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Home , Al Clark (film editor), Be Cool, Cat Chaser, Dane Clark, Delmer Daves, Destination Tokyo

September 24, 2013 (XXVII:5) , 3:10 TO YUMA (1957, 92 min)

National Film Registry—2012

Directed by Delmer Daves Written by Halsted Welles (screenplay) and (story) Music by Cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr. Edited by

Glenn Ford...Ben Wade ...Dan Evans ...Emmy ...Charlie Prince

DELMER DAVES (director)(b. Delmer Lawrence Daves, July 24, 1904, , —d. August 17, 1977, La Jolla, California) Daves wrote 50 films, among them 1965 The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, 1964 Youngblood Hawke, 1963 Spencer's Alma, Michigan—d. January 24, 1990) wrote 44 films and Mountain, 1959 A Summer Place, 1957 An Affair to Remember television shows, including 1976 “Doctors' Hospital” (TV (screenplay), 1956 The Last Wagon (screenplay), 1955 White series), 1973-1974 “Kojak” (TV series), 1971-1973 “Rod Feather (screenplay), 1954 Beat (screenplay and story), Serling's Night Gallery” (TV series), 1969 “Mannix” (TV series), 1947 Dark Passage (screenplay), 1943 1966 “12 O'Clock High” (TV series), 1965-1966 “The (screenplay), 1943 Stage Door Canteen (screenplay), 1940 The Virginian” (TV series), 1959-1962 “ Presents” Farmer's Daughter (story), 1936 (TV series), 1960 “” (TV series), 1957 3:10 to Yuma (screenplay), 1932 Divorce in the Family (screenplay and story), (screenplay), 1957 “The George Sanders Mystery Theater” (TV and 1929 Queen Kelly. In addition to writing, Daves directed 30 series), 1957 “Playhouse 90” (TV series), 1955 “Lux Video films, including 1965 The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, 1964 Theatre” (TV series), and 1949 The Lady Gambles (adaptation). Youngblood Hawke, 1963 Spencer's Mountain, 1962 , 1961 , 1961 Parrish, 1959 A Summer ELMORE LEONARD (writer, story) (b. Elmore John Leonard Jr., Place, 1959 , 1958 , 1958 October 11, 1925, , —d. August 20, 2013, , 1958 Cowboy, 1957 3:10 to Yuma, 1956 The Bloomfield Township, Michigan) 43 films and television shows, Last Wagon, 1956 Jubal, 1954 , 1954 Demetrius and including 2013 Life of Crime (novel: The Switch), 2010-2014 the Gladiators, 1953 Never Let Me Go, 1953 Treasure of the “” (TV series, 53 episodes), 2012 Freaky Deaky (novel), Golden Condor, 1952 , 1951 Bird of 2009 Sparks (story), 2008 (novel), 2008 The Tonto Paradise, 1950 Broken Arrow, 1949 Task Force, 1949 A Kiss in Woman (story), 2008 “The 2007 Academy Award Nominated the Dark, 1948 , 1947 Dark Passage, 1947 The Red Short Films: Live Action,” 2007 3:10 to Yuma (short story), 2005 House, 1945 , 1944 , (novel), 2003-2004 “” (TV series), 2004 The 1944 The Very Thought of You, and 1943 Destination Tokyo. Big Bounce (novel), 1998 “” (TV series), 1998 (novel), 1997 (novel: ), HALSTED WELLES (writer, screenplay) (b. December 29, 1906, 1997 “” (TV movie) (novel), 1997 “” (TV

Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—2

movie) (book), 1997 Touch (novel), 1997 “Last Stand at Saber cinematographer for 113 films, including 1967 Oh Dad, Poor River” (TV movie) (novel), 1995 (novel), 1992 “Split Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, Images” (TV movie) (novel), 1990 Border Shootout (novel The 1965 A Rage to Live, 1964 Youngblood Hawke, 1964 Ensign Law at Randado), 1989 “Desperado: Badlands Justice” (TV Pulver, 1963 Spencer's Mountain, 1962 13 West Street, 1962 movie), 1989 (novel and screenplay), 1989 Rome Adventure, 1961 Two Rode Together, 1961 A Raisin in the “Desperado: The Outlaw Wars” (TV movie), 1988 “” (TV Sun, 1960 The Wackiest Ship in the Army, 1960 Comanche movie) (novel), 1988 “Desperado: Avalanche at Devil's Ridge” Station, 1960 Man on a String, 1959 The Gene Krupa Story, (TV movie), 1988 “The Return of Desperado” (TV movie), 1987 1958 The Last Hurrah, 1958 Cowboy, 1957 3:10 to Yuma, 1956 , 1987 “Desperado” (TV movie), 1986 52 Jubal, 1955 My Sister Eileen, 1955 The Long Gray Line, 1953 Pick-Up (novel and screenplay), 1985 Stick (novel and Miss Sadie Thompson, 1952 Paula, 1952 Boots Malone, 1951 screenplay), 1984 The Ambassador (novel: 52 Pick-Up), 1980 Man in the Saddle, 1951 Santa Fe, 1950 Kill the Umpire, 1949 “, Part II: The Return of Will Kane” (TV movie), Tokyo Joe, 1949 The Doolins of Oklahoma, 1947 The Lady from 1974 Mr. Majestyk, 1972 , 1971 Shanghai, 1947 Her Husband's Affairs, 1946 The Walls Came (novel), 1970 (novel and screenplay), 1969 Tumbling Down, 1946 Perilous Holiday, 1945 Brewster's (novel), 1967 (novel), 1957 3:10 to Millions, 1944 See Here, Private Hargrove, 1942 Joe Smith, Yuma (story), 1957 (story), and 1956 “Schlitz American, 1942 The Vanishing Virginian, 1941 Maisie Was a Playhouse” (TV series). In addition, he was the executive Lady, 1940 Hullabaloo, 1939 Nick Carter, Master Detective, and producer on 5 projects for TV and film, including 2010-2013 1937 My Dear Miss Aldrich. “Justified” (TV series), 2008 Killshot, 2005 Be Cool, and 1997 Jackie Brown. ...Ben Wade (b. Gwyllyn GEORGE DUNING Samuel Newton Ford, (original music) (b. May 1, 1916 Sainte- February 25, 1908, Christine-d'Auvergne, Richmond, Indiana—d. Portneuf, Québec, February 27, 2000, San Canada—d. August 30, Diego, California) was a 2006, Beverly Hills, Los member of music Angeles, California) departments on 264 film appeared in 109 films and and television projects, TV shows, including among them 2004 “Star 1991 “Final Verdict” (TV Trek New Voyages: movie), 1991 Raw Nerve, Phase II” (TV series), 1990 Border Shootout, 1997 “Law & Order” 1980 Day of (TV series), 1983 “Zorro Resurrection, 1979 The and Son” (TV series), 1980 “Top of the Hill” (TV movie), 1978 Visitor, 1978 Superman, 1976-1977 “Once an Eagle” (TV mini- “Child of Glass” (TV movie), 1978 “Walt Disney's Wonderful series, 7 episodes), 1976 Midway, 1975 “The Family Holvak” World of Color” (TV series), 1977 “The Father Knows Best (TV series, 10 episodes), 1971-1972 “Cade's County” (TV series, Reunion” (TV movie), 1975 “The Abduction of Saint Anne” (TV 24 episodes), 1966 Is Paris Burning?, 1965 The Money Trap, movie), 1971-1974 “The Partridge Family” (TV series, 23 1964 Fate Is the Hunter, 1964 Advance to the Rear, 1963 The episodes), 1971 “Black Noon” (TV movie), 1969 “Then Came Courtship of Eddie's Father, 1962 The Four Horsemen of the Bronson” (TV series), 1967-1968 “Star Trek” (TV series), 1964 Apocalypse, 1961 Pocketful of Miracles, 1958 Cowboy, 1957 “Slattery's People” (TV series), 1963 Toys in the Attic, 1963 Don't Go Near the Water, 1957 3:10 to Yuma, 1956 The Island of Love, 1961 Sail a Crooked Ship, 1960 The World of Teahouse of the August Moon, 1956 The Fastest Gun Alive, 1956 Suzie Wong, 1960 Let No Man Write My Epitaph, 1960 All the Jubal, 1955 Blackboard Jungle, 1954 Human Desire, 1953 The Young Men, 1959 The Wreck of the Mary Deare, 1959 The Last Big Heat, 1951 The Redhead and the Cowboy, 1946 Gilda, 1942 Angry Man, 1958 Bell Book and Candle, 1958 Cowboy, 1957 The Adventures of Martin Eden, 1940 Men Without Souls, and , 1957 Jeanne Eagels, 1957 3:10 to Yuma, 1940 Convicted Woman. 1956 Storm Center, 1955 Picnic, 1955 My Sister Eileen, 1955 The Man from Laramie, 1955 The Long Gray Line, 1953 Salome, VAN HEFLIN...Dan Evans (b. Emmett Evan Heflin Jr., 1953 Last of the Comanches, 1951 The Barefoot Mailman, 1951 December 13, 1910, Walters, Oklahoma—d. July 23, 1971, Lorna Doone, 1950 Harriet Craig, 1949 Jolson Sings Again, Hollywood, , California) won the 1943 Academy 1949 The Doolins of Oklahoma, 1949 Johnny Allegro, 1947 Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Johnny Eager Johnny O'Clock, 1946 The Jolson Story, 1945 Eadie Was a Lady, (1941). He appeared in 66 films and TV movies, including 1971 1944 Kansas City Kitty, and 1943 Around the World. “The Last Child” (TV movie), 1970 “Neither Are We Enemies” (TV movie), 1970 Airport, 1969 The Big Bounce, 1967 The Man CHARLES LAWTON JR. (cinematography, director of Outside, 1966 Stagecoach, 1965 Once a Thief, 1965 The photography) (b. April 6, 1904, Los Angeles, California—d. Greatest Story Ever Told, 1960 Under Ten Flags, 1959 They July 11, 1965, Pacific Palisades, California) was the Came to Cordura, 1958 Tempest, 1958 Gunman's Walk, 1957 Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—3

3:10 to Yuma, 1956 Patterns, 1955 Battle Cry, 1953 Shane, 1952 The family’s intimate involvement with history My Son John, 1951 Tomahawk, 1949 Madame Bovary, 1947 continued into Delmer Daves’ generation—before he was a year Green Dolphin Street, 1947 Possessed, 1946 The Strange Love of old he and his parents were evacuated from San Francisco by Martha Ivers, 1941 Johnny Eager, 1940 Santa Fe Trail, and refugee train after the great earthquake of 1905. The family 1937 The Outcasts of Poker Flat. settled in Los Angeles, where Daves made his movie debut at the age of ten in a movie starring the future director Robert Z. FELICIA FARR...Emmy (b. Olive Dines, October 4, 1932, Leonard. Occasional bit parts followed during his years at Los Westchester County, New York) appeared in 41 films and TV Angeles public schools and at Polytechnic High School, but at shows, including 1986 That's Life!, 1975 “Harry O” (TV series), that period Daves planned a career in civil engineering. By the 1973 Charley Varrick, 1971 Kotch, 1967 The Venetian Affair, time he left the Polytechnic he had changed his mind, and went 1964 Kiss Me, Stupid, 1964 “Burke's Law” (TV series), 1964 north to to study law. “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (TV series), 1963 “Bonanza” (TV Daves worked his way through Stanford as a draftsman series), 1962 Ben Casey (TV series), 1960 “Naked City” (TV (for the city of Palo Alto), illustrator, and poster designer, and as series), 1960 “Zane Grey Theater” (TV series), 1957 3:10 to a teacher of drawing and lettering. He also somehow found time Yuma, 1956 “The Ford Television Theatre” (TV series), 1956 to act in many student productions and to serve as director and Reprisal!, 1956 Jubal, and 1955 Big House, U.S.A. business manager of the drama society and manager of the glee club. In his graduate year he was a much-praised Macbeth. By RICHARD JAECKEL...Charlie Prince (b. Richard Hanley the time he left Stanford in 1926 or 1927 he had a degree in law Jaeckel, October 10, 1926, Long Beach, Long Island, New but very little interest in it. He took a three-month vacation, York—d. June 14, 1997, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California) appeared in 187 films and TV shows, among them1989-1994 “Baywatch” (TV series, 29 episodes), 1991 “China Beach” (TV series), 1990 Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection, 1989 Ghetto Blaster, 1987 “Murder, She Wrote” (TV series), 1985-1987 “Spenser: For Hire” (TV series, 47 episodes), 1985 “: Next Mission” (TV movie), 1984 Starman, 1984 The Fix, 1983 “At Ease” (TV series, 14 episodes), 1982 Airplane II: The Sequel, 1982 Cold River, 1982 “King's Crossing” (TV series), 1981 ...All the Marbles, 1976- 1981 “Little House on the Prairie” (TV series), 1980 “Reward” (TV movie), 1979 “Salvage 1” (TV series, 13 episodes), 1977 Twilight's Last Gleaming, 1976 “Baretta” (TV series), 1976 “Joe Forrester” (TV series), 1975 “Ellery Queen” (TV series), 1975 The Kill, 1975 “Cannon” (TV series), 1975 The Drowning Pool, 1963-1975 “” (TV series), 1973 & Billy wandering among the Hopi and Navajo Indians of the South- the Kid, 1972 Ulzana's Raid, 1970 Sometimes a Great Notion, West, and then joined the Pasadena Playhouse, along with fellow 1970 , 1967 The Dirty Dozen, 1962 “Have Gun - Will alumnus Lloyd Nolan. Soon afterwards, deciding that his heart Travel” (TV series), 1960 “The Untouchables” (TV series), 1959 was after all in the movies, he left his friend behind and joined “Naked City” (TV series), 1958 The Naked and the Dead, 1958 the director as an assistant property boy. Cowboy, 1957 3:10 to Yuma, 1957 “Playhouse 90” (TV series), A husky young man, six feet two inches tall, Daves 1952 Come Back, Little Sheba, 1952 Hoodlum Empire, 1952 My made himself exceptionally useful around the old Metropolitan Son John, 1950 , 1949 , 1949 lot. He first attracted notice by helping out the ailing property Battleground, and 1943 Diary. man by lifting a piano singlehanded, and soon showed such various talents as a bit-part actor, stuntman, poster designer and From World Film Directors Volume I. Editor John Wakeman. deviser of special effects that Cruze began to take an interest in The H.W. Wilson Company, N&Y, 1987 him. When Daves said that his ambition was to direct, Cruze started him on his way by letting him help out in the cutting Delmer (Lawrence) Daves, American director, scenarist, actor, room under Mildred Johnson. and producer, was born in San Francisco, the son of Arthur In 1928, when Cruze went to MGM, he took Daves Lawrence Daves, a businessman, and the former Nan Funge. along with him. Daves was promoted to technical director on the Daves’ grandfather had emigrated from Ireland during the college movie The Duke Steps Out (1929) because he (unlike American Civil War, in which he fought for the Union. After the Cruze) had actually been to college. The same film brought him war he made two wagon treks with the Mormons and at their his first important acting assignment. Dissatisfied with the puny invitation settled in Salt Lake City. There he went into the freight physique of the actor cast as campus boxing champion (and as wagon business, transporting army supplies from Utah and ’s temporary boyfriend), Cruze gave the role to Colorado to Santa Fe, . He also rode with the Pony Daves. Express and had his heel shot away by the Ute Indians. Daves’ Daves also had Cruze to thank for his first assignment grandmother was born in California in 1854, two months after as scenarist. Campus movies were then very much in vogue, and her mother had crossed by covered wagon. the MGM director wanted to make the first college Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—4

talkie. Cruze sent his young protégé to Wood, who asked him for There is a good deal of sentimentality also in The Very a story idea. Daves had no idea how to submit his material and Thought of You (1944), in which ’s wartime handed Wood a twenty-page scenario scribbled in pencil on marriage to , stifled by her possessive family, is yellow paper. The director read it anyway, and liked it so well rescued by the arrival of a baby. However, in his two-part article that he put Daves on the payroll of the MGM script department. about Daves in Films and Filming (April and May 1963), So This Is College (1930), which introduced Robert Montgomery Richard Whitehall wrote that this movie’s “long searching look: and Elliott Nugent, was a hit, and Daves subsequently worked on at the American family was refreshingly free from the clichés of the scripts of Harry Pollard’s shipmates (1931) and George Hill’s the genre: “Daves portrays the family as a trap from which the Clear All Wires(1932). Daves also acted in So This Is College young should endeavor to escape….The idea of the family as an and Shipmates but thereafter confined himself to writing— octopus with tenacious tentacles strangling the initiative of the reportedly at the earnest request of Ward Bond, who complained young is a recurrent theme in the early Daves films.” that Daves always got the roles that would otherwise have been Hollywood Canteen (1944), a star-stuffed wartime his. musical, was followed by The Pride of the Marines (1945), In 1933 Daves quit MGM and took a vacation—a written by . It tells the story of (John bicycle tour of Europe. He returned to Hollywood the following Garfield), a young Philadelphian who joins the Marines, fights year and joined Warner Brothers, working as a scenarist or heroically at Guadalcanal, is blinded by a grenade, and then has coscenarist of a string of Dick Powell musicals directed by Lloyd to fight even more bravely to come to terms with his disability. Bacon, , and Mervyn Le Roy, and also on Archie As in Destination Tokyo, there is a certain amount of Mayo’s excellent thriller The embarrassing rhetoric about the Petrified Forest (1936). After American way of life, but there that Daves turned free-lance, are also some pointed attacks earning credits on two more on racial and religious bigotry Dick Powell vehicles and on an (involving Schmid’s Jewish assortment of other movies, buddy, played by ). including Leo McCarey’s The movie received a comedy drama Love Affair good deal of praise, especially (1939) and Borzage’s Stage for the family scenes at the Door Canteen (1943) None of beginning and the action these pictures was particularly sequences. William R. Meyer distinguished, but Daves was wrote that Daves had “use the enjoying life—he worked nine technique of double printing months a year, traveled for the with a sixty percent positive other three, and (until he married the actress Mary Lou Lender in and forty percent negative image to evoke the horror of a grenade 1938) was a much sought-after Hollywood bachelor. When the exploding in Schmid’s face,” and called the night battle chance to direct came his way in 1943, he was far from eager to “agonizingly real.” James Agee remained relatively unmoved, accept the challenge. finding the picture “long-drawn-out and never inspired, but very The opportunity presented itself when Daves went back respectably honest and dogged, thanks considerably, it appears to to Warner Brothers to write (in collaboration with Albert Maltz) Albert Maltz’s script.” a submarine drama called Destination Tokyo. The film was to be Daves wrote The Red House himself, introducing in his made with the cooperation of the navy, and in the interests of murderous farmer (Edward G. Robinson) a figure that has authenticity, the writers were asked to spend some time in a recurred in his films—one whose consuming egocentricity makes submarine at sea. By the time the scenario was completed, Jack him a force for evil and destruction. This “powerful mood-piece” Warner realized that Daves knew more about submarine warfare was followed by Dark Passage (1947), also scripted by Daves. It than anyone else on the lot, and asked him to direct the picture. stars as Vincent Parry, a San Quentin lifer Daves demurred, pointing out that as a writer he didn’t get wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. He escapes, and, aided ulcers, but Warner and the producer finally prevailed. by Irene (), a San Francisco socialite who believes Destination Tokyo (1943) stars as in him, undergoes plastic surgery to alter his appearance. After commander of the submarine Copperfin, struggling to cope not trying but failing to bring the real killer to justice, Parry escapes only with the hazards of war, but with the presence on board of a with Irene to South America. The first part of the film—until womanizing troublemaker (). The result was Parry emerges from the surgeon’s bandages looking like praised for some well-handled moments of tension and a Bogart—was shot “subjectively” with a hand-held camera (a generally “firm control of character and situation,” but some captured German Arriflex). reviewers thought it too long (at 135 minutes) and marred by William R. Meyer called Daves’ script “a winding, sentimentality and intrusive patriotic rhetoric. James Agee wrote often hysterical narrative, offering weak motivations,” but that it “combines a good deal of fairly exciting submarine admired the supporting performances of Clifton Young (a warfare with at least as much human interest, which I found blackmailer), Tom D’Andrea (a taxi driver), and Agnes neither very human nor…very interesting.” Others were more Moorehead. For Richard Whitehall, however, this was a “minor impressed, however, and the picture did well enough at the box masterpiece” reminiscent of early Fritz Lang, and “one of the office to establish Daves in his new role as a director. most extraordinary American films of the late forties,” Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—5

distinguished by “meticulous observation of background detail” Up to a point Drum Beat reverses the argument of and of minor characters: “All the people Parry meets, whether Broken Arrow, taking the point of view of the white settlers. friend or enemy, are beautifully realized, and the whole work has …The drift of the film is not against the Modocs as a whole— an exhilarating compactness and freedom.” they are shown to be generally peaceable and honorable—but against the appeasement of a treacherous renegade. Some To the Victor (1948)…Task Force (1949)…and the commentators saw analogies between events in the film and the banal comedy A Kiss in the Dark (1949), were Daves’ last films Cold War, though Daves said that he had not intended this as a contract director for Warner Brothers. connection…. Moving on to Twentieth-Century-Fox, Daves made his A less reflective but more exciting film followed, The first Western. Broken Arrow (1950), adapted by Michael Last Wagon (1956)—a “revenge Western” that becomes a Blankfort from Elliott Arnold’s novel Blood Brother. Sickened “journey Western” as an embittered loner () by the ’ pointless and bloody war with the Apaches, leads the survivors of an Apache raid back to civilization. And the liberal ex-soldier () takes his life 3:10 to Yuma (1957) has been classified as yet another species of in his hands and opens peace negotiations with the chief the genre—a “chamber Western,” in which much of the action (). The attempt is at least temporarily successful, takes place indoors. Holed up together in a hotel room are Ben and when the treaty is broken, it is not by the Indians. In the Wade (Glenn Ford), a much-feared outlaw, and a decent farmer interim, Jeffords is briefly and idyllically married to the Apache named Dan Evans (Van Heflin) who has undertaken to deliver maiden Sonseeahray (Debra Wade to Yuma Penitentiary and Paget). who knows that Wade’s gang is Broken Arrow was gathering outside. one of the first Westerns to Evans accepts the show the American Indian in a assignment because it will earn sympathetic light and to him the money to save his farm, portray love between an Indian but he gradually comes to realize and a white. Drawing on his that he is fighting also for such own family connections with imponderables as peace and the Southwest and his decency. He pursues his wanderings as a young man apparently suicidal but morally among the Indians of that correct course out of an almost region, Daves made a film in fatalistic sense of necessity, and which his respect for the in this resembles the heroes of Apaches shines through, as Richard Whitehall wrote, “in his other “adult” Westerns of the 1950s. like High Noon, The sympathetic treatment of Cochise and his understanding and Gunfighter, and ’s “Renown” cycle. 3:10 to poetic treatment of Indian ceremonials and customs, particularly Yuma was shot by Charles Laughton Jr. in black and white, red the wedding ceremony with its beautiful marriage poem” and in filters being used in the outdoor sequences to intensify the “the lovely low-angled shots as Tom Jeffords and Sonseearay impression of a parched and hostile terrain. It was much admired enter their marriage wickiup….Although it is not a great for its photography, its “wonderfully visual use of shadows for Western, it is one of the loveliest, with its beautiful color dramatic effect,” and its adroit balance of action, irony, and photography by Ernest Palmer.” allegory. The picture brought Chandler an Oscar nomination for Cowboy (1958), based on Frank Harris’ account of his his performance and Daves a Directors Guild Prize. It was a disillusioning experiences as a young easterner in the Old West, commercial success and ushered in an era of “adult” and was a more ambitious but less satisfying film, shot by Lawton in “socially significant” Westerns. William K. Everson has written color and cinemascope and starring and Glenn that Broken Arrow, “while it may have been prompted by the Ford. Daves made two more Westerns after that—Badlanders controversial but commercially successful race problem…films (1958), a translation to of W.R. Burnett’s The Asphalt of the 1940s managed the rare movie trick of making a social Jungle, and The Hanging Tree (1959) with , Maria comment without overloading the scales. The side issues of Schell, and . The ulcers that Daves regarded as the Broken Arrow were rapidly commercialized to the hilt…[and] its director’s lot finally got him during the filming of the latter, and controlled documentary qualities were also copied shamelessly the shooting was completed from his sketches by Karl Malden. by many lesser Westerns. But the original film was good enough None of Daves’ later pictures was of much merit. Most to survive even this subsequent exploitation; it was and is a of them were rather turgid romances that he wrote and produced warm, poignant, and often poetic film.” as well as directed. He made his last picture in 1965 and, until his A succession of bad or mediocre studio assignments death twelve years later, went on trying to generate new projects followed….It was not until 1954 that Daves was able to make a through his Diamond D Production Company….Daves was more personal movie, the Warner Brothers Western Drum Beat, described as “one of the happiest men in Hollywood” and “one scripted by the director and based on contemporary accounts of of the best-liked directors,” open and easy-going. … the United Sates’ war with the Modoc Indians of the California- Richard Whitehall called Daves “the documentarist of Oregon border in the 1870s. the Western film” and wrote that “few directors have caught so exactly the flavour of bleak, wooden constructions and sterile Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—6

dust of the shack-town of the desert or have tried to set their setting. It’s interesting to consider their dissimilarities in light of characters so firmly as part of a working community. the frequently repeated story that Hawks said he made Rio Bravo (1959) as a corrective to both Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) and Daves’s 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Daves’s film, in many ways patterned after High Noon (ticking-clock western suspense within a compact time frame, a brooding and endlessly repeated theme song, stark black-and-white imagery), features a protagonist who is almost overcome by inner conflicts. For Hawks, such a hero was unthinkable. His best movies, including Rio Bravo, feature aristocratic circles of the confident and able, from which the self-doubting are barred. Even ’s recovering alcoholic deputy in that film is innately skilled—he just doesn’t think he is. For that reason, Hawks’s film, which also features a captured criminal whose friends are coming to get him, is not a suspense story at all but, as many have pointed out, a relaxed and endlessly digressive interval spent with a group of pals. Kent Jones: 3:10 to Yuma: Curious Distances (Criterion In auteurist lore, 3:10 to Yuma has always come out on Notes): the losing end of this comparison—Rio Bravo is bravely, Many of Delmer Daves’s films are beloved today, but to say that idiosyncratically “pragmatic,” while the Daves film is merely, he remains a misunderstood and insufficiently appreciated figure and fashionably, “psychological.” But that is to understand the in the history of American movies is a rank understatement. matter only as Hawks did. He watched Daves’s film, recognized Daves was at once a true artist, a western specialist, and a nothing but the antitheses of his own predilections, and reacted Hollywood pro whose work was respected by insiders but accordingly. But to see 3:10 to Yuma only as Hawks did is hardly received little in the way of official recognition. Unlike, say, to see it at all. It amounts to much more than a “psychological Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray or , directors western,” and more even than a “suspense classic,” as it has been whose careers afford rough parallels to that of Daves, he was not validated by official film culture. It is, as Bertrand Tavernier has reclaimed by auteurism, the strain of film criticism that written, a “magnificent parable of liberty”—as well as a moving originated in as the “politique des auteurs” and flowered depiction of a marriage at a crossroads, a fascinating study in here in the United States as the “auteur theory.” In fact, Daves ambiguity, and one of the most visually striking of all westerns. could be counted as one of its casualties. On many levels, 3:10 to Yuma stands alone in the genre and, I In the grand reconsiderations of our national cinema that think, in American cinema. were written between the 1950s and 1970s, Daves was tagged as An extremely terse 1953 Elmore Leonard story a nature lover, a Hollywood naïf, a purveyor of the conventional. provided the basis for the film. A deputy sheriff brings a prisoner In large part, this was due to the fact that he simply did not fit the to a hotel room in Contention City, Arizona, where they remain auteurist mold of the subversive maverick injecting notes of until it’s time to walk through a gauntlet of the prisoner’s armed unease, distress, and irrationality into otherwise conformist gang to the 3:10 train bound for the federal prison in Yuma. The narratives, under the eyes of nervous studio heads and watchful question of why the deputy risks his life for the paltry sum of censors. He was drawn to the bonds between people rather than $150 a month goes unanswered. Leonard himself was initially the divisions, to friendship and love rather than discord and disappointed that it did not remain so in the film version. This ven-geance. He was very good at dramatizing destructive urges would have been a tall order: the mystery of the deputy’s and behaviors, embodied by secondary characters who shadow motivation is made possible by the intense narrative compression the paths of his honorable protagonists, and no filmmaker had a of the story and would have been difficult to sustain throughout a richer feeling for the aching loneliness of western life. feature-length running time. (In the intervening years, Leonard Nonetheless, there is a consistent and coherent sense throughout has reversed his opinion of the Daves film and now considers it Daves’s films of the world as essentially and innately one of the best adaptations of his writing, along with Budd benevolent; he was one of the only American filmmakers outside Boetticher’s 1957 The Tall T.) of the avant-garde to work with a genuinely transcendentalist “Three-Ten to Yuma” was adapted by Halsted Welles, spirit and outlook, no matter that it was filtered through the who had a long career in radio drama and television but died with commercial demands of Hollywood moviemaking. This places only five film credits to his name, including Daves’s 1959 his perspective as far from the glad-handing optimism of truly The Hanging Tree and ’s 1967 Civil War western A conformist film-making as darker sensibilities like those of Ray, Time for Killing. Welles and Daves (who, having worked as a Mann, or Hawks. screenwriter before he began directing, always did a “director’s A comparison between Daves and Hawks is particularly polish” on scripts for his pictures, even when he wasn’t credited illuminating. Daves was a filmmaker of grand rhetorical with writing them) made some interesting choices based on the gestures; Hawks was not. Daves was passionately interested in sparse information provided by Leonard, not only filling out the landscape and history, Hawks in neither. Daves was a characters but actually deepening them. In the story, the prisoner fundamentally openhearted artist of the natural world; Hawks’s complains that it’s going to and asks the deputy to close the sensibility was sleek, sophisticated, and urban, whatever the window in the hotel room. In the film, the question of rain Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—7

becomes a key dramatic element. There’s a drought, and the relatively brief period, perhaps only a third of the movie, but her hero, now a rancher named Dan Evans, is desperate for cash, early moments with Heflin and the scene in which she and her which is why he agrees to risk his life by guarding the prisoner, family share their dinner table with Ford set the tone for the film. Ben Wade—it is also why Wade never stops attempting to bribe Her character amounts to much more than a mirror of her Evans with increasingly large sums. Thus, in the film, Wade asks husband’s insecurities or his moral bedrock—these are genuine Evans to open the window because it’s so hot outside. In the one-to-one transactions in which the shifting emotions passing story, the deputy refers to his wife and children, but in the film, across their open and visibly careworn faces have been as we come face-to-face with Evans’s family, and so does Wade. In attentively cultivated and integrated into the texture of the the story, there is a flash of kinship between guard and prisoner, images and the action as in a late Bergman movie. which is expanded and compellingly complicated in the film— And then there’s Wade, the privileged witness to this giving rise to the enigma of Wade’s generosity at the final, couple’s most intimate emotions. The term “morally ambiguous” crucial moment. Welles and Daves also made a fascinating and has been employed a little too often over the past two decades, little-remarked change that renders the entire question of Wade’s but it certainly fits this charming outlaw who shoots down two moral character more complex. In the story, a member of the men, including one of his own, and doesn’t even stop for a prisoner’s gang has shot and killed a stagecoach driver during a breath; who is prone to romantic reveries and expressions of holdup. At the very beginning of the film, we witness that tenderness; who shifts in the blink of an eye from the affable to holdup, as do Evans and his sons. the mercenary and back again. When the driver pulls a gun on Ford and Daves had already the gang member who is taking found a common wavelength the money from th e strongbox, in Jubal (1956), and they Wade shoots his own man created something even more (presumably reckoning that he’s a refined and surprising here goner anyway), then the driver, with Wade, a remorse-less and then gets back to business. murderer with a capacity for Daves originally offered awe. Critic David Thomson the role of Evans to Glenn Ford, has complained that the film who chose instead to play Wade, suffers from Ford’s “inability supposedly because he had been to be nasty,” but that is pretty advised as a young man by John much the point: goodness and Barrymore to never turn down mercy often arrive the part of the villain. Daves responded with the equally unannounced in this film, and come as a surprise even to those unorthodox casting of Van Heflin as Evans. Heflin was an who bestow them. interesting actor, a soft and often genuinely unappealing presence 3:10 to Yuma is not just a penetrating character study who specialized in characters either gnawed by doubt and guilt or but a vision anchored by Daves’s understanding, as a westerner haunted by the specter of humiliation. Ford, on the other hand, himself, of life in the West, as well as his sharp graphic sense. He radiates ease, confidence, and charisma as Wade. Not only does shot the film in Arizona in winter, in Elgin, Willcox, Texas the casting up the ante of the cat-and-mouse, war-of-nerves Canyon, and Old Tucson—a movie studio built outside Tucson exchanges between Wade and Evans but it also immediately and used as a setting for many westerns—and farther north in points the film in a more surprising direction. Sedona. “On 3:10 to Yuma, the moment the sun rose and broke Daves took a lean western tale and fashioned out of it a the horizon, I’d be aiming right at it,” he explained to writer spiritual suspense story about a trio—a husband, a wife, and their Christopher Wicking in a 1969 interview. “We got beautiful improbable observer. The film plants seeds of doubt between long, long shadows. It’s not possible to get that effect in the Dan and his wife, Alice ()—he imagines that she is summer.” Daves wanted deep, rich blacks in the images, to questioning his manhood and his ability to provide, and that she reflect his own memories of drought condi-tions in the region, an has been charmed by Wade. We in turn study Alice’s face for effect heightened by the unusual use of red filters (his signs of apprehension and disquiet, and sense that the two of cameraman, Charles “Buddy” Lawton Jr., had pursued similar them have been down this road before; we can see their high-contrast black-and-white imagery with Orson Welles in exhaustion, that it is close to the edge of desperation. We can 1947’s The Lady from Shanghai), and he had to go to Columbia also see that Wade is visibly moved by Alice, and we wonder head Harry Cohn to make his case. The result is a western that when and in what form this sentiment will manifest itself. looks like no other, the texture of its images alternately stark and The core of 3:10 to Yuma is a marriage, not an idealized lustrous, enhancing the loneliness of houses, animals, and human marriage but something like an actual one, with its wearinesses figures against the endlessly flat earth and wide-open skies. and projections of fear, its longings and its renewals. Heflin’s This loneliness, felt inside and out, is the emotional Evans is often mindlessly grouped with his beleaguered rancher corner-stone of the film. It is behind the lovely interlude in which in Shane (1953) or his man-with-a-dishonorable-past in Act of Wade and Felicia Farr’s Contention City barmaid, Emmy, talk Violence (1948), but this is a different kind of character, a each other into bed for a stolen hour, and speak after the fact as if nuanced creation shuttling between fatigue, rattled stoicism, and they were already each other’s distant memories. It is behind the bursts of nervous upset, and Heflin’s finest moments are his curious distances between people, the sense of lives lived at a quietly barbed exchanges with Dana. She is on-screen for a remove from those of others. And it informs the beauty and Daves—3:10 TO YUMA—8

power of those remarkably expressive high-angle boom shots for doing it by instinct half the time, slowly, slowly, but now which Daves became known, and which are a particular soaring,” Daves explained. “If you do it that way, you do it characteristic of this film’s signature. according to feeling.” At one moment, the boom is akin to a Daves considered himself a pioneer of the boom, and he silent benediction on the characters, carrying their hopes aloft; at designed his own special rig. “Other booms always had to be on another, it is used to underscore the force of a pack of riders an angle,” he told Wicking, “but our boom goes straight up in the cutting through limitless spaces; and in the final scene, the boom air like a telephone pole, and you can figuratively shoot all takes the camera soaring with Alice’s joy. It’s an appropriate around.” Daves used the boom in many of his films for the ending for a film in which the spiritual education of the three “poetic image,” but in 3:10 to Yuma, it becomes a vitally principal characters is not a by-product or a subtext but at once important creative instrument—to paraphrase critic Fred Camper its central motor, its force, and its final destination. By the time it on Robert Mulligan, it allows Daves to emotionalize space. “I’m reaches its end, Daves’s film has nowhere to go but up.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2013 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXVII: October 1 Kon Ichikawa Fires on the Plain 1959 October 8 Peter Bogdanovich The Last Picture Show 1971 October 15 Sidney Lumet Network 1976 October 22 Bruce Jackson & Diane Christian Death Row 1979 October 29 Jim Jarmusch Dead Man 1995 November 5 Pedro Almodóvar Talk to Her 2002 November 12 Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York 2008 November 19 Wim Wenders Pina 2011 November 26 Baz Luhrmann The Great Gatsby 2013 The online PDF files of these handouts have color images

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Delmer Daves and Peter Fonda, Sun Valley, 1976. Photo by BJ