In a thread about "The Man who shot Liberty Valance" our fellow Western and Wayne officiando An Edjamikated Redneck said...
I love the lessons in this movie; especially the way the shooting of Valance comes about.
Tom could have taken Valanace out at any time, and both of them knew it; consequently Valance kept his head when Tom were Tom was concerned.It was the pending shooting of Stoddard that caused, not to step out and face down Valance man to man as the code required, but to shoot him from ambush, so Stoddard could look good to the girl, teh girl Tom loved.
He broke the Code to keep the girl happy, something that wouldn't have happened had Tom stepped into thr street.And then he admits to the Pilgrim that he shot the man form ambush.
I have always finished that movie wondering; did he really shoot Valance, or did he make up the story to keep Stoddard in the race for represenative?Not that Tom wasn't capable of the shot, but was he capable of the ambush?
I have a slightly different take on this. You see John Ford had met many of the actual cowboys who had lived during those days. Hell Wyatt Earp was hanging around Hollywood until the twenties so Ford got some first hand accounts of what it was really like in the West. The men who built empires and cattle ranches were hard men. They didn't have fancy notions about a "code" and you have to meet out in the street face to face and that Hollywood bullshit. Most violence was spontaneous and messy. A lot like the fights in the TV show Deadwood and the violence there rang true. A straight up gunfight was pretty unusual. Certainly facing a guy out in the street with the whole town hiding behind water barrels and fence posts. The actual historical murder of Wild Bill Hickok was a case in point. Jack McCall just walked up behind him and blasted him in the head. That was the norm not the exception. The murder by Dan of the one eared outlaw on the stairs was also more the way it was. He just pulled out his blade and slit his troath. If you read historical accounts you would be amazed at the number of shots fired and missed in these "gunfights." I think the violence in the West has a lot more similarity to drive-bys by the Crips and the Bloods then it does to the beginning of "Gunsmoke."
My favorite "Gunsmoke" episode didn't even have Matt in it. It starred Buddy Ebsen as an old mountain man who's daughter or granddaughter was raped by a band of outlaws passing through. Newly was covering for the Marshal so he goes on the trail of these outlaws but the old mountain man ( a Jim Bridger/Kit Carson style figure) is always one stop ahead of him killing those guys one at a time. No fuss. No muss. No big show. Like shooting pests. Or killing bugs.
One of the most interesting discussions of this is in a book by Louis Lamour called "Bendigo Shafter." I highly recommend it to Western Fans. Now Louis Lamour practically patented a lot of Western Cliches so I don't claim by any means that his stuff isn't mostly Hollywood. But in this book the hero, "Bendigo Shafter" is a lawman who is stalked by an old mountain man and outlaw called Stacy Follett. He is a regulator and assassin who regularly shoots people in ambush. His eventually decides not to kill Shafter and they actually become friends. But his discussion of these themes is very interesting and worth the look. It is my favorite book by the dean of Western Writers.
In the end, I think Tom did kill Liberty Valance and the newspaperman just got it wrong.
Remember: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
Or as Tom Doniphon would say: "The only thing worse than a journalist, is a lawyer who becomes a Senator and steals my girl."
14 comments:
Classic, 5 star stuff. I always liked the Gene Pitney song too (even though it wasn't used in the movie).
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Normally I liked qatching Jimmy Stewart. But in Valance I could not identify with his character. Stewart was a true good man.
Even the cowboys could shoot straighter than NYPD finest.
Troop, I agree that the Movie West was was a different place than the actual West.
Talking of the folks who lived the West being in hollywood when John Ford first went there- I have always appreciated "The Big Trail" for that reason; some of the flks who rode teh wagons west were still alive when that movie was filmed, and probably their stories lent some realism to the film.
But, back to Tom and Rance.
In the Real West in this situation I think Tom would have shot Valance long before the final scene, and probably as soon as he may have felt threatened by him, had Valance allowed him the chance to feel threatened, and not just shooting him first.
But we are talking not only the movie West, but John Ford's movie West. The good guys have a Code.
Think about it this way. In the Real West Tom probabaly would have shot Rance from the ambush. It's win-win. Valance gets hung for the murder; Rance is a hero- a dead hero- and Tom gets the girl.
Not exactly a John Ford ending, but a real one.
Right you are Edjamikated Redneck and you know I love John Fords West. He dumbed it down you know but even with that he put some complicated characters in many of his movies. Wayne’s performances in Fords and Hawks Westerns have a nuance that his later work abandoned as he slid into an easy caricature. Wayne at half speed is better than the rest full bore in my book.
I think his Tom Doniphon is one of his neglected masterpieces in what was a small film. But imagine it redone today in an urban setting. A bespectled Denzel Washington as the Tom Stoddard character. Or maybe Tom Hanks if they want a fumbling white guy.. Jack Black as Marshal Link Appleyard. RachelWood as Hallie. James Remar as Liberty Valance. Ian Mcshane as Dutton Peabody. Michael Clarke Duncan as Pompey.
But who could play Tom Doniphon? There ain’t nobody worthy of walking in the Dukes footsteps. No way. No how.
Kurt Russell.
Also, directed by John Carpenter.
Who remade Rio Bravo as Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, and redid the famous Quiet Man fight in They Live.
The man who wanted to make Westerns in a time when horror was king.
Well John Carpenter is a personal hero of mine for an entirely different reason.
Can you believe that what you're thinking of didn't even occur to me until you posted that?
Sheesh. I must be tired.
Talk of Hawks Westerns always reminds me of another underrated Duke classic- The War Wagon.
Absolutely the perfect movie for me. All I ask of a movie is a good story, convincingly told, and this one gets it done.
Besides, how can you beat te Duke and Kirk Douglas?
Rereading your post again reminded of an old Bruce Willis movie- SUNSET.
Willis plays Tom Mix, and he meets Wyatt Earp and they solve a mystery together.
Have you ever seen it? I watched it on TV one afternoon, but have never rented it because, like all Willis' movies it is probably full of profanity and nudity (kids ya know).
Sunset was a huge disappointment at the time, at least to me. Blake Edwards directed, Bruce Willis as Mix, yeah, and James Garner as Earp.
As for Willis' movies, they're only profanity and/or nudity laced when appropriate. Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Kid and even the last Die Hard movie, don't have any. (The appropriateness of which is somewhat arguable for DH.)
There is a great movie to be writtin about Wyatt Earps later years. Did you know he went to the Yukon gold strike?
Blake, lets write a screenplay and submit it to John Carpenter.
@Trooper, you might want to look at the Owens-Blevin shoot-out for an example of a "classic" gunfight in the Old West.
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