I see any new Western that comes out. I think of it as doing my part to keep the genre alive.
TEXAS RANGERS with Ashton Kutcher and Usher? In the theater.
AMERICAN OUTLAWS with Colin Farrell? The weekend it opened. I want studios to know, yes; there are people who will support this dying genre.
But let’s be honest, it may already be dead. In the last century, I’d guess 40% of all films (and most network TV throughout the 50s and 60s) were Westerns. And not just shoot-em-ups, but sub-genres of musical Westerns, family Westerns, war Westerns and comedy Westerns (set in the West – not parodies.) All these are done. I doubt we’ll ever again see a film about the U.S. Calvary, or one about herding cattle. Today we get steam-punk stuff like
WILD WILD WEST, or else grim, violent tales about gunplay and – always -- revenge.
All told, the Western looks good in death. People tend to recall the landmark classics or those iconoclastic upstarts who would later re-wrote the rules. People think of John Ford films set in Monument Valley or Sergio Leone, alternating between vast expanse of Spain masquerading as the American West and beady-eyed close-ups. Yet, the majority of Westerns were programmers. Many, even classics, were set-bound affairs, even some of the exterior scenes. Think of the opening scenes of
RIO BRAVO or James Caan facing down members of Christopher George’s gang in
EL DORADO. (Love the bit where George cuts his man loose – “It should’n’a taken four guys.” Classic.) All shot on set. I’m obsessed with another such scene. I don’t know if I have a favorite Western, but I have a favorite moment in a Western, as it’s one of my favorite moments in any film.
GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRALL is a fairly boilerplate tale of Western heroics and it’s truly marvelous. Okay, (pun intended) maybe it ‘s a little stodgy; it’s also irresistibly entertaining.
Like all good 50s Westerns, the film opens with a theme song, -- even seemingly unwieldy titles like
THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, had them – and this one is ridiculously catchy. The film recounts the timeworn story of Wyatt Earp facing down villains with the help of an unlikely ally, Doc Holliday, the frontier dentist turned gambler with a penchant for finding trouble. "Unlikely", can also describe the film’s screenwriter, the novelist Leon Uris, who crafts an episodic take on the archetypal story of the reprobate redeemed by his fellowship with a righteous lawman.
Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp embodies ramrod, stoicism. There’s little of the high-wattage grinning that would enliven
THE PROFESSIONALS ten years later. But as usual Lancaster fills the screen with his solid presence. At the climatic gunfight, it’s great to watch the way this former acrobat moves.
GUNFIGHT is directed by John Sturges, who two years later would helm the equally craftsman-like
MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Like that film, this one has none of the caricatures or stereotypes we sometimes see in Westerns of this period. There are no stupid people in a John Sturges film. The story is about weary, flawed adults and the cast conveys this. Scenes around the Earp’s dinner table, including womenfolk and kids, are played with low-key naturalism, avoiding the robust sentimentality of a Ford film.
Sturges may not dazzle with cinematic styling, but he stages everything brilliantly, shots both interior and exterior are neat compositions. The film’s unpretentious, but dramatically serious. There’s an undercurrent of raw emotion Uris and Sturges bring to the surface in the final third of the picture. The slow-burning tension pays off in what, for me, is a more moving picture than more acclaimed films like
HIGH NOON or
SHANE.
It’s grand entertainment, but hardly transformative. To some, it may even seem like a good example of a genre that was getting a bit moribund and needed the shaking up that would arrive in the form of Leone and Peckinpah.
Except, that is, for one indelible, incendiary ingredient.
The role of Doc Holliday is like an American counterpoint to a character from Shakespeare, a challenge many actors have relished, and I don’t think any haven’t risen to. Victor Mature, Jason Robards, Dennis Quaid and especially Val Kilmer, triumphed when they took their shot.
And then there’s Kirk.
He’s not an alabaster lunger, like Val. His Holliday is a man who refuses to let on any weakness; he’s a gambler after all, out to dupe suckers at the card table. We don’t get much in the way of tubercular histrionics. Sometimes we see Douglas cough discretely, but mostly he’s slick and dapper, totally in control of himself. Most of the time.
After one of the Earps has died at the hands of the villainous Clantons, Holliday confronts his ex-girlfriend Kate (Jo Van Fleet), who has betrayed Doc, and was with the badmen when the killing was planned. She tearfully confesses her complicity and Doc asks her who else was in on the conspiracy. Finally, he arrives at the ultimate question of whether his bitter rival and Kate’s new lover, Johnny Ringo, was in on it.
“Was Ringo there!” he says.
Except he doesn’t say it. He screams it. At the top of his lungs. Like a stuck banshee. At the same time he launches himself hallway across the room to get right up in her face.
I remember the first time I saw this on TV, thinking to myself – “Holy shit, what just happened? “ There I was, watching this gripping 50s Western and Kirk Douglas just snapped. Nothing prepares you for it’s ferocity. It’s a feral outburst of anger, guilt and lacerating self-hatred.
I’ve watched this scene maybe 100 times since first seeing it. I’ve rewound it on VHS, and set it up on repeat on DVD. You cannot see Douglas anticipate his outburst. You can, however, see Van Fleet flinch. The moment is shocking, but not jarring. It’s been building all through the picture. Holliday’s scenes with his paramour play more like something out of
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLFE than
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. An earlier scene where she goads Ringo into humiliating Doc is also a powerhouse, stunningly played by the pair. This stands as one the few films from this period in Hollywood’s history to examine the dynamic of the unmarried couple. (
SUNSET BOULEVARD and
THE HUSTLER are two others.) It’s gut-wrenching stuff, and Doc’s keening outburst finds its most raw expression.
Of all the Hollywood leading men who came out of the 40s and remained stars through the 70s, Douglas was probably the most ambitious, the hardest-working and the least loved. His frequent co-star Lancaster was a critical darling with art house credentials. Gregory Peck was embraced for his fatherly warmth, if not his acting chops. Mitchum’s “Baby, I don’t care “cool earned him an ever growing cult. But Kirk? He was too intense, too simultaneously needy and arrogant. Did anyone ever say, “I wanna be just like Kirk Douglas?” The French may love their stars losing their shit on screen ala Jean Gabin. But, Americans prefer icons of cool.
What Douglas unleashes in
GUNFIGHT isn’t an example of the Method showcases of the 50s. When he writhes around on the floor, it’s more like something out of a silent film. Yet, when he deals hands of solitaire in a saloon he’s mesmerizingly natural. Whatever he does, it never feels out of character, you feel you’re watching Holliday. This is simply one of the best performances by an American actor of all time.
GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL may not be etched on the Mt Rushmore of Western classics, but it’s richer, more dramatically sophisticated than some of the films that are. Indeed, Sturges’
MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is more of a lightning-in-a-bottle, one-of-a-kind classic entertainment. But, at the end of the day, I prefer
GUNFIGHT. It’s darker, more brooding. It’s lack of iconic baggage, makes it easier to sneak up on you. Once it does, there’s a certain hotheaded, yet cool, card-playing dentist you will never forget.
Oh, and Alec Guinness in
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
That’s the answer to the trivia question: who won the Oscar for Best Actor the year Kirk Douglas starred in
GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL?