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HOLLYWOOD's WEST: the American Frontier in Film, Television, And o HOLLYWOOD’S WEST WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 1 8/31/05, 4:52 PM This page intentionally left blank HOLLYWOOD’S WEST The American Frontier in o Film, Television, and History EDITED BY PETER C. ROLLINS JOHN E. O’CONNOR THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 3 8/31/05, 4:52 PM Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2005 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508–4008 www.kentuckypress.com 0908070605 54321 “Challenging Legends, Complicating Border Lines: The Concept of ‘Frontera’ in John Sayles’s Lone Star” © 2005 by Kimberly Sultze. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hollywood’s West : The American frontier in film, television, and history / edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-2354-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Western films—United States—History and criticism. 2. Western television programs—United States. I. O'Connor, John E. II. Rollins, Peter C. PN1995.9.W4A44 2005 791.436'278--dc22 2005018026 This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 4 8/31/05, 4:52 PM To two great heroes on the intellectual frontier who have inspired the coeditors for decades: ALAN HEIMERT (1928–1999) Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Harvard University and E. JAMES FERGUSON (1917–2002) Professor of History Queens College and the Graduate Center of City University of New York WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 5 8/31/05, 4:52 PM This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface Ray Merlock ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. The West, Westerns, and American Character John E. O’Connor and Peter C. Rollins 1 PART ONE. EARLY SOUND ERA WESTERNS, 1931–1939 Chapter 1. The New Western History in 1931: RKO and the Challenge of Cimarron J. E. Smyth 37 Chapter 2. Tradition, Parody, and Adaptation: Jed Buell’s Unconventional West Cynthia J. Miller 65 Chapter 3. The Lone Ranger: Adult Legacies of a Juvenile Western John Shelton Lawrence 81 PART TWO. THE POST–WORLD WAR II WESTERN, 1945–1956 Chapter 4. Wee Willie Winkie Goes West: The Influence of the British Empire Genre on Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy Kathleen A. McDonough 99 Chapter 5. Beyond the River: Women and the Role of the Feminine in Howard Hawks’s Red River John Parris Springer 115 WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 7 8/31/05, 4:52 PM VIII o CONTENTS Chapter 6. The “Ache for Home”: Assimilation and Separatism in Anthony Mann’s Devil’s Doorway Joanna Hearne 126 Chapter 7. Giant Helps America Recognize the Cost of Discrimination: A Lesson of World War II Monique James Baxter 160 PART THREE. THE COLD WAR WESTERN, 1950–1981 Chapter 8. Rewriting High Noon: Transformations in American Popular Political Culture during the Cold War, 1952–1968 Matthew J. Costello 175 Chapter 9. Almost Angels, Almost Feminists: Women in The Professionals Winona Howe 198 Chapter 10. Cowboys and Comedy: The Simultaneous Deconstruction and Reinforcement of Generic Conventions in the Western Parody Matthew R. Turner 218 PART FOUR. THE POSTMODERNIST WESTERN, 1980–2000 Chapter 11. Historical Discourse and American Identity in Westerns since the Reagan Era Alexandra Keller 239 Chapter 12. Challenging Legends, Complicating Border Lines: The Concept of “Frontera” in John Sayles’s Lone Star Kimberly Sultze 261 Chapter 13. Turner Network Television’s Made-for-TV Western Films: Engaging Audiences through Genre and Themes David Pierson 281 Filmography John Shelton Lawrence 300 Bibliography Jack Nachbar and Ray Merlock 322 Contributors 345 Index 351 WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 8 8/31/05, 4:52 PM o Ray Merlock PREFACE The Western obviously means different things to different people. To some, it conjures a sense of nostalgia, memories of Saturday afternoons at the downtown picture show, where a kid could get popcorn, a soft drink, and candy for a dime, or a quarter, or seventy-five cents (depending on the decade) and cheer Gene, Roy, Hoppy, Durango, or any number of hard-riding heroes. For others, the Western brings to mind Sunday nights with the family, watching Bonanza (NBC, 1959–1973) on a new color TV. To filmmakers and production students, the Western must be cited as one of the building blocks of filmmaking, a genre possibly as old as moving pictures, cameras, screens, and projectors. The Great Train Robbery (1903) helped establish cinematic terminology and narrative possibility. Orson Welles, in preparation for directing Citizen Kane (1941), acknowledged screening John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) over and over (once stating he watched it more than forty times, on another occasion stating he viewed it so many times he lost count), always with different technicians enabling him to inquire how this was done or why Ford chose to do a shot or scene that way. Film schools for decades used (and still use) a documentary on editing entitled Interpretation and Values: The Filming of a Sequence from the Television Series Gunsmoke (28 min., 1958) to clarify the concepts of “establishing shot,” “master shot,” “inserts,” and “cut-ins and cutaways” and the varied ways a scene can be assembled, thereby instilling in the minds of would-be filmmakers a primal connection of Westerns to filmmaking. To discerning critics, historians, and fans, the Western undeniably includes some of the finest motion pictures ever made, remaining for decades a preferred genre for directors, producers, and stars central to American—even to world— WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 9 8/31/05, 4:52 PM X o PREFACE Clint Eastwood, frontier icon, in Hang ’em High. cinema. The American Film Institute’s (AFI) List of the Top 100 American Movies of the Twentieth Century, compiled and released at the turn of the millennium, included nine Westerns—no. 33, High Noon; no. 50, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; no. 63, Stagecoach; no. 69, Shane; no. 75, Dances with Wolves; no. 88, The Wild Bunch; no. 82, Giant; no. 96, The Searchers; and no. 98, Unforgiven—while several others on the list (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Midnight Cowboy, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, and Raiders of the Lost Ark) obviously are informed by and owe debts to the iconography and themes of Westerns. And it is the Western that has been the source of introspection and insight for a considerable portion of what has become landmark film and cultural criticism, including Robert Warshow’s essay “The Westerner,” André Bazin’s “Le Western,” and the other extraordinary scholarly contributions discussed by Peter Rollins and John O’Connor in the introduction to this collection. To other observers, though, the Western currently exists primarily as a curiosity, a once popular, once fashionable, once immensely profitable form of entertainment that wore out, exhausted its possibilities, and has, except for isolated reappearances, more or less vanished. Coinciding with (perhaps even contributing to) the appraisal of the Western as a relic are suggestions that the WEST*FrontMtr.pmd 10 8/31/05, 4:52 PM PREFACE o XI genre’s decay and demise resulted from its manifesting (indeed, perhaps even celebrating) destructive and damaging tendencies and practices of American culture. In the documentary Sam Peckinpah’s West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade (2004), when questioned about director Peckinpah’s classic Western film The Wild Bunch (1969), Paul Schrader, an admirer, fan, and himself a screenwriter-director of violent fare, acknowledged what he felt to be Peckinpah’s ultimate understanding of and approach to the Western: “I know it’s an anachronism. I know it’s fascist. I know it’s sexist. I know it’s evil and out of date. But, God help me, I love it so.” What Schrader may be suggesting is that, by the late 1960s, Peckinpah was aware that commonly held models of masculinity and masculine behavior had become suspect. Peckinpah was able to appreciate how and why diverse factions, all in good conscience, could denounce or even ignore the Western. The form, however, in which he had begun his career as a writer of television Western episodes, could—at least for him—still be seen as a place for myth, legend, and political expression and, in his own words, still be described as “a universal frame within which it is possible to comment on today.” While teaching a recent course on the history of film, I included, among the works to be studied, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956). I was a bit taken aback when several students in the class acknowledged The Searchers was the first Western they had ever seen. Two students admitted it was the first John Wayne film they had ever watched. Most of the African American students in the class stated they had never before viewed an entire Western. Several young women registered in the course confessed they never thought the Western had any application to them, except for a young woman who confided she had once stopped and watched part of a Clint Eastwood Western on television when she saw her father sitting and watching it.
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