I was a recent guest on Todd Liebenow’s excellent podcast Forgotten Filmcast, which features a film blogger covering a movie they consider under-appreciated. We focused on Last Train From Gun Hill (1959). Todd had never seen it, and I was so happy to hear he loved it. It’s a great 50s Western, one of my favorites, and I hope we did it justice.
The show’s now available from iTunes or the Forgotten Filmcast site.
The terrific illustration of Kirk Douglas in Last Train From Gun Hill was done by Roger Koch, who goes by the name Zombie Dad. Permission to use it is greatly appreciated.
One of my favorites, too.
Just listened to the podcast Toby. I thought you did a fine job of selling the movie and drawing attention to its strengths and highlights.
Todd mentioned a few times that this might be seen as an atypical westerns, and how it bore a resemblance, mainly via Quinn’s part and performance, to gangster/crime pictures. For me anyway, the moral complexity of this one places it firmly among the more typical 50s westerns, where darkness, moral dilemmas and the quest for revenge and/or redemption became increasingly common. It also represents the versatility and adaptability of the western at the time, the way virtually any theme or genre convention could be woven into proceedings successfully.
Thanks for giving up almost an hour of your time for this.
Todd’s gangster point was a good one, but when you’ve seen a lot of these 50s Westerns, you realize this is a theme that turns up quite a bit.
What strikes me about this one is that it focuses on tension rather than action.
Again, thanks for listening.
Hey, it was a pleasure!
You’re spot on about the tension aspect, and I liked that the point was made that this is a suspense movie wrapped up in western garb.
BTW, I though you made a good point too about the gradual escalation of intensity within the genre as the decade wore on.
Agreed ! Don’t know why this movie seems to be overlooked by many. It has an edge to it that most movies – Western or otherwise – lack.
Like that graphic up top too.
A great interview about a great Western, Toby. I wouldn’t actually call “Last Train From Gun Hill” a forgotten film, though. I and many others have had a high regard for it for decades and, of course its great lines of dialogue:
RICK (chained to the bed): “You’re finished, Morgan! The only way you’re gonna get out of here is in a box!”
MATT: “Just as long as you’re with me, that’s the main thing!”
This has always been one of my favourite Westerns, which I went to see as a 12 year old in 1959 and I’ve still got the Movie Classic comic book adaptation of the film which I bought at the time, too. I agree it’s better than “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”, which is too long and drawn out, while “Gun Hill” is very tightly paced and edited. It’s an age thing, I suppose. People of my age, 66, are bound to remember it, while the younger generation would not have heard of it. I was in a taxi cab a year or so ago and I was talking to the taxi driver who I guess was in his twenties and he’d never heard of Richard Widmark, Amazing! I think the painting of Kirk is really good, too. It looks just like him.
Thanks for the kind words, David.
You’re right, it’s not forgotten among Western fans. But I wanted to use it as a way of getting “regular” people to see more of these things.
As it turns out, Roger, who did the great Douglas illustration, saw Last Train at 12 at the RKO Palace in Cincinnati. He says there was a Yellowstone Kelly trailer before it.
Yes, I went to see “Yellowstone Kelly” at the same cinema (the now long demolished Broadway in Meir, Stoke-on-Trent) a few months after “Last Train From Gun Hill”. That was seen in November, 1959, and “Yellowstone Kelly” at Easter, 1960, when I was just 13. It was a great novelty seeing Clint Walker on the big screen in Technicolor after seeing him every week as Cheyenne Bodie on the small television screen in black and white. In fact, in both “Fort Dobbs” and “Yellowstone Kelly”, he was Cheyenne in all but name.
I love Fort Dobbs!
I loved “Lawman” with Lancaster. He (BL) was my All Time favorite.
“Fort Dobbs” is an action-packed, excellent, beautifully photographed on location Western with a great Max Steiner score and good performances, especially from Richard Eyer, who cried very convincingly in one particular scene with Clint Walker, where he wrongly believes that Clint murdered the boy’s father. Only the young Dean Stockwell, ten years earlier in “Down to the Sea in Ships” and Paul Engle in one particular episode of “Cheyenne” in 1956 (whose title escapes me) were as good at on screen emotion as Richard Eyer was in “Fort Dobbs”.
Eyer is very good in it.
By the way, I was able to interview him about Fort Dobbs for my book — very nice man.
Just a short note of agreement that LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL is a very excellent film, if not better than that description. I have seen it several times since I first saw it in a theater first run. I never really get tired of watching it.
Excellent stuf. A group of us have taken to watching B movies, for a laugh, on a Sunday night. I got the job recently of finding more movies and was shocked when I looked online that 5 of the top ten were films I genuinely love. How is Warriors a B movie?
Al the best
Stuart
I hope followers of this blog who have not yet listened to the Podcast will do so. It is absorbing throughout and I felt the host Todd plainly did not know as much about 50s Westerns as Toby but readily acknowledged it, was a bright guy ready to learn, and did his part to make it a good discussion.
Along with the many good insights and observations about “Last Train” specifically, Toby briefly made reference to a point that I strongly agree with and feel is very important, that you can see the genre’s evolution year by year in the 50s. It’s not just a decade where it’s the same at the beginning as at the end, even though the beginning is strong in its own way too, and each year is very strong on its own. But the more I get into it the more I feel each year has its own individual character, which can’t be easily described in a few sentences but looking at a lot of the films together, one can get a feeling about this.
1959–the year of “Last Train from Gun Hill”–is arguably the peak of the genre, not only so strong for artistry in so many films but the most consistently mature in hitting the deepest themes and most compelling narratives.
This is very belated, Toby. I apologize for that and feel you did a wonderful job of evoking this superior Western.
I’ve always loved the first 3 CLINT WALKER/GORDON DOUGLAS WESTERNS. YELLOWSTONE KELLY, remains one of my favorite films. But honestly I just cannot figure WWHY the other two were lensed in black & white!! Good gosh they both SCREAM for TECHNICOLOR!! Especially with the outstanding on-location scenery as in GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS!! (oh well., at least it was filmed in WARNERSCOPE, a tag used for only a few titles during this period). In closing, I’m sorry to mention this, — but I never was a fan of the EYER Brothers !!
I like Fort Dobbs being B&W. It works for me, though color would’ve been fine, too. Was able to interview Richard Dyer about Dobbs, and he had some great things to say.
I am a western aficionado and have watched many of the better ones multiple times. Last Train…..stands up very well over the years and repeated viewings. It has many great elements. Actually, like perhaps many of you…I am old enough to have seen it when it was first run in the theaters in the 1950s. (I am 75.)