Marshal Preston faces Scratchy Wilson
In 1898
Stephen Crane published a short story in McClure’s
Magazine entitled The Bride Comes to
Yellow Sky. It tells of Texas marshal Jack Potter returning to his town of
Yellow Sky with a new bride and coming up against the drunken gunfighter
Scratchy Wilson, who has treed the town in Potter’s absence.
The
story inspired a 1967 opera of the same name but also a film. In 1952 RKO
released a rather curious two-story picture known as an ‘omnibus feature’ which
had James Mason starring in a 50-minute version of Joseph Conrad’s sea story The Secret Sharer and a 40-minute
treatment of the Crane tale starring Robert Preston. I’ll skip the non-Western
first story here (a rather poor adaptation in which one character says, “Not
like you and I, Mr. Robinson,” a solecism that Conrad would never have
allowed) and look at Yellow Sky.
Even in the poster Minor Watson is overdoing it
Yellow
Sky is not the ghost town Stretch Dawson came to in the WR Burnett novel, nor where Gregory Peck met Anne Baxter in 1948, in the movie of that name vaguely based on it, but a
town “on the Texas plains at the turn of the century”. Marshal Jack Potter
(Robert Preston, excellent as ever) leaves his prisoner to let himself out and
go get food at the saloon while he, the lawman, sets off on a “business trip” to San Antone.
How the nosey townsfolk long to know why he goes there so often! But he doesn’t
let on.
All is
revealed (to us) though when we see him returning on the train with beautiful
young Marjorie Steele as his (unnamed) bride. Ms. Steele, 22, is charming and
clearly in love with the marshal. It was her only Western; indeed it was one of
only four films she made. She was the producer’s wife.
Bashful
Marcellus
T Wilson, known to the town as Scratchy, is played by Minor Watson, rather
hamming it up, it must be said. Mr. Watson normally specialized in jovial,
friendly doctors and uncles and the like but here, aged 63, he lets himself go as the all-round
meanie.
Scratchy Wilson
Olive
Carey is Laura Lee, the tough, no-nonsense woman behind the bar in the saloon, so that’s good.
Olive Carey tends bar
There
are echoes of High Noon (the same
year) as the treed town depends on the single-handed marshal, but there is no
final shoot-out.
Marjorie Steele as the bride
The
Crane story was adapted by James Agee. It was his only Western but he clearly
had a lot of fun.
Always good
I would
watch this for the curiosity value and because Preston is always worth seeing.
He keeps his usual charming roguery in check in this picture. But I wouldn’t
pretend it’s High Noon…
Like you, I will see anything with Preston. He's a powerhouse, and sometimes a western's only saving grace. (See How The West Was Won!) Thanks for this.
ReplyDeleteHTWWW is such a monstrous turkey that (see http://jeffarnoldblog.blogspot.fr/2011/03/how-west-was-won-mgm-1962.html) even Preston can't save it but I do always like him, especially when he does his 'charming rogue' act (i.e. usually).
ReplyDeleteJeff