The Ranown Cycle (1956-1960)

In the 1950s, Budd Boetticher directed seven Westerns starring Randolph Scott, often referred to as the Ranown cycle. The first of these was 7 Men from Now (1956), in which seven men rob Wells Fargo, steal a lot of gold, and kill the wife of Randolph Scott in the process. He sets out to avenge her death, and while he is at it, he retrieves the gold as well. Justice is served. But there is another injustice that has to be addressed in this movie.

When Scott first happens across Walter Reed and his wife, played by Gail Russell, we can see right off that this guy is a wimp, and we wonder how he ever got himself a wife like Russell. Even when she falls in the mud, she oozes sex appeal. In fact, that may even make it better. Some men would love to just get down and wallow in the mud with her. Later, when they are joined by Lee Marvin and his partner, Marvin says to his friend, “It just don’t seem right to me…., why a full woman like that would settle for half a man.” He is right. Reed just does not deserve Russell.

A man like Marvin is the sort who cannot help stepping on something little, so one night while Scott, Reed, Russell, and Marvin are inside the covered wagon, Marvin starts talking about how deliciously desirable Russell is, practically ravishing her with his words, while her husband, who is being verbally cuckolded, just sits there and takes it. Marvin also talks about how he once knew another woman like Russell, who eventually ran off with a real man, suggesting that she has a thing for Scott. And apparently she does, because later, when Scott says goodbye to her, she moves in to be kissed, although he does not avail himself of the opportunity. For one thing, he is a recent widower, and for another, he is too upright to take another man’s wife.

We know that Scott will eventually kill all the men who stole the gold and caused his wife’s death, because that is routine for a Western. It is the injustice of Reed’s being married to Russell that worries us, for there is no standard convention for handling that situation. In The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), there is a similar injustice of Lana Turner being married to Cecil Kellaway, and so she and John Garfield kill him. But that is simply one form of injustice being corrected at the expense of creating another. As a result, Turner and Garfield never really get to enjoy the love they deserve, because they must be punished for committing a murder. What is needed is a way of bringing about the sexual justice we want without having it undone with the criminal injustice of murder.

When Scott discovers that Reed had been hired by the robbers to transport the gold, he takes the box of gold away from Reed and tells him and Russell to go west. We get a sinking feeling. The sexual wrong will never be righted. Fortunately, Reed decides to go south to inform the sheriff of Scott’s situation.

Before Reed can get to the sheriff’s office, the leader of the men who hired him to transport the gold shoots him down in the street. Because Reed knowingly risked his life and lost it trying to help Scott, Marvin says he was wrong, that Reed was a man after all. Well, it is nice of Marvin to say that, being generous about the husband now that he is dead, but we know better. After all, Reed was not wearing a gun, and in a Western, that is the mark of a weakling. And thus it is that when Reed is shot in the back unarmed as he walks to the sheriff’s office, we breathe a sigh of relief. Though Russell says she loves her husband, yet we know that this is for the best.

Later, after Scott has returned the gold, he tells Russell where he will be working as a deputy and indicates that he would be glad to see her, if ever she should be passing by that way. She quickly decides that after a decent interval (both have recently murdered spouses), she will take him up on that offer. This makes us feel good, because Scott is the man she has needed all along. When they finally get married, and he gives it to her the way her first husband never could, justice will finally be restored.

Boetticher was obsessed with what it meant to be a real man. Men in his movies often explain their actions by saying a man does this or a man does that. Not only had Boetticher been an athlete in college, but he had a lifelong fascination with bullfighting as well. And didn’t we learn from Hemingway that bullfighting is a most manly endeavor? As a result, he had a thing about beautiful women being married to men lacking in the proper amount of manhood, and this form of injustice is a recurring theme in most of the movies he made with Randolph Scott. One can almost imagine Boetticher in college, wondering why a pretty coed would date some nerd when she could have a big, strapping man like himself. Perhaps he expressed his frustration on this score through the movies he made.

Before moving on the the other movies in the Ranown cycle, let us look at four of the critical features of sexual injustice in the movie just considered:

The Dead Wife: Randolph Scott’s wife has been killed by bandits.

The Unworthy Husband: Gail Russell is a pretty woman that is married to a man that doesn’t deserve her.

The Perceptive Outlaw: Lee Marvin is an outlaw that talks to Scott about how desirable Russell is and how she deserves better than the man she has.

The Worthy Replacement: Russell is freed of her husband and will eventually marry Scott, a man that is appropriate for her.

Not every movie in the Ranown cycle has all these features. In some cases, there are minor variations. And there is one movie that has none of the elements listed above.

In The Tall T (1957), Maureen O’Sullivan plays a middle-aged, supposedly homely woman, although we know she is better looking than some of the characters in this movie seem to think. She was on the verge of becoming an old maid when a man married her for her money, because her father is rich. The husband turns out to be a spineless heel. Just as Marvin, in 7 Men from Now, was an outlaw that got into a discussion with Scott about Russell, so too is Richard Boone in this movie an outlaw that gets into a discussion with Scott about O’Sullivan. He says O’Sullivan would be more attractive if she fixed herself up, and he refers to her husband as “low grade.” So, it is clear that it is a form of sexual injustice that she is married to that man. That husband is killed by Henry Silva, one of the outlaws in Boone’s gang, before the marriage is consummated. But she never loved her husband anyway, so she let’s Scott kiss her passionately. After the bad guys are killed off, Scott and O’Sullivan go off together with his arm around her. He’ll give her the love she needs. Sexual justice has been restored.

In this movie, the first feature is missing: Scott does not have a wife that died for the simple reason that he has never been married.

In Decision at Sundown (1957), Scott plays a man who had been cuckolded by various men while he was off fighting the Civil War. After his wife’s last affair with a sleazy character played by John Carroll, she committed suicide. Scott blames Carroll for that and tracks him down, determined to get revenge. When he finally catches up with him, Carroll is about to get married to Karen Steele. We are suspicious of Carroll because he is a dandy. We get the sense that he is marrying Steele, not because he loves her, but because he is a social climber, something a real man would never do. As she learns more about him, she refuses to marry him. This is similar to the way the marriage was never consummated in The Tall T. Carroll ends up leaving with the town whore, the one he is suited for, while Steele seems to be pairing up with the local doctor, a more suitable match.

There is a minor variation on the second feature: the woman is not yet married to the man that is unworthy of her. The third feature is absent: there is no perceptive outlaw to talk about Steele with Scott.

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) is an outlier. None of the features listed above are present. There are maybe three women in this movie, two of whom have speaking parts, but neither is of much significance. What little we can discern of their relationships with men, there appears to be no sexual injustice.

In Westbound (1959), Andrew Duggan, a secret agent of the Confederacy, has married the woman Scott used to love, Virginia Mayo. Scott is a captain in the Union Army. On the stagecoach, he meets a Union soldier played by Michael Dante, who lost his left arm in the Civil War from gangrene. He is married to Karen Steele. This is the first of these movies in which the husband of the leading lady has a physical handicap instead of a character flaw. Dante keeps referring to himself as being “half a man,” the same expression Marvin used in reference to Russell’s husband in 7 Men from Now.

Now, we were fine with the way three of the previous movies depicted sexual injustice by pairing a beautiful woman with a man that was not worthy of her because he was weak or effeminate. And we were glad when these marriages were stopped or broken up. But do we really feel it is an injustice for a man that is physically impaired to be married to a beautiful woman? Well, maybe we don’t, but apparently that’s the way Boetticher must have felt, because he has Dante is killed off.

Somewhat later, Duggan, Mayo’s husband, is killed in a gunfight. Mayo seems to still be in love with Scott and would like to have him back, but we see Scott saying goodbye to her as she leaves on the stage. Then, in a manner similar to the ending of 7 Men from Now, we get the impression that Scott and Steele will end up getting married as soon as the decent interval of mourning has passed. When that happens, she will get a whole man and not just half of one.

In this movie, there is a variation on the first feature: Scott’s wife has not been killed for the simple reason that the woman he loved married someone else instead. This is similar to Decision at Sundown, where an unfaithful wife committed suicide while Scott was off fighting the Civil War. Here, the woman he loved was unfaithful and married someone else while he was off fighting the Civil War, depriving Scott of a wife in a different manner. The third feature is absent: there is no perceptive outlaw that talks to Scott about how desirable the woman is that is married to a man that is unworthy of her.

In Ride Lonesome (1959), Scott is a bounty hunter, bringing in a prisoner. Pernell Roberts and James Coburn are two outlaws that want to be the ones to bring the prisoner in themselves. If they do, they will receive an amnesty for their past crimes, allowing them to go straight and become partners running a farm on a piece of land Roberts owns but cannot return to while he is wanted by the law. When we first meet Karen Steele, she has just been made a widow by some Indians. She and her husband had been managing a staging post out in the middle of nowhere. Scott makes some derogatory remarks about her deceased husband, saying he should never have brought her to that isolated place, and having done so, he should never have left her alone to go chase after some horses. So, even though we never meet the husband, we know from Scott’s assessment that he was unworthy of Steele. We get the feeling that, sorry as she is that her husband has been killed, the love in that marriage had long since died. Roberts, like Marvin and Boone in two of the previous movies, gets into a discussion with Scott about how nice it would be to have a woman like Steele for a wife.

The principal outlaw that Scott must contend with is Lee Van Cleef, the brother of Scott’s prisoner. Toward the end of the movie, we find out that Van Cleef once hanged Scott’s wife for revenge. After Van Cleef has been killed, Scott lets Roberts and Coburn have his prisoner for the amnesty. From the dialogue, we get the sense that, after the usual period of mourning, Steele will end up marrying Roberts. We don’t know what her deceased husband had been like, but Roberts is definitely the real man she needs.

The fourth feature is unusual in that it is the perceptive outlaw that becomes the worthy replacement.

In Comanche Station (1960), Scott’s wife was captured by the Comanches ten years ago. Whenever he hears about a white woman being held by the Comanches, he goes to their camp to barter for the woman, in hopes that it will be his wife. Upon arriving at a Comanche camp for just such a purpose, he ends up trading for Nancy Gates, a more recently captured woman. He tells her he will take her back to Lordsburg, where her husband is. Because all the braves have been having their way with her (we see bruises on her arms), she worries that her husband won’t want her back. At this point, the question seems to be not so much whether her husband is unworthy of her, but whether he will think her unworthy of him. Scott says that if he loves her, it won’t matter, which tells us more about his attitude toward his wife, if he ever finds her, than it tells us about Gates’ husband.

Claude Akins and two other men have been looking for Gates too. Akins knows what Scott and Gates do not, that her husband offered a $5,000 reward for her return, dead or alive. Akins says that the husband will pay even if she is returned dead so that he will know for sure what happened to her. But we can’t help thinking of The Searchers (1956), where John Wayne wants to kill Natalie Wood because she has been raped by the Indians. If it is like that, then the husband is unworthy of Gates. But we don’t know.

Akins is the perceptive outlaw in this movie that talks to Scott about how desirable Gates is. Scott once had Akins court martialed for killing peaceful Indians to get their scalps, for which a bounty was offered. Akins talks about how nice it would be to have a woman like Gates, and how her husband can’t be much of a man, or else he would have gone looking for her himself. He talks about how he knew a man once that set out to find another man’s captive wife. He found her, but before they got back to her husband, they became lovers. This remark is reminiscent of the remark made by Lee Marvin in 7 Men from Now, the one about a woman like Russell running off with a real man, suggesting that Scott would be that man, just as Akins does in this movie. Akins’ assessment of the situation makes us think the husband is unworthy of Gates.

Akins plans to kill Scott so that he can collect the reward. But since Gates would be a witness to the murder, he plans on killing her too, after which he will return her dead body to the husband. Needless to say, Scott kills Akins on the way back to Lordsburg.

There is a scene in which Gates says that she hopes Scott will stay in Lordsburg for a while after they get there, saying it will make things easier, since she is afraid things will never be the same with her husband, now that she has been raped. Scott says she’ll forget. There’s no PTSD in a Boetticher Western. But Gates may be wondering more about whether her husband will forget than whether she will. She points out that Scott hasn’t forgotten about his wife. He says that knowing Gates has made him forget, at least for a little while. All this sounds familiar, like the dialogue in some of the previous movies that suggest that the woman, once freed of her unworthy husband or fiancé, will soon be getting together with a man that deserves her.

But when they arrive at Gates’ home in Lordsburg, a young child comes running out to her, calling her “Mommy!” That changes everything. There never were any children involved in the previous movies, and the presence of a young child confers a movie’s blessing on the marriage that produced that child. Then her husband comes out, and we see that he is blind. Gates and her husband embrace, and we know all will be well, that they truly love each other.

Did Boetticher have a change of heart? Maybe. But we meet this husband and find out about his condition only at the end of the movie. We just barely have a moment for it to register that he is blind before Scott rides away and the movie is over. But suppose we had been introduced to this married couple early on? Suppose, similar to Dante in Westbound, he was a soldier that had been blinded during the war, and we see him reunited with his wife in the first twenty minutes of the movie? And assume there was no child. Would the husband have survived then? I doubt it. I don’t think Boetticher could have stood it. He would have had to kill him off so that Scott and Gates could hint to each other that they will be getting together just as soon as it is socially acceptable for them to do so.

We suspect that the first feature is present in this movie. That is, we figure that Scott’s wife is dead by now. And the third element is present, in that Akins is the perceptive outlaw that talks to Scott about what an attractive woman Gates is, and how he thinks her husband is unworthy of her. But is the second element present? Is Gates’ husband unworthy of her by Boetticher standards, owing to the fact that he is blind? Or has she herself become less worthy on account of having been raped by all those Comanches, in which case, she and her husband are now suited for each other? We may not think that way, but given the movies that have come before, we can’t help but wonder if this was Boetticher’s way of bringing about what for him would be sexual justice

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

When The Day the Earth Stood Still opens, a UFO is spotted, circling the Earth at a high rate of speed. A man on the radio announces that this is not another flying saucer scare, that scientists and military men have agreed that this is something real. Nevertheless, another radio announcer says that in the nation’s capital, there is some concern, but no sign of panic, as people are enjoying a nice spring day.

We see the familiar landmarks of Washington, D.C. At a park, people are lying about, others having a picnic, while a bunch of children are playing baseball. Suddenly, it becomes clear that the flying saucer is going to land there, and they all scatter.

This is not realistic. A UFO always lands in some isolated area, where only a few people see it, one of whom is taken into the flying saucer so a needle can be stuck into her navel. And then when she tries to tell her story, no one believes her, except a few government officials, who keep it a secret because we must never know. Landing right in the middle of the nation’s capital in broad daylight with everybody watching just isn’t the way UFOs do things.

The flying saucer is surrounded by infantry, artillery, and tanks, as well as by onlookers. Eventually, a ramp appears, and a door opens. An alien emerges in the shape of human being. That’s reassuring. He starts speaking with a male voice, so men apparently run things where he comes from too. He is wearing a space helmet, but only because every well-dressed alien from outer space is expected to have one. Otherwise, it serves no useful function: he wouldn’t have needed it on his flying saucer, and he has no trouble breathing when he takes it off. When he does take it off, we see that he is white, so apparently white people run things where he comes from too. We later find out that his name is Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie.

He is able to speak English, which he learned from listening to our radio and television broadcasts. He says, “We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill.” But when he whips out what appears to be a space switchblade, one of the trigger-happy soldiers shoots him.

Then a great big robot comes out, and with rays of light beaming out of the slit in his head, he starts vaporizing all the rifles, artillery, and tanks, but without harming any soldiers. Klaatu struggles to rise up from the ground, addressing the robot, “Gort! Deglet ovrosco!” Apparently, the robot’s name is Gort, and he doesn’t speak English.

As some soldiers approach, Klaatu picks up the broken device he had been holding, saying, “It was a gift for your president. With this he could have studied life on other planets.” Perhaps the president could also have studied the planets that used to have life on them before they were annihilated for disobedience. But Klaatu brought only one with him, so we’ll never know.

Klaatu is brought to a hospital to treat the wound to his shoulder. He is visited by Mr. Harley, the president’s secretary. Klaatu tells him he has traveled 250,000,000 miles from his planet to reach Earth. That means he could be from Mars, but it is not clear what was intended by the scriptwriters. Later in the movie, Klaatu speaks of a confederation of planets, but we can’t be sure whether they are supposed to be within our solar system or beyond it. At the time this movie was made, the possibility of intelligent life on other planets in our solar system and even on their moons was widely accepted in science fiction. On the other hand, Klaatu at one point says, “The universe grows smaller every day,” not, “The solar system grows smaller every day.” Therefore, it is more likely that Klaatu’s home planet is not in our solar system. But that means that its distance from Earth would have to be measured in trillions of miles, not millions.

Klaatu demands that he be allowed to address the United Nations. Mr. Harley is hesitant, saying there are problems with that, saying that “evil forces have produced tension in our world.”

Klaatu replies, in a voice that is not at all friendly, but rather threatening, “My mission here is not to solve your petty squabbles. It concerns the existence of every last creature who lives on Earth.” So much for all that talk about “peace” and “goodwill” in his initial greeting. Later, he refers to earthlings as being childish and stupid. However, when he learns that he cannot get anywhere with the political leaders of the world, he decides he must mingle with ordinary people of Earth, so as to understand their “strange, unreasoning attitudes.”

He is locked in his room in the hospital, but of course he is able to escape. He rents a room at a boardinghouse, using the name Mr. Carpenter, where he meets Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby. According to an online script, Bobby is supposed to be eleven years old, even though he is played by Billy Gray, who was thirteen at the time. Although “Mr. Carpenter” becomes quite familiar with these two, as well as with others who live there, he never encourages anyone to call him by a first name. This is consistent with his persona, which affects an aloof, superior attitude.

The next morning, at the breakfast table of the boardinghouse, Mr. Carpenter reads in the newspaper that a Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) has invited scientists from all over the world to study the spaceship. He seems to be getting an idea: if he cannot get anywhere with politicians, he might do better with scientists. That places this movie on the left, politically speaking. Conservatives don’t trust scientists the way liberals do.

Also at the breakfast table are other tenants, listening to the radio, where the announcer refers to the spaceman as a monster, who must be tracked down like a wild animal and destroyed. However, he expresses concern that destroying him might involve retaliation. We are supposed to disapprove of this xenophobic attitude on the part of the announcer. This is ironic, for once we find out why Klaatu has come to Earth, we realize that the announcer was right: Klaatu is a monster, and the only misgivings we should have about killing him is the possibility of retaliation. Of course, the movie does not want us to think that way, not even at the end when his threat to destroy all life on this planet becomes clear.

One of the tenants, a Mr. Barley, turns off the radio in disgust, complaining about the way the government isn’t doing anything because they are Democrats. Because he comes across as dogmatic and narrowminded, this remark further establishes the leftwing orientation of this movie.

Mrs. Barley, his wife, doesn’t even think he is from another planet, but from right here on Earth. Given the year this movie was made, we may guess that she thinks the man is a Communist. Only Helen defends the spaceman, suggesting he is not a menace at all.

Mrs. Crockett, the landlady, enters the dining room and tells Helen that Tom Stevens is here to see her. She goes into the lobby, where they kiss romantically. Apparently, they were planning a picnic, but Helen says she hasn’t been able to find a babysitter for Bobby. She tentatively suggests taking him with them, but we can see that Tom doesn’t like that idea. Right then, we know we aren’t supposed to like him, not surprising since he is played by Hugh Marlowe. Furthermore, he is an insurance salesman. In real life, an insurance salesman might be a fine fellow, but when a scriptwriter decides to make one of the characters in a movie an insurance salesman, he wants the audience to have a negative feeling about him. Tom wants to marry Helen, but she isn’t sure.

In any event, Mr. Carpenter offers to take care of Bobby, so Bobby can show him around the city. Before Helen has a chance to think about that, Tom says, “Say, that’ll be great, wouldn’t it, Helen?” Helen is hesitant, but she finally agrees. Bobby and Mr. Carpenter begin by going to Arlington National Cemetery, where Bobby’s father is buried. Mr. Carpenter is deeply moved by the fact that all those men died in wars. He says that they don’t have wars where he comes from. Then they go to the Lincoln Memorial, where he reads the Gettysburg Address, which was given during the Civil War. Again, Mr. Carpenter is deeply moved. Referring to Lincoln, he says, “That’s the kind of man I’d like to talk to.”

I hate to get ahead of this story again, but since we all know what is coming, I guess it will be all right. The whole reason Klaatu is here on Earth is that earthlings fight wars. Since they now have atomic weapons and are experimenting with rockets, this will make them a danger to the whole universe, once they move beyond Earth and venture on to other planets. As a result, Earth may have to be incinerated, wiping everyone out, including Bobby, I might add. In order for this to make sense, Klaatu should be showing disgust at the way earthlings not only fight wars all the time, but also honor those who died in those wars, thereby duping future young men to fight and die too. That he should become sentimental about those who died in wars, and that he should admire a man who presided over a war, is incongruous, given the kind of death and destruction that he threatens to inflict on all of mankind on account of the wars they are always waging.

Since Lincoln is no longer available, Mr. Carpenter asks Bobby who the greatest man in America is today, meaning the greatest philosopher, the greatest thinker. Bobby says it’s Professor Barnhardt. They go to Barnhardt’s house, but he’s not home. Mr. Carpenter and Bobby go inside anyway, where they see a blackboard full of equations, representing an effort to solve a problem in celestial mechanics. Mr. Carpenter writes on the blackboard, essentially solving it for Barnhardt, leaving his address with the Barnhardt’s secretary when she interrupts them.

Eventually, Barnhardt and Mr. Carpenter get together, the latter revealing himself as Klaatu. He says that the warlike earthlings are beginning to be a threat to other planets, now that they have atomic energy and rockets. Klaatu says that if he does not get the hearing he demands, he may have to resort to violence to get one, such as by destroying all of New York City. If he gets a hearing and fails to get the results he demands, the entire planet Earth will have to be eliminated. In the meantime, he agrees to settle for a nonviolent demonstration of some sort.

That night, Bobby follows Mr. Carpenter to the flying saucer, where he sees him interacting with Gort and then entering the spaceship. He tells his mother what he saw, and, you guessed it, she insists he was dreaming, one of the most irritating plot devices in the movies. How refreshing it would have been to see her immediately pick up the phone and call the police. Instead, we have to resign ourselves to suffering through this routine until Bobby is finally believed, and then only because Mr. Carpenter tells Helen that he is Klaatu. He admits to what happened because he found out that Bobby saw him entering the flying saucer, and he was afraid Helen would believe Bobby and call the police. It never occurred to Klaatu that Helen would dismiss what Bobby told her as being a dream because he is from another planet and has never been in an Earth movie before.

Right after he tells her this, the demonstration he promised Barnhardt begins, when all electric power throughout the entire world is turned off, including that of automobiles. That’s impressive, all right. Even more impressive is the fact that this is done differentially, with exceptions being made for hospitals and airplanes in flight. Problem is, if Klaatu, all by himself, has the ability to do this, he could shut off the electricity of any rocket ships trying to leave Earth. In that case, the other planets that Klaatu represents would have nothing to fear, and Earth would not need to be destroyed. But Klaatu doesn’t think of that.

Anyway, Tom figures out that Mr. Carpenter is the spaceman. That’s because Klaatu carries perfect diamonds around in his pocket like loose change, a couple of which he gave to Bobby, one of which Tom accidentally found. He and Helen start arguing about it. He wants to report this to the Pentagon, and she wants to protect Klaatu by keeping it a secret.

Tom says, “He’s a menace to the whole world. It’s our duty to turn him in.” He’s right, of course. Klaatu casually spoke of murdering everyone in New York City just to make a point, that point being that he is willing to murder everyone on this planet, if we don’t do what he says. By our standards, he is a psychopath, although on the planet he comes from, he may be perfectly normal.

But the movie doesn’t want us to think that way. For some reason, we are supposed to think Klaatu is a good person, and that Helen is right to protect him. Therefore, the movie must make Tom out to be even more unlikable than he already is. He continues:

You realize what this’d mean for us? I’d be the biggest man in the country. I could write my own ticket…. You’ll feel different when you see my picture in the papers…. You wait and see. You’re going to marry a big hero.

It might be one thing for him to think that way, but no matter how vainglorious a man might be in his heart, he would know not to say something like, “I want to be a hero.” Rather, what we would expect is that Tom would continue to say he is turning Klaatu in because it’s the right thing to do. Later, when surrounded by reporters, who speak of him as a hero, he would say, “Oh, no. I just did what anyone else would do in my situation.”

In any event, after he tells Helen that he doesn’t care about the world, that he only wants to be big and important, that marriage is off.

Of course, in another sense, Tom was wrong about informing the Pentagon, as a practical matter. Even if Klaatu were to be arrested or killed, Earth would be destroyed anyway. Klaatu says that is exactly what would happen, that Gort would destroy the whole planet if anything happened to him. Gort may end up doing that eventually, but right now it would be premature. To prevent Gort from so doing, he tells Helen that if anything happens to him, she must go to Gort and say the words, “Klaatu barada nikto.”

Later, when Klaatu is shot down in the street by soldiers, he tells her to get that message to Gort right before he dies. Meanwhile, Gort has been sealed in a rectangular prism of plastic, which is harder than steel. Nevertheless, he simply vaporizes it and frees himself. A couple of soldiers approach. This time, Gort doesn’t simply vaporize their rifles. He vaporizes the soldiers too.

Then Helen shows up. Gort is about to do the same to her, but she utters the all-important words, “Klaatu barada nikto.” There must be a lot of meaning in those words because Gort picks up Helen and brings her inside the flying saucer. Then he goes to the cell where the body of Klaatu has been locked up, vaporizes the wall, and brings Klaatu’s body back to the flying saucer.

When Gort brings Klaatu back to life, Helen asks, “You mean he has the power of life and death?”

Klaatu responds, “No, that power is reserved for the Almighty Spirit.” This is the only explicit reference to God in this movie, although his use of the name “Carpenter” is intended to make us identify him with Jesus, as does his resurrection.

All the scientists that Klaatu wanted to speak to have convened around the flying saucer. Klaatu emerges and gives a short speech.

Essentially, he says that the other planets in the universe have created a race of robots to act as policemen. Their job is to enforce the peace. They have absolute power over those who live on those planets, and their power cannot be revoked. If the people on Earth try to extend their violent ways beyond their own planet, the entire planet will be burnt to a cinder. Having given this ultimatum, he gets in his flying saucer and flies away.

Earlier, I noted that the political orientation of this movie is on the left, given its positive attitude toward scientists. Furthermore, regarding those scientists now surrounding the flying saucer, we see they consist of men and women of all races and from all parts of world, suggesting an equality of the sexes and the races, which also puts this movie on the left. In the original script, Klaatu compared the organization of the planets of which he speaks to “A sort of United Nations on the planetary level.” Even without that line in the movie, the similarity between the organization of the planets and our United Nations is obvious. This further marks the movie as being on the left, given that liberals tend to have a more favorable attitude toward the United Nations than conservatives do.

As opposed to this, I would have expected conservative viewers of this movie to react with revulsion at the thought of having to submit to Klaatu and his robot. I should think they would regard the loss of sovereignty of planet Earth to some interplanetary government, which in turn has given up its sovereignty to a race of robots, not as a positive thing, but as a cautionary tale as to what could happen to American sovereignty if the elitists and globalists are allowed to have their way. Moreover, I should have thought that those on right would have been appalled at the way we are supposed to admire Klaatu and appreciate what he is doing for the people on Earth, while threatening them all with death if they don’t behave. Finally, given the intensity with which conservatives embrace their Christian faith, I should have thought they would regard the suggestion that Klaatu was Christlike as blasphemous.

And yet, I have found none of this. With professional critics, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether they are liberals or conservatives, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Whatever their political orientation might be, they all seem to approve of the way Klaatu bestowed upon mankind the blessing of peace on Earth. As for those I have known personally, their response has invariably been the same, even though I have lived in Texas most of my life and am surrounded by Republicans. It strikes me as paradoxical that, though I am a Democrat, yet my reaction to this movie is further to the right than it is for those who actually belong there.

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

At screenrant.com, there is an article entitled “Every Single Tarzan Movie (in Order of Release),” with commentary provided by authors Shawn S. Lealos and Angel Shaw. When they get to Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, they note that this was the first Tarzan movie to receive Oscar nominations, saying, “This 1984 film is widely considered one of the best of the Tarzan movies.”

If so, I don’t share that opinion. Although a movie should always be judged on its own merits, it is impossible to watch a Tarzan movie without comparing it to the novel or other Tarzan movies. In comparing the book with a movie version, there is the question of fidelity to the original story and fidelity to the spirit of the novel, which are not quite the same thing. This movie fails on both counts.

At first, it appears that we may be watching a Tarzan movie that follows the story in the novel. Minor changes are to be expected, of course. But a major change is when Tarzan (Christopher Lambert) meets Jane (Andie MacDowell). In the novel, she is abducted by Terkoz, one of the great anthropoid apes, who wants to ravish her, but she is rescued by Tarzan, who wants her for himself. Although he cannot speak a human language, they fall in love. In this movie, he does not meet Jane until after he has learned to speak English and has arrived in England.

Moreover, Burroughs apparently believed in Lamarckian evolution, for he presents Tarzan as one who manages to maintain his noble bearing even though he was raised by apes in the jungle, on account of his aristocratic ancestry. In this movie, on the other hand, Tarzan runs about on all fours, oo-oo-ooing like an ape. This is bad enough while he is in the jungle, but long after he has arrived in England, he still reverts to running about on all fours and making silly ape noises. Even on the night he has sex with Jane, he comes into her bedroom, barefoot and on all fours, and when he starts removing her clothes and sees her bare flesh, he gets so excited that he starts oo-oo-ooing again.

Compare that with the first sexual encounter between Jane and Tarzan in the novel as he fights with Terkoz to the death:

Jane—her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration—watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman—for her.

As the great muscles of the man’s back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl.

When the long knife drank deep a dozen times of Terkoz’ heart’s blood, and the great carcass rolled lifeless upon the ground, it was a primeval woman who sprang forward with outstretched arms toward the primeval man who had fought for her and won her.

And Tarzan?

He did what no red-blooded man needs lessons in doing. He took his woman in his arms and smothered her upturned, panting lips with kisses.

For a moment Jane lay there with half-closed eyes. For a moment—the first in her young life—she knew the meaning of love.

But then her civilized upbringing comes back to her, and she resists Tarzan. He is puzzled by this, but he does not force himself on her. As they become better acquainted, his behavior toward her was the “hallmark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate.”

It might be argued that the movie is more realistic. It probably is, for the Tarzan of this movie reminds me of the title character in The Wild Child (1970), based on the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a boy who had grown up wild in the forest. But if realism is what you are after, you should watch that movie instead of a movie about Tarzan anyway.

Speaking of which, there is a worker on the Greystoke estate named Willy who is said to be “a bit soft in the head.” Both his behavior and his posture are similar to that of Tarzan. One of the unresolved questions about Victor of Aveyron is whether he was born with normal intelligence, which was impaired by his growing up without human contact, or whether he had been abandoned by his parents because he was suffering from a mental disability to begin with. Willy’s presence in this movie reinforces the similar doubts we have been having about Tarzan.

When Tarzan discovers an ape in a cage, he frees him, and they go to a park and climb a tree, just like old times. When a guard shoots the ape, Tarzan screams, “He was my father.” In the end, the Tarzan of this movie is so offended by the civilized world that he decides to go back to the jungle where he belongs.

There is one part of the novel that I doubt even the most devoted Burroughs’ fan would want to see in a movie because it is just too painful. Tarzan’s parents had brought books with them for the purpose of raising a child, which Tarzan discovered long after they had died. By means of these books, Tarzan learned to read English by associating, for example, a picture in the book of a man with the word “man” written on the same page.

He rescues a Frenchman named Paul D’Arnot, who discovers that although Tarzan is not mute, he can only read English, not speak it. So, he decides to teach Tarzan how to speak a human language. But since D’Arnot’s English is not very good, he teaches Tarzan to speak French. He does so by pointing to the word “man” and telling Tarzan that the word is pronounced homme.

Ugh! Apparently, French still had some snob appeal back when Burroughs wrote this story, so he wanted his Tarzan to speak both French and English. This movie wisely avoided all this by having D’Arnot teach Tarzan English to begin with, letting him learn French later.

Anyway, to continue with the novel, D’Arnot also teaches Tarzan the ways of civilization. Eventually, Tarzan travels to America to find Jane, whom he rescues from a fire along with several others. Unfortunately, she is engaged to another man, Tarzan’s cousin, William Cecil Clayton, the heir apparent to the title of Lord Greystoke. Though she loves Tarzan, yet she cannot break her promise to Clayton.

Shortly after talking to her, Tarzan receives a telegram informing him that fingerprints have established that he is Greystoke. The following lines are the end of the novel, an ending that to my knowledge has never been in any Tarzan movie ever made, but would be enough to put such a movie at the top of my list should there ever be one:

As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.

Here was the man who had Tarzan’s title, and Tarzan’s estates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved—the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man’s life.

It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and—it would take them away from Jane Porter also. “I say, old man,” cried Clayton, “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for all you’ve done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full saving our lives in Africa and here.

“I’m awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted. I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your environment.

“If it’s any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?”

“I was born there,” said Tarzan, quietly. “My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn’t tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was.”

Orpheus (1950) and Black Orpheus (1959)

Orpheus is a French film directed by Jean Cocteau. It is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set contemporaneously in France. The movie begins in The Poet’s Café, where a bunch of hoodlum poets hang out. Orpheus (Jean Marais) is hated by the rest of the poets in the café, because his poetry is so much better than theirs. A fight breaks out among the poets, just the way you and I might get into a fight over some poems we had written. Other poets join in, and it becomes a riot. Orpheus is almost arrested, but the policeman lets him go when he realizes who he is. In fact, the policeman is surprised he didn’t recognize Orpheus, since there are lots of pictures of him in his wife’s room (Oh, brother!).

Anyway, Orpheus is a grouch who is mean to his wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa), but we are supposed to understand that he is a genius who has his moods, and so that makes it all right. Death (María Casares), in the form of a hot babe, kills Eurydice, and down she goes to Hades. Instead of being grief stricken, however, Orpheus falls in love with Death. But he can’t get rid of his wife that easily. The old ball-and-chain is allowed to follow Orpheus back from the underworld to the surface as long as he does not look at her. Well, he never seemed to want to look at her when she was alive, so I don’t know why he would want to look at her now, but he does. In fact, he cares so little for her that I suspect he looked at her on purpose so he could be free to make it with Death, the hot babe.

And it almost works, except that we are then treated to an outrageous narrative rupture, in which Orpheus and Eurydice live happily ever after.

As for Black Orpheus, another French movie based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, if you decide to watch this one, I hope you like dancing, because that is what half the movie is, and it is monotonous, repetitive dancing to monotonous, repetitive music.

In this version of the myth, set in contemporary times in Rio de Janeiro, Orfeo (Breno Mello) asks his girlfriend Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira) to marry him, and then on the same day, he meets Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) and has sex with her. Then, instead of at least breaking off his engagement, he just dances with Eurydice at the carnival right in front of Mira. So, he’s a louse, right? Wrong. The movie wants us to like Orfeo and despise Mira. You figure it out.

Anyway, there is a guy running around with a death mask on who wants to kill Eurydice and eventually succeeds. We don’t know why, because she says she never had anything to do with him. I guess we are supposed to accept this as mythologically inevitable. Or, you can just assume the guy is wearing a hockey mask.

Hombre (1967)

The Movie

The Man with Three Names

Hombre is a movie about John Russell (Paul Newman), a white man who was kidnapped as a child and raised as an Apache, who was eventually rescued and educated among white people, but who then returned to live among the Apaches. There is also an indication that he has spent time living as a Mexican, but no emphasis is placed on that, mostly just the fact that he was a white man steeped in Apache culture. Because he has spent time among three different cultures, he has three names, one for each.

Russell Inherits a Boardinghouse

When the movie starts, he finds out that he has inherited a boardinghouse in the town of Sweetmary from “Old Man” Russell, his adoptive father. He looks over the boardinghouse, which is run by Jessie (Diane Cilento). She shows him the books and tells him he can make a regular income off the place without lifting a finger. But he is not impressed. He says he has an offer on the place for a herd of horses in Contention, and he has decided to take it. Jessie is disappointed, for she really liked her job.

She has been sleeping with Sheriff Frank Braden (Cameron Mitchell), so she goes over to his office and tells him she no longer has a job, hoping he will marry her. He doesn’t want to get married, however, so she decides to take the next stage leaving town and try to make her way somewhere else.

The Stagecoach Is Held Up

And so it is that she ends up on a stagecoach with Russell, who is on his way to Contention, along with a variety of characters, one of whom is Dr. Favor (Frederic March), the Indian agent at San Carlos, and his wife (Barbara Rush). Along the way, the stage is held up, and one of the passengers, Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone), turns out to be the ringleader of the bandits. We then find out that Dr. Favor has been embezzling funds by starving the Indians, and the bandits steal the money he has with him.

But things get complicated when Russell retrieves his rifle off the top of the stagecoach that the bandits did not know about. He kills a couple of them, getting back the money, which he intends to return to the Indians that still live on the reservation. One of the bandits he kills is Sheriff Braden, who admitted to Jessie when asked what he was doing there, “Going bad, Honey.” No wonder he refused to marry her, if he was planning on being a part of this.

The Standoff

The rest of the movie is a struggle between the two groups of people, the bandits and the passengers. But among the passengers, there is also a struggle between the ways of the white man and the ways of the Indian. Russell has trouble understanding why white people persist in helping other white people, even though they don’t deserve it. He especially dislikes Mrs. Favor because she expressed contempt for the Indians, and because she was party to her husband’s embezzlement. During the final standoff, Grimes has Mrs. Favor tied out in the hot sun with no water, saying that she will stay there until either she dies or someone brings him the money. Russell is willing to just let her die, but Jessie is determined to save her. Russell knows Jessie will be killed if she tries to bring Grimes the money in exchange for Mrs. Favor’s release, and since he likes Jessie, there is nothing for him to do but rescue Mrs. Favor himself. In the end, Russell kills Grimes and mortally wounds a Mexican bandit. Russell is also killed, though he did succeed in saving Mrs. Favor, which was white of him. As a result, when the dying Mexican asks what the name was of the man that shot him, he is told the man’s name was “John Russell” rather than being given his Indian or Mexican name.

Was Mrs. Favor in on It?

Back when the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) had discussion boards for each movie, the question was posed, “Was Mrs. Favor in on it?” to which many people answered in the affirmative. It certainly is an interpretation that makes sense of some of the peculiar things that happen in this movie. From what we can gather, Dr. Favor has been embezzling for years. For some reason, he suddenly decides to take the money and run. Perhaps he found out that the federal government was sending someone to San Carlos to do an audit, and he figured he would get out before the embezzlement was discovered. So, using the excuse that he and Mrs. Favor were going to Bisbee for a couple of days to settle some affairs, they go into town to take the stagecoach, intending to go to Mexico.

And yet, when they get to town, the heist is all set up. Not only do the bandits know that Dr. Favor has been stealing from the Indians, they also know that he has chosen just this moment to make off with the money, and that he and his wife intend to take the stage. Furthermore, because most of these bandits were from out of town, they had to know about Dr. Favor’s intention to abscond well in advance, so they could ride into the area and get things ready, which includes Grimes also getting on the stagecoach. Presumably, they had inside information. And a likely source would be Mrs. Favor. She could have been having an affair with Grimes, and during some pillow talk, told him about the money and exactly when she and her husband would be leaving.

After the robbery takes place, Grimes says to Mrs. Favor, “I figured you’d ride along with us a way.” And Mrs. Favor says, “I’d better not.”

I’d better not? That is not what an attractive woman says when she is about to be abducted by a bunch of desperadoes that, she should have every reason to fear, will gangrape her and leave her for dead in the desert. What we would expect her to do is scream and beg for mercy.

By way of contrast, consider the movie Niagara (1953). Marilyn Monroe is married to Joseph Cotten, who is very jealous and possessive. One night some young adults that are staying at the same hotel are having an outdoor party. Marilyn asks a young man to play her favorite record for her. He does, and then he asks her to dance. She looks over at her hotel room and sees her husband watching her through the window. She turns back to the young man and says, “I’d better not.”

Now, that is where that line makes sense, when a woman is worried about making her husband jealous. What would explain this is that Mrs. Favor and Grimes planned this robbery, and they agreed that she would rendezvous with him later in Mexico. This sudden change in plans worries her, for it might make her husband suspicious, especially since he has had time to wonder, as we do, just how the bandits knew so much about his plans.

Toward the end of the movie, the passengers, who are trying to make their way back to town by walking, decide to hide in an abandoned shack near a mine until nighttime. It is located on top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill is a smaller shack, which the bandits, with Mrs. Favor as their hostage, use as their base of operations when they discover where the passengers are hiding. Grimes goes up the hill to try to make a deal, trading the woman for the money, but Russell rejects the offer. As Grimes tries to get back down the hill, Russell puts three slugs in him. When Grimes collapses in the doorway of the small shack, we see the hands of Mrs. Favor dragging him inside, saving him from being shot any further. This means she cares about Grimes, confirming the theory that they were having an affair.

On the other hand, this could be an instance of the Stockholm syndrome. In fact, just prior to Grimes’ deciding to ascend the hill and try to make the deal, he asks her if she wants to send her husband a message, and she says, “Tell him I’m being well looked after,” which is characteristic: as a victim, she might be grateful that she has not been raped, thereby bonding with her captor. Furthermore, since they are alone in that scene, we would expect some kind of communication between them making it explicit that they were in cahoots, if indeed they were, but nothing of that sort is forthcoming.

At least, movie logic would require that. Now, in real life, just because Grimes and Mrs. Favor were having an affair and had conspired against her husband, that would not mean that they would say something about it whenever they were alone. But even though real-life logic would not require it, movie logic would, and this is, after all, a movie.

Let us further undermine the case against Mrs. Favor. A running theme through the movie is the irrational way white people, from Russell’s Apache perspective, will stick together and protect one another even after acts of betrayal. That Mrs. Favor would drag Grimes to safety would be just one more instance of this. That he would subsequently tie her up in the hot sun without water would simply underscore Russell’s belief that white people are foolish to be so trusting and forgiving of one another.

Finally, since the sheriff was also in on the job, he might, as a law-enforcement officer, have gotten wind of Dr. Favor’s treatment of the Indians, and might have also found out through someone connected to the reservation that Dr. Favor seemed awfully anxious to make that so-called trip to Bisbee.

In short, while there is a strong circumstantial case that can be made that Mrs. Favor was in on it, it is equally possible to make the case that she is innocent, at least in the sense that she did not betray her husband.

In any event, as noted above, Russell ends up in a shootout with the bandits, in which he and they are killed, leaving only the passengers still alive. Actually, there is one more bandit, who went behind the hill to cut off their retreat, but we figure the passengers will not have any trouble with him, outnumbering him as they do.

Did Jessie Act Precipitously?

While we are thinking about what will happen after the movie has ended, allow me to suggest a subsequent scene: About a week later, the man that was planning on buying the boardinghouse arrives in Sweetmary to find out why Russell didn’t show up to finalize the deal and take possession of that herd of horses. And while he is there, he decides to check out the boardinghouse, asking, “Where is the woman who runs the place? Did she quit?”

After all, there is nothing surprising about the fact that someone might inherit a business, but immediately sell it because he didn’t want to bother with it. But you have to figure that the person who bought the business wanted to keep it as an income-producing asset. Therefore, it makes no sense that Jessie would assume that she no longer had a job running the boardinghouse until she had a chance to talk to the man who bought the place.

The Novel

So, what with my wondering if Mrs. Favor was in cahoots with Cicero Grimes, and wondering why Jessie wouldn’t wait to see if the new owner of the boardinghouse would want to keep her on as the manager, I decided to read the novel, written by Elmore Leonard, to see if that would shed any light on the subject.

If you told me that the novel was written in the first person, I would have assumed that Jessie would be the narrator. There are only two scenes in the movie she is not in. The first is when Billy Lee (Peter Lazar) tells John Russell that the stage line is closing down and will no longer need horses, which Russell and a couple of fellow Indians were regularly supplying. The second is when Russell goes to Delgado’s to talk to Mendez (Martin Balsam) about the boardinghouse, a conversation that gets interrupted when a couple of white men enter the bar and start insulting Russell’s two Indian companions. Russell bashes one of the white men in the mouth with the butt of his rifle just as the man was putting a whiskey glass to his lips. Mendez, a resident of the boardinghouse, could have told Jessie about what happened. On the other hand, there are several scenes with Jessie in which others in the story are not present. She is the one that ties all the pieces of the story together.

Much to my surprise, then, I found that there is no such character as Jessie in the novel. Needless to say, that means that the question as to why Jessie didn’t wait to talk to the new owner never comes up in the novel. In fact, it is not even a boardinghouse that Russell inherits, but just the house his adoptive father lived in. But even more striking is Jessie’s absence from the novel throughout. We are used to movies eliminating characters in a novel to keep thing simple, but here is a case where the novel seems empty and flat without a character that exists only in the movie. She is the one that makes this movie so much fun to watch, especially the way she is wont to make brutally frank comments about sex.

Also, I cannot help but mention that while the John Russell of the movie is a man with a ready wit, Apache style, of course, the novel is excessive in depicting Russell as the strong, silent type, practically making him a zombie. In criticizing the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain said that Cooper violated most of the rules of romantic fiction. One of those rules is the following:

… the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

It is a detail that seems to have been overlooked by Elmore Leonard as well. Interestingly enough, the Natty Bumppo of the Leatherstocking Tales is a white man raised by the Indians just as John Russell was in this novel. Perhaps Leonard was guided by Cooper in creating the character of John Russell. Now, I know that the old movies never represented Indians as being loquacious, but I always figured that was because their English was limited. Hence, the stereotypical Indian who merely says, “Ugh!” But it seems that Cooper and Leonard both regard Indians as inherently laconic.

In any event, Russell and Jessie are not the only ones that made the movie better than the novel in this regard. Billy Lee and his wife Doris (Margaret Blye), who have a miserable marriage, add to the fun, especially when Doris becomes infatuated with Grimes. She flirts with him, saying she likes to see a man act like a man, and Grimes obliges by roughing her up sexually in the dirt.

Billy Lee of the movie sort of corresponds to Carl Allen of the novel, who is the narrator, but he is unmarried. And instead of Doris, there is what Carl refers to as the McLaren girl, who had been kidnapped by some Indians. They kept her prisoner for over a month, during which time Carl figures she had been repeatedly raped, but we never find out for sure. Replacing Carl and the McLaren girl with Billy Lee and Doris was a good move on the part of the scriptwriters.

We are also used to movies changing the names of characters in a book for seemingly no good reason, but this movie goes one step further. It turns out that the Cicero Grimes character in the novel goes by the name of “Frank Braden,” the name of the sheriff in the movie. In what follows, the name “Frank Braden” will be understood to refer to the same character as Cicero Grimes in the movie, not the sheriff in the movie.

Anyway, at first I thought the novel would support the idea that Mrs. Favor and Frank Braden had been having an affair. Carl describes a scene on the coach:

Frank Braden had eased lower in the seat and his head was very close to Mrs. Favor’s. He said something to her, a low murmur. She laughed, not out loud, almost to herself, but you could hear it. Her head moved to his and she said one word or maybe a couple. Their faces were close together for a long time, maybe even touching, and yet her husband was right there. Figure that one out.

And after the holdup, when Braden tells Mrs. Favor she is going to have to come with him, she makes the same odd remark:

Braden brought the horse over to her and said, “I thought you’d come along with us a ways,” sounding nice about it.

And just as nice, she said, “I’d better not,” as if they were discussing it and she had a choice.

But even so, the theory falls apart. Lamarr Dean, the guy that got the whiskey glass smashed into his mouth, used to work for the man that delivered beef to Dr. Favor, and that was how he knew that Favor was claiming more beef was delivered than actually was, and then charging the government to get “reimbursed.” Regarding Favor’s attempt to take the money he had embezzled and head for Mexico, Dean says, “I’ve seen this coming for two, three months.”

After Dean describes how Dr. Favor was cheating the government, Mrs. Favor says she recognizes Dean, but not Braden. Dean replies, “No, Frank wasn’t anywhere near. He was still in Yuma then.” So, Braden and Mrs. Favor could not have been having an affair.

And that might seem like the end of it. We could just assume that the authors of the screenplay left out Dean’s remarks about how he was the one who figured out that Favor had been embezzling a lot of money and would try to leave with it soon, and that Braden had been in Yuma, presumably meaning the prison there. In the movie, Dean does make reference to the way Dr. Favor cheated and starved the Indians, but it is not clear how he knows that, or if he is the ultimate source of that information.

But as if to prove that I have spent more time thinking about this than is good for me, it then occurred to me, upon finishing the novel, that these omissions in the movie were no mere oversight, but the result of a deliberate attempt to make us wonder if Mrs. Favor was in on it. Dean’s explanation of how he knew what Favor was up to, along with the remark that Braden had been in Yuma, would have added only about two minutes to the length of the movie, not a sufficient reason for leaving it out. One might justifiably conclude that the scriptwriters wanted to create the suspicion that Mrs. Favor betrayed her husband, only to be betrayed in turn by Grimes, the man she loved and trusted.

While that is debatable, there is no question but that the scriptwriters did the right thing by creating Jessie for this movie, even if they did leave us wondering why she didn’t stick around to talk to the new owner to see if she still had a job.

The Arrogance of Atheism

It was in my sophomore year in college, in the late 1960s, when I quit believing in God. So, the next semester, when I was filling out the usual form for something or other, I came across the question asking for my religious preference, and I put in the word “Atheist.” I happened to mention this to a friend of mine, and he cautioned me against it. “John,” he said, “the whole point of a college education is to turn you into an atheist. If you let them know you already are one, they will immediately give you a degree, and you will have to go out and get a job.”

I didn’t take that seriously, of course. But a few days later, my father happened to see the form, which I had left on my desk for the time being. He was appalled. First he cautioned me against the imprudence of such action, for it might incur the hostility of some dean or professor at the university who saw the form. Then, a few days later, he brought the subject up again, and tried to make me feel bad, pointing out that I would only be hurting those whose simple faith helped them endure a cruel world. Finally, he went for the jugular. “Girls have to believe that sex is God’s way of bringing love into the world,” he said gravely. “If they find out you are an atheist, you’ll never get any.”

That last one did give me pause. In the years to come, I would learn that it was no good pretending to be religious for sexual purposes. (I once even went so far as accepting an invitation from a girl to go to church with her one Sunday. I thought maybe I could fake it just long enough to get laid. God punished me.) At the time, however, I figured no coed would see the form, and I could always decide about what to tell the girls later. So I handed it in unchanged.

You see, I have to confess that I had taken no small amount of pleasure in writing down the word “Atheist” in that blank. This was back in the day when atheism was not the commonplace it is now. Today, if you go into a bookstore, you are likely to find an entire shelf or two full of books about atheism. Such did not exist 45 years ago. First you had to find out that certain philosophers were atheists, such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Marx, and then you had to search out their writings, for the titles typically gave nothing away. And if atheists were rare on the bookshelf, they were practically non-existent on campus. In fact, I was the only one I knew personally who did not believe in God. To have labored under an oppressive system of beliefs for almost twenty years, and then to have thrown off that burden and freed myself from it was exhilarating. But in addition to that, I had done something that most people had not, nor ever would, and much as it pains me to admit it, I felt a little smug about the whole thing.

My sense of pride in this matter was only enhanced by the reaction of others. “There’s no such thing!” one girl said to me, when I mentioned that I was an atheist. In other words, what I had accomplished in getting rid of God was not merely rare—it was impossible. She was disgusted with my iconoclastic audacity, so I gave up on the idea of asking her out; but she had so stroked my vanity in refusing to believe that I did not believe, that I felt more than compensated by whatever I might have lost in the way of carnal desire.

It was not long, as you might imagine, before I heard the old saw that there are no atheists in foxholes. Of course, if there really were an all-powerful, loving God, there wouldn’t be any foxholes. But that aside, the truly ironic aspect of this remark is that it conforms to the atheist’s explanation for the existence of religion, which is that fear of death is a major reason people believe in God. But the point of the no-atheists-in-foxholes assertion is not to prove that there is a God, but to deny that the there is anything exceptional about the atheist. It is not that the atheist is strong enough to get through life without God, the reasoning goes, but rather that his contempt for religion is a temporary condition, predicated on having a comfortable life, at a time when death is remote. As reflected in such movies as San Francisco (1936) or The Spiral Road (1962), the foxhole theory presumes that when the atheist finally comes up against suffering or death, he will be brought to his knees just like everyone else. To be regarded with such horror that one’s professed disbelief in God is rejected out of hand as just so much bluff and bluster cannot help but make one feel like some kind of Nietzschean superman.

There can be no doubt that some atheists are arrogant to the point of being obnoxious. They give full vent to their contumely, never missing an opportunity to sneer at the silly superstitions of mankind. But there is an inescapable arrogance in being an atheist that cannot be avoided no matter how polite or considerate one tries to be. In asserting one’s atheism, one explicitly denies the existence of God, but implicitly asserts one’s superiority, in effect saying, “You need religion as a crutch, while I have the strength to face life standing on my own two feet.” The atheist gives offense whether he wants to or not, and it is small wonder that it is a common religious fantasy that he will crawl in the end.

Consider the case of Rebecca Vitsmun, a survivor of the deadly tornado that went through Moore, Oklahoma a couple of years ago. She tried to avoid affirming her atheism, looking down shyly, and saying, “Uh huh,” when Wolf Blitzer asked her if she thanked the Lord. Only after being pressed, and in spite of herself, did she finally admit to being an atheist. The reason for her reluctance is simple. She did not want to make him or anyone else feel bad. It is to be noted that his belief in God did not offend her, but only embarrassed her. And this is a fundamental asymmetry between belief and disbelief: no one ever denied believing in God for fear of hurting the feelings of an atheist, but many an atheist has concealed his views on the matter, lest he make others feel uncomfortable by expressing them. And this only adds to the atheist’s conceit: when you have to lie about who you are to keep from hurting people, it is hard not to regard them as inferior.

Lately, however, there has been a disturbing trend. Atheists have started to organize. This reminds me of something else from my college days. Those who did not join a fraternity or any other campus organization were called independents. But then there was an organization for independents, which seemed a little paradoxical. In a similar manner, there is something so individualistic about being an atheist that the idea of forming a group seems to go against the grain.

That aside, if it were just a matter of atheists seeking out like-minded people for social purposes, there would be no cause for alarm, even if I would not be inclined to join such a group myself. What does concern me, however, is the way atheists as a group are in danger of becoming thought of as a minority, as a group that suffers discrimination. At the present, this trend seems to be only in its infancy. We have hardly reached the point where anyone is talking about affirmative action for atheists. But the trend is there nevertheless, and I want to nip it in the bud.

Let us consider, for example, some recent remarks made by Joe Klein regarding his observation that there were no organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals in the wake of that disaster in Oklahoma. One diary on Daily Kos points out that Klein was mistaken, and that his oversight was the result of his prejudice that religious people are more caring than atheists. That much is fine, but there is in addition an expression of indignation, along with the suggestion that Klein should apologize.

Think of the implications. Joe Klein has hurt our feelings. We have been offended, and need an apology. No, I won’t have it. Remarks like those made by Klein are unworthy of my notice. I enjoy being disdainful of the opinions that people of have of atheism, and I will not ruin it by putting on a pout and sulking because someone has not given us atheists the respect we deserve.

Then there is the matter of chaplains for atheists in the military. Part of the fun of listening to someone say that there are no atheists in foxholes is the smirk I have on my face when he says it. But if he also brings up the fact that atheists want chaplains of their own in the military, it will completely put me out of my countenance. As someone who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War, and therefore has never seen combat, I suppose it is not my place to begrudge those in the military a little spiritual counseling, if that is what they need. But I cannot help but deplore the way this wounds my pride, nevertheless.

Finally, there is a recent article advocating changing the name of the National Atheist Party to the Secular Party of America. The reason for making this change is that the word “atheist” has too many negative connotations, and that a term that is “richer and more positive” is what is needed, in order to be more inclusive. Groan. When I was a child, I learned that there were derogatory words that were used to refer to certain groups of people, and that I should avoid such slurs, and use polite words instead. But as I got older, the polite words somehow became quasi-slurs themselves, and we were admonished not to use them as well, while new terms were then deemed appropriate. It all seemed a little silly to me, but since I am nothing if not magnanimous, I went along with it in good humor. “If that’s what makes them happy,” I said to myself, “then I suppose it won’t kill me to change the way I speak.” But I confess that I was just a little bit contemptuous of all this need for political correctness. And thus it is that I now cringe at the idea of atheists trying to avoid the very word that I was once so proud to write down on that form when I was in college. The next thing you know, we will be asking religious people to tiptoe around us, never saying the A-word, because we regard it as demeaning. If that day ever arrives, I will be embarrassed to admit that I am an atheist (or whatever politically correct term is then being used in its place).

One of the pleasures of atheism is the arrogance that naturally comes with it. Let’s not spoil it with a lot of whining about how we just aren’t being treated right.

The Godless Girl (1929)

In The Godless Girl, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Judy (Lina Basquette) and Bob (Tom Keene) are high school students. Judy is a militant atheist, who holds atheist rallies, accompanied by a monkey as a prop, whom she refers to as our cousin. Bob is a Christian fundamentalist who leads a bunch of like-minded Christians on a raid on one of those meetings. A mêlée breaks out, during which a girl accidentally dies. Bob and Judy are sent to a reform school. After enduring much brutality, they escape and fall in love. While bathing in a river, Judy admires the beauty of nature, made no less beautiful by a naked Judy, and she thinks how she might almost believe in a God who created it. Bob, on the other hand, recalling all horrors of the reform school, says there is no way he can believe in a God who would allow such things to happen.

So far there is balance between the two. But notwithstanding the fact that this is a pre-Code movie, I knew that it would be required that Judy pray to God before the movie was over. I thought of San Francisco (1936) and The Spiral Road (1962), where the atheists in those two movies end up getting on their knees and humbling themselves before God, and so I braced myself for the inevitable.

They are captured and returned to the reform school. Bob is handcuffed to the bench in his cell, but Judy is handcuffed to a pipe above her head, forcing her to stand with her arm extended upward. Within the movie, the difference between the way Bob and Judy are handcuffed seems to be just a matter of chance. But from outside the movie, it just did not make sense, since handcuffed like that she would not be able to use the bucket, but would have to foul her pants when she needed to defecate. Actually, having handcuffs on prisoners while locked in their cells does not make much sense anyway. I suspected there was a reason this was put in the movie, but I could not figure out what. Soon all was revealed. A fire breaks out in the reform school, and Judy is forgotten about as the flames close in around her. In desperation, she prays. It is a conditional kind of prayer, not exactly expressing full belief, but more importantly, because of the way she is handcuffed, she cannot kneel. She thus retains her dignity, literally standing tall, and thus figuratively as well.

After Judy is saved by Bob, they rescue the brutal guard, whose dying wish is that they be pardoned, and so they are. As they ride away from the prison, Bob curses the foul place, but Judy says that it was where they learned to believe and let believe. It is not clear exactly what each believes at this point, but they will clearly tolerate each other’s views, whatever they may be. More importantly, because we were not treated to a vulgar display of humiliation and self-abasement on the part of Judy, this is a movie an atheist can enjoy, regardless of what Judy may or may not believe in the end.

The Fastest Gun Alive (1956)

What makes The Fastest Gun Alive so unusual is not only that it has a twist ending, but also that the twist ending so thwarts our expectations that a lot of people do not remember it years later, but only recall the ending they were expecting.

By the time this movie was made, the Western formula of the gunfighter with a guilty past who wants to hang up his gun was well established, as in Shane (1953) and Johnny Guitar (1954). In some of these Westerns, as in The Gunfighter (1950), the point is made that once a man has a reputation for being fast on the draw, he will be plagued by young punks trying to goad him into a fight so that they can prove they are faster, thereby establishing a reputation of their own.

And so it is that early in The Fastest Gun Alive, we are encouraged to fit George (Glenn Ford) into that category. We see him practicing with his gun, which he has told his wife, Dora (Jeanne Crain), that he threw away a long time ago. We believe that she does not like violence and killing, and she has made George promise to give up his gunslinging ways. This recalls the way Peggy (Helen Westcott) in The Gunfighter left her husband, Jimmy Ringo (Gregory Peck), because she abhorred his life as a gunfighter. In other towns where George and Dora have lived, his reputation of being fast with a gun has resulted in his continually being challenged to a gunfight, just as with Ringo. And just as Ringo promises his wife that he is through with gunfighting, and that they can start a new life in California where nobody will know who he is, George and Dora have started a new life in Cross Creek under assumed names.

Unfortunately, there is no glory in being a shopkeeper, and so every time George and Dora settle down in a new town, there eventually comes a time when he just can’t stand it any more, and ends up proving to everybody what a hotshot he is with a gun. And once the word is out, he and Dora have to move again. And thus it is that in Cross Creek, George once again finds himself irked one day when he hears a bunch of men in the saloon talking about men like Vinnie Harold (Broderick Crawford), reputed to be the fastest gun in the West. George gets his gun and puts on a show, shooting coins out of the air and blasting a mug of beer before it hits the ground.

Now everybody knows. And now Dora is disgusted. She tells George that she is all through running. George tells the townsfolk his problem, and they go along with keeping his expertise with a gun secret, but unfortunately a few letters have already gone out, and word has reached Vinnie, who arrives in town, threatening to burn it all down if George does not come out of the church to meet him in a gunfight. The townsfolk turn to Dora, begging her to release George from his promise to her not to get into any more gunfights.

And then comes the twist no one expects and which many cannot even remember. Dora tells them that she doesn’t care if George gets into a gunfight and she never has. She says he has always been free to use his guns. The problem is, George is a coward. He has never been in a gunfight, and so every time men come around challenging him to a fight, he wants to run away and hide out in a new town. And she is just tired of having to move.

So, George straps on his gun, kills Vinnie in a gunfight, and then the town digs a mock grave with a tombstone that has George’s name on it. That way, George can stay in Cross Creek without having to worry about men coming around trying to prove themselves by challenging him to a gunfight, and at the same time, he can strut around town like a real man, because everyone knows he is the fastest gun alive.

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932)

In the opening scene of The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, the title character (Ann Dvorak) is crying because she is pregnant. Her rich boyfriend promises to marry her, but he quickly deserts her by leaving town. There is, however, a nice guy who would be happy to marry her. This is Jimmy (Richard Cromwell), a clean-cut medical student who is working his way through school as a bellhop. Jimmy loves Molly, but she rejects him. She is attracted to a gangster, Nicky (Leslie Fenton) and runs off with him instead, getting involved in a few of his crimes, and handing her daughter over to an orphanage. When she runs into Jimmy a few years later, he still loves her and wants to marry her and be a father to her daughter. At first she agrees to marry him, but she actually desires Scotty (Lee Tracy), a hardboiled reporter who promises only that he will show her a good time for a while and then dump her. She likes the idea. In fact, this makes her realize why her own mother abandoned her when she was a child, because when a woman really wants a man, nothing else matters, not even her own child. Jimmy walks in while they are kissing, and she tells him she has decided to run off with Scotty instead.

In the last reel, Scotty has a change of heart, promises to help her fight the charges against her for her involvement with Nicky, and then marry her. That a movie should feature a fallen woman who would reject the love of a good man like Jimmy (twice) and knowingly choose men who are scoundrels instead is amazing enough. That she should end up living happily ever after by doing so is a story that could exist only in the pre-Code universe. Or in real life.

Missing in Action (1984)

A long time ago, I saw an essay in a book of film criticism entitled, “How Hollywood Won the War in Vietnam.” I started to buy the book, but to my regret I did not, and so I never got to read the essay. However, I think I am safe in saying that Missing in Action was one of the movies the essay would have discussed, along with Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).

People who worry about words will quibble as to whether we “lost” the Vietnam War. Well, we did not lose it in the sense that we were not conquered by the Viet Cong, but we lost in the sense that we failed in our mission, that we gave up, pulled out, and let the Viet Cong take control of the entire country. And that made us feel bad.

But it is Hollywood’s job to create a better world than the one we actually have to live in. Now, Hollywood could not make a movie showing us conquering the Viet Cong and making the country safe for democracy, because the direct contradiction to reality would have been too stark. Instead, it made a movie in which an individual soldier, Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris), along with a few associates, goes back to Vietnam and succeeds in freeing some American soldiers still being held in a prisoner-of-war camp.

The Vietnamese government categorically denies having these prisoners, but to what end is a mystery. We simply have to assume that they just enjoy making these American prisoners of war miserable, or that they know that we know they have the prisoners, and that they just enjoy frustrating American efforts to get them back. In either event, they are mean and spiteful.

But what is important is that they give Braddock a mission that he can carry out. The first part of Braddock’s mission is to appear at a diplomatic function and display his contempt, as when he refuses to shake hands with a Vietnamese general. This ostensibly is directed toward the general, but it is really a put-down of American politicians who think that diplomacy is the way to get things done.

The second part of his mission is to personally kill the general and a high-ranking officer who is shown through a flashback to be cruel and evil. This allows him some personal revenge before he sets out to kill a bunch of generic bad guys.

The third part of his mission is to sneak into the jungle and free the American prisoners. Braddock and his few associates kill over ten times their number in doing so, proving that the American soldier is a vastly superior to his Vietnamese counterpart. You see, it was embarrassing that the world’s greatest superpower was unable to defeat such a puny country. This movie essentially declares that it must have been a bunch of spineless politicians back home that caused America to lose the war, probably the same sort that are busy being polite at diplomatic functions, because it is clear that men like Braddock would have won the war given the chance to do so.

This movie allows us some imaginary revenge against an enemy that humiliated us, and that makes us feel good. Of course, we would have felt a whole lot better if the movie had actually been entertaining instead of dull and plodding.

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