To the Last Man

The Haydens and Colbys are two mountain families who've had such a long term feud, everyone's forgotten what it started over. Never mind when Pop Colby (Noah Beery, Sr.) shoots Grandpa down in cold blood, Dad Hayden takes an unorthodox and cowardly approach in some eyes, he calls in the law.

The Haydens move west and Colby when he gets out of the joint takes the family and moves to where the Haydens are to take up where they left off. Along the way he has an ally, Jack LaRue, who has an agenda all his own.

Of course in Romeo&Juliet fashion, the Hayden son (Randolph Scott) and the Colby daughter(Esther Ralston} meet and flip for each other. If anything that throws gasoline on the feud fire.

This is one of the weakest of Randolph Scott's earlier westerns. I'm not sure if I'm seeing the complete film as a budget video company put out a re-release that looks like it was choppily edited. There are a lot of plot gaps and things that don't make sense.

This is also one of the earliest films of Shirley Temple who's big scene is when one of the Colbys shoots the head off of her doll. It wasn't for sadistic purposes but to get the Haydens to chase them. Still it's an earlier weepy for Shirley. She later did two more films with

Randolph Scott, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Susannah of the Mounties and with her name above his at that point.

Also at the very end, the fadeout is Esther and Randy in what looks like a photograph of later domestic bliss. And the soundtrack was blaring the Bing Crosby hit Please. Kind of out of place, but since Paramount had the rights to it, they figured they had to use it.

A really great movie containing great stars & many future stars, most uncredited! A very young Randolph Scott in a piece of American (And worldwide) history. Feuds: In rural Kentucky, America or anywhere really, family feuds sprung up and lasted decades, long after anyone could remember what started the feud... (Think Hatfield's & McCoy's) A great human interest story about all the different personal (And inter-personnel) reasons and feelings that normal people have in family and area struggles. Synopsis: After the War Between the States a war tired Southerner returns home to Kentucky determined to stop the killing and end the feud. He takes his family west to find freedom, opportunity, and away from the feud. A good socially redeeming story and movie! To bad hollywood doesn't make these any more!

This is a standout early-30's western because of the extraordinary talent that participated in it: director Henry Hathaway, writer Jack Cunningham (who collaborated with Hathaway on six pictures in 1933-34), original novelist Zane Gray, and a cast of stars and future stars who were in Hathaway's stock company at the time: Randolph Scott, Barton McLane, Buster Crabbe (who in two-shot close-ups looks as though he were born to play Scott's brother), Noah Berry, and Jack LaRue. Even in brief and minor roles, Hathaway gets memorable performances, such as a shaved Fuzzy Knight in a serious rather than comic-relief role and Eugenie Besserer as a fierce grandmother crying out for Biblical vengeance. Esther Ralston is a revelation in the lead female role, as an unpolished and touchy backwoods girl who yearns to be a lady but who is fully capable in the climatic scene of fighting desperately to save her man's life.

The plot mixes returning Civil War veterans, hill country family feuds, and Western rustling action, and ties these threads neatly together. The film is only a little over an hour long, but it packs a lot of action and plot into that short running time.

It would be a shame if no strong print of Hathaway's "To The Last Man" survives, because it is far from a typical western-it could fairly be called "pre-code"- and it stands with Walsh's failed "The Big Trail" as an attempt to make a "grown up" adult Western.

Like "The Big Trail" , "Last Man" has one for in the formal styles of Silent Film. What sets it apart is it's theme of decency finally caving in to humanities thirst for revenge and violence. The brutality of the film, both in terms of violence and emotional cruelty, is formidable. It all leads to an ending that, despite the upbeat coda, is truly apocalyptic.

Worth going out of your way to see; but it is too bad there is no quality print.

The film itself is an unusual Randolph Scott western which deals with a feud born in the hills of Kentucky that follows a family trying to settle in Nevada. Much of the story and dialog is typical of the standard westerns of the day, but there were a few aspects of the film which made it quite interesting, namely:

• Esther Ralston playing the love interest. I can't recall seeing Esther in a film before, but here she is wonderful as a backwoods girl who doesn't take guff from any man. It's rather amazing to see such a strong female character who can ride a horse without a saddle and is willing to literally fight the bad guys right along with the men.

• The violence from the bad guys is more realistically portrayed and was somewhat shocking to see for a film of this era. Sometimes you can become numb to standard Western action, but in this film the more realistic portrayal of the violence brings home the consequences of their actions.

Overall I enjoyed the film very much. There was also some very nice outdoor scenery shots. This is supposed to be Nevada but I'm not sure where it was actually filmed. The restored print that Turner Classic Films showed looked very good.