This and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were two big flops that did a lot of damage to the career of Glenn Ford and also Sol Siegel as head of production at MGM. Unlike the latter film though it made sense to make it with Ford in the lead - he is well cast - and they picked the right director - Anthony Mann. It was a Western with plenty of colour, movement and action - normally sure fire stuff in 1960. Why then did it lose so much money? (NB It was a hit, but not as big a one as MGM hoped.)
I'm trying not to be wise in hindsight here but it feels the filmmakers made some key mistakes to the story. Really, at heart, this is a "woman's picture" (for lack of a better word) - like Giant and Showboat were, also based on an Edna Ferber novel. The influence of Giant on this is especially apparent - it should have been more like that.
The movie needed to be about Maria Schell's character because she's the narrative spine - this French American who marries an adventurer, and goes to Oklahoma. They fail in the land rush but set up a newspaper. The husband struggles to settle down, it's a battle of make money, a Jewish neighbour loves her but she remains faithful, the husband periodically gets involved in gunfights where he kills people (Charles MacGraw, Vic Morrow), said husband takes off for years at a time, their friends strike oil, their son grows up to fall in love with an Indian girl they've raised as their own and mum doesn't approve, Schell becomes a massively successful newspaper magnate but can't hold on to her man.
When the story is summarised - and that's what is on screen - you can see how it works. It's a similar template to Showboat and not dissimilar to Giant. The girl is the protagonist, the husband is a dashing figure who pops in and out of the action, and the piece at heart is a melodrama.
But for whatever reason the story is distorted to fight against this. We never see Schell fall in love with Ford on screen - the movie starts and bang, they're off to Oklahoma, and we've missed seeing sounds like an interesting story (colorful adventurer Ford romancing hoity rich girl Schell). Then we keep hearing all these things Ford's done in his past life - romancing a prostitute (Anne Baxter in a wonder bra), being a son-like figure for an old newspaper owning couple (Robert Keith, Aline MacMahon), helping the father of a young boy who is turning outlaw (Russ Tamblyn).
The movie feels like a sequel to another, more interesting movie with Ford having all these wild adventures then settling down for respectability with Schell and ending with the Oklahoma land rush - which is what people always talk about with Cimarron and I thought was going to be the climax but here it happens in the first 20 minutes or something. And Ford fails to get decent land, so it's unsatisfactory.
Then we kick into the more melodramatic section of the story. Ford shoots evil Charles MacGraw who is lynching an Indian and then later shoots bank robber Vic Morrow - both of these are well done sequences (Mann was a top director) which serve to make Ford look heroic and non racist. This is in contrast to his wife who is racist against Indians and who wants Ford to accept reward money for shooting Morrow. Ford has a sulk and takes off for something like five years. Then he comes back and is once more very noble and non racist, complaining when his old mate Arthur O'Connell, who has struck it rich with oil, tries to rip off the Indians. People want him to run for Governor but he has to sell out his principles and he refuses - Schell cracks it and boots him out, so he takes off adventuring again. Eventually she finds out he's been killed in action.
So basically Ford's character is this guy who is brave, tough, has principles, defends Indians, fights racists, won't cheat on his wife with Anne Baxter... but who still periodically abandons his wife and child and newspaper to go off having adventures for years at a time. Which kind of could work if the film really dealt with the fact this guy is one of those who couldn't be tied down, but spends more time on showing how heroic he is.
And to make him more noble the filmmakers made the major mistake of trashing Schell's character - she's racist until the end (kicking out her son for marrying an Indian), greedy for money, wants Ford to sell out his principles for money, whines about not having her husband and son around.
I have this horrible feeling that MGM may have originally considered this a vehicle for Elizabeth Taylor or something but then got Ford and Schell and once they did all these changes had to be made to keep Ford happy - giving him these heroic/tough guy moments. He could have been a heroic tough guy but they needed to acknowledge that him taking off for years at a time is a bad thing and symptomatic of something deeper - and they needed to make Schell the hero.
I could be wrong - maybe the story was always dodgy. (A lot of these flaws I speak of could have been in Ferber's original novel - I've never read it). But the fact remains this is a big glossy MGM film where the two protagonists are really flawed in an uninteresting, unsympathetic way and the drama is undersold. It's one of those times that if they had cast say Elizabeth Taylor and she'd wanted these changes to make her character more sympathetic/heroic, she would have been dead right.
Okay other stuff - photography great, the land rush is exciting (though the second one is thrown away dramatically), Henry Morgan is decent support, terrible performance from the kid who plays Ford and Schell's son (MGM didn't have anyone better under contract? even in 1960?), Morrow and MacGraw are solid villains, I liked Tamblyn's part. The let's-be-nice-to-the-Indians is classic Hollywood 50s liberalism i.e. well meaning with a good heart but the Indian characters still have no dimension or personality.
It was a misfire but not of the spectacular size of Four Horsemen and it did hold my interest.
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