Prospecting for Cultural Gold: The Western Mining Film, 1935-1960

By William Graebner SUNY-Fredonia

f the thousands of westerns that Hol­ ible with the \Vestern's attention to the construc­ lywood has brought to the screen, per­ tion of an ideal, stable, family-based commu­ 0 haps a score take western gold or sil­ nity.' ver n1Jmng as their subject in some significant Although hardly Hollywood favorites, films way, and probably fewer than one hundred evoke about western mining are sufficiently numerous gold or silver mining or the mined metals in even to make possible some preliminary ideas about marginal or minimal ways. How to account for the history of the genre and its social and cul­ this dearth? Hollywood has seldom been at­ tural interpretive functions. It may even be pos­ tracted to the workplace, and the mining work­ sible to suggest a historical trajectory locating place is either dark-the mine shaft-or curi­ the apogee of the western mining ftlm in the la te ously amorphous-the stream bed. While the 1940s, when the genre's focus on a world tradi­ cry of "Eureka!" is likely to be good for the box tionally associated with men briefly coincided office, mining itself, whether by pick, sluice, or witl1 more general social and cultural imperatives. pan, is a prosaic, repetitive, and-for the film .My conclusions are based on a sample of viewer-rather boring activity. twelve films that were both relevant to the Indeed, about half of the "mining" films do query-some, admittedly, more than otl1ers-and not show any mining taking place. Nor is min­ available for viewing. This list includes a fum ing as an occupation likely to produce the ro­ from the 1930s, Tbe Call of tbe U?'i/d (1935), and mantic leading man. A miner prodding a burro two from the early 1940s, !11 Old Califomia and does not cut quite the same figure as a cowboy Tbe Spoilers (both 1942). It draws five ftlms from on horseback or a sheriff squaring off against the late 1940s, Station IV'est, YelloJJ; S~y, and Tbe an outlaw in the center of town. Altl1ough the Treas11re of tbe Sierra 1\!Iadre (all from 1948), and mining engineer was understood in the late nine­ Silver l{Jver and Lmt for Gold (1949). The list teenth century to be a risk-taking, manly, even also contains three films from the 1950s, Apacbe romantic figure, Hollywood thought differently Dm111s (1950), Wi11gs of tbe HaJJJk (1953), and in the twentieth century, presenting the engineer Cardell of Evil (1954); and one from the 1960s, in Silver River (1948) as an amiable but weak N 01tb to Alaska (1960).2 appendage to a powerful woman, and in Garde11 of Evil (19 54) as the whining object of a rescue Mining, According to Hollywood effort mounted by real men and a real woman. In addition, frontier mining areas were male en­ Of the films that show us something of the claves, complicating Hollywood's ability to cre­ process of mining gold, most represent that pro­ ate the romantic, heterosexual couple. Others cess as it was practiced in its early stages. Set in have emphasized that the frontier mining expe­ Alaska nine years after the discovery of gold in rience-the transient camp, the town in up­ 1891, Tbe Spoilm shows employees of the :Midas heaval, the bachelor experience- is incompat- 1vlining Company, a small partnership, standing 48 2003 i\!Iining History ]omwd

in a river bed, shoveling gravel into a Y-shaped receives important coverage in these films is sluice. The California rush depicted in In Old claiming-jumping. Scholarly literature on gold Califomia consists of a brief but vivid and rea­ rushes emphasizes how limited this practice was, sonably realistic montage of a variety of tech­ and how miners in the camps came together to niques, from the very basic to the more sophisti­ establish ad hoc legal systems that effectively dis­ cated. In these scenes individual miners work a couraged it. Still, claim-jumping is a threat in section of the Sacramento River with pans and several films, including The Call if tbe !Wild, Nolth picks. Up in Bear Claw Camp and Brandy Gulch, to Alaska, and The Spoilers. Set in Nome and vi­ more miners use pans, a rocker, and-in the fi­ cinity in 1900, The Spoilers opens with these nal scene of the montage-an elaborate sluice words on the screen: "During the Alaskan gold system with three wooden channels, each per­ rush, claim-jumping and mine stealing became haps a hundred feet long, fed gravel by dozens an eveq day occurrence- lawlessness was ram­ of miners with shovels. The Treas11re if the Sierm pant." A valid statement, perhaps, but only for Madre contains a basic but vivid shot of pan­ the early stages of the rush, before the mid-1899 rung, and its three prospectors also use a simple, discovery of alluvial gold deposits on the Nome short sluice box, presumably built to wash gravel beach.5 extracted from an improbable timbered tunnel Sometimes, the problem is a failure to respect dug into the side of the mountain.3 the legal rights of those who have flied a claim. By the late 1940s, mining was increasingly Events in Lust for Gold validate the anxieties of represented on film as a business requiring capi­ Jacob Walz, who is reluctant to file a claim to tal, labor, and machinery. The mining operation the Lost Dutchman Mjne because to do so would shown in .Siluer Riuer consists of several large make public the mine's location and threaten his buildings, a railroad spur, and a smelter with a newfound wealth. Similarly, Howard advises smokestack, all managed by a milling engineer. against filing a claim in The Treas11re if the Sierra Irish Gallagher's (Van Heflin) Mexican operation Madre because that would invite a visit from a in U?'i11gs if the HaJJJk incorporates placer mining representative of a big mining company "with a on a large scale, with a sluice system hundreds paper in his hand showing we had no right to be of feet long, but dependent on an elaborate net­ here." work of tunnels beneath the surface of the hiU­ More often, the problem resides with the law side. Although none of the films in the sample itself, or with those charged witl1 its enforcement. shows any machinery other than a cradle or sluice In 1-T?'iJ~s if the I-laliJk, Irish Gallagher's livelihood box, SiiJ;er Riuer and N01th to Alaska feature sub­ is threatened by General Ruiz (George Dolenz) plots involving the purchase and delivery of and his Mexican federal troops, who operate like machinery, suggesting that mining had moved the Mafia, demanding half of Gallagher's gold beyond the stage of exploration and discovery. production in return for protection from the Still, the actual milling we see in No1th to A laska Insurrectos. Claim-jumpers abound in North to is all done with sluice boxes-whether simple Alaska, but the more serious obstacle to tl1e ad­ or complex-and all, conveniently, within a short mirable entrepreneurship of Sam McCord Qohn wagon ride of Nome. What the Alaska-Yukon Wayne) and George Pratt (Stewart Granger) is a films do not show are the labor-intensive and bumbling, insensitive Alaskan territorial govern­ sometimes complex methods used to thaw tl1e ment bureaucracy indifferent to truth and jus­ ground in order to recover the gold-bearing gravel tice. In The Spoilers, claim-jumping is facilitated for sluicing.4 by a slick, corrupt U. S. Gold Commissioner The only other issue specific to mining that (Randolph Scott), who allows the filing of Prospectiug for Cultural Gold 49

fraudulent claims based on specious earlier fil­ ity and the picturesque .. The film's theme song ing dates, and a dishonest circuit court judge who by Johnny Horton has its prospectors crossing enforces them-what one character labels a "law the Yukon River to their "bonanza gold." This and order front." journey would have put the mine some two hun­ dred miles from Nome and justified Sam "Wet" and "Dry" Films McCord's claim that he managed to get into town only once every six months, but the film actu­ We may profitably classify mining films as ally locates the mine in a non-existent nearby "wet" or "dry," depending on the area in which mountain range, witnin a day's ride by buckboard. the action takes place. "Wet" films are those set !11 Old Calijomia deals with somewhat more ac­ in regions notable for rain and snow, particularly cessible mining regions and a milder climate, but the Alaska- Yukon region, which is featured in it, too, avoids portraying~ the extraordinary physi­ three of the twelve flims. "Dry" films are gener­ cal effort required of a gold-rush prospector. ally set in the arid regions of d1e American South­ Most of the flim takes place in San Francisco or west or northern Mexico. Wet films, which usu­ Sacramento; only a steamboat ride separates the ally open on a street deep in mud in downtown two cities. \'Xlet films transport us to another time Nome or San Francisco, dominated the 1930s and place, but do not present the natural envi­ and early 1940s and returned to favor in 1960 ronment as a formidab]e opponent of human with N01tb to Alaska, a John Wayne vehicle in activity and desire. which Nome's residents find themselves ankle­ The films of the late 1940s and 1950s are deep in mud despite ubiquitous sunshine.6 mostly dry. Except for .Si/1;er lv1;er-apparently Except for this urban mud, wet flims do not set in Silver City, Nevada,9 in the vicinity of take full advantage of their locale; they do not snow-capped mountains-these postwar efforts represent geography as the significant obstacle offer us forbiJJing, bo111e-dry climates or set the it often was. Notwithstanding what one scholar action in the drier areas of regions with diverse has described as the "animal-like malevolence climates. YellowS~, filmed in Death Valley Na­ of nature at her most cruel, the diabolical harsh­ tional Monument, open:s with six men on horse­ ness of the Yukon in the grip of winter," neither back. The camera presents a variety of geogra­ the film set in that locale- nor the two set in phies and weather conditions in short order, in­ Alaska, where the weather was not much differ­ cluding mountains, dmnder and lightning, clear ent-present the local climate as anything more skies, and sunshine. The discovery of a skull than moderately challenging. Even Tbe Call if pierced by an arrow initiates a discussion that the LT7ild is set in 1900, when steamboat and rail refines and Limits the geographical space. transport existed over some of the more diffi­ \'Xlhen Stretch (Gregory Peck) asks, ''All dus cult portions of the route into the Klondike.7 country around here like this?"-as if the cam­ Hollywood may have preferred the Alaskan era had revealed a sameness-Dude (Richard gold rush of 1898, as portrayed in The Spoilers Widmark) responds with remarks that set the and NoJth to Alaska, over the Klondike- Yukon stage for a harrowing desert crossing to come, experience as a setting for its films because and for the "dry" setting of the remainder of the Alaska's camps were located closer to town (viz., film: "Pretty much. Up north there are lots of Nome). Hence verisimilitude did not require canyons and draws, if you know which ones arc featuring the long trek into the camps.8 Even open. Those hills over there back up right into so, the geography of North to Alaska appears to the mountains. T hose are salt flats down south. have been compromised for the sake of simplic- Even a rattlesnake couldn't get across ...." 50 2003 j\1illtllg HisiOI)' Joumal

......

Yellow Sky (1948), a "rbf' JJJestem starri11g FJchard WidJJiark and CregO!)' Peck (third and fom!b frolll lift, respec/tJJCb'), /fJeS its ({}ir/ selti!Jg /0 frallle COII/1/IC/Jfa!J' 0/J eCO/JOJJ/tC det;elopllle/J/ ttlld SCXIfaftiJ'· (ColfrleD' o/ tbe Acade!J()' o/ LVfotion Piclm'C Arts aJ!d ScieJ!ces.) CardeJI of Evil traverses a variety of Mexican rifice, community building, and, in the end, a topographies before setdng the action in a rocky, satisfying domesticity. Director William Wellman parched, forbidding Mexico that makes ironic the opens his depression-era fi lm Tbe Call o/ the ll?'t!d lush image of the movie's title. It opens with with a map of the Yukon, followed by the words Fiske (llichard Widmark) contrasting his "dry" "Skagway-mushroom metropolis-the first location with the "wet" environs of the 1849 stop on the long trai l to the goldfields." The California gold rush. "Every mother's son's urban milieu of Skagway tracks tl1e nation's un­ pickin' up gold by the fistful in California," he easy fascination with city life, reflected in the laments, "and I'm marooned in a Mexican vil­ gangster pictures of the 1930s, and the film's lage called-what do you call it?" Concerned commitment to adventure resonates with Ameri­ that summer wild flowers would give his YelloJJJ cans' desire for the journey of escape in an era Sk)' desert the wrong look, director \'

Commissioner McNamara and brawl over seri­ Americans, and lamenting the community's un­ ous issues of class and elitism; the Palace of willingness to let a "gringo" set up a shoeshine N01tb to Alaska, where fighting has been divorced business and make a few pesos. from mining history and become just so much The fullest exegesis on the barrenness and comic fun. 12 decline of economic life takes place in 1'elloJIJ S~y The dry films of the postwar decade shun around a ghost town of the same name, where the milieu of the gold rush for less promising Stretch, Dude, and some other bad boys have moments in less hospitable geographies. L!IStfor gathered to take the gold mined over the years Go/r/- based on the "true" story of the Lost by Mike (Anne Baxter) and her grandfather Dutchman Mine-takes place in Arizona's Su­ Qames Barton). YelloJJJ S~ · was once a silver perstition Mountains, thirty-six miles east of boomtown, Grandpa explains-the "Fastest PhoenL'C, in the 1840s, 1887 and 1948. Apacbe Growing Town in the Territory" according to its Dm;;;s presents the "waterless mountains of the own, now crumbling sign-before the "veins South West" in 1880. llf'i,~s rif the HctJ/Jk is set pinched out." A h1 te arrival, he found gold. Now, in the revolutionary Mexico of 1911, and Tbe according to his granddaughter, he sti ll lives out 'li-eaJifre if the Sierra f./fadre in the post-revolu­ the dream of growth and prosperity. "lt ain't tionary Mexico of 1925. Reflecting the concerns just the money," she contends. "Look at him. of post-World War II America, two films arc con­ He's an old man. AU he's drearned about is see­ veniently set in the post-Civil War era: YelloJJJ S~y ing this town come to life again, with people livin' identifies its setting as 1867; SiiJJer H.iJJer opens here and working, and stores open, the stage with a scene from the battle of Gettysburg that comin' through from Alkali, and all because of shapes the character of Niike McComb (Errol him and what he'd done." 13 Flynn) for the remainder of the film. Except for tl1e community of Silver City in Money and Matedalism Sih;er River- which has some of the dynamic qualities of the gold rush towns of the wet Curiously, the depression of the 1930s and films-dry mining films are for the most part set the prosperity of 1960 seem to have resulted in in or around under-populated small towns and fllms in which the protagonists, though willingly villages in which there is little or no entrepre­ involved in the pursuit of gold, are also some­ neurial life. Garrle11 if ElJtl (1954) has two semi­ what disengaged and rather blase about money. urban settings: Puerto Niiguel, the sleepy coastal In Tbe Call if tbe L17i/d, this disengagement is village where the film opens; and an interior lo­ portrayed through the metaphor of gambling; cation, "a boom town once," but now-except when Jack Thornton (Clark Gable) loses his gold for a church steeple and a mine shaft- covered fo rtune at the gan1ing tables, he is unfazed, an­ with volcanic lava. The town of Spanish Boot, nouncing there's "a lot more where that came the setting for Apacbe Dm;;;s, appears to be a from." He later teams up with Shorty Hoolihan harmonious community, but it is also a place of Oack Oakie) and Shorty's map because he ap­ boring and unproductive moralism. The pros­ preciates Shorty's attitude: "it's only a gamble." pectors in The ·1 Jl!cwtre if the Sierra lvfadtl! get their Nolib lo A laska opens with McCord and Pratt start in Tampico, depicted here as a city of sorts. having already struck it rich; they trade their But there is so little work to be had and so little nuggets for cash and buy drinks for the saloon economic activity going on that Fred C. Dobbs patrons. Although they intend to make more (Humphrey Bogart) is reduced to buying lottery money by mechanizing their operations, Sam and tickets, begging for meal money from fellow George are more interested in women. George 52 2003 Mining HisiOI)' ]o11mal

wants to use his share of the profits to bring his who care little about money are able to subli­ girlfriend north from Seattle for marriage. ''You mate their sexual desire; at the other end, those don't know what Jenny means tO me," he tells who lust for gold are also potential rapists. Sam. "All the gold in Alaska-not worth the little finger." Sam, more reluctant to risk the The Heroic male bond for heterosexual domesticity, con­ cludes the ftlm with a declaration of his love for In wet films, the heroes are seldom conflicted, l'vfichclle (Capucine) with the words, "I got my­ and more grasping attitudes toward wealth are self a real gold mine." reserved for the evil "other." These characters In contrast, the dry ftlms of the postwar de­ include Ernie Kovacs's cheat and con man cade, although made in a time of growth and Frankie Canon in North to Alaska. In Old prosperity, are as a group sharply critical of ma­ Califomia's wealthy Britt Dawson (Albert terialism. Indeed, some of them reflect the 1946 Dekker), plans to trade typhoid fever medicine 14 wave of labor militance. Apache Dn1111.f vali­ for gold in the mining camps and with his dying dates the hard work of its Welsh miners and words, inappropriately offers Lacey Miller emphasizes the need to contain and redirect the (Binnie Barnes) "the house with the gold door­ misguided selfishness of gambler Sam Leeds knobs, if you want 'em." Claim jumpers and (Stephen McNally) and those like him. Silver corrupt judges and regulatory authorities frus­ Rive/s McComb builds an empire- the slogan trate the legitimate goals of decent, ordinary citi­ of his Silver City Bank is '1\ssets: All the West"­ zens in The Spoilers. In The Call of the lf/ild the and lives in a mansion filled with European im­ genuinely heartless and sometimes effete villains' ports. But his economic success and material lust for gold and lack of concern for human li fe wealth come at the expense of his friendships, bring about their violent deaths-drowned by his humanity, and the men who work in his mines. the wdght of sacks of gold. Several films, including Garden of E11il and Sta­ To be sure, Gable's Thornton is tempted to tion ).~est, suggest that people can literally be m ix his philosophy of the "game" and the bought-that is, made to do things they would "gamble" with some version of might-makes­ not otherwise do-and The '"[reamre of the Sierra right. When Shorty wonders how gold and the Madre uses a marketplace model to explain and things it will buy will change their lives, Claire predict human behavior, viz.: to point out Blake (Loretta Young) responds that it won't be humanity's vulnerability to material desires. "nearly as much fun." Thornton tries tO set her Like Silver RiJ;eJ~ YeiiOJJI s~, applauds growth straight. "You're wrong, Claire," he says as the and commercial development while remaining three sit around the campfire. "Wishing never critical of grasping materialism. Its most con­ got anybody any place. It's owning something flicted villain, Dude, is never able to transcend that counts. Taking it, when you can't get it any the memory of having lost his wealth. "I used other way. That's all right, too. The law up to have a big Pharaoh layout V10use] in San Juan," here- the law of the KloncUke-if there's some­ he reveals. "Best looking woman in camp wait­ thing you need, grab it, take it away from the ing on me hand and foot. Then bang! Along other guy-it's a good law-it works." Yet comes this tinhorn, puts a bullet in me." Dude Claire-whose verbal response is not intelli­ has vowed to return with a stake, and he cannot gible-disagrees, and in the film's last scenes, resist the gold that will provide it. In Dude and Thornton shrugs off his own "need" for Claire, other Yello11' S~' characters, materialism and sexu­ allowing her to leave with her husband in an act ality arc conflated. At one end of the scale, those that puts his own life at risk. Prospectingfor Cultural Cold 53

Saloons is where the men sleep, and where Dude dies, gold dust-his blood- pouring from a bag near The saloons of the "dry" towns tell a similar his body. story. As opposed to the large, thriving center The festive connotation of the word "saloon" of social activity in the wet mining films, the hardly describes the subdued, languid atmo­ saloon of the dry film is usually a small, dark, sphere of the bar in Garden of E1;il, which Leah confining, and hostile space-a space with some Fuller (Susan Hayward) enters, gun on hip, to of the unsettling qualities of the flllll noir style. offer a thousand dollars to any man willing to Yello})J SA~y offers two worthy examples. Its first ride into the hills to rescue her husband, trapped saloon, appearing only minutes into the film, is in a mine cave-in. The modest Tampko bar in a nearly empty space, defined by a folk painting The Treaslfre rf the Sierrct Madre is the setting for hanging above the bar which features a woman only one event: a bloody, brutal, and realistic astride a wild, rearing horse, against a desolate beating administered to another character by background of a leafless tree. The second sa­ Dobbs and Curtin (Tim Holt), very different from loon, in the ghost town of Yellow Sky, is the the formulaic, boys-will-be-boys skirmishes fea­ long-abandoned El Dorado Bar. l\lfarked by a mred in most wet films. The saloon in Station fallen sign, it functions in the fi lm as a space of U?'est is large and rather elegant, but it is memo­ reduced consciousness- of sleep and death. It rable as the scene of an early, tense, hostile con-

Lust for Gold (1949) features Glenn Ford (foreground) as Jacob 1-Palz, claimant to tJJhat became knoum as the Lost Dtttch/Jicm gold 111ine in Arizona~ Superstition Motmtaim, and Ida Lupino as the femme fatale. Tbis scene reveclls the flllll~ interest in the crou;d. (Cotflte!JI of the Acade;;ry of Motion Pict11re Arts and Sciences.) 54 2003 Mining HisiOI)' ]o11mal

versation. Shaped by camera work that turns sign a paper-"It's the law," says the clerk-and the large room claustrophobic, the scene features he does so. A huge crowd has gathered behind the stranger Haven (Dick Powell) and saloon him to monitor the transaction. A group in the owner Charlie Qane Greer), who is behind a se­ crowd has this exchange, with the conversation ries of gold shipment stage robberies that FJa­ moving backward through the line: ven, of the Military Tnte ll igence Department, seeks to solve. Charlie will be shot and killed in Mm1: Is he signing his name? her office above the saloon. 1/r'oll!all #1: Is he signing his name? Perhaps the strangest saloon scene of all Man: I don't knO\v. takes place in Lust for Gold. \XIa l7., a German lf?'oll!rlll # 1: He isn't even signing his immigrant, has found gold in the hills near Phoe­ name. nix, and the town's citizens, eager to have him 1/r'o;;Jtlll #2: He can't even write his own reveal the site of the find, push him into the sa­ name. loon and gather around the piano for a few cho­ (.fr'oi/Jall #3: He can't read nor write. ruses of "Du Du, Liegst 1.\{ir Im Herzen," guar­ WoJJJaJI #4: How do you like that, Julia? anteed to please the wealthy stranger. When he A stupid foreigner that can't even sensibly refuses to divulge the location of the read or write finds a million dollar mine, the saloon mob labels him a "foreigner." gold mine And you [she glances dis­ Thrown out, Walz vows that if they won't let paragingly at her short, obviously him stay in, "I won't let you come out," and for henpecked husband] get $11 a week a time enforces his edict by shooting from the clerkin' in a hardware store. You street at the saloon doors. ami your high school diploma-huh!

The People, the Mob The wet mining ftlms of World War II vin­ tage are especially steeped in concerns about Walz's experience in that Phoenix saloon is crowds, the people, workers, and community one of several that mark "the people" as untrust­ responsiveness. Set during the Alaskan gold worthy- as a crowd, a mob in the making, an rush, The Spoilers pits the " law"-meaning the irrational congregation requiring control-the government and the courts-against entrepre­ standard approach of those dry films that have neurial capitalism and its militant, working-class an interest in the subject, and reflective of miners. In an effort to elkit the viewer's sympa­ middle-class anxieties through much of the dties for Glennister Qohn Wayne), owner of the twentieth century. A mindless bunch with that .Midas Mining Company, the film offers some of most elemental of motivations-the lust for cinema's most idyllic mining scenes, a machine­ gold-the Phoenix populace follows Walz wher­ in-the-garden perspective that combines a ever he goes, hoping he will lead them to the charming river valley with a train, a dam, placer source of his new wealth. "Every time you leave equipment, and hard-working, presumably well­ Phoenix," complains the sa loon keeper to Walz, paid miners housed in tents. \'{!hen corrupt pub­ "you take half the town with you." 15 Another lic officials shut down the mine and threaten to scene suggests that strong and thoughtless remove it from Glennister's control, angry min­ women, abetted by weak men, may be at the ers revolt. Led by their boss, they use a locomo­ core of the mob's irrationality. In Lmtfor Cold it tive to break into the gated, heavily-guarded takes place with \'{lalz in the assay office, con­ property, precipitating a lengthy nighttime gun verting gold nuggets into dollars. He is asked to battle in which many miners and deputies are Prospccti11g for Clllt11ral Gold 55

killed. Although the script appears tO tolerate manifest a growing postwar interest in analyzing and even encourage worldng-class militance, it and treating anti-social behavior through psy­ also shifts the object of that militance from busi­ chology, psychotherapy, and small-group dynam­ ness to government. ics and therapeutics, with returning veterans and In I11 Old Califomia, another wartime film, aggressive women as patients. Even L11stfor Cold, Sacramento pharmacist Tom Craig (John Wayne) for all its fascination with an irresponsible popu­ is about to be lynched by citizens who believe lace, suggests that Walz-depicted in several he is responsible for the death of a local man, scenes as a vicious, hardened killer-has been when the discovery of gold distracts the crazed the victim of personal tragedy and might be mob and shifts the scene to Shinbone Creek, reachable through a sort of informal psycho­ Brandy Gulch, and other mining camps up river. therapy orchestrated by a nurturing and loving An epidemic of typhoid fever in the camps cre­ woman. ates panic in Sacramento, where fearful residents Consistent wid1 dus modern, individualized prepare to flee the town and abandon the fever perspective, the four men gathered by Leah victims in the camps above. 16 Stepping into a fuller to s~tve her husband in Gt~rrlcJI qf Evil re­ leadership role, Craig convinces the people to flect different types and va lues: Daily (Cameron stay and fight the epidemic. In a later scene, he j\llitchell) is the unredeemable, oversexed, gold­ even manages to secure the cooperation of a crazed ex-bounty hunter, lacking endrely in group of«bad guys" by making them understand moral character. He is accompanied by his part­ their own vulnerability to d1e fever. Hence the ncr in the quest for gold, the Mexican (Victor film employs cUsease-a rather extreme device, j\1Iendoza). "They don't know anything," says it would seem-to promote the intense, shared, Hooker (Gary Cooper) of the pair. "They're just cross-class, cross-cultural community reguired to trying to get rich before they die." Hooker, an fight the real war against the Axis. And In Old ex-sheriff, is observant, thoughtful, judicious, Califomia suggests how eli fficult it is to get people courageous, and a leader, while Fiske (Richard to do the right dung. Only a Wayne-style charis­ Widmark), is a complex man whose actions are matic leader, and a dose of self-interest, can not entirely predictable. persuade the masses- emotional, fickle, often A hardened, professional gambler whose irresponsible, and inherendy selfish- to act ethi­ fondness for the material is apparent in the gold cally, altruistically, and cooperatively. chain and medallion hanging from his vest, Fiske is also a self-proclaimed poet of "people," who The Psychotherapeutic avers: "I like to see what I can get outta them­ either their money or their characters or both." Except for T~11.rtfor Gold, most of the dry fi lms Yet stranded on the Mexican coast, his complaint in the sample do not conceptualize "the people" that "every mother's son" was at that very mo­ as an entily. Rather than crowds, mobs, or other ment getting rich in Ca li fornia at least evokes large aggregations, they feature individuals in his mother's essence, and in the end, with the conflict with the self, or small groups character­ Apaches in hot pursuit, it is Fiske who chooses ized by disparate perspectives and conflicts- in to stay behind and face certain death to allow short, a potentially therapeutic universe. These Leah and Hooker to escape-and make the new concerns reflect a declining interest in the couple. Looking back and reflecting on Fiske's sociological origins of Nazism, fascism, militant sacrifice, Hooker says: "Somebody always stays. labor unions, and other socially threatening mass All over the world, somebody gets it done." movements of the 1930s and early 1940s. They YclloJJ; S~y offers much the same gang of mis- 56 2003 i\lfining HistOJ)' jo11ma/

creants and the same set of obsessions-gold zation, the bar of soap. i\.s the days go by, Stretch (again, somebody else's), and sex, though with a cleans up for Mike (he shaves), and listens different emphasis. Having gaped at the woman thoughtfully as Grandpa and Ivlike narrate and in the painting above the bar, robbed a bank, interpret the old man's story of hard work in escaped from the cavalry, and crossed the arid mining the gold, and his quest for security (the salt flats, the six bad boys come upon Ivlike and right reason to acquire g:old) and social progress her grandfather, living in a cabin near Yellow Sky (through the revitalization of Yellow Sky). This and-as the newcomers will soon discover-sit­ story serves as a way station for Stretch's subli­ ting on fifty thousand dollars worth of gold dust mation of his sexual desire, a sublimation that that they have cradled and sluiced over the years. lies at the heart of YellmJJ S~. The night after Raised by Apaches and adept with a pistol and a the struggle between Ivlike and the men down at rifle, Ivlike is a strong, assertive young woman. the spring, Stretch has ~~ second sexual encoun­ Aware that most if not all of the men find her ter with Ivlike, this one brought on and fueled as attractive, Stretch, the group's leader, orders much by Ivlike's passioll1 as his own. Yet this them to stay away from the house. erotic moment goes no further than a deep kiss. Although each of the men has a different re­ Just as Ivlike, as a woman, must learn to give lationship to the twin temptations of gold and expression to appropriate sexual feelings-to sex, two of these relationships are noteworthy. grow up, to cease being a child, tO drop the tom­ Several of the men display a degree of sexual boy routine for full womanhood, Stretch, as a desire for .Nlike that borders on a rape fantasy. man-and, one might add, as a veteran-must This desire persists even after Grandpa has learn to temper his lust,. to repress some of hjs agreed to split the gold with the intruders, sub­ sexual energy. 17 ject to their digging it up from a cache at the Indeed, the next scene reveals how thor­ mouth of the old silver mine. As several men oughly Stretch has teamed that lesson. From go about that task, .Nlike is accosted by Lengthy the exterior location of their kiss, Ivlike and Gohn Russell) and Walrus (Charles Kemper) Stretch move inside, into the space of domes­ while carrying the proverbial pail down to the ticity. There, James "Stretch" Dawson-the re­ stream. Lengthy grabs her and wrestles with her, vealing of full names in this scene marks the while Walrus, in a line that references and re­ maturity of the characters-tells Mike and casts the painting over the bar in the earlier scene, Grandpa his own story. He comes from "good yells: "Ride her cowboy, ride her, but watch your­ people," parents who we:re farmers, from "sound self!" When Stretch arrives to intervene, the stock." Although the !family's involvement in men assert that "she was just askin' for trouble," the Kansas border wars has bent the youth to­ and Stretch, ostensibly troubled by Ivlike's im­ ward guns, and the Civil War, as Grandpa put it, pact on his companions, tells her to "stop "set [the young menl off on the wrong foot," his swingin' your hips all over the place." mother's deep religiosity and his own habit of In the meantime, we have been monitoring readjng the Bible, developed in childhood, have Stretch's desires, which are more for Ivlike's body provided a proper mora.! grounding. These de­ than her gold. Ignoring his own advice, Stretch tails confirm that Stretch possesses the moral has gone up to the house, rolled on the ground values and character necessary to sublimate his with :Mike and kissed her, only to have been re­ sexual desire and become a productive citizen. jected. "You smell bad," .Nlike says, implying The parallel story-:M.ike's emergence as a sexual that Stretch's affections might be welcomed if being-is, of course, not narrated. But Stretch only he were to make use of that agent of civili- is well aware that his story mandates hers, that Prospecti11g for C111111ml Gold 57

the reward for male repression is female sexual the 1940s, experts in fields such as child-rear­ availability. When he leaves he suggests this ing, public works, psychiatry, and the militaqr bargain, asking i\llike, "haven't you got any bet­ were valued according to their ability to order ter name than M.ike?" She replies, "Constance things, to reduce the role of the contingent, to i\l!ae." 18 generate a science that would make the behav­ ior of human beings understandable and predict­ Concepts ofLeade!'sbip able. Howard's role in 1/Je Ti-easm·e of the Sierra Nladt-e was to move that agenda forward, and he After 1945, mining films, wet and dry, ap­ did. 19 pear to lose interest in !11 Old Califomict's project, The case for charismatic leadership is taken the forging of a national community committed up in Silver RiveJ~ a film whose confused ideas to a single goal, and, more particulatly, in the about leadership suggest that it may have been concept of leadership used to forge it. Yel!oJJJ conceived during the war as a wet milling film s~, 's Stretch talks the leadershjp talk in his ef­ and completed in the postwar era as a dry one. fort to control the unattractive characters he has Thrown out of the Uruon Army for (unavoid­ mistakenly chosen for companions. When an ably) disobeying orders, the arrogant :Mike anxious Grandpa asks: "What'll they do next?" McComb (Flynn) goes out West and builds an Stretch responds didactically: "It's hard to say empire in silver mines, banks, and gambling with me not there to tell 'em." But Gregory Peck houses, willie abandoning friends, alienating the is no John Wayne, and his intentions, as we have miners, and angering the community. Coveting seen, have more to do with women than with Georgia Moore (Ann Sheridan), the wife of mjne the leading of men. owner and milling engineer Stanley Moore (Bruce Somethjng similar seems to occur in The Trea­ Bennett), McComb intentionally fails to warn JIIre of the Sierra Madre. That fllm offers only Stanley of Indian trouble in the Black Rock Howard (Walter Huston) as a leader, and his non­ Range where Stanley is headed, and Stanley is directive, chatty, informational style seems to be killed. This is an ethical failure of the first mag­ no match for Dobbs's obsessions, his paranoia, nitude, one to which McComb never confesses or the strength of his on-screen persona. To the and for which is he is never properly contrite. extent that Howard is expected to keep Dobbs Remarkably, the film employs the ideology in line, he fails. In the end his leadership role is of leadership, outdated by 1948, to redeem this limited to that of a medkine man in an Indian nasty, selfish, thoroughly immoral man. In the village, where, as he explruns, ''I'll be worshipped midst of an enormous campaign rally attended and fed and treated like a high priest for telling by hundreds of unemployed miners, McComb's people things they want to hear. Good medj­ li felong friend, John Plato Beck (Thomas cine men are born, not made." Mitchell), a populist-style candidate for the U.S. But to emphasize Howard's weakness as a Senate, is murdered wlllie giving a speech. Over leader is to mjsunderstand his role. Howard is a Beck's dead body, Georgia, now McComb's wife, very powerful leader-indeed, a controlling encourages him to take up the burden of leader­ force-but his leadership is of a new and differ­ ship. ent kind. Howard's leadership is the leadership of the expert, much revered in wartime and post­ I'll tell you what he (Plato] told me. In war America, a leadership grounded in experi­ every age, every country, a few leaders ence and knowledge rather than the force of are born. Not many. Just enough to personality, though he has some of that, too. In keep things going. You were that kind 58 2003 i\lfining I-IistOI)' Joumal

of man, i'v[ike. He'd always hoped you'd the saloon. The men in these films are both at­ find out. But you've built an empire, tracted to and repulsed by the strength of these just for yourself. Then you destroyed women. Like Stretch in Yellow S~y, Statio11 l/f'esls it. Plato was trying to pick up the pieces, Haven insists on knowing Charlie's "real" name, put them together again. There's no one Charlene, only to confirm its superiority-"! like left to do that now, but you. that better." While negotiating with mine-owner Georgia Moore for the use of some wagons in Inspired by Georgia's remarks, McComb SiiJJer H.iJJer, McComb can't help but notice her reprises his Civil War leadership role, leacling an wardrobe. "Pretty smart in those pants," he says. enormous cavalcade of miners into Silver City, Her reply: "I'd look pretty silly without 'em." where, in the film's final scenes, they take up Leah Fuller's cold demeanor and single-minded arms against concentrated wealth and privilege. determination to save her husband in Garde11 of EJJil are for Fiske less admirable qualities than Women of the Mining West signs of something lacking. "She's like some­ thing hammered outta silver," he comments. The model of wet and dry films also has con­ Heflin's Irish Gallagher has a si milar reaction tO siderable relevance to the ways in whkh women Raquel Oulia Adams), the swarthy revolution­ are presented. Despite Wayne's presence as a ary in IP'i,~s qf tbe Hm11k. "You look like a fe­ possible romantic interest in in 0/r/ Califomitt, male," he tells her, "but d1at's about all."20 women aren't much more than an afterthought In YelloJJJ S~y, Hollywood's effort to subdue in that film. The Spoilers, also made in 1942, has the over-aggressive woman resulted in harsh women of moderate strength: Cherry Malone treatment for leading lady Anne Baxter. "I'm (Marlene Dietrich), who runs a saloon and deals insisting on the boys getting reall y rough with cards, and Helen Chester (Margaret Lindsay), her," said director \XIellman, "because you can't who recognizes and resists the corruption of her pretend in these matters and get by. But I don't uncle, a judge. But again, neither character drives want her to suffer anything worse than maybe the plot. Determined Claire Blake is a strong some bruises." Baxter found it all quite curi­ presence in The Call of tbe 1/?'i/d, but her central ous. Referring to one scene in which the script functions in the film are rather traditional ones: called for co-star Peck to "rmakel a flying tackle" to monitor T hornton's male ethics while remain­ and " [d1rmvl her violent!)' to the ground" before ing loyal to her husband. In the wet film revival ki:;sing her, she said, "If my husband Uohn N orth ·1 oA laska, where the mining camp-wid1 HodiakJ had tried that technique on me when its suburban-like "honeymoon" cabin-is a site we were going together-well, I'd still be for the almost desperate mating rituals associ­ single." 21 ated with the height of the baby boom, women 1\ifany of these f.tl.ms implicate women in the have been reduced to romantic objects. weaknesses and fa ilures of men. Ivuke's swing­ The women featured in dry films are tougher, ing hips drive men to attempted rape; Georgia more masculine, have more economic power, and Moore's swaggering self-confidence tempts are more dangerous to men. They sometimes :McComb to commit murder by default; Leah wear pant:;, have names like Charlie and Nlike, Fuller's money, determination, and allure com­ and carry six-guns on their hips. In some of the pel d1ree men to join her on a deadly journey. films, including 5 tatio11 ll?'est, SiiJJer RiJJeJ; Garden Even Tbe TreasNre of the Sierra JV!adre, an essen­ of EPi/, and YelloJJJ 5~ ,, they own or share owner­ tially woman-less fi lm, suggests that Dobbs's ship of a gold or silver mine-a step up from destructive paranoia has something to do with Pm.JjJecting for C11llural Gold 59

sexual maladjustment. \'(!hen Howard asks ing country or to the mine proper, and often a Curtin and Dobbs what they intend to do with mountainous location. Nonetheless, several their share of the profits, Curtin mentions peach "dry" mining films have one or more jil111 11oir farming, but Dobbs focuses on the physical plea­ qualities. Statio11 IVest is the best example. While sures, inducting a Turkish bath and, awkwardly, its song elicits concern for men, Charlie is the women. film's tragic, flawed figure-not unlike Joan Two films-Statio11 West and L11st for Cold­ Crawford's 1Vlildred in Milrlrerl Pierce (1945) or go further, marking their women protagonists as other noir female protagonists who find romance criminals or as evil people capable of heinous and a fondness for money incompatible. Its town acts. Like almost everyone in the hostile town of Rock Pass is very much a 11oir space: dark, of Stcttio11 Hl"est, Charlie is hardened, callous, and insular, claustrophobic, and mean. Using words cynical; she believes that "every man has his that evoke the 11oiridea, a reviewer for NeuJ Yorker price," and that "every woman knows ir." \'(!hen magazine noted \'(!illiam Wellman's curious treat­ Haven arrives in town to investigate a series of ment of space in YelloJJJ S~ ' : "\'

attracted to Walz and even a bit tempted by real of the close-up, yields what filin scholar James romance, Julia is incapable of sharing his feel­ Naremot:e has described as "an oddly claustro­ ings. Driven by the lust for gold, she stabs her phobic effect." 27 husband in the back in a last-ditch but hopeless The story of Dobbs's migration tO greed and attempt to convince Jacob of her fondness for paranoia is justifiably famous, but what is per­ him. A Columbia Pictures publicity poster for haps less understood is the role that geography the film, depicting this sorting-our that takes plays in that transformation. Dobbs is uncom­ place at the mine, reveals an earnest Julia on her fortable in every part of the Mexican climate; he knees, pleading with an unyielding Walz-a pose is always hot, Jirty, and sweaty. He longs to be that suggests that one purpose of Lml for Gold1 clean. In Tampico, with a few panhandled pe­ and of similar filins, was to show a strong woman sos, his first stop is the barbershop, for a shave reduced to abject helplessness.24 and a haircut. Up on the mountain, he imagines returning to a Turkish bath. He becomes en­ GeowrnphyandCwilUation raged when Curtin uses the word "hog" to de­ scribe his inclination to accumulate more gold Only in the dry films, and only in two of than he needs, claiming that Curtin had implied them, do we encounter a geography that is more that he was not "civilized." Although the val­ than a setting for events, a geography with im­ ley-jungle portion of the journey is brief, it nearly pact. One of them is The Treasure o/ the Sierra defeats Dobbs, who expresses his desire to "go JV!adre, a dry film of considerable geographical back to civilization."28 complexity and depth, the script for which was Later, when the group ascends the mountains adapted by John Huston from a 1935 B. Traven and the jungle and its creatures have presum­ novel with Marxist overtones.25 Filmed for the ably been left far behind, references to jungle most part on location in Mexico, the action opens animals, including lions, tigers, and even a leop­ in steamy Tampico, on i\tfexico's eastern shore. ard skin with which Curtin covers his burro, dot Here the three central characters come together the screenplay-although the only animal the in a prospecting venture: Howard (Walter group physically encounters is a foot-long Gila Huston), the experienced old-timer; Curtin (Tim monster.29 l'or all the men, but especially for Holt), the earnest, agreeable tenderfoot; and Fred Dobbs, the jungle and its inhabitants signify the C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), neurotic and great anxiety of the postwar world: of humanity's needy, his prosaic name a sign of his status as animal-ness, of its primordial origins, and of its everyman. partial, incomplete, and problematic transforma­ The story briefly traverses the lush valleys tion into a "civilized," domesticated state.30 Af­ of the Sierra Madre Oriental, where machetes ter Dobbs, at his most paranoid, shoots Curtin are required in the dense, jungle-like underbrush; and leaves his body behind a tree, his morning moves on to the dusty upper reaches of the Ori­ anxiety begins when he hears a growl. "What's ental range, where gold is abundant and water getting into me," he asks himself. "A tiger." scarce, and where the film's most important Returning in panic to the where he has left the events either take place or are initiated; and con­ body and finding it gone, he imagines what has cluJes to the west in a mythic Durango, where transpired. "I got it," he says. "The tiger. Yeah, drought and wind-blown dust seem to be a way yeah, that's it, the tiger. Must have dragged him of life. 26 Despite this movement through space, off to his lair, that's what." In a sense, he \Vas with its scenic potential, the fum's refusal to of­ right; the tiger is Dobbs. fer the viewer that scenery, and its frequent use Dobbs has another, very different, problem Prospecting for C11lturcrl Gold 61

Tbis publid(y photo for The Treasure of lhe Sierra MaJre (1948) resonates JJJith the psychological conflicts for JJJhich the fiiJII is well known. The three prospectors co11/d share theirfoocl but dividing their gold pro1;ed IIIOJ<: difficult. The jil111 stan Tim Holt, Htmphrey Bogart, and director john Huston's fatiJeJ; U1'alter Huston. (ComiC!)' o/ tbe UCLA. Theater A rts Libra')'.) with the natural environment: he does not un­ Dobbs: Been a lot better to me than any derstand it. That, at least, appears to be mes­ woman I ever knew. Keep your shirt sage of the following exchange, which takes on, old timer; sure, I'll help you. place when our trio of prospectors decides to break camp: Ho\-vard's view of the mountain is mystical, and it is one for which we have not been pre­ Howard: Take another week to break pared. To this point in the ftlm, Howard's voice down the mine, put the mountain has been that of reason, pragmatism, math, sci­ back in shape. ence, and the marketplace, a voice devoid of Dobbs: Do what to the mountain? the qualities that one might today label New Age HOJ}J(Ird: Make her appear like she was feminist spirituality-or perhaps as superstition, before we came. incipient environmentalism, or just an odd sort Dobbs: I don't get it. of chivalry.31 But while Dobbs is willing to help, HoJJiard: We wounded this mountain. his perspective differs markedly from Howard's, It's our duty to close her wounds. and even from Curtin's, who appears to enter­ The least we can do to show our tain the mountain-as-woman idea. In contrast, gratitude for all the wealth she's Dobbs pitches in not because he believes the gtven us .... mountain is a damaged woman whose wounds C11rtin: You talk about that mountain he is obliged to treat and heal, but because he is like it was a real woman. sure that the mountain is not a woman and could 62 2003 Mining His!OIJ' jo11mal

not, having been so generous, be one. mental problems are identified with that wilder­ Pur another way, Howard and Curtin can ness environment. After one especially eli fficult understand how the act of mining could be con­ night, when his paranoia is only beginning to ceptualized as an act of exploitation because emerge, Dobbs's neurotic morning mumbling they have some sense of themselves as flawed takes place against a mountain backdrop. When men who might be tempted to exploit women­ Dobbs and Curtin come into conflict on the trail that is, because they are civilized. Conversely, down, with Dobbs coming apart at the seams, Dobbs has no sense of mining as exploitation he meets Curtin's ethical objections to stealing because he has no sense of himself as a man Howard's goods by suggesting that Curtin's "Sun­ who exploits women-that is, because he is too day school talk" sounds "foolish out here in the much an animaL Although fretful about animal­ wilderness." That evening, Dobbs's rapid de­ ness in some intuitive or unconscious way, scent into madness is framed by a surreal, al­ Dobbs has not yet come to terms with it con­ most haunted setting of barren trees. sciously. The next day, after Curtin has barely survived The standard argument for Dobbs's paranoia Dobbs's attack and Curtin and Howard have a is that he has succumbed to the lust for gold, moment to consider what has happened, that proverbial temptation. A somewhat more Howard's explanation is the confluence of money sophisticated version of that argument, and one and Mexico's remote back country. "He's not a made in the fum's trailer, is that the three pros­ real killer as killers go," Howard says. "I think pectors manage to overcome the "forces of na­ he's as honest as the next feller, or almost. The ture, only to find their greatest enemy is: human big mistake was leaving you two fellas out there nature." Howard, the film's voice of authority, in the depths of the wilderness with more than a confirms that perspective at several points, warn­ hundred thousand between you." Significantly, ing the boys in an El Oso Negro dormitory, for in the film's final scene, when Howard rehearses example, that "when the piles of gold begin to the possible explanations for the tragedy that has grow, that's when the trouble starts." Later, on befallen them, the trilogy he offers- "the lord, the mountain, when Dobbs first expresses inter­ or fate, or nature"-includes neither "human est in dividing the gold dust, Howard says, "I nature" nor greed. And Howard's claim that "the know what kind of ideas even supposedly de­ gold has gone back to where we found it"-al­ cent people get when gold's at stake." The let­ though obviously not true in the literal sense­ ter from Helen, found among Cody's possessions reinforces the importance of nature in Howard's after his death, with its comment that "we've summation of what has occurred. already found life's real treasures," also implies that the search for gold is somehow inappropri­ Howard's Experiment ate.32 Yet the fum offers another explanation for Even so, there is something unsatisfying Dobbs's behavior that has more to do with ge­ about the view that Dobbs's paranoia is the prod­ ography-specifically, with the curious wilder­ uct of the natural environment; the nature de­ ness in which these men find themselves. On picted here is not all that rugged or frightening the train early in the journey, Howard points to or mysterious. The term "wilderness," which his map and announces they are headed for a dots the screenplay and suggests remoteness, is place so remote that the terrain is undefined, closer to the fUm's truth. But something is miss­ "that shows the makers of the map themselves ing. What is it about the wilderness, about the don't know for sure." At every turn, Dobbs's remote, that would have fascinated director John Prospecting for Cllltum/ Gold 63

Huston in 1948? The answer lies in Howard, Howard moves the experiment along by acced­ who orchestrates and supervises the expedition. ing to Dobbs's request. Nor does Howard use No ordinary old timer or sourdough, \XIalter the revelation of the Gila monster under the rock Huston's Howard has some of the qualities of that covers Dobb's goods to convince Dobbs an academic, of a social scientist whose specialty that his anxieties are delusional. J ndeed, is economics and society.33 \Xlhen we ftrst meet Howard's position as investigator obviates a him at El Oso Negro, he is presenting a version therapeutic, interventionist perspecrive, no mat­ of the ideas of nineteenth-century British econo­ ter how appropriate it seems to the viewer. He mist David Ricardo, holding forth on theories smbbornly refuses to identify Dobbs as an espe­ of the labor value of gold, which he cleverly and cially neurotic man who needs help sorting things adroitly models mathematically for his eager class out. of wide-eyed pupils, including Dobbs. A scholar Instead, Howard prefers tO see Dobbs as "not of human namre with world-wide experience on a real killer as killers go," and "as honest as the the subject, he calmly explains how gold affects next feller, or almost," thus preserving Dobbs's human beings and predicts future events up on stams as an ordinary, even normal man, and as 31 the mountain with calm precision. ' an appropriate subject for the experimental dem­ Yet despite his knowledge, Howard cannot onstration to which Howard is committed. resist mounting the expedition, an enterprise that Howard's rational, removed, non-therapeutic could be understood as a study or experiment perspective resembles that of biologist Alfred on the effects of economic stimuli on human C. Kinsey, whose S cx11al Bebttvior tJ/ the H11111a11 beings in an environment of isolation-i.e., the j\1alc-the flrst of two volumes of what became wilderness-an experiment, it should be said, known as the Kinsey Report-appeared in the whose outcome Howard already knows. Of same year as John Huston's film. 35 course, Howard cannot avoid being part of the When Cody arrives in camp, he for a time experiment; after all, he is one of the prospec­ takes over this academic role, perhaps to keep tors. Hence his role is a complex one. One part Howard's character from becoming irritatingly of his "narrative" reflects his role as prospector. rational or perhaps to suggest the limits of the Implied rather than presented, this narrative is rational mind. Cody combines science and logic. the story of men working together in a spirit of On the one hand, he claims to have the ability cooperation and tolerance, finding and sharing to locate gold by examining geological forma­ gold, and evenmally going on to achieve a stare tions; on the other hand, he purports to know of domestic bliss. The other part of his something about how human beings will resolve narrative-more forcefully articulated and even ethical dilemmas. Supremely confident in his predicted, and reflecting Howard's stams as a own reason, Cody outlines for the prospectors social scientist-has the group coming apart be­ the three possible ways in which they could deal cause of conflicts over gold. with him. One would result is his being expelled To manage these disparate narratives and from the group, the second in his becoming a conduct his experiment, Howard puts himself partner, the third in his death. At each step he at some remove from the emerging conflicts. imagines how the option would play itself out When Dobbs first raises the issue of dividing and explains why it would or would not be the the gold dust, Howard tellingly rejects the obvi­ most advantageous course for the prospectors ous leadership role- he refuses, in effect, to re­ to take. mind Dobbs that he had predicted Dobbs's de­ This social-scientific perspective on The Trea­ sire, and to persuade him to rethink it. Instead sl!re o/ tbe Sierra j\1adre helps clarify one other- 64 2003 Mini11g HistOI)' Jouma/

wise odd scene, early in the film. It takes place in narrative and experimental consciousness. But Tampico and features director Huston in a cameo how might Dobbs do this? In what might rebel­ role as a well-to-do American, dressed in a white lion consist? By being cooperative, Dobbs could suit and white hat, who has twice been hit up for challenge Howard's predictive abilities, his au­ money by the pan-handling Dobbs. On the oc­ thority as a social scientist, and his economic casion of a third request, an exasperated model of human behavior. But to do so would Huston-another advocate of nineteenth-cen­ consign him to a group life and a domestic fu­ tury market economics-calls attention to the ture that he finds unappealing. By being unco­ situation and offers Dobbs a peso in return for operative, he writes himself into Howard's ex­ his promise not to ask him again. T hen, as if periment as d1e predictable paranoid. More so­ Dobbs were an object in an experiment, perhaps phisticated responses to Howard's narrative a welfare recipient whose behavior he seeks to power-some sort of unpredictable randomness, modify, Huston puts a second peso in his hand. perhaps-are beyond him. Like the classic film "Just to make sure you don't forget your prom­ noir victim, Dobbs has no way out. ise," he adds, "here's another peso ... but from Made a year later, Llfst for Gold (1949) is also now on, you have ro make your way through life about epistemology, and it also explores that without my assistance." 36 subject through a story about mountains. But Huston's demand fo r self-sufficiency raises unlike The Treasure of tbe Sierralvfadre, the moun­ the issue of D obbs's dependence on Howard, tainous setting of LIISt for Gold is deeply, rad1er which is apparent throughout most of the film. than superficially, anthropomorphic. "You're How, indeed, does Dobbs respond to Howard's looking at Superstition Mountain," announces experiment, and to his own status as experimen­ the opening voice-over, "a barbaric pile of tal subject? He rebels. This rebellion takes the rock. . . . Eight hundred square miles of sudden form of paranoia, a state of "madness" charac­ and violent death .... She looks easy, from the terized by "systematized delusions and the pro­ outside. Inside, it's like Satan's private art gal­ jection of personal conflicts, that are ascribed lery; sculptured pagan granites, unmellowed by to the supposed hostility of others." This dic­ time, hidden and terrifying canyons and gorges." tionary definition applies to Dobbs, but only if "You see," concludes the initial voice-over, "this Howard can be trusted-only, that is, if he is is the true story of Superstition Mountain, the not experimenting with Dobbs's life or otherwise biography of a death trap." seeking to exercise control over him. Film Posed against this mythic and intimidating scholar Dana Polan offers us another way to geographic mass we have Barry Storm (William understand paranoia, one perhaps more appli­ Prince), the latest in a parade of men who have cable to the situation that Dobbs faces. Polan sought to penetrate Superstition and find its bur­ describes paranoia as a response to power, and ied treasure, and the grandson ofJac ob "Dutch" especially to "the power of a narrative system." \XIalz, the German immigrant who in the 1880s "Paranoia," he argues, "will here first be the fear rediscovered what became known as the "Lost of narrative, and the particular social represen­ Dutchman" mine. Storm has the enthusiasm and tations it works to uphold, against all that threat­ methodology of a cub reporter or graduate stu­ ens the unity of its logical framework."37 dent. In his 1948 search for the mine, he exam­ Using Polan's concept of paranoia, it is pos­ ines the ftles of the local newspaper, visits the sible to appreciate Dobbs as a figure of resis­ coroner's office, listens as the local sheriff re­ tance, struggling for personal freedom, working counts an Apache legend and shows him arcane to position himself outside of Howard's dual markings on a rock, and does some oral history Prospecting for Clfltural Gold 65

among the community's oldest citizens at the Lost Dutchman. That idea, while sensible Pioneer Rest Home. The f!lrn itself participates enough and the culmination of the film's inves­ in and appears to validate this process of inguiry, tigatory premise, is dashed on the rocks of Su­ and to assume that it leads to some sort of truth. perstition Mountain. Storm's thorough and re­ Following the title and credits, we are shown a lentless inguiry has missed something basic: time piece of paper, signed by the governor of Ari­ and nature in motion, the natural world under­ zona. It reads: "The picture which you are about stood historically. "You forgot [that] the moon to see represents, to the best of our knowledge, and earth keep movin," the sheriff suggests. "At the true facts concerning this unusual situation, this rate, you're gonna have to dig up the whole as substantiated by historical records and leg­ mountain-need a bulldozer. That [1887] earth­ ends of the State of Arizona."38 quake changed things, too. That's why Ray Covin Storm is our bellwether for evaluating the never found the mine. That's why you'll never validity of the process of inguiry and for know­ find it." Chastened but unbroken, and clinging ing whether truth is accessible, and the messages to his grandfather's German rationalism, Barry the character provides are mixed. On the one acknowledges the problem, but only to imagine hand, his detection of a key geographical start­ solving it. "That's right," he tells the sheriff. "If ing point, Weaver's Needle, by what he admits it is the moon that'll point out that gold, it'll only is "sheer blind luck," would suggest that even do it once a year. On the anniversary of the the most determined researcher or scholar needs night [a century ago] when the Peraldas [the a bit of good fortune to prevail. On the other Mexican brothers who opened the mine on In­ hand, ensuing discoveries of a srone-carved dian land) made that sign. That's the catch. "master map of the region" and, across the can­ When was that sign made? What hour? What yon, a needle-like peak with a windowed open­ moment? If I could figure that out, I'd hit the ing, produce in Storm euphoric, conceited claims jackpot." that belie his earlier state of humility. "As I Storm's response reflects the deep belief in clawed and climbed my way toward the window the postwar era of the power of science and sci­ above," Storm breathlessly narrates, "one entific method to penetrate and solve life's thought kept repeating itself: nobody-not Ray mysteries. His enthusiasm had an official voice Covin, not the sheriff, [not] Bill Bates-nobody in Vannevar Bush, Franklin Roosevelt's foremost had ever mentioned the weird map cut in the science policy adviser, who in 1945 pronounced rocks or this peak that had been pointed out by science an "endless frontier," the development the stick in the hole. I'd discovered these things of which was as essential to national greatness all by myself-what I knew was top secret, pri­ in the twentieth century as the free land of the vate knowledge for Barry Storm."39 \'{!hat Storm West had been in the nineteenth.40 The fllm as a has found is not unimportant, but neither is it whole is more ambivalent. To be sure, Storm "private knowledge;" indeed, Deputy Covin (Will has framed the remaining mysteries in a way that Geer) stands behind him with a rifle, ready to opens them to rational inguiry. Mysteries of a march Storm off a cliff to protect his own knowl­ different sort-the Apache legends that present edge of the map and the windowed peak. Superstition Mountain as a ((sacred" place, or the After Covin's plan has been foiled, Barry and suggestion that the mountain's perverse geogra­ Sheriff Lynn Early (Paul Ford) take a turn at phy makes for "unfriendly ground"-have ap­ moonlight prospecting, emboldened by the parently been forgotten. Still, L11st for Gold de­ thought that the moon, shining through the nies knowledge and science their just deserts; it needle's window, wi ll illuminate the site of the ends without the mine having been found. The 66 2003 Mining H.istOJ)' }o11mal

TreaSI/re qf the Sierra lllfadre does something simi­ male sexuality, powerful and ambitious women, lar for the experimental ethos of the social sci­ and an overbearing science. The \Vest of the ences. The film at times identifies its mountain wet mining film is essentiall y a space of sanc­ terrain as primordial and haunted, and Howard's tioned commercial and economic exploitadon, film-ending litany of "the lord, or fate, or na­ where good and evil lock horns. The \XIest of ture" doesn't include science. But Treasure is at the dry mining film is often a space of psycho­ its core a chilling experiment in economics and logical and sociological conflict and torment, human behavior, with Howard as head investi­ where the human condition and human nature gator and Dobbs his unwitting victim. are at issue, and where basically good people­ D irector John Huston's fascination with these Barry Storm, Stretch, Dobbs, even Howard­ themes was not unusual. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope lust for gold, sex, or power. (1948) dealt even more directly with the hubris Films also differ in how they present western of the rational and the experimental, depicting topography. The West of the wet film is knee­ two young men who commit murder for "the deep in the man-made mud of plentiful water, experiment of committing it." Psychologist B. community, and enterprise; it is accessible by F. Skinner's best-selling novel, Walden Two, pub­ helpful maps that can be read or figured out; it lished the same year, featured a utOpian com­ abuts oceans and rivers that carry machinery to munity operating under behaviorist principles. In Nome or Silver City. The geography is often short, L11st for Gold and '1 he Ti·eas11re of the Sierra sublime- as in N ortb to A/ask({- 0r pictur­ Madre use the geography of western mining as a esque- as in Tbe Call if the Lfl'/ild. The terrain space in which to explore and celebrate the roles can be difficult or dangerous, but it is seldom of rational, scientific inquiry and social-scien­ impassable or deadly. In contrast, the West of tific experimentation in mid-twentieth-century the dry film is a West of salt flats and gila mon­ American life .41 sters, dusty rocks, and water to be hauled-if it exists at aiL Tts maps arc incomplete, wrong, Conclusion unclear or indecipherable, or if readable-as in Garden ofcvif.- somehow cursed, the source of The western mining film accomplishes what the problem rather than its solution. Neither most genres or types accomplish; it sheds light sublime nor picturesque, the West's geography on some of the more important issues of the is desolate, its terrain a dangerous and deadly era, including community, "the people," the role one of narrow ledges, steep ascents, craggy of leadership, the impacr of war, the growth of peaks, volcanic eruptions, and avalanches. big business, the perils of materialism, the cor­ Perhaps most importantly, in the best of ruption of government, and the role of women. these films, this "dry" West is a space of legend The wet mining films of the Great Depression, and mystery. In '1 JJe Treas11re o/ the Sierra 1\!Iadre, World War II, and 1960 are, on the whole, posi­ it is space inhabited by lions and tigers and leop­ tive and accepting about entrepreneurial and ards-that is, by the animal witllin us that threat­ commercial activity, adventure, money-making, ens to engulf the self or, understood more posi­ women with strength, aggressive men, domes­ tively, to frustrate those who would claim to be ticity, and the role of ordinary people in com­ able to predict the behavior of human beings. munity li fe. The dry mining fwns of the post­ In L11st for Gold, it is inhabited across time by war decade are more likely to probe the dark side Apaches and Mexicans and by their legends and of the American experience, including an irre­ stories, frustrating efforts to locate the Lost sponsible populace, failed leadership, greed, fare, Dutchman and to know the "truth." And in both Prospecli11g for C111111ra/ Gold 67

films this West is inhabited by something even what produces that delicious feeling of doubt more intangible. \Xlhatever one calls it-nature, when the incorrigible positivist Barry Storm bra­ God, fate, spirit-it is what compels Howard zenly concludes that the answers to just a few to repair the damage to the mountain, and it is questions wi ll make him rich. ,..

Notes:

for many years the mining engineer was as ignored by embedded in rock- was so difficult that it was usually scholars as he was by Hollywood. See Clark C. Spence, reserved for corporations with money and expertise. lt Mining Engineers and the Alllnictl/1 ll>'est: The Lice-Boot is unlikely that the trio of prospectors in Tbe Treasure qf Brigade, 1849-1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, /he .fiemuHrtdrewould have had d1e equipment for such 1970), 2, 15, 318. Spence treats the mining engineer as an enterprise or the time to make it profitable. Greever, an aspect of the "transition from unsystematic to Bonr111~1 ll~'eJt, 52-3. Indeed, B.Traven, on whose novel scientific mining under way since the mid-nineteenth the screenplay was based, explained in an eight-page century." (p. 4). On the ratio of women ro men during memo on d1c techniques of gold mining that a vein the California gold rush, sec \'-:' illiam $. Greever, The mine was (i.e., should be) "out for dus picmre." Bonanza W'cst: The Jtoo• qf the Westem Minitl!, RlfShes, l\femo, "The Treasure of tl1e Sierra l\faclre," in folder 1848-1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, "Treasure of Sierra .t\ladre, Traven B. and H. C. corrcs, 1963), 62. On d1e mining town's incompa6bility with 2/47, n.cl . notes," John Huston Collection, Margaret the \Vestern's ideal community, see "£-lining" entrr, Herrick Library, Los Angeles, California. Edward Buscombe (ed.), Tbe BFI Co111panion to the 4 The mining scenes for Ji/i;er Ri11envere filmed on a set 1/Ye.r/em (New York: /\theneum, 1988), 188-91. constructed in Bronson Canyon, only minutes from 2 I am grateful to Paul Ryan, who graciously made his Hollywood. Production Notes for Jil11er Ri11e1; in subst;mtial coll ection of western films available to me Production Files, Herrick Library. Greever, Bona11zn and steered me toward ftlms about mining, and to Lee West, 361-64. Albert, Bennett Graebner, and David r.Ianch for 5 On claim law in the early mining camps, see John locating several hard-to-find ftlms. \'\/alton Caugher, Gold is tbe Comerstone (Berkeley: Tlus list is partial. Od1er relevant ftlms include The University of California Press, 1948), 227-32. Based on W'alkitl!, Hills (1949); Black 1-lt/ls CJ 947); JiiJ;er Q11een a 1898 Rex Beach novel about a Nome gang of (1942); The Jil11er LtJde (1954); Roi/Janre of tbe IWe_rt "spoilers" who swindled miners out of their claims, (1946); Fill)' a/ Fm7tm·e Creek (1948); Comanche TeniiOI)' Tbc Spoilers was ftlmed in 1913, 1930, and 1942. Sec (1950); Drmgbtcr qf tbc ll~'est (1949); indian Up1isitl!, folder, "The Spoilers," "Exploitation Suggestions & (1952); Ri11er qf i\To Ret11m (1954); and The Far Count!)• Feature Articles," Produc6on Files, Herrick Library. On (1955). Nome's early history, see \XI.P. Morrell, TbeGold fu1sbes None of t.hc ftlms screened deal wid1 d1e Black (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1940), 402-03. Hills gold rush of 1874-79, which took place in the 6 San Francisco's mud problem was especiall}' severe O;lkota and Wyoming 1·e rritories. Blm·k Hills, listed during the wet wimcr of 1 R49-50. Greever, Bo11anzn above, a "B" picmre at best, uses d1e region's name and ll~'e.rt, 38. has a gold-mining subplot, but it otherwise ignores the 7 Garry Hogg, Lll.rtforGolt!(Ncw York: A.S. Barnes and setting. On d1e Black Hills gold rush, see Watson Co., 1962), 43. Tmil qf '98 (1928, silent), set in the Parker, Gold in tbe Black Hills (Lincoln: University of "Klondike" region of Alaska, offers me most realistic Nebraska Press, 1966), and Rodman Wilson Paul, film treatment of the harsh conditions along the Mini'!!, Frontim qftb e rar West, 1848-1880 (New York: Alaska-Yukon border. The ftl.m appears to replicate Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 176-96. the passage over d1e C!Ulkoot Pass in the Klondike 3 The rocker, d1e sluice, and oilier nuning methods arc region, between Skagway and Dawson. It also conflates described in Greever, Bonallza West, 47-51, and Otis E the Klondike-an iconic word in the film-and A Iaska. Young, Jr., Westcm Mimi!!,: An bifOJmal Aer01111t qf 8 The White Pass and Yukon Railroad w;1s completed in Predo11s-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, ·1900, replacing the very difficult White Pass trail out of and l\li.l.ling on the American Frontier from Spanish Skagway. Greever, Bonanza West, 354-56. Times to 1893 (Norman: University of Oklahoma 9 The film could also be set in the mining town of Silver Press, 1970), I 08-23. City, New l\fexico or in Silver City, Utah. l ts featured Quartz nuning-the mining of veins of gold Indians are Shoshone, a widely disbursed linguistic 68 2003 LV!ining History jottmal

group with a presence in Utah, but not in New Mexico 15 On d1e people and d1e mob, see, for example, Walter or Arizona. "[Srudio) Synopsis," Sifi,er Rive1; Lippmann, P11blic Opinion (1922. Reprint. New York: Production Files, Herrick Library. The Free Press, 1965); Gregory \Y.I. Bush, Lord of 10 Shot on location in Tcptzlan, along d1c Concheros Attention: Gemld Stan!~· Lee nnd tbc Crmvd Jvlc!npbor in River near Acapulco, around Paricutin Mountain, and Jnd!ls!Jinli~ng Amelica (Amherst: University of near Guanajuato, Gardm of E.11il's scenery produced ~fassachusetts Press, 1991 ); and William Graebner, Tbe considerable comment in d1e popular press. "Vital Enginming of Cowen!: De/JIOCI'flf)' and AIIIIJOii!J• 111 Statistics," CnrdmofE11il; "Garden of Evil," Vmie(y(D), Tu,mlielb-Cenlmy Amelira (Madison: Universit)' of 30 June 1954; and "Garden of Evil," Time, '19 July 1954, \XIisconsin Press, 1987). all in Production Files, Herrick Library. "Vim! Statistics To be sure, it was not uncommon for cities to Concerning Ye/!oJ/1 Sky" (20'h Cent1.1ry Fox empt)' out in ilie early stages of a gold fever, and for mimeographed handout), Production Files, Herrick business to come to a near standstill as a result. It Library. happened in San Francisco in 1848. See Caughey, Gold 11 Morrell's Gold RIISbes describes Skagwa)' in similar is !be Comers/one, 20. terms, even using the word "mushroom" (p. 384). A 16 Disease, including t)rphoid fever, was a serious problem member of the Nordnvest Mounted Police, visiting in tl1e California camps and od1er areas of the state Skagway in ilie late 1890s, described d1e town as "about before 1856. Greever, Bonanza West, 58. the roughest place in d1c world." Greever, Bonnnzn 17 The sexual content of YellowS~echoes d1e sex crime IP'e.rl, 344. panic that reached a peak of intensity in the winter of The best example of escapism in filin is Tbe 1949-50. George Chauncey, Jr., "The Postwar Sex IIYizrml of Oz (1939). On the city in film, sec A11drew Crime Panic," in William Graebner (ed.), Tme Sto1ies Bergman, We~~ in tbe 1\llon~ l· Depmsion .AJJ1elim and Its Film.r fivmlbeAIImican Pas/ (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), (1971: New York: l-Imper & Row, 1972), 18-29. On the 160-178. The lVfotion Picture Committee of ilie importance ofadventure in d1e decade after 1935, see William General Federation of Women's Clubs found d1e film Graebner, "TI1eApple Bo)r. Incfu~dualand Community in the "very offensive," and the Production Code Em of dle Second World War," Ne/J/ Y01k Folk/01r, 10 Administration and local censorship boards of the (Summer-Fall1984): 77-87. Motion Picture Association ofAmerica took exception 12 On Dawson's saloons, see :Morrell, Gold Rmhes, 389. to some of d1e more salacious aspects of d1e script and Drinking, alcoholism, and saloons were feat1.1res of d1e film, including "violent kissing" and the "ride her, mining scene, in d1e camps and nearby towns and cities. cowboy" line. Letter, StephenS. Jackson, Production See Greever, Bonanza West, 60-6 'I; Rodman Paul, Code Administration, to Colonel Jason S. Joy, Calijomia Golrl: The Beginning of Mining in I be Far Jll,/esl Twentieili Centtll)'-Fox Film Corporation, 21 Apr. (Lincoln: UniversityofNebraska Press, 1947), 83; Paul, 1948; letter, l'vlrs. P.E. \'{Iillis, General Federation of Mining Frontiers, 164-66. \'{/omen's Clubs, lVfotion Picture Committee, to Lamar The mindless brawling in No11b lo Alrt.rka was Trotti, Twentieili Centtll)'-Fox Srudio, 21 Dec. 1948; socially purposeful. Reviewers applauded d1e film's and reports of local censorship boards for d1e Motion non-realistic, non-adult, non-political approach. "No Picrure Association ofAmerica, all in Production Code message here," wrote Constance Littlefield for d1e Los J\dministration Files, Yellow S~, Herrick Library, Angeles Examitw: "No social significance, no juvenile Department ofSpecial Collections. delinquents, no beatniks. Just screams of laughter 18 On Silver River and Yellow Sky as stories about "war­ from tl1c ftrst barroom brawl to tl1e closing alienated individuals," see John I I. Lenihan, SbowdoJJJII: donnybrook in d1e muddy main street of Nome." Lo.r Confronting iVlodem America in tbe IWe.rlem Film (Urbana: Angele.r Examiue1; 24 Nov. 1960, Production Files, University oflllinois Press, 1980), 102-05 (quotation HenickLibrary. on 105). Rita Parks puts Stretch in the "good badman 13 According to Philip French, the ghost town is "ilie tradition" of ftlms such as Jesse James (1939) and Bii!J I be objective correlative ofth e impermanence ofAmerican Kid (1941 ). Parks, Tbe !Westem Hero in Fi!IJI rmdTele11ision: life, a pessimistic feeling about ilie fragility ofAmerican Mas.r Media i\t1ytbology (1\nn Arbor, .M:ichigan: UNIT civilization and its problems in putting down roots." Research Press, 1982), 95. Quoted in "Ghost Town" cnU)', BFI Companion to !be '19 On expertism, see William Graebner, TbeAgeofDollbl: 117eslem, 129. Amelican Tbo11gbt and C111111re til !be 1940s (Boston: 14 George Lipsitz, Class aud C111111re in Cold 1/YarAme,ica: Twayne, 1991), 32-33. ·~ Rainbo111 a/ iVlidnigbt" (South Hadley, lvfass.: J.F. 20 "We got the realism we were after," said William Bergin Publishers, 1982). Wellman of Yellow SA:J, including "rough, wild men ProJpectillg for C!tlt11ml Cold 69

fighting over a desert-hardened girl." The Los Angele.r interest and the gun; and the Indian village, which Times referred to Station IJ?'est's anti-heroine as the offers a vision of pastoral paradise." By emphasizing "Outlaw Queen." "Vital Statistics Concerning Yellow Howard's future in the Indian village, and Curtin's as a J~y," and Edwin Schallbcrt, "Powell Duels with Sul try peach farmer back in d1e St;ltes, Slotkin argues d1at Jane G reer, Outlaw Queen," Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. Mexico functions in d1e film as a site ofAmerican moral 1948, both in Production Files, Herrick Library. regeneration. That Howard was in need ofregeneration 21 "NEWS From 20'h Century-Fox," 16 June 1948 is clear, but his behavior in d1e ftlm, especially his role in (\'\lellman) ancl"Vital Statistics Concerning Yellow J')~/' d1e tragedy d1at befalls Dobbs, would seem to require (Baxter), in Production Files, Herrick Libraq. something more than his narcissistic wid1drawal into a 22 See June Sochen, "Mildred Pierce and\'(/ omen in Film," life of semi-retirement in a remote village. AmericcmQ11m1nb•30 (Spring, 1978): 3-20. Ne111 Yorke1~ There is a large li terature on The Treas11re of tbe 12 Feb. 1949, in Production Files, Herrick Library. Jienn M(/rlre and director John Huston. See especially 23 J.P. Telotte, Voices in the D(/rk: The Nmmlive P(JI/ems of Stuart Kaminsky,]obn Hwton: Maker ofi\1(/gic (Jwston: Film Noir (Urbana: University of Jlinois Press, 1989), Houghton Mifflin, 1978); Scott Hammen,Jobn H11ston 134-78. (Boston: Twayne, 1985); Lawrence Grobe!, T/;e Hmtons 24 Tbc Treas11rc of tbe Sinm Madre also has noir qualities. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989); Gaylyn Bogart is the quintessential noir ftlm srar, and his Studlar and David Desser (eds.), Riflections in a Male Dobbs is a perfect example of what film scholar Ej•e: ]olm H11s!on (/nrl the Ametit'tlll Expetimce \XIinfried Fluck has called "drifter-noi1;" a form of the (\XIashington, D.C.: Smid1sonian Institution Press, genre that locates the source of crime in mood and 1993); Lesley Brill,joh11 H11ston's Fi/,wm(Jkil(g(Cambridge, impulse and hence problematizes the idea ofgu ilt. See England: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Fluck's superb essay, "Crime, Guilt and Subjectivity in Stephen Cooper (eel.), Pmpettives 011 Jolm l-l11.rto11 (New Film Noit; in Amerikast11rlien 46, no. 3 (2001), 379-408. York: G.K. Hall, 1994). 25 James N:n·emore, " Introduction: A Likeb• Prqject," in 28 The film's Sierra i\fadre is tl1e Sierra iVfadre Oriental, one James Naremore, (eel.) The Treas11re of tbe Sien'fl M(Jdrc ofMexico's nord1-soud1 ranges and an extension of d1e (Maclison: The Uni versity of Wisconsin Press, 1979), Rocky Mountains. Its peaks are from fifty tO one 13-14. hundred miles west of tl1e Gulf Coastal Plain upon 26 The real Durango-at least two hundred miles from which Tampico is located at the mouth of Rio Panuco. where d1e duee prospectors find gold-seems too far The city had been a starting poi11t for gold seekers since away to have been a realistic destination. Sec Fcrol me 1840s. Historian Ferol Egan describes Tampico as Egan, The El Domdo Tmil the Story of the Gold F..11.rb "a good place to hurry through, an unusual place to Ro11tes Across Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska write home about, but it wasn't healthy to stay there for Press, 1970), map in front matter. J\ reviewer for long unless a man had already built up some natural Varie()• (7 Jan. 1948) suggested that the "rugged immunity to fevers and developed a tolerance for d1e beauty" of the locadon "contrasted lwith] the human swarms of insects." Egan, Tbe El Domrlo Tmil, 207; conclition." James D. Rudolph (ed.), Mexico: A Comti!J' Sti/(!J', On Traven, see B. Traven, The TrMS/Ire qftbe Sim'fl Foreign Area Studies, The American University, 1985 Jvfadrc (1935. Reprint. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); (n.p., n.cl.), map of i\Iexico's geography opposite pp. Ernst Schiirer and Philip Jenkins (eels.), B. Tmt:en: Life 84and 87. a11d lfVork (London: Pennsylvania State University 29 The film's treatment of the animal popularion of the Press, 1987). Sierra i\fadre Oriental resembles one miner's account of 27 Naremore, "Introduction," 21-22. In Gmifigbter the fauna he encountered-grizzlies, panthers, pumas, Natio11: Tbe iVI)'tb of !be Frontier i11 Tu;eJJtieth-CeJJtll')' and lions among them -while in me headwaters of Amen·c(/ (1992; New York: HarperPerennial, 1993,417- the Platte River on d1e way to d1e Colorado gold rush. 18), Richard Slotkin argues that each of the fum's The account is in Hogg, Lwtfor Gold, 41. locations represents a social and political system or 30 Graebner, Age rfDoHbt, 23 and prwim. option: "d1e city of T:1mpico, divided between 31 On New Age feminist spirituality, with its emphasis on unscrupulous wealthy capitalists (many of d1em interconnectedness rad1er d1an power and dominance, American) and me utterly immiserated poor; the and on d1e cosmos as a "living body," see J\{ary Farrell primitive pueblo, where a rough but simple justice Bednarowski, "The New Age i\Iovement and Feminist rules under d1e eye of a patriarchal mayor; d1e Spirituality: Overlapping Conversations at the End of wilderness mining camp, where no law exists but self- the Century," in James R. Lewis and J. Gordonl\ felton 70 2003 Mining HisiOI)' jolfmal

(eds.), Perspetlire.r 011 the X ew Age (Albany: State 36 The scene resonates with john 1-iusaon's recollection of University of New York Pre~s, 1992), especiaUy 172 his only "recurrent dream .. . one in which I'm ashamed and 175. of being broke and having to go to my father for 32 The "greed and gold" interpretation is found in Vmie(y money." John !Juston, A11 Opm Book (New York: (7 Jan. 1948), and in Bosley Crowther's review in the 1\lfred i\. Knopf, 1980), 5. j\'en, Y01k Times (24 Jan. 1948, I I :2). For the hisrory of 37 Laurence Urdang (ed.), 'l'be Rt~nrlom Ho11se DictiOJJ(II)' of humanity's lust for gold, see Hogg, Ltt.rljorGo/d. The tbe E11glisb Ltmg11nge (New York: Random House, thearrical rrailer is available in the "I Iumphrey Bogart 1968). Dana Polan, PoJJJer fllld Prmmoifl: I listOI)i CoUection" edition of the video version of The Trensmr Nmmtil'e, a11d thr / lmnim11 Ci11ema, /940-1950 (New qf thr Simn Madre (\XIarner Brothers, 1948 !Turner York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 12. Entertninment CompnnyJ). 38 Six of the films under discussion rreat native Indian The film's reflections on the desire for gold might populations in some Wll}'· The Indians are usually be understood ns n version of the mythic Spanish quest hostile and usually Apaches in the American described by historian David J. \'\Ieber in 1\[yth tmtl the Southwest. Sec the sketch map "Apache Country," I Iis!OI)' of !be I Iispa11ir Jo11thwest (the Calvin P. I lorn which defines Apache territory as roughly equivalent ro lecnares in Western History nnd Culture, University of Arizona, 1 ew Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua. Paul I. New i\fex.ico, 8-11 Nov. 1987; Albuquerque: University \'\leUman, Death i11the Dem1: The Fif!J' Years' Jlrmjor tbr of New i\lcxico Press, 1988). 1\ ccording to \'\Ieber (p. 4), Great J'olllfm,ut (1935; Lincoln: University of Nebraska even the rreasure sought by Corres and Pizarro had only Press, 1987), viii. While most films present a generic mytl1ic comenr. "This treasure," he writes, "existed "Apache" group, Apacbe Dmm.r (1950) features the only because of their imagining. Gold, the principal t\Icscalero 1\paches, led by ChiefVicrorio, who menaced commodity that the Spaniards valued, hnd no intrinsic wh.ites in the Southwest in the late 1870s, and tl1e value in and of itself. Unlike essential commodities, Apaches in Lttst for Gold are led by Coch.ise. The such as food or shelter, whatever value gold held for the Shoshone appear off screen in Ji/11er Rirer (1948). On Spaniards was the value they invested in it dlt'ough their Chi efVictorio, see WeUman, DMth i11 I be Desert, 162-63. own beliefs, or myths." When Howard argued in El t\ reviewer for the New Y01k Ti111es found the Oso Negro that gold's value was based on the labor narrator's closing assertion that the basic facts were true required ro find and mine it, he was presenting a very "somewhat optimistic," but he characterized the film different perspective. On one level, d1en, tl1e film as a "tense, intelligent, and often thrilling adventure." might be understood as a conflict between different Vnric!J•'s reviewer commented on the fil.m's twenty ideas or systems of value. million doUar giveaway "dwarfmg even radio's 33 Reviewer Bosley Crowther (1\Jm, Y01k Time.r, 24 Jan. fabulous handouts." A.W., Nn11 Yo1k Ti111es, 4 July 1948, II :2) describes the old timer as "the symbol of 1949,9:2. Vmie!J•,25 t\ fay 1949. substance, of philosophy and fatalism, in the film, as 39 The reference to "rop secret" is a nice touch from rhe well as an unrelenting image of personality and Cold War. strengtl1." While accurate, the description fai ls to 40 Graebner, Age of Do11bt, 125; Vannevar Bush, Scimce: captll!'e Howard's complex agenda. The E11dless Fro11tin: A Report to the President 34 1 arcmorc emphasizes lloward's "thearrical sense" in (Washington, D.C.: USGPO,July, 1945), 1, S-6. this and a later scene, set in a i\fexican village, in which 41 /{ope (1948); B.F. Skinner, llralrle11 Two (1948. Reprint. I Ioward min.isrers to an ill child. Naremore, 1 ew York: Macmillan, 1962). "Inrroduction," 27. 35 1\lfred C. Kinsey, \'\/ardell B. PomefO)', and Clyde E. i\1artin, Jex11al Bebm,iorin tbe H11111n11 Male (Philadelphia: \'\I.B. Saunders, 1948).