jesse's brother Frank
The Tin Star - Fonda gets the Anthony Mann treatment

Tenderfoot of the Week #1: Humphrey Bogart

Star: Humphrey Bogart
1899-1957
Type: Bum
Height: Comically Short
Era: Classical Hollywood
Politics: Liberalish
Major Westerns: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
AFI Male Star Ranking: #1

Welcome to Tenderfoot of the Week. Every first Sunday of the month, we'll have a non-Western star who got the job done in at least one Western, and no more than 3 or 4. This week, we've caught us a whopper, AFI's top male star of all-time: Bogart.

Humphrey Bogart wasn't exactly a master of genres. Sure, Sabrina is a great romantic comedy. And he made some military and adventure movies, like African Queen and Sahara. But for the most part, the man made noirs and various other kinds of gangster films. The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo - even Casablanca - over and over again, Bogart played a fast-talking tough guy who's in over his head but comes out on top. And his earlier gangster pictures still involve some version of that scenario and that character.

That's not the case with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Although frequently categorized only as an adventure film , the movie's a Western. It's essentially a naturalist parable, just like Stroheim's Greed. It's about gold, and what it does to the hearts of men - particularly Fred Dobbs (Bogart), an American bum in Mexico who goes digging for gold.

I sometimes wonder if the only reason Bogart didn't make more Westerns was his height. Western stars were tall. They just were. If you couldn't act, but you were 6' 2" or above, you could be a Western star. Bogey was 5' 8". But he's so good in this movie, playing a down-and-out drifter that's decidedly not in his traditional mode, that it makes me think he could have done this over and over again. Maybe it was just the height. I can only imagine what he would have looked like standing next to Stewart or Wayne or Cooper, and it's not a pretty picture. No one takes a midget cowboy seriously.

In fact, the Walter Brennan coot role in this movie is played by director John Huston's father, Walter Huston. Walter was 6 feet tall at least. But he the part he plays is that of a shriveled up, wizened old man, and spends the whole movie hunched over. That's probably because the script called for it. But Bogey wouldn't have looked so good if the little old man in the picture had towered over him...

It's pretty easy to tell the coot is taller than Bogey, even when they're sitting down.

Personally, I only admire the movie as an excellent one - there are many who regard it as one of the greatest of all time, including one Paul Thomas Anderson. But it is at worst a very good movie, and certainly one of the most acclaimed of all-time. Above all, it's fun for two reasons: 1. We get to see what Philip Marlowe looks like with a six-shooter
2. It provides us with that classic line, when some Mexican bandits are masquerading as Federal police, "We don't need no stinkin' badges!" Comedy ensues.

Other Westerns of Note:
None

Other Westerns:
The Oklahoma Kid

Western Star of the Week #3: John Wayne

Star: John Wayne
1907-1979
Type: Hero
Height: Really Tall
Era: Classical Hollywood
Politics: Conservative
Go-to Director: John Ford
AFI Male Star Ranking: #13
Historical Importance: Highest

In cult classic Repo Man, one of the repo men suggests that John Wayne was gay. As a result, the rest of the repo men heap him with insults, concluding with the declaration "John Wayne was the greatest American who ever lived." I don't know any better way to sum up John Wayne's mystique: although the man was not an actual Western hero, although he didn't actually fight in a single war, although he had the acting range of a grapefruit, there are still plenty of people who regard him as the greatest American who ever lived. Although the AFI lists him as only the 13th greatest male star of all-time, I think he'll be the most loved movie star of all time until the last baby boomer dies, and maybe even after that.

Marion Michael Morrison's early career was made up of a series of bit and lead parts in B-Western, broken only by Raoul Walsh's 1930 Broken Trail, a massive experiment in wide-screen filmmaking that only recently saw the light of day on DVD in its widescreen format. The film wasn't a hit, but it was notable for one reason: Walsh renamed his young star John Wayne. Nine years later, master filmmaker John Ford decided to make his first Western in a decade, and cast his former bit player Wayne in the leading role. The result, 1939's Stagecoach, is still regarded as one of the greatest Westerns ever made, and launched Wayne's mature career.

Even if you've never seen a single John Wayne movie, you probably already know the John Wayne persona. Tough but fair, hard but with a heart of gold, harsh to men on the trail and contemptuous with tenderfoot "pilgrims" but with a soft spot for children, animals, and the occasional pretty woman. If you think that all sounds a little corny, well:
1. You're right
2. Even so, it sure works, and set the stage for all future action heroes
3. Most, if not all, of Wayne's best performances offer up a more problematic version of this portrait.

John Wayne, a man's man who nevertheless always ended up with the lady, is probably the most enduring movie star of all-time. For the "Greatest Generation," he was everything they wanted to be - heroic in an old-fashioned way. For the Baby Boomers, he represented a god-like and stern father figure, and his roles in the 50s and 60s, which represented both his best acting and his greatest willingness to take chances and portray morally suspect characters, solidified this particular persona. Today, I think John Wayne is most remembered as a great actor who could give a solid, if undistinguished, performance in his trademark persona while asleep but, when asked by the script and director to do more, always delivered a character of tremendous depth and profoundly effective emotions.

The Films:
John Wayne made more than 140 movies and his favorite genre was the Western, so choosing the usual 3 is pretty much impossible. I have somehow confined myself to 4 - as always, in order of greatness.

1.The Searchers (1956)
Dir. John Ford
Political philosopher Robert Pippin points out that, although non-Western lovers tend to praise Westerns for their clear-cut distinctions between good and evil, the greatest Westerns always feature deep moral ambiguity. No western character is more problematic than Ethan Edwards, a man whose search for his kidnapped niece seems less driven by familial love and more driven by a racist desire to ensure that the Indians who kidnapped her don't contaminate her with their culture and bloodline - even as he is deeply embedded in Comanche customs. Ford's greatest film, Wayne's greatest role, and a movie that is still frequently chosen as the greatest ever made.




2.Red River (1948)
Dir. Howard Hawks
When John Ford saw Red River, he reportedly claimed that he hadn't previously known that Wayne could act - even though the two had spent the last decade collaborating. Wayne is Thomas Dunson, a rancher who befriends a young boy and, post-Civil War, embarks on a historic cattle drive. The boy grows up to be Montgomery Clift, and their eventual confrontation is both a deep political problem - the paternalistic Wayne wants to rule over his men with the power of life and death, and Clift oppose him - and representative of a shift in film acting, as Clift's method acting brings out previously unknown depths in the Hollywood style of Wayne.
Update: Something I forgot to mention: Red River has the gayest scene ever recorded in cinematic history. Clift and John Ireland, trying to feel each other out, hand each other their six-shooters and proceed to rub, admire, and vocally praise each other's "gun." It's so homoerotically charged, it could have been written by Whitman.

3.Stagecoach (1939)
Dir. John Ford
Orson Welles claimed to have learned how to make films by watching Stagecoach over and over again. Who could blame him? Stagecoach is more or less perfect. It follows a charming outlaw (Wayne), a sheriff, a Southern gentleman, a cavalry wife, a woman of ill-repute, a drunk doctor, and a traveling salesman trying to survive a stagecoach ride through Indian country. Each of the characters has strengths and weaknesses; each of them grows or changes on their journey. It sounds cliched now, but for a 1939 Western, it was positively revolutionary.

4.Rio Bravo (1959)
Dir. Howard Hawks
Conservatives Hawks and Wayne disliked High Noon's liberal message, so they set out to make a film that repudiating every aspect of that classic. Twice as long as High Noon and leisurely paced over several days, Rio Bravo follows Sheriff Chance's brave effort to hold a murderer against the thugs hired by the prisoner's brother. Whereas High Noon's marshal begs the townspeople for help, Sheriff Chance will accept the aid only of the best trained professionals and would never ask them for help. Ultimately, Hawks' career was about hardened professionals doing the tough and dirty jobs that the sniveling populace couldn't handle, and it doesn't get any harder than Sheriff Chance.

Western Star of the Week #2: Gary Cooper

Star: Gary Cooper
1901-1961
Type: Hero
Height: Inconceivably Tall
Era: Classical Hollywood
Politics: Conservative
Go-to Director: None
AFI Male Star Ranking: #11
Historical Importance: High

Just like last week's star, Jimmy Stewart, Cooper was equally adept at playing hardened Western heroes and the classic Capra everyman, which he did in Meet John Doe and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Unlike Stewart, Cooper is better known for his Western work.

Like many other Western stars, Cooper played more or less the same characters in each of his films. Cooper is always dignified and slow to violence, but he also punches someone in the face in nearly every movie he ever made. Allmovie has a biographical explanation for this character: Cooper was born and raised on a ranch in Montana but "finished" at a prestigious English boarding school. And thus the Cooper persona was born: rough and ready but also regal and urbane. Cooper was clearly Western royalty, which made the characters he played most frequently ironic; he often played saddle-trash, a wandering cowboy with no home and no respect. And although he was almost always a hero imbued with a classical sense of right and wrong, the fun in a Cooper picture is wondering when that sense is going to assert itself - or if it will. Because although we remember Cooper, as I said in my post about George Bailey, as a cardboard cutout of righteousness and good will, Cooper's cowboy is almost always self-interested first and interested in justice second. Along the way, though, he generally manages to set thing right.

Cooper didn't have a go-to Western director, but he did have a go-to co-star: Cooper and Walter Brennan befriended each other in their mutual early days of Hollywood, and offered themselves to directors as a team: the rugged action hero and the coot sidekick. The most successful of their collaborations is The Westerner, which I'll write about in a different post.

Cooper's glory days were in the early 40s; from 1940 to 1943, he appeared in a string of movies whose excellence is unsurpassed by any run by any other actor I know: The Westerner, Ball of Fire, Meet John Doe, Sergeant York, The Pride of the Yankees, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (he was friends with Hemingway). But his true Western glory period came in the 50s, as his rugged good looks became even more craggy and patrician, and he became the symbol for the Old West.

The Films:

1. High Noon (1952)
Dir. Fred Zinneman

Zinneman's only Western stars Cooper as Marshall Will Kane, who's about to retire and leave town with his new Quaker bride (played by Grace Kelly, who is probably the prettiest human being to ever walk the face of the earth*). The only hitch is, some bad dudes he put in jail are set to get out that day and show up to raise hell in town at noon. The film, which is only 85 minutes long, plays out almost in real time, as the morning crawls by and the inevitable confrontation gets closer and closer; Cooper must either flee town and abandon the the townspeople to their fate, or stay and defend them even though they refuse to help him. Written by a blacklisted screenwriter, High Noon is both the perfect allegory for the necessity of standing together against the red scare and and simply a perfect Western thriller. It's universally regarded as one of the three or four best Westerns ever made, except by this hipster douche bag.



2.Man of the West (1958)
Dir. Anthony Mann

Man of the West is the final Western for both Western auteur Anthony Mann and Gary Cooper. Like other Mann Westerns, it's Shakespearean in tone and themes. Cooper plays Link Jones, a seemingly regular guy on a train to hire a schoolkeeper for his new town. Along the way, the train is robbed, and Link, a showgirl, and a gambler end up off the train and in the hands of the robbers - who turn out to be led by Dock Tobin, the outlaw who raised Link and calls him son. Link must navigate between his past, from which there is no escape, and his future, which is threatened by the gambler and girl's knowledge of his past actions. Along the way, in typical Mann fashion, he is stretched to the psychological breaking point, as he and his companions must deal with murder, torture, and rape at the hands of Tobin's gang. The movie culminates in a Mann specialty: a complex and bloody shootout in an abandoned mining town - my personal favorite Western shootout of all time.

3. Vera Cruz (1954)
Dir. Robert Aldrich

Burt Lancaster was so attractive that he had to start his own production company in order to get roles beyond generic beefcake actor. His company produced Vera Cruz, which teamed Lancaster and Cooper in a role of opposites. Lancaster plays one of his classic personas: a laughing liar, amoral and dangerous, with a quick draw and a quicker temper - Elmer Gantry with a six-shooter. Gary Cooper plays the Cooper role - cooler, more moral, but just as dangerous and, in this case, just as self-interested. Lancaster's a career criminal; Cooper is a Confederate colonel who lost his plantation. Both have come to Mexico to fight in the Mexican battle against the French Emperor Maximillian, for whichever side will pay more, and thus both repeatedly jockey for gold, women, and respect, with each other, with both sides of the Mexican conflict and with a group of American desperadoes led at times by Lancaster and at times by Western tough Ernest Borgnine. Although Vera Cruz isn't perfect, no non-Brennan actor has ever played such a great Cooper foil as Lancaster's, and the movie provided the amoral gunslinger in Mexico template that would later produce The Wild Bunch, A Fistful of Dollars, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I know, technically Bolivia).

*Outside of, you know, Christian Bale

Western Star of the Week #1: Jimmy Stewart

Star: Jimmy Stewart
Type: Hero (?)
Height: Really, Really Tall
Era: Classical Hollywood
Politics: Conservative (get used to it...)
Go-to Director: Anthony Mann
AFI Male Star Ranking: #3
Historical Importance: High









Jimmy Stewart is best remembered by the public for his frequent collaborations with Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock. Early in his career, he was the perfect Capracorn player: earnest and All-American. Later, he was perfectly suited for Hitchcock: a serious, reserved actor who could harbor surprising psychological depth. In between, he did his very best work: Westerns.

In 1939, John Ford reinvented the Western with Stagecoach, singlehandedly taking it from a super-popular B movie genre to a serious, nuanced genre worthy of big budgets and critical acclaim. Ten years later, Ford and his star, John Wayne, were going strong, making great movies that made great money, but their movies hadn't changed much since Stagecoach, and innovation was going to have to come from somewhere else.

That somewhere else was from Anthony Mann and his newly-minted Western star, Stewart. Anthony Mann more or less invented the so-called "psychological" Western, and Stewart was the perfect man to play the leads. The Stewart-Mann hero was an untrustworthy hero, a hero whose morals might be questionable, a hero who rode tall in the saddle and saved damsels in distress, but who nevertheless might just get pushed to the breaking point and do something he might regret. And even if he kept his heroism about him, you always knew that he would face terrible psychological hardship or even outright torture.

Together, Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart rewrote the Western genre in the 50s. They were indirectly responsible for a film like The Searchers, in which Ford and Wayne borrowed their questionable hero of deep psychological complexity. To today's audience, Stewart's heroes can look a little less questionable; the Eastwood anti-hero has made his heroes look like boy scouts. But even if their behavior never shocks you, watch these films and be shocked by the depths that Stewart plumbs.

Recommendations:

1. Winchester '73 (1950)
Dir. Anthony Mann

My clear favorite of the Mann-Stewart collaborations, and maybe my favorite Western of all-time. Winchester '73 was revolutionary in its time, introducing the new Stewart persona, but it stands up against the best Westerns. Stewart plays Lin McAdam, sharpshooter who wins a coveted rifle in a shooting contest with an enemy from his past, only to have the rifle stolen. The film follows his singleminded quest to retrieve the rifle, slowly unfolding his past conflicts and inner demons along the way.




2.The Man from Laramie (1955)
Dir. Anthony Mann

It's hard to choose between the other Stewart-Man collaborations, but I value this one for its Shakespearean scope and story of hidden motives and epic conflict. Again, Stewart is a man with a past whose motives are unknown. This time, his character is more tortured by the past but seems less likely to break psychologically. But the torture he endures from the past is mirrored in the physical torture he endures in the film; Stewart may do the best acting of his entire career as he's tortured by a spoiled ranch heir.





3. The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Dir. John Ford
With John Wayne, Lee Marvin


Stewart's final leading role in a major Western pairs him with John Wayne in John Ford's final masterpiece. Like most of Ford's films, Valence is a communitarian examination of America, and in this case Wayne and Stewart representing opposite American paths; Wayne represents heroic self-sufficiency while Stewart stands for the rule of law and a united community. Once again, there's more to Stewart's character than meets the eye, and once again he's brutally tortured on the way to single-mindedly achieving his goals. Another film frequently picked as the finest Western ever made.


More to Watch:
With Mann:
Bend of the River
The Naked Spur
The Far Country

Others:
Destry Rides Again
Night Passage
The Shootist

Western Star of the Week: Intro

As I've mentioned before, the Western has a privileged place in both the history of film and my love of film. It was the dominant film genre for the first 70 or so years of Hollywood cinema, from the 1903 12-minute masterpiece The Great Train Robbery and the very first feature-length film, 1906's The Story of the Kelly Gang, up until the end of the 70s revisionist age and the films of Leone, Peckinpah, and Eastwood. So I've decided to start a weekly column: every Sunday, I'll highlight a different Western movie star. I'll talk about their Western persona, their best films, and their place in the history of the Western genre.

I'm going to mix it up a little on the first Sunday of every month; instead of a Western Star, I'll highlight a Tenderfoot - an actor not known for making Westerns, but who shone in a Western or two or three. And I'll play fair and try to make most of my tenderfeet from the 70s or earlier; sure, Russell Crowe has only made two Westerns, but that's two more than most of his contemporaries. He's no tenderfoot, is what I'm saying; he just happens to live in age where the Western is a novelty.

I'm going to start with my two personal favorite Western Stars, then move from there to the Duke. After that, I'm gonna go as long as I still have stars to talk about. I hope you come along for the ride. See you tomorrow!