Tom is rather stern
It was inevitable, once Zane Grey’s 1912 novel Riders of the Purple Sage had become so
enormously popular, that a film version would follow swiftly on its hooves. And
indeed, only six years later, Fox produced a silent movie of it, directed by
Frank Lloyd and starring William Farnum as Lassiter. I haven’t seen it but it
was evidently a big effort, with five reels.
By 1925 Hollywood Westerns had moved on, however, and
it was time for a new one, this time featuring Fox’s great star Tom Mix.
Mix was at the height of his fame. Between wrapping
the picture and its opening he had undertaken a European tour where he was
received with wild enthusiasm. On his return in May, President Coolidge invited
him to the White House. His salary was huge and his lifestyle lavish. But he
was increasingly fretting under the controls on his pictures Fox imposed, he
was drinking hard and, as usual, his matrimonial situation was in difficulties –
he was on his fourth wife, Victoria Forde. Reviews of Purple Sage were mixed. Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times of the day wrote, “If one were able
to have a haircut and a shine while viewing Tom Mix's latest picture, ‘The
Riders of the Purple Sage’, it would prove a far more entertaining effort than
it is when sitting still twiddling one's thumbs.” That was a bit harsh. I don’t
know why he had that u in his first
name. Mr. Hall did, however, in a rather superior fashion, reluctantly admit
that “the boys in the Piccadilly yesterday afternoon were very keen about Mr.
Mix's ability to outwit the cattle thieves, and their applause demonstrated
that they approved of his excellent horsemanship and his manner of polishing
off the bad men.”
Snooty critics or no, the movie was a smash hit at the box
office.
It is, however, rather lower-key than the usual glitzy
Mix efforts. Perhaps because he was trying to make a ‘serious’ Western along
the lines of the novel or perhaps because of his personal and professional
problems, Riders has little humor and
is low on zip. There’s one amusing semi-comic stunt where Tom (he is Lassiter,
of course) is ambushed by Tull’s thugs and escapes by sitting on a ripped-out sagebrush
and getting Tony to tow him along the trail at ground level. But most of it is
played straight with Tom’s Lassiter in black looking stern all the time.
It’s odd, too, that Mix and EA Bingham, his scenarist,
faced with such a long book with so many episodes, decided to devote so much
time to showing the backstory, which doesn’t appear in the novel at all. The
film starts with farmer Frank Erne (Arthur Morrison), his wife Milly (Beatrice
Burnham) and baby Bessie, arguing over the drudgery which Milly is condemned to
and which slimy attorney Lew Walters (pre-Charlie Chan Warner Oland) is trying
to seduce her away from. Walters and his unsavory ‘hirelings’ are run out of
town and kidnap Milly and Bessie, and shoot Frank, before setting off. Dying
Frank calls ‘Jim Carson’, Milly’s brother, to his bedside and Jim (Tom) vows to
find the females and get revenge on Walters.
It’s only then we get to Cottonwood and Jane
Withersteen and Venters and so on.
Tull (Charles le Moyne) is “a ruthless cattleman whose
word is law in the town” and he makes Walters, who has now changed his name to
Dyer, a tame judge. Dyer is not a bishop. In fact Mormonism is not mentioned at
all. That whole aspect of the novel was excised, entirely, whether for reasons
of aimed-at blandness (a sort of 1920s PCism) or shortness of time, who knows.
Maybe there were some Mormons involved in making the movie.
Tom is duded up a bit though not as flashily dressed
as in some of his efforts. He shoots the hirelings when he finds them in a saloon,
so is quite tough for Tom, and he disposes of Dyer in the courtroom showdown
quite satisfactorily with his sixguns, though Dyer is discreetly hiding behind
his judicial bench so we don’t actually see him hit, just the sinister tell-tale bullet holes in the wood.
Some of Tom’s gravitas is lost because of his
bandy-legged walk, made worse by the speeded-up film of the day.
The entrance to the rustler’s hideout, through a
waterfall, is there (famously copied in Johnny Guitar) and the carved footholds and balancing rock of the hidden valley
are well done too. There’s no climactic horse race, though, sadly, and, as was
usual for movie Riders, Bern Venters (Harold Goodwin) is relegated to a minor
part. Even Jane’s role is pretty low-key; she is not the ruling grande dame of Cottonwood but just a
woman who duly falls for Lassiter.
It was shot at Lone Pine but manages to look very
Utah-ish. The cinematography was by Daniel B Clark and is really rather classy.
He photographed two other great Mix movies, TheGreat K & A Train Robbery (1926) and the 1932 Destry Rides Again.
The music on the DVD is very repetitive. It probably
would have been much better in a 1925 theater with a piano. At the New York
première they had a full orchestra and Lassiter entered to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance!
Riders
was directed by one of Tom’s favorites, Lynn Reynolds. Reynolds was an
interesting fellow. A newspaper reporter in Iowa, Reynolds got into movies
as an actor in 1914 and 1915, then writing and directing. Later he joined Universal
and died of a gunshot wound, allegedly having shot himself in front of guests, following
an argument with his wife, actress Kathleen O’Connor, during a welcome-home
party being held in his honor following an on-location movie shoot.
Lynn Reynolds
There was a tall, young extra who was in Tull’s posse.
He turned to someone on the set and offered the opinion that Mr. Mix didn’t act
very well. “He’s good enough to make $17,000 a week,” was the short reply. That
extra was Gary Cooper.
Love the Cooper quote! Haven't seen this in years and years ... now, another DVD for me to buy. Excellent stuff!
ReplyDelete$$$ well spent...
ReplyDeleteJeff