The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America the Sagebrush Trail Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Sagebrush Trail The Modern American West David M. Wrobel and Andrew G. Kirk, Editors Carl Abbott The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West Richard W. Etulain Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art Gerald D. Nash The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West Ferenc Morton Szasz Religion in the Modern American West Oscar J. Martínez Mexican-Origin People in the United States: A Topical History Duane A. Smith Rocky Mountain Heartland: Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming in the Twentieth Century William G. Robbins and Katrine Barber Nature’s Northwest: The North Pacific Slope in the Twentieth Century R. Douglas Hurt The Big Empty: The Great Plains in the Twentieth Century Robert L. Dorman Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Modern American West Donald L. Fixico Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West Richard Aquila The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America The Sagebrush Trail Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America Richard Aquila tucson The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2015 The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2015 Printed in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-0105-2 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3154-7 (paper) Cover designed by Carrie House, HOUSEdesign llc Cover image © Silvia Bukovac Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aquila, Richard, 1946– The sagebrush trail : western movies and twentieth-century America / Richard Aquila. pages cm — (The modern American West) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8165-3154-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8165-0105-2 (cloth edition) 1. Western films—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Modern American West. PN1995.9.W4A67 2015 791.43'65878—dc23 2014037296 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). For Mom Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Prologue. The Sagebrush Trail 3 Part I. The Rise of Western Movies, 1900–1944 1. The Great Train Robbery: Or How Early Western Movies Stole America’s Heart 13 2. Blazing the Trail: New Directors and the Rise of Feature Westerns 34 3. The Big Trail: Tracking Feature Westerns Through Depression and War 65 4. Tumbling Tumbleweeds: Guns, Guitars, and B-Western Cowboys 92 Part II. Transitional Westerns on New Frontiers, 1945–1963 5. The Searchers: Cowboys and Containment on the Cold War Frontier 131 6. Shane: Western Heroes and the Culture of the Cold War 165 vii viii · Contents Part III. “New Western” Horizons, 1964–1999 7. A Fistful of Dollars: Spaghetti Westerns and Changing Times 195 8. The Wild Bunch: American Westerns on a Revisionist Trail 218 9. True Grit: Traditional Westerns Ride Again! 258 10. Silverado: The Mythic West at Century’s End 286 Epilogue. Django Unchained 329 Notes 339 Index 363 Illustrations 1. Movie poster for Sagebrush Trail 4 2. Movie poster for The Great Train Robbery 17 3. The outlaw in The Great Train Robbery 18 4. G. M. Anderson’s Broncho Billy 25 5. Scene from Blazing the Trail on the cover of Film Fancies 35 6. William S. Hart in The Gunfighter 51 7. Wagon train and wide-open spaces in The Covered Wagon 55 8. Tom Mix, B-Western cowboy extraordinaire 60 9. Movie poster for The Big Trail 66 10. Movie poster for In Old Arizona 69 11. Jane Russell posing seductively in The Outlaw 78 12. John Wayne in Stagecoach 81 13. Movie poster for Tumbling Tumbleweeds 93 14. Movie poster for Riders of Destiny 101 15. William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy 103 16. Yakima Canutt, Rita Hayworth, and Tex Ritter in Trouble in Texas 112 17. Gabby Hayes with Dale Evans and Roy Rogers in Utah 116 18. Movie poster for The Searchers 132 19. Jeff Chandler and James Stewart in Broken Arrow 149 ix x · Illustrations 20. Scene from Fort Apache, evoking Remington’s The Last Stand 159 21. Movie poster for Shane 166 22. Woody Strode in John Ford’s Sergeant Rutledge 181 23. Movie poster for A Fistful of Dollars 196 24. Movie poster for Django 205 25. Movie poster for The Wild Bunch 219 26. Movie poster for Jeremiah Johnson 247 27. Movie poster for True Grit 259 28. Movie poster for Silverado 287 29. Movie poster for Young Guns 303 30. Movie poster for Dances with Wolves 311 31. Movie poster for Unforgiven 320 32. Movie poster for Django Unchained 330 Acknowledgments Many people have helped with this project. First, I would like to thank Richard Etulain, who invited me to write this volume for the University of Arizona Press’s Modern American West series. He provided encourage- ment and expert advice about the manuscript. I’d also like to thank the other editor of the series, David Wrobel, as well as Kristen Buckles of the University of Arizona Press, for their support and insights. Penn State Uni- versity provided me with a sabbatical and funds for research. My family offered additional help and encouragement. My son, Stephen, his wife, Meredith, my daughter, Valerie, and her husband, Jeff, served as my focus group and always listened enthusiastically whenever I talked about west- ern movies. And my wife, Marie, proved to be an excellent companion on the “sagebrush trail.” She watched hundreds of westerns with me, most of which never would have made her Netflix queue. She listened patiently to my comments, and then graciously read and helped edit the final manu- script. I’m sure she is as happy as I am that this book is finally completed, but perhaps for different reasons. I can remember back in the 1950s when my parents bought me a cowboy hat and six-shooters, and my brother, Phil, and I used to sit on the floor every day in front of the TV watching Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Cisco and Pancho, and other cin- ematic cowboys galloping across the screen. Who would have guessed . ? xi The Sagebrush Trail prologue The Sagebrush Trail The Sagebrush Trail is a history of western movies but also a history of twentieth-century America. The book’s title is based on a 1933 film that starred John Wayne as an innocent man convicted of murder back east. He breaks out of jail and heads for the American West to find the real killer. One movie poster features the tall and lean twenty-six-year-old actor wearing a black cowboy hat, black pants, and tight red shirt, with a jaunty bandanna around his neck. A tooled-leather holster clings to his hips. His gun is drawn and pointed directly at the viewer. A tagline emblazoned in red across the top reads: “he wrote the code of justice with a blazing six-gun!” Wayne’s character—a rugged individual named John Brant—is the quintessential western hero. Strong and silent, he lets his fists and guns do the talking. He fights for truth and justice, righting every wrong and help- ing those in need. Before he’s through, the determined westerner not only locates the real killer, but he finds romance with the beautiful Sally Blake (Nancy Shubert) and manages to outsmart, outride, and outshoot a gang of cutthroat desperadoes (led by actor/stuntman extraordinaire Yakima Canutt). Wayne’s character accomplishes his goals by posing as an outlaw to infiltrate the bad guys’ gang. When one of the crooks witnesses Brant evading a posse, he invites him back to their hideout. “You’re a pretty smart hombre, and you got plenty of nerve,” he tells Brant. “It strikes me that the boss could use somebody like you.” When Brant refuses to reveal his name, the gang member says with a smile, “Smith, ain’t it? That’s the handle most of you fast travelers use. Aw, it’s as good a name as any. Mine’s Jones!” 3 4 · Prologue Figure 1. Sagebrush Trail (Lone Star Pic- tures, 1933) featured a young John Wayne playing a good guy who plays a bad guy to win the day, not to mention the girl. Just as Wayne’s character in Sagebrush Trail was not what he appeared to be, western movies are also more than they seem at first glance. For more than one hundred years, moviegoers have sat on the edge of their seats, mesmerized by great train robberies, Indian attacks, cavalry charges, and shootouts at high noon. Yet, they have never grown tired of watch- ing cowboys and Indians gallop across Big Sky country. Audiences have cheered on movie versions of Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Wyatt Earp, George Armstrong Custer, Crazy Horse, and other historical westerners. And they have embraced fictional heroes like Shane and Hopalong Cas- sidy, as well as “real” film cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Westerns have always been great fun and entertainment, but these films—like John Wayne’s character in Sagebrush Trail—hold deeper secrets and meanings. Clues about America are scattered along the “sage- brush trail” of western movies, which winds through the twentieth century and beyond. They reveal that for more than a century, western movies The Sagebrush Trail · 5 have reflected—and sometimes have helped shape—American history and culture. Movies and the Mythic West The cinematic West was always more myth than reality. It was part of a long cultural tradition that went back hundreds if not thousands of years. By the time colonists made their way to American shores, the notion of a mythic West had already taken root in the European mind.