Isn’t it about time we got around to Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954)?
Long before Kathryn Bigelow was winning Oscars with The Hurt Locker (2008), she was a graduate film student at Columbia University. She and a friend, Sarah Fatima Parsons, interviewed Nicholas Ray about a month before he passed away in 1979. Here’s a bit of that interview — the parts covering Johnny Guitar. You can find the rest here.
Nicholas Ray: “One night Joan Crawford got drunk and threw Mercedes McCambridge’s clothes on the highway. She was absolutely great at work, but sometimes anger won over her temperament. They were very different and Crawford hated McCambridge.”
“I kept the posse in black and white during the whole film. Herb Yates, the studio owner who was in Europe during the shooting of the film, looked at the dailies when he came back. And he said, ‘Nick, I love what I’m seeing, but it’s a Technicolor film and everything’s in black and white.'”
By the way, Nick Ray nuts (like myself) will be happy to know the 1975 documentary I’m A Stranger Here Myself can be seen on YouTube.
I’m trying to get a better handle on Joan Crawford, party because of the Mildred Pierce series–it lets me go back to my days of reading James M. Cain (if you’ve never read Serenade, you owe yourself the pleasure–it’s very odd and entertaining–and will teach you to cook an iguana).
I watched the original Mildred Pierce, Dancing Lady this morning (with Freddy Astaire) and most of Autumn Leaves the other day. Crawford is a flavor I never could quite taste; she’s more object than human, and there’s a lesson there for me about Hollywood artifice. I wonder if one can understand Hollywood without coming to grips with Crawford (and Liz Taylor).
But Johnny Guitar is an amazing piece, some lesson in how to construct a piece of abstract art around a cinematic persona–it’s hardly a Western at all. I’m going to have to watch Party Girl again one of these days–my prof. once told me it was the acid test for Ray fans. And I’ve been looking at Robert Taylor more closely since I made the connection between Marguerite Roberts and Taylor (five films, I think).
Of Mildred Pierce, there’s an interesting piece by Joyce Carol Oates on Cain in a fine collection called Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties.
Crawford was never really my bag. I’m much more a fan of genre pictures than her kinda stuff. Your “more object than human” comment is perfect.
I’m a bit the same way with Ray — I prefer On Dangerous Ground and The Lusty Men to his “key” pictures like Rebel Without A Cause.
Working on this book, I’ve become a big fan of The True Story Of Jesse James. It grows on me more each time I watch it. His use of CinemaScope is really incredible.
Johnny Guitar‘s a bit like Rancho Notorious. Not just the obvious women stuff, but more the overall weirdness of them both. What a great double bill they would make!
I really love how Guitar has the look and feel of a Republic B Western — but bigger. Is that cabin toward the end the same one in the beginning of Bells Of Coronado?
Rancho Notorious has the stylized, set-bound feel of an old fantasy picture, more Wizard Of Oz than Western Union. It’s one of those films that I love for the very reasons it’s often criticized.
And while you can toss these two into some kinda Weird Western category, there are no movies really remotely like either one of them.
On Dangerous Ground is a remarkable picture, a sort of gothic snow-Western. Ward Bond as the kind of bully a lot of people supposed he was in life, at least politically, but he’s sympathetic. Ryan is one tiny hair away from becoming Travis Bickle, or The Bad Lieutenant–he’s the stretched-nerve equivalent of late-40’s hard guys like Dana Andrews and Robert Taylor. In movies like this one and Clash By Night, he’s the unsympathetic version of Stanley Kowalski.
And the blind Ida Lupino! All of that and one of Bernard Herrmann’s best scores.
As far as wide screen goes, Rebel is textbook stuff–almost more fun to watch for the camera work than the story or actors.
As for best Ray, you have to toss in In A Lonely Place.
I have a lot of affection for Rancho Notorious–it’s almost a comedy–and it feels like it has something in common with Man Of The West–one of those boxed-in neurotic bad guys stories, loads of sexual tension. You could write a fun play around that kind of thing.
Ever see Line Camp, the Tom Gries episode of The Westerner, with Robert Culp and Slim Pickens?
Great comments here. Especially enjoyed hcbeck’s comments on Joan Crawford. I avoided her for years (I think I was scarred in childhood by scenes from BABY JANE at a neighbor’s house, LOL) but over the past couple years have acquired more of an appreciation for Crawford, starting with her pre-Codes and continuing with later films like MILDRED PIERCE. I think part of the reason I finally was willing to watch her films was her pre-Code heroines are warmer and more human than her ’50s-type characters which had initially turned me off, feeling rather “plastic” to me (especially with her unattractive ’50s hairstyles). So the comment about her being “more object than human” struck a chord with me.
I thought of Marguerite Roberts being mentioned here when I had the good fortune to see Robert Taylor in THE BRIBE on the big screen last Friday. Thanks to a previous discussion here I knew the name and her connection to writing some very good Taylor films. My first viewing of THE BRIBE had been a murky video so it was a great pleasure to see a beautiful print!
Best wishes,
Laura
Another co-written Roberts picture was recently released by Warner Archive, Rampage, with R Mitchum. It’s a very odd duck, with Jack Hawkins as the over-the-hill Hemingway hunter–very old school, smoking jackets, rooms full of trophies, brandy and bravado– who teams with Mitchum, a trapper, to find a half-leopard, half-tiger called The Empress. In tow is Elsa Martinelli as the hot euro babe Hawkins raised and wooed and is losing. A lot of Hatari around the edges but awfully overwrought.
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