Bandoleros de ayer

In the midst of all the wide screen, technicolor 1950s westerns, I saw this small screen B&W feature when I was ten, in 1957. Something about it just took hold.

The simple but fast paced story is fun and entertaining. Glenn Ford and William Holden are in top form even at the start of their great careers. Claire Trevor is attractive and spunky. Edgar Buchanan is the consummate character actor in his usual role as a shady...fill in the blank...dentist. His constant reference to "a bad bicuspid" is typical of his almost absent minded approach to his part. His voice and facial expressions could make putting on his shoes look shady.

Texas is great all around fun and has an ending with a moral. I give it 4 Stars.

Holden and Ford may be the stars, but the film belongs to director Marshall and the incomparable Edgar Buchanan. Marshall started out directing comedy shorts and it shows up here in several memorable scenes. That fight scene may be the most amusing on boxing record. Dutch Henry keeps popping up, dukes raised, like a whack-a-mole, and I love the way the boisterous crowd ends up in a frontier free-for-all. The buckboard scene may be brief but it's expertly done, Trevor shows real comedic ability as she struggles with a rebellious ten yards of skirt. Then there's the topper—pudgy, gravel-voice Buchanan actually doing a song and dance. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it. But more incredibly, his graceful shuffle and tuneful refrain are absolutely charming. What a marvelous actor he was as he transitions here from musical performer to shifty-eyed mastermind.

It's a good story if a bit shopworn—two buddies (Ford & Holden) falling on opposite sides of the law while competing for the same girl (Trevor). The various alliances get a little confusing so you may need a scorecard to keep up. Holden gets the majority screen time, while the always low-key Ford is even more so than usual. All in all, it's a highly entertaining, fast-paced 90-minutes, thanks mainly to an expert director and a cagey old coot.

The other reviewers are right. I would never have rented this when I saw it at the video store if not that I could not resist the temptation of seeing BOTH William Holden and Glenn Ford at only about 23 years old (you almost can't recognize them at first) rounded out by Claire Trevor, and even then I actually put it back on the shelf before changing my mind. Surely, if it were any good, I thought, I would have heard of it before. No doubt it was an early, typically cheesy B-western whose only merit was that it happened to include together two young actors who would eventually become quite famous. Even John Wayne had a dog or two among his early pictures, I thought - it happens to all kinds of great performers. But ignoring my more conservative judgment, I took a risk.

Now I wish I had my own copy - I have to wonder if it's still available anywhere. A quintessential "buddy picture" of the first order, not only is there terrific chemistry between the characters, but it's mostly fast-paced with enough clever plot developments and deviousness to oftentimes seem quite contemporary in 2003! Any film maker looking to do a western revival which would entertain audiences today would do well to remake this picture. One hopes he would stick as close to the original as possible, because there's enough good stuff there already to get him most of the way through. Four stars on a conventional scale would be well-deserved.

Other reviewers have spoken of the pleasures of seeing William Holden and Glenn Ford at age 23, both so young as to be almost unrecognizable; and Claire Trevor, too and Edgar Buchanan as a dentist -- he was one in real life, before he turned to acting.

But I think a lot of credit is due to the director, George Marshall. Today, almost the only Marshall movie anyone knows is the justly famous 1939 version of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN. But he was primarily a comedy director, back to the 1920s when he directed Fox Sunshine comedies, to the 1930s, when he worked at Roach on Laurel and Hardy, through the early 1970s. And this movie was directed during his peak period and it shows it. The comedy sequences are wonderfully directed, especially the boxing match.

So, while you're enjoying the acting, remember that the funny broad comedy comes from the mind of the director.

It's a bit surprising that no one's commented on this movie till now. After all, it isn't some obscure B-western but rather an almost "A" production with two rising young stars, (William Holden and Glenn Ford, plus Claire Trevor), and a respected director, George Marshall. Perhaps the fact that it's in b&w has unjustly relegated it to near-obscurity.

Those who seek it out, however, will be rewarded by an engaging plot which has some interesting twists and turns, by some snappy dialog -- particularly in the first meeting between Holden and Trevor -- and by a host of good supporting players, such as Edgar Buchanan who plays a devious dentist.

For fans of "beefcake," there's an early prizefight sequence in which a shirtless Holden battles the local champ in a bare-knuckle marathon. Only about 22 or 23 years old at the time, Holden's physique hadn't yet reached the maturity displayed in his later films, (most notably "Picnic"), but his bare chest, (shaved of the hair displayed earlier in "Golden Boy"),is still quite pleasing to the eye. If only the scene could be re-written so that Holden would have been matched against a stripped-to-the-waist Glenn Ford. Now, that would have been a beefcake bonanza!