Thursday November 28, 2019 They Don't Make Movies Like This Anymore

The other night, the wife and I watched an old movie on Netflix, made in 1959 titled, “The Hangman.”

“1959?” my wife said, settling onto the couch with all her pillows and the remote. “I was in seventh grade. Were you even born yet?”

“Oh yeah,” I answered, placing a dish of food on the carpet by my easy chair and arranging room for a glass on a nearby table.
 “I was, like, eight . . .”

The movie credits rolled as they did before a movie in those days, the little woman let loose with, “Ooooo! Robert Taylor!” recognizing him as a heart throb of her mother’s generation.

“Tina Louise ... hmmm,” I said, leaning back into my LazyBoy and pulling the lever on its side to recline. “Wasn’t she in . . . ?  Then I started whistling bits of a show theme that came to me of the TV program I had forgotten. “Was it . . . Gilligan’s Island?”

My wife affirmed my idea, “Yes, she was Ginger, the movie star.”
“Redhead wasn’t she? She was hot.” I mused.

“Fess Parker was Davy Crockett,” I said. “I wonder if this role was before or after that? (Parker played Davy Crockett from 1954-1955 and Daniel Boone from 1964-1970.)

Reading on, the wife said, with some amazement, “Jack Lord!”
“He’s gotta be the bad guy.”

“Didn’t he later play a police captain in Hawaii Five-O?” I said.
“Yes, he must be just a kid in this one.”

The story line was about a Deputy Marshal Bovard (Taylor), known as The Hangman, who was hunting down the last member of a outlaw gang (Jack Lord) who had eluded a number of lawmen because, primarily, -- no one knew what he looked like. All they knew was his name was John Butterfield and he was a former cavalry soldier who, another of his captured gang had said, was working as a teamster somewhere near the border.

At an Army post, Bovard was told of a woman (Tina Louise) named Selena Jenniman, in the town who had known Butterfield and would know what he looked like. The marshal finds her working in a laundry and offers her five hundred bucks to just narc on the guy. All she had to do was identify him and she could receive the money the same day, no strings attached.

 She was, at first, reluctant to cooperate despite the huge reward, but the marshal is a smooth talker and convinces her to meet him in the town where she said Butterfield was working, whom she said was six feet tall and ‘fair haired’.

Arriving a day or so before the woman, the marshal introduces himself to town Sheriff Weston (Parker) and asks him about Butterfield, but meets a dead end as no one knows a man by that name, but whose description closely resembles a well-liked man in town by the name of Johnny Bishop.

Although its accompanying music line wore thin on us after awhile, as well as did some of the cheesy acting, the movie did prove somewhat thought-provoking. Like when I watched the opening scene of a stagecoach pulled by six horses running fast down a narrow road across a rolling southwestern landscape, I wondered what does same area look like now over sixty years later? What happened to all that expanse? Is it covered with suburban houses? Fast food joints?

I recognized that all too familiar horse whinny that I’ve heard in dozens of period westerns; it’s gotta be the same horse. You hear several times in the film. Canned effects? “Key horse whinny.” And too, why are horses whinnying for no reason. What’s up with that?

Realistically, the cowboys looked as dirty and dusty from working at a freight business in town, as did the people stepping from the stage pulled by a half-dozen horses after riding for miles in an open-windowed wooden box suspended on either side by large leather ‘belts’ between the front and rear axles. I liked its authenticity that way. Makes one appreciate the length a few of the old producers undertook making a film such as this.

All of the minor role actors looked familiar because I had seen them employed in other movies doing much the same thing, maintaining the theme of ‘when men were men’ drinking whiskey like water, drinking beer with frothy heads from big glass steins, getting into long enduring fist fights in the street, knocking each other through walls and over corral rails. It was wonderful.

Seeing Johnny again after all this time, Selena, ever in love with Johnny, decides not to identify him for Bovard and warns him through a note given to one of his co-workers that she’ll be by the freight gate the next morning and for him to not recognize her.

Dressed in a spectacular form-fitting high fashion dress, Selena steps from the hotel and creates mind-numbing reaction from every male on the street, including a shaggy dog on a leash. (No BS) Men hoot and holler. Horses rear up. (There’s that whinny again) Wives beat their husbands into submission, the whole bit. Nonetheless, Johnny walks right by her, never casting so much as a glimpse her way.

Bovard, no fool, sees through this charade and later angrily chastises Selena in her hotel room. Unexplainably, in a quieter moment as she gets dressed after Bovard discovers her swimming naked in a trail side pond replete with cattail fronds just outside of town, Taylor wrestles with his life’s dilemmas concerning his utter bafflement of womankind. It was deep, I tell you, deep, as presumably so was the pond.

In another great scene, Big Murph Murphy, the scruffy black-bearded wagon driver is wildly whipping his freight team toward the border, with Johnny Bishop and his pregnant wife hidden in the wagon box. Marshal Bovard, with Selena handcuffed to him and crammed against the saddle horn, is in hot pursuit -- (you just don’t see that in films anymore) -- both of them eating the dust from the speeding freight wagon, as Big Murph Murphy, standing up with all the reins in his hand, is swinging a big bullwhip over his head and cracking the team with it. 

Amid all the clouds of dust and action the music builds to a crescendo as Bovard shouts for Murphy to stop the wagon, finally driving the horse he and Selena are on against the raging lead horse of the team forcing it off the road.

My heart is nearly in my throat by this time. The tips of my fingers are embedded deep into the arms of the chair so much so that I had to take a shot from my inhaler to catch my breath and wrench them out. The only way this movie could be more exciting is if it was in color, hooyah!

Johnny confesses his naive role in the robbery but despite his plaintive remorse, he is handcuffed and taken to jail by Bovard, with Sheriff Weston’s disapproval. “Key somber music.” Things don’t look good for Johnny. Selena and Johnnny’s wife are basket cases -- (as women were back then). 

In the meantime, a teamster named Jimmy Hoffa, tells Johnny to be ready to escape as he has a plan to break him out, despite Johnny begging him not to do it because he is ready to accept his fate and plead his case in court.

Hoffa ties a saddled horse to the back wall of the jail using a convenient steel ring there, then using a long heavy chain hooked through the jail cell window to the back of his freight wagon, he pulls the wall down and Johnny escapes. “Key horse whinny!”

Bovard and Weston rush onto the street as Johnny lashes his mount away, and Bovard, a lawman of some historic renown, shoots at Johnny to make it look good, firing over his head, as his faith in his fellow man is restored -- and retires from law enforcement on the spot. Sheriff Weston is pleased. “Key happy music.”

Selena, standing meekly with her two men-in-waiting is ready to board the stage to parts unknown. Bovard is waiting for a later stage to go to California where he plans to open a vineyard and cash in on cannibis sales. Sheriff Weston, explainably hot for Selena, proposes to her with Bovard’s urging, but Selena demurs saying although she is fond of Weston, she cannot marry him.

Bovard, ever the heart throb in his movies, sees his opportunity and timidly pops the question to her, to which she answers in the affirmative, fluttering her eyelashes. Whisking her away in his heart-throb arms, he feels sorry for Weston, and so assures Weston that there are plenty more fish in the sea -- like the cute waitress in the cafe there--that would appreciate a man as good as he is.

Weston growls, “One of these days partner, they’re going to find you in an alley somewhere with a tomahawk in your back. Have a nice day.”  “Key horse whinny.”