Tough cavalry Western
In 1953 (a vintage year for oaters)
there were two good, gritty cavalry Westerns filmed in Death Valley. The better
of them, certainly, was MGM’s Escape from Fort Bravo, because it was shot by Robert Surtees, directed by John Sturges
and starred William Holden. But able to hold up in comparison and with its own
merits was the other, War Paint,
produced by Howard Koch and Aubrey Schenck, a Bel-Air Productions picture,
directed by old hand Lesley Selander and starring Robert Stack.
Stack generally avoided Westerns, making
only six in his long career, even when, in the 50s, studios were churning them
out at a rate of knots and all their stars were expected to climb into the saddle.
He didn’t become Eliot Ness until 1959, of course. But he was good in oaters, I
think, and it’s a pity he didn’t do more. See for example Badlands of Dakota (1941), his first, or Conquest of Cochise, the same year as War Paint, in which he also played a tough but wise Army officer in
the Indian wars. Neither movie was top-drawer but Stack was good in both.
The movie has one of those plots where a
statesmanlike Indian chief wants peace but his firebrand
son seeks the warpath. That story’s been done to death, of course, but this one
is well handled. Lt. Billings (Stack) leads a patrol of ten men on a grueling The Lost Patrol-type journey to deliver
the treaty in time to Gray Cloud but little does he know (at first) that his
guide, Taslik (Keith Larsen, Brave Eagle on TV) is the firebrand son who will do everything to
thwart the mission and cause war. Taslik is aided by his Amazonish sis, Wanima
(Joan Taylor), a maid who is very handy with a Winchester, as the opening dramatic
scene showed us.
The good news is that among the troopers
are Robert J Wilke, John Doucette, Peter Graves, Douglas Kennedy and Charles
McGraw. They are all more or less surly but as the ordeal is prolonged (Taslik
deliberately leads them to where there is no water) the bad eggs get badder.
Peter Graves as Trooper Tolson is especially nasty. Graves was usually a goody
but also had quite a useful sideline in bad guys. This was only his second
Western in what was to be a very long career in the genre (IMDb credits him
with appearances in 180, from 1951 to 1969). It’s one of those movies in which
the members of the party get picked off one by one, till there’s only badman Graves
and hero Stack left, so they can have a showdown fight. No prizes for guessing
who will win.
Doucette, whom I always like seeing in
Westerns, was another who had a long and worthy career in the genre, appearing
in 200 big- and small-screen oaters, from Station West in 1948 to an episode of How the
West Was Won in 1979. Respect. In War
Paint he plays the Pole Charnofsky with a squeezebox, with quite a good
accent, in fact. Gravelly-voiced Charles McGraw, eternally, it seemed, a dogged
cop or soldier, here in only his fourth Western, plays the loyal, tough (not to
say dogged) Sergeant Clarke who backs up the lieutenant. Good old Bob Wilke was
of course the heavy in Western after Western, one of my heroes, and he was very
well cast here as the boorish bully Trooper Grady. As for Kennedy, Trooper
Clancy, he bravely volunteers for a rescue mission but is bushwhacked by the
deadly Wanima. He was soon to become Steve
Donovan, Western Marshal on TV but he did a lot of big-screen Westerns too
with (usually small) parts, from North West Mounted Police in 1940 onwards. Also in the troop were Charles Nolte
as the corporal who dies of thirst, and Paul Richards, James Parnell and Walter
Reed as troopers. They all fall, one by pitiless one.
There’s a message, of sorts, namely that peace might well fail but they have to try, and the alternative is endless people dying on both sides. Even the homicidal Wanima comes round to that view.
Mean shot with a Winchester
The Pathécolor is bright, the terrain shot
by DP Gordon Avil brutally arid and harsh, the almost Star Wars-y music (Arthur Lang and Emil Newman) underlines the
threat and hardship, director Selander keeps up the tension (and this was only
one of five flicks he directed that
year), and the whole thing is acted well enough to pass muster as a decent
Western. It’s tough and economical. Characters develop.
Recommended.