Drango

The director and writer of this movie, Hall Bartlett knew the far-west because he made a documentary fiction about a Navajo Indian who was brought up in a white school (Navajo 1952). You can see that this movie looks more real than other westerns. Jeff Chandler as Major Drango is an officer who understands this villagers and he has self-reproach because he sacked the village during the civil war. He did it by order but anyway he wants to make it good. The officer of the confederation, Captain Marc Banning (John Lupton) is full of lust for revenge and at the end there will be the confrontation with his own father -the past- and with Major Drango who claims a peaceful future for the people who lost the war. After each war people have to try to live together again but all wounds cannot be healed in some months. This movie is a serious attempt to show the psychological difficulties in the reconstruction of a nation after a civil war.

A rather dour Reconstruction Western that's probably too earnest for its own good. Writer Hall Bartlett's heart is in the right place—reconciling North and South following the Civil War. Union Major Drango (Chandler) wants to unite rebellious Confederate town around a regime of humane occupation, despite widespread resistance. The supporting cast is familiar from about every popular TV series of the day—Stone, Phillips, Sande, Ankrum, Baer. Too bad the powerful Donald Crisp is largely wasted in a circumscribed role, and why Julie London's presence other than to build box-office appeal is unclear to me. In fact, her romantic subplot with Lupton sprawls the story without strengthening it.

Also, reviewer Lorenellroy is right—Chandler's major comes across as too stiff and unappealing for a central character. His besieged Major should be serious, but the seriousness is finally carried to a deadening degree. Bartlett was interesting as a producer, especially with Navajo and Unchained. Here, however, I'm afraid he tries to do too much with a screenplay that ends up in too many talky subplots. Then too, direction should have been left to a better stylist since the core material had potential.

In passing—note that no reference to slavery or appearance of a black person occurs anywhere in the movie, a rather startling omission for a film dealing with the post-Civil War South. My guess is that the producers, like others of the period, didn't want to risk dealing with a sensitive subject at a time when Jim Crow laws still prevailed below the Mason-Dixon Line. Anyway, considering the number of Westerns on TV and in theatres in 1957, it's probably not surprising that despite good intentions and a fine performance from Joanne Dru this dour little oddity has remained lost in the mix.

For a story set in Georgia in late 1865 the absence of any blacks in the town and surrounding rural areas is utterly absurd. The labor force the farmers would mobilize to replant would have included the freed slaves. They would certainly have been a source of support for the Union military government.

The movie perpetuates the cry-baby version of history that the state of Georgia has foisted on the consciousness of the nation. Sherman's armies did not ravage Georgia anywhere near as bad as they complain. They did NOT routinely burn down houses and churches and schools. They did destroy supplies that could help the military effort of the South. It was noted at the time that where Sherman marched through Georgia, hardly a house in any town was torched.

By contrast, when the same armies marched through South Carolina, hardly a house in any town was left standing. That was no accident. Sherman blamed South Carolina for the war and gave orders to his men to burn everything. When his armies crossed the border into North Carolina, his forces reverted to the milder policy they had observed in Georgia.

South Carolina was the only state of the Confederacy whose citizens did not supply at least one regiment for the Union army. In all the others there were Unionists who made their way north to enlist and fight for the United States.

Jeff Chandler in the title role of Clint Drango has a disagreeable and difficult duty to perform as military governor of a small Georgia town that not even a year before he had ridden through with General Sherman's army. They did not leave much standing and when the town learns of his military record, Chandler's not left with much support for the difficult job he's trying to do. To bring peace to a conquered and proud people.

The film starts with the lynching of northern sympathizer Morris Ankrum and his daughter Joanne Dru though she hates Chandler at first for not sending Ankrum to safety, she becomes his biggest supporter mainly because she has nowhere else to go.

Behind the resistance is former Confederate officer Ronald Howard who never looked more like his father Leslie than in this film. He was certainly evocative of Ashley Wilkes another Georgia aristocrat. Donald Crisp is Howard's father here and Julie London is another southern aristocrat who Howard uses to gain information. Of course Ashley's attitude toward the conquering Yankees was light years different than than Ronald Howard's in Drango.

Drango's not a bad western, but quite frankly the total absence of blacks from the film is puzzling. There are places in the south which did not have cotton plantations and hence no significant black population at the time of the Civil War. But looking at the mansions that Crisp and London have belies that notion for this section of Georgia.

That absence makes Drango a decent, but very flawed picture.

Either previous reviewers are confused as to exactly who John Lupton is or they're not watching the same movie I am. Previous reviewers state that Lupton's character Capt. Banning is out for revenge against the south-Incorrect! Banning is Major Drango's adjutant. His role in the film is more of a "spear carrier" than anything else. "Capt. escort the lady home"-"Capt. Go get the Doctor"- He expresses almost no opinion through out the film except on Christmas day when he tells the Major he needs to take a day off.

Another reviewer has confused the characters completely and has Capt. Banning as the son of the Judge when in actually it is Ronald Howard, the Confedrete Villin...

On the whole I thought this was a good plot but to squeezed into a short film to explore the subject properly. I like Jeff Chandler, but he overacts way to much in this one.