Warner Archive has announced a handful of Clark Gable pictures as their newest DVD-R releases. Two of them are Westerns.
Across The Wide Missouri (1951) is an excellent film from William Wellman. The story goes that after a preview, MGM got a little scissor-happy with it, leaving us with a fast, tough, beautiful 78 minutes. Joining Gable in the top-notch cast are Ricardo Montalban, J. Carrol Naish, Jack Holt and Timothy Carey (uncredited in one of his first films).
Timothy Carey (from a Psychotronic interview): “I was just an extra in Across The Wide Missouri. Gable had a home up there they rented for him. I went up there and said I was working on the picture. They invited me in and gave me tea and crumpets and were very hospitable to me. I started working on the show three days later and he was a little embarrassed that he wined and dined an atmosphere player at his home. I worked on the show, I played a dead man in it; it was a great part! You could only see my back, I was lying in the water. I’ll never forget the director (William Wellman,) he was a great director, a tough director. I had two arrows in my back lying in the water. I couldn’t hold still, it was so cold and my teeth were chattering. The director said, ‘Keep that jerk still, he’s supposed to be dead.’ I had just come from dramatic school in New York. I thought I was a great actor; I’m the only one who did.”
Also on its way is Lone Star (1952) which puts Gable up against Broderick Crawford, with Ava Gardner in the female lead. Directed by Vincent Sherman, it’s not one of Borden Chase’s better scripts.
Great anecdote from one of the strangest guys to ever step in front of a camera lens.
Carey is easily one of my favorite actors. From Crime Wave to The Killing to The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie to CHiPs, he’s always great fun to watch.
He’s in The Last Wagon and, I believe, Wichita — which will allow me to get him in my book. And, of course, One Eyed Jacks.
Across The Wide Missouri is excellent with some truly stunning scenery.
Although the film is about fur trappers there is not one scene of an
animal being trapped/harmed.Eastwoods excellent underrated White
Hunter Black Heart;with its big game hunting theme also managed to
tackle its subject without any scenes of animals being shot/harmed!
Lone Star is flabby big budget nonsense that manages to bring Andrew
Jackson,Sam Houston and Geronimo into the mix.
In his autobiography Budd Boetticher states that MGM wanted George
Sherman to direct but Universal would not allow this. Big mistake; according
to Budd; because he was sure Sherman could have brought Gable over
to Universal!
Sherman was also a past master of this phoney historical pap so Ive no
doubt film would have been better under his direction.
I want to like Lone Star a lot more than I actually do.
MGM and Westerns were sure strange bedfellows.
Across the Wide Missouri is easily the best of those two Gable pictures; as John says, it’s visually stunning, and the story’s pretty good too.
The less said about Lone Star the better IMO.
In an old interview (that screenwriters issue of Film Comment some years back) Borden Chase said he had wanted George Sherman for Lone Star, and not Vincent Sherman. That seems to back up Budd Boetticher’s version of this, and I too have no doubt George Sherman would have made a better movie of it–any of his Westerns of this period are better. Somehow, though, it’s hard to imagine George S. working at MGM. Like Toby I’ve watched it with good will and only wished it were better.
But I don’t know if I completely agree with the statement that “MGM and Westerns were sure strange bedfellows.” The studio is my least favorite of the studio system, but that opinion is much modified once Dore Schary takes over as head or production in place of L. B. Mayer and if there are arguably no great MGM Westerns there before the 1950s, there are after that—and many other great films, though mostly by non-contract directors with the major exception of Vincente Minnelli. I don’t know why MGM tampered with Across the Wide Missouri, which was apparently almost twice as long and didn’t have that narration attached to it originally. But Wellman’s own next film was for MGM and this was the great Westward the Women which seems to have suffered no interference, and after that there are The Naked Spur, The Last Hunt and Ride the Country, to name only a few that rank at or near the top for me and I’m sure we could all name a fair number of other outstanding ones. I don’t want to push this point too far, because this is not the studio I want to take up for, but with the right director, story, cast, production conditions and studio support for a project, they could make a great Western too. In the 50s especially, it could be done anywhere, which I know is one of Toby’s main points behind both blog and book to be.
What makes MGM a weird place for Westerns is that Westerns, by their nature, go against the typical MGM gloss. They stick out like sore thumbs in their filmography.
Of course, some of them are very, very good.
Blake is right about their pre-1950 Westerns being no great shakes. But The Outriders and Devil’s Doorway got the new decade off to a very good start.
Exactly the the same two I was thinking of for 1950, Toby, along with the marginal but deeply relevant to the genre Stars in My Crown.
And of course, it is the gloss that was always the problem with MGM. That gloss seems less though, with films short partly or mostly on location, and that’s to the advantage of the studio in the 50s, when I feel it gives at least its share to the Western.