Just catching up on some old Rara-Avis digests and came upon
a discussion Elmore Leonard & the film 'The Tall T.' I
thought that some here might find the following of
interest:
http://www.nandotimes.com/ourcentury/cnremember/story/body/0,3343,66061-
104625-572185-0-nandotimes,00.html
Things to Remember By DAVID COHEN
(October 4, 1999 3:28 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com)
- Since the earliest days of Hollywood, Westerns have served
as a genre in which questions of morality and ethics have
been played out. The wide-open spaces, the barren landscapes,
and the easy opportunities for hindsight have proved
irresistible to those who would fight and re-fight arguments
over basic truths.
One of the more obscure but excellent directors in this
regard was Budd Boetticher (1916- ). In the 1950s, he made a
series of what critic Andrew Sarris called "floating poker
games" set out West. Randolph Scott
(1898-1987) was his star, and the best of those films was
"The Tall T," a short but potent 1957 film.
"The Tall T" was a story of people in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Scott plays the central character: He's a lone
rancher with a strong sense of independence but he's also a
soft touch, toting around some cherry-striped candy that a
little boy asked him to buy. He and a pair of newlyweds (John
Hubbard, Maureen O'Sullivan) end up held captive after a
botched stagecoach robbery by a trio of murderous
thieves
(Richard Boone, Henry Silva, Skip Homeier) whose victims
include that little boy and his father. The cowardly Hubbard
tries to save his skin by making a deal with Boone to ransom
his rich wife for $50,000. A deadly game of bluffs and
threats follows.
Boetticher's three-cornered game revolves around a good man,
a bad man and a truly evil man. Scott is the good man, ramrod
straight and tall, but stoic. Silva is the truly evil one, a
vicious killer whose very posture suggests a man who can't
distinguish good from evil - and doesn't want to. In the
middle is Boone, who keeps Scott alive for no good reason
other than the fact that Scott's integrity and maturity make
him a man he can talk to.
Weary of traveling with two thugs but not strong enough to
leave them behind, Boone's character is a fascinating one.
Boone yearns to be like Scott but thinks destiny has placed
him on another path. His final one-on-one confrontation with
Scott makes for a great scene: Boone walks away from an armed
Scott with his back turned, knowing full well that Scott
could never shoot him in the back. A few seconds later,
however, he comes back, making one last try for the $50,000
and is gunned down. As critic Danny Peary has written: "Their
final clash results from Scott being a moral man with violent
tendencies and Boone being a violent man with moral
tendencies."
Boetticher's film was a B-movie through and through, a mere
77 minutes. Its production values were nothing special and
its cast on the low-budget side. But it was, like his 1959
film "Ride Lonesome," an effective, entertaining story about
morality, courage and, most of all, integrity. "The Tall T"
of the title could well be "Truth."
THE TALL T, a 1957 film. Key figures: Budd Boetticher
(director), Harry Joe Brown (co-producer), Burt Kennedy
(script), Elmore Leonard (story), Randolph Scott
(star-producer), Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Arthur
Hunnicutt, Henry Silva.
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