Tag: Wallace Ford

The Man From Laramie (1955)

Psychological complexities abound in a gripping revenge Western full of intriguing characters

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: James Stewart (Will Lockhart), Arthur Kennedy (Vic Hansbro), Donald Crisp (Alec Waggoman), Cathy O’Donnell (Barbara Waggoman), Alex Nichol (Dave Waggoman), Alice MacMahon (Kate Canady), Wallace Ford (Charley O’Leary), Jack Elam (Chris Boldt), John War Eagle (Frank Darrah), James Millican (Tom Quigby)

It’s the classic Western set-up. A mysterious man rides into town, shaking up the local rivalries while secretly searching for something himself. The final collaboration between James Stewart and Anthony Mann, The Man From Laramie proves to be one of their most complex and, in the end, uncomfortably unreassuring of them all. It seems to promise a fiendish scheme only James Stewart can blow apart. What we actually get is something far more haphazard, put together by a panicked villain, where our hero is only a few shades less compromised than the villain.

Will Lockhart (James Stewart) is nominally in Coronado to deliver goods to Barbara Waggoman (Cathy O’Donnell). But he’s really a cavalry officer searching for a mysterious person selling repeating rifles to the Apache; rifles that led to the ambush and slaughter of a cavalry troop. Lockhart soon finds himself butting heads with the impulsively angry Dave Waggoman (Alex Nichol), son of local rancher Alec (Donald Crisp) who runs the town with his trusted lieutenant Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy) as mediator. Lockhart is more and more determined to uncover the truth.

No one in The Man From Laramie is quite what they seem – or who others see them as. Lockhart seems like the mild-mannered James Stewart, a humble trader looking to make money and move on. But he has obsession in his eyes, a capacity of sudden, compulsive violence and is hiding a complex past that leaves the town reeling. The Waggomans aren’t quite who they seem either. The Lear-like Alec feels like a domineering dictator, but he’s strong-willed but fair. His son Dave seems like a villain, but he’s more a spoilt, impulsive child and the reasonable Vic is more compromised than he appears, a nominal second-son to an Alec but painfully away he comes a distant second to flesh-and-blood. Even Jack Elam’s eccentric is also a dangerous man.

Donald Crisp’s stoic, gruff, hardened rancher is raging against the dying light, covering up his incipient blindness (he can barely read accounts or see the dials on his safe, let alone accurately count out money). He’s facing a conundrum: his actual son, Dave, is a foolish weakling who will be eaten for breakfast by Alec’s crushed rivals – and Vic isn’t his son. Not to mention pressures reveal Vic as liable to stupid, ill-thought out and panicked decisions himself. There is an obvious Shakespeare beats playing out in the wilds of the West.

This combines with a mission of personal revenge for Lockhart. Stewart excels again as an obsessively single-minded man who won’t let anything get in the way: even a gunshot to the hand doesn’t shake his determination. Slapped down early on by Dave –accusing Will of stealing salt and rustling cattle, Dave shoots his mules and burns his carts – he responds with slaps of his own, roughing up Dave in the street and with quiet determination sets about pointedly not doing what the Waggomans want, allying with their rival, sharp-tongued Kate Canady (a wonderfully arch Alice MacMahon) who likes a challenge as much as he does.

But the film avoids a Shane-like clash between little guys and ranchers that we expect. Alec, who clearly learned a lot getting where he is, makes a very generous financial offer to Will as an apology and has no delusions about the (lack of) qualities in his son. There are hints of a past relationship between Alec and Kate, making him less of a bully than you think. And when Alex objects that he never interferes once he appoints a sheriff, you feel inclined to believe him. Alec has risen to power through merit, hard work, investing wisely and reaping the rewards; in fact he’s almost an American business hero. And Lockhart isn’t interested in settling rights and wrongs in the town (he’s not the dangerous stranger Alec keeps dreaming about) however sympathetic he might be.

The Man From Laramie constantly unspools unexpectedly, all it filmed in gorgeous cinemascope that captures the vastness of the West. Mann is also confident with more intimate settings, captureing some truly striking images, not least a Stewart-focused dolly shot that sees the furious Lockhart march through a crowd for retribution against Dave. Mann also shows the terrible power of violence. Opening with the discovery of the smoked-out ruins of a cavalry patrol, it presents violence as the tool of bullies and a blunt instrument. Hand-to-hand battles are desperate, messy struggles in the dirt with no nobility at all. A shoot-out between rocks feels tight and scary and when bullets land the camera captures intense pain in the victim’s faces. The Man From Laramie’s most famous scene focuses violence as a tool, a humiliated Dave ordering Lockhart held down while he shoots him point blank in the hand (a reaction Stewart sells perfectly).

It leaves Lockhart visibility compromised for a large chunk of the film, his hand wrapped in bandages, barely able to aim and fire his rifle. It contributes to another great mini shoot-out where the near blind Alec attempts retribution on a one-handed Stewart, a great scene that deglamorises and builds empathy at the same time. And always we circle back round to Arthur Kennedy’s Vic, an expert portrait of a man who feels like he is constantly paddling violently under the surface to float serenely at the top.

It’s one of several excellent performances, lead brilliantly by Stewart, that round out a very well-shot and psychologically engaging Western that cleverly inverts and realigns expectations and presents a resolution that is deliberately unsatisfying (for us and for Stewart) and a comment itself on the strangers who ride into town to shake it up and then disappear. It’s a fine swan song for a great collaboration between star and director.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

A small town family is corrupted by a malign force in Hitchcock’s favourite of his films

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Teresa Wright (Charlie Newton), Joseph Cotton (Uncle Charlie Oakley), Macdonald Carey (Detective Jack Graham), Henry Travers (Joseph Newton), Patricia Collinge (Emma Newton), Wallace Ford (Detective Fred Saunders), Hume Cronyn (Herbie Hawkins), Edna May Wonacott (Ann Newton), Charles Bates (Roger Newton)

It’s a surprise to discover Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock’s favourite of his films (although the Master of Suspense was a notorious kidder). It rarely makes even the top ten of Great Hitchcock’s and for years was semi-forgotten in his CV. But delve into this small-town chiller and it becomes less of a surprise the master was so fond of it. Hitchcock’s first American-set film (his previous American films being British-set), this takes an idyllic, everyone-knows-your-name, no-doors-locked small town in California and injects into the middle of it a ruthless sociopath, as charming as he is shockingly ruthless. Doesn’t that sound like Hitchcock all over?

That small-town is Santa Rosa in California. There the Newton family is thrilled at the imminent arrival of Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) from New York. None more so than his niece Charlie (Teresa Wright), a precocious teenager who shares her uncle’s wit and worldly wisdom. He arrives laden with gifts – but also dragging two police detectives and swirling rumours of terrible crimes. Surely Uncle Charlie – hero to all and idol of his niece – can’t also be the ruthless “Merry Widow” killer, dispatching aged widows for their riches? And, if he is, what on earth will Charlie do about it?

A lot of what would become Hitchcock’s central concerns in his later, darker, mature works make their inaugural appearance in this dark, creeping mystery. Everything in the Newton home is perfect, until they welcome Charlie, whose amiable greed and self-interest tarnishes everything he touches. Despite this, he’s the most likeable, charismatic, charming character in the film. So much so, a big part of us wills him not to be the murderer we can all be pretty confident he is. He’s far too exciting and dynamic for us to want him torn away from us!

The two Charlies are close – so much so Hitchcock would surely have dialled up the incestuous spark between them even further if he had made the film fifteen years later. They have a near supernatural mental bond, seemingly able to predict where and when the other might be. They laugh and flirt. In arguments Uncle Charlie grasps his niece like a frustrated lover, clutching her too him. As well as sharing many character traits (implying it would be easy for Charlie to become like Uncle Charlie) they’re closeness feels as much like a courtship as it does familial closeness. When Uncle Charlie takes Charlie to a gin bar to gain her confidence and support to hide from the cops, the entire scene feels like the appeal of a would-be lover.

It overlaps another theme future Hitchcock have taken further: the thin line between innocence and killer. Uncle Charlie and his namesake have a special bond. They share the same world-view and many of the same ideas. They’re both charismatic and natural leaders. They both feel stifled by this small-town world. They are both ruthlessly determined when roused. One of them might be innocent and one might be good – but how much of a push would it be to turn one into the other?

Hitchcock probes this possibility throughout in a film stuffed with doubles and duality. Both Charlies are introduced with similar shots of them lying in bed, being questioned by others. Later Uncle Charlie will inherit Charlie’s room in the house. Greeting each other at the station, they move towards each with mirroring shots. They share the same name. Twins, doubles, mirrors and the number two abound in the film – a marvellous blog here captures this all in far more detail and insight than I could here.

Uncle Charlie slithers into Santa Rosa like the serpent into the garden of Eden. He offers temptation left, right and centre. The Newton family receive lavish (stolen) gifts. His brother-in-law’s bank gets a investment from the cash Uncle Charlie carries around (he’s old fashioned you see). He laughs and jokes, reminds Charlie’s mother of the joys of her past and inveigles himself into the heart of the family (he even sits at the head of the table). But he’s also a dark, sinister figure, frequently framed at the top of staircases, marching inexorably towards camera and (in one stand out moment) breaking the fourth wall to address us directly while coldly, contemptuously outlining his theory about the pointless burden useless lives have on the rest of us.

He’s played with a charismatic, cold-hearted, jovial wickedness by Joseph Cotton. Cotton is so good as this on-the-surface amiable man, with a soul devoid of any love, it you’ll wish he’d got parts like this more often. Liberated from playing decent best-friends, Cotton dominates the film with a malignant charisma, married with a growing only-just-concealed desperation at the fragility of his fate. Opposite him, Teresa Wright is marvellous as a young woman who finds her sense of morality fully awakened into outrage by this dark presence corrupting everything in her life.

Corruption is central to Shadow of a Doubt – no wonder Hitchcock loved it – with Uncle Charlie turning everything in the simple, honest town into something darker and tainted by his very presence. There is an almost cliched home-spun decency about the town (almost as if co-writer Thornton Wilder was parodying his Our Town), serving to make Uncle Charlie’s modern sociopathy even more of a destructive force.

Shadow of a Doubt is directed with immense care, but a great deal with subtle flourish. Staircase shots abound, to stress sinister motivations, positions of weakness and unease. Characters lurch towards the camera frequently, as if the whole film was hunting us down. An air of menace, lies and danger builds inexorably as Uncle Charlie’s true-nature leaks out. There is also wit: not least from Charlie’s father (a jovial Henry Travers) and eccentric neighbour (a scene-stealing Hume Cronyn) gleefully discussing true crime throughout. There is also Hitchcock’s love of irony, not least in the fact Charlies problems are largely caused by his attempts to conceal a newspaper article that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Hitchcock makes his cameo early on as a card player on a train journey. He’s revealed to be holding all the trumps. That’s how he likes it: and perhaps explains his fondness for Shadow of a Doubt. Low key but perfectly constructed, it’s a film that latches onto themes of corruption, dark temptation and ruthless violence. Film logic abounds – who cares that the detective’s investigation is so inept they’d never be employed again – and the second half is crammed with murder attempts as unsubtle as they are ingeniously dark. Shadow of a Doubt feels like a prototype for darker themes of obsession and temptation Hitchcock would explore in the future. Perhaps that’s why he was so fond of it: it’s where he started to spread his wings.

The Last Hurrah (1958)

Spencer Tracy runs for office in John Ford’s toothless satire The Last Hurrah

Director: John Ford

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Major Frank Skeffington), Jeffrey Hunter (Adam Caulfield), Dianne Foster (Maeve Caulfield), Pat O’Brien (John Gorman), Basil Rathbone (Norman Cass), Donald Crisp (Cardinal Martin Burke), James Gleason (“Cuke” Gillen), Edward Brophy (“Ditto” Boland), John Carradine (Amos Force), Willis Bouchey (Roger Sugrue), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Weinberg), Wallace Ford (Charles J Hennessey), Basil Ruysdael (Bishop Gardner)

Mayor Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) is running for a fifth term of a “New England city”. Skeffington’s roots lie in the town sprawling Irish population, and has successfully played the game of machine politics all his life. He’s alienated the members of the towns traditional elite – who can trace their ancestors all the way back to the Mayflower – but he’s loved by the regular people of the city. But is Skeffington going to find himself out of touch with a political world starting to embrace populism and the power of television?

John Ford’s adaptation of a hit novel by Edwin O’Connor, is one of his rare “present day” pictures. But it’s a bit of a busted flush. What should have been an exploration of a tipping point in American politics, totally fails to successfully land any of the points it could make. It’s a film that doesn’t understand the Kennedy-esque world America was moments away from embracing, and looks with such ridiculously excessive sentimentality at old-school politics it manages to tell us nothing about the corruption and dirty deals of this sort of machine politics. Effectively it’s a film that takes two long hours to tell us almost nothing at all.

The film adores two things – and it’s not a surprise in a Ford film – the past and the Irish. Anything from yesteryear is covered in a halo, with the parade of old-school Hollywood character actors from the Ford rep company taking it in turns to denounce and condemn anything and anyone less than 40 years old. Every young person in the film is either a feckless idiot – Skeffington and Cass’ sons are a playboy and an embarrassing moron – or, like Jeffrey Hunter’s Adam Caulfield (Skeffington’s nephew covering the election for the local paper) is there merely to provide doe-eyed adoration.

As for the Irish, the film loves the grace and charm of this old immigrant community. Skeffington’s Irish political machine is sanitised beyond belief. In the real world these sort of organisations operated on a system of back room deals, intimidation and careful arrangements to deliver set quotas of votes on polling day. Sure many of these politicians also delivered a number of social reforms – as Skeffington does – but any suggestion that any of Skeffington’s dealings could ever be described as dirty are roundly dismissed. Here it’s all about what Skeffington could do for other people, and no mention of the endemic corruption in many politicians like this. Instead Skeffington is presented with nothing but rose-tinted sentimentalism, a respectful widower, a kind man, whose actions are often more about other people than politics.

Former Boston mayor James Michael Curley – who Skeffington was clearly based on – was imprisoned for corruption. No chance of that happening to Skeffington who only uses intimidation and back-street savvy to fight the causes of orphans and widows (literally) and takes nothing at all from the public purse (although he still lives in a lovely big home). By contrast his elite opponents are the sort of scowling, greedy, penny-counters you might find in a Frank Capra film, shameless bankers and newspaper types who care nothing for truth and justice and only their own selfish needs.

Perhaps that’s why Skeffington’s opponent McCluskey (an early Kennedy substitute with his perfect family life, war record and lack of actual accomplishments) is portrayed as such an empty suit, a mindless, grinning yes-man who has nothing to say and no goals to meet. Ford’s contempt for him – and for the new word of television – drips off the screen. The TV shot we see McCluskey shooting is a farcical mess, poorly shot, edited and delivered with stilted artificiality by McCluskey and his tongue-tied wife. Not only is it not particularly funny, the presentation of this just shows how out of touch Ford was with modern America. Two years after this, Kennedy would win an election largely off the back of his ability to present a dynamic image on TV. Skeffington even crumbles in the election due to his traditional, press-the-flesh campaign not competing effectively with TV slots. How can that look even remotely convincing when Ford shows his rival has no mastery of the new media at all? That in fact he’s worse at making TV than Skeffington proves to be?

What exactly was Ford going for? By failing to criticise anything at all about the old-school politics and pouring loathing on the new politics, he ends up saying very little at all. Skeffington is a twinkly angel, but we never understand why so many in the church and the city oppose him – other than the fact I guess that he is Irish. Donald Crisp’s cardinal promises at one point near the end to reveal why he always opposed Skeffington – only to be hushed. If anything bad ever happened, Ford ain’t telling us making this one of the most dishonest of his tributes to Old America.

None of this is to criticise much of the acting, which is great. Spencer Tracy dominates the film with his accustomed skill and charisma, his Skeffington both a twinkly charmer and a practised flesh-presser who manages to subtly pitch and adjust his character depending on his audience and whose physicality helps to assert his dominance in every scene. Pat O’Brien does fine work as his fixer and Basil Rathbone is suitably sinister as a his principle financial opponent. Ford also puts together some memorable shots – especially a long walk Skeffington takes past a victory parade – and scenes, but the film is an empty mess. And, with its extended final twenty minute coda, goes on way too long.