It’s a
rather curious thing that Delmer Daves, who directed a film as good – and as
influential - as Broken Arrow in 1950,
could make such a weak ‘Indian’ movie only four years later.
I say
Delmer Daves ‘made’ it: he both wrote and directed Drum Beat, so there are few others to blame. Excuses? It was made
for Alan Ladd’s production company Jaguar, set up so that the sar could cash in on his Shane fame, so perhaps it was constrained by that.
It was for Warners rather than Fox, so maybe the studio insisted on its being
bad (most of its early 50s Westerns were). Another reason might be that Arrow was a distinctly liberal film and
four years had passed since Broken Arrow,
years in which McCarthyism had really taken hold: maybe now films in which
liberalism is shown to fail (the peace council scene) and the necessity for war
against the enemy is apparent (whoever the far right considered to be enemies
at the time, communists, probably) were more likely to succeed. And 1950s
Hollywood was hardly noted for its courageous stand in favor of minorities, or
free speech.
Whatever
the reason, Daves seems to have suppressed his pro-Indian sentiments and come up
with an old-fashioned Western in which the Indians are the dumb bad guys.
The hero
is an Indian fighter, which isn’t a terribly good start. True, Daves seeks to
play this down. Johnny McKay (Ladd) is an ex-Indian
fighter, charged in the opening scene by a peace-loving President Ulysses S Grant
(Hayden S Rorke) with being a peace commissioner to tame the Modocs without
gunplay. Yes, Modocs – we are on the California/Oregon border this time. Of
course the Modocs are indistinguishable from Hollywood Apaches; they are kitted
out by central casting with standard costumes and have the obligatory red
headbands and Winchesters. They do that ug-speak, even when talking to each
other. “Me want fight bluecoats”, that kind of thing. Oh dear. But McKay never
quite manages this peace business, and under his watch Modocs are killed here
and there (though he doesn’t actually shoot them himself). Finally he persuades
Grant that this peace malarkey is not on, and he resumes Indian fighting.
Of
course Ladd is one of the problems. In 1950 James Stewart had burst onto the
screen with his new tough-guy image, all passion and grit, but Alan Ladd? He was
just too soft, too short, too Beverly Hills to be convincing in the saddle. His
Western clothes always looked like costumes. His hair was too blond, too
coiffed. No, sorry, it just didn’t work.
The Indian
chief isn’t a noble and statesmanlike Jeff Chandler, either. It’s Charles Bronson,
in his first major role since leaving his Buchinsky moniker behind him, as
Modoc supremo Captain Jack. He’s a one-dimensional Indian baddy, and the film essentially blames
him for the trouble. Daves has McKay say to the
chief, with breath-taking effrontery, “We could have saved a lot of lives, Jack, if you hadn’t grabbed country
that wasn’t yours.” History is thus rewritten so that it was the Indians who
took land that wasn’t theirs.
Daves wrote
that the film was “almost a documentary about the wars conducted by the Modoc
Indians, made in a manner which conforms totally to the truth.” Notice that it
was a war “conducted by the Modoc Indians”, as if the whites had nothing to do with
it. And if this film “conforms totally to the truth”, then I am a Dutchman. I don't mind Westerns that are historical hooey, that's part of their charm, but I do get annoyed when they claim to be factual and aren't.
Chapter
10 of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at
Wounded Knee is entitled The Ordeal
of Captain Jack, and while I am the first to admit that Dee Brown may not
be primus inter pares when cold,
dispassionate history is written, I nevertheless prefer to accept this version
than Delmer Daves’s.
Now I
don’t want to make this post too long but I do think it is worth a brief
excursion to say a little about the life of the real Captain Jack. The true
story (as far as one can glean it) would have made a much better movie than Drum Beat.
Apart
from Dee Brown, there are other sources: Captain Jack was a central character in Terry Johnston's historical novel Devil's
Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3 (1991); and in Arthur Quinn's non-fiction
work, Hell with the Fire Out: A History of the Modoc War (1997).
Captain Jack’s
real name was Kintpuash or Strikes the Water Brashly and he was born c 1837, so
would have been in his mid-30s at the time of the so-called Modoc War. He seems
to have been quite pro-white in a general way, arguing for co-existence and
trade. He reluctantly signed the treaty under which the Modocs were sent north
from their homeland to the territory of their traditional rivals, the Klamaths.
It was not a good place for them to be, and promised supplies did not arrive.
In 1865 Kintpuash led his people back to their home, cautioning them,
especially the hotheads, not to cause trouble with the whites. But the Army
rounded them up and returned them to the Klamath lands with promises. Nothing
improved.
Kintpuash, known to the whites as Captain Jack, in 1864
In April 1870 Kintpuash
led a band of about 180 Modocs to the Tule Lake area. The Indian Bureau warned
him to return. Kintpuash asked for a reservation in traditional Modoc lands and
the Bureau thought this request reasonable but the local whites opposed
granting any land at all to the Indians and the Army was assigned the duty of
removing the Modocs back to the north by force.
In November
1872 cavalry under Major James Jackson ordered the Modocs, starting with their
leader, to lay down their carbines, and Kintpuash hesitated but did it. The
others followed, but one, known to the whites as Scarfaced Charley, refused to
give over his pistol. Hot words were exchanged, Scarfaced and an Army lieutenant both
drew and fired. Neither was hit but the Modocs made a rush for their piled-up guns
and the cavalry commander ordered his men to open fire. There was a sharp fight
and the cavalry retreated, leaving one dead and seven wounded on the field. The
Modocs headed for sanctuary in the caves and ravines of the California Lava
Beds.
There
now enters the story Hooker Jim. He was one of the Modoc group that might be
described as die-hards or even extremists, with little political sense or
caution in him. On the way to the lava beds he and his band of about thirteen
Modocs killed twelve white settlers in revenge for a lethal attack on his camp.
Hooker Jim was defensive and truculent but Kintpuash now knew the soldiers
would never leave them alone and indeed in January 1873 Bluecoats were sighted,
a force of 225 regulars and 104 volunteers, with howitzers.
Kintpuash
was for negotiating but Hooker Jim and his crew spoke out loudly for attack,
and carried the day. In the ensuing fight the soldiers were routed. The Modocs
recovered valuable arms, ammunition and rations from the field.
At the
end of February Kintpuash’s cousin, Winema, who was married to white man Frank
Riddle and called herself Toby Riddle (played by Marisa Pavan in the movie) came
to the lava beds and she brought her husband and other whites to arrange a
parley with the peace commissioners.
The
members of the commission were Alfred B Meacham, who had once been the Modocs’
agent in Oregon (not in the film), a California clergyman named Eleazar Thomas
(Richard Gaines in Drum Beat, played
as rather a simpleton), and LS Dyar, a sub-agent from the Klamath reservation (the
excellent Frank Ferguson on celluloid). Overseeing the whole affair was General
ERS Canby (Warner Anderson), who had fought Manuelito’s Navajo band twelve years before.
The
Modocs were assured that Hooker Jim and his group would be arrested but not
hanged; rather, they would be sent to Indian Territory in the south. They
surrendered. But once in the Army camp, Hooker Jim was threatened with hanging by
settlers and it appeared that the commission had exceeded its authority by amnestying
his men; the Indians fled back to the lava beds. Sherman was in no mood to
compromise. He ordered Canby to use force so “that no other reservation for
them will be necessary except graves.” That’s Sherman for you.
Delmer Daves: why did he make such a bad film after such a good one?
Now I
really must cut a long story short: Hooker Jim and Co. continued to press for
fighting, Kintpuash for talk. In a famous scene, one of Hooker Jim’s men threw
a woman’s shawl over Kintpuash, calling him a “fish-hearted woman.” He was
forced to agree to try to kill Canby. On Good Friday, 1873 a final parley took
place, in which all parties were supposed to be unarmed, though the Modocs had
pistols concealed and Meacham and Dyar had derringers in their pockets. No
progress was made in the talks, both sides grew exasperated, Kintpuash drew his
pistol, and although the gun at first misfired, the second shot killed Canby
outright. One of Hooker Jim’s men killed Mr. Thomas. Winema/Toby saved Meacham’s
life by knocking a Modoc pistol aside. Dyar and Riddle escaped in the
confusion.
Three
days later mortars pounded the lava beds but when the soldiers overran the
stronghold they found it empty. Kintpuash and his band had slipped away in the
night. The Army employed 72 mercenary Tenino Indians to track them, but Kintpuash
ambushed the advance guard and nearly wiped it out. Still, it was only a matter of
time.
Hooker
Jim, evidently a bad egg, then abandoned Kintpuash, leaving him with 37 warriors to fight off a
thousand soldiers, and surrendered to the Army, agreeing to help track Captain
Jack down in return for amnesty. Kintpuash was finally cornered with the last
three braves who had stayed with him to the end.
Captain Jack or Kintpuash, on the eve of his execution
There was
a ‘trial’, though the Modocs had no legal counsel and could speak little or no
English. The gallows was already being built as the trial went on, so there was
no doubt as to the outcome. Captain Jack/Kintuash was hanged on October 3. His
body was secretly disinterred afterwards and embalmed, and became a fairground
attraction, admission ten cents. Hooker Jim and the rest of the band were sent
to Indian Territory. Most of them, including Hooker Jim, were dead before, in
1909, the government relented and the survivors were allowed back home. There were
51.
Well,
sorry to have been so long-winded but I thought you’d like the story. It isn’t
very much like the one we get in Drum
Beat…
Getting
back to that film to conclude, it could have been set up for Ladd to fall for Toby
(though she’d have to die of course) but ‘miscegenation’ was not on the cards
this time, as it had been in Broken Arrow,
so a white woman is invented for the love interest, Nancy Meek (Audrey Dalton).
There’s a quite hilarious scene in which the couple embrace and Nancy has a
daring speech full of double-entendre. She proposes obliquely to McKay and says
she needs someone who knows how to plow, and how to plant seed, nudge nudge. It’s all too
much for Ladd, who could never do physical romance scenes, and he is rescued by
someone calling him to HQ.
Once
again Daves’s beloved rivers are used as settings for key scenes, such as when
the stagecoach is attacked by Modocs (the same setting was used when Geronimo attacked
the stage in Broken Arrow) or the climactic
hand-to-hand fight between Captain Jack and McKay.
J
Peverell Marley photographed Drum Beat in
CinemaScope color and he was the equal of Ernest Palmer in Broken Arrow. Both were shot in
Arizona - rather curious in the case of Drum Beat because
the story was all about the Modocs in Oregon, but there we are. Visually, the
film is superb.
Victor
Young did the score of the movie and pretty standard it is, not to say corny.
“Indian” music greets every appearance of a Modoc and there is slushy stuff for
the Ladd/Audrey Dalton scenes.
Strother
Martin is in it. Elisha Cook Jr. is the wicked gun-runner and Robert Keith and
Rodolfo Acosta have bit parts. But with Ladd in the lead and Bronson as Captain
Jack the picture was pretty well doomed from the start.
Stick to
Broken Arrow, pards.