A dos pasos de la horca

Pretty good town-bound western. Stolid Ben Cutler (MacMurray) gets promoted to marshal after predecessor is killed in a bank robbery. Trouble is kid (Vaughn), who looks like he shot the marshal, is old boyfriend of Cutler's daughter (Blackman). Now the marshal has to decide whether there should be leniency for the kid or not, since the town's people have decided there's not enough evidence. I get the feeling a popular youth theme of the 50's is being recycled. That is, should the good girl follow her heart and go with the hell-bent boy, or go with her upbringing and the wholesome youth who goes with it (Drury). This deepens the plot since it may mean dad Cutler has personal reasons for executing the heck-bent kid.

Except for a posse chase across scenic desert terrain, action is confined to the town and courtroom. Fortunately, the screenplay mostly compensates. Then too, MacMurray is one of Hollywood's most underrated actors. Here, he has on his grimly determined face, and delivers a convincing turn. Robert Vaughn also scores as the weakly dangerous Eddie, with an appropriate array of twitchy expressions. And catch that supporting cast, a near who's-who of 50's performers. I just wish ones like the scary Stacy Harris got more screen time. Nonetheless, it's good to see ace veterans like Wendell Holmes and Edmond Ryan pick up a featured payday. Of course, the girls look like they just stepped out of a beauty spa, something 50's oaters could not seem to avoid. Dirty up the guys, sure, but never the women.

Overall, it's a decent western with some suspense, a badly staged fist-fight, and an ironic climax. But nothing exceptional among the many oaters that filled the 50's big screen.

On a peaceful day in a small western town in Nebraska in 1878, a bank robbery occurs and Marshal Emile Meyer is killed pursuing the gang. But citizen Fred MacMurray, a former marshal, kills one of the gang and wounds the one who he saw shoot Meyer.

It was Robert Vaughn a young kid who was a former resident of the town who left some years earlier. It's now obvious what he took up doing after he left. MacMurray's daughter Joan Blackman is kind of fond of Vaughn even though she's been keeping company with the young town doctor, James Drury.

Good Day For Hanging has some good intentions and other reviewers have faulted for having the cast speak in modern idiom. That's not the film's problems, it's trying to graft a 20th century urban plot on a 19th century rural western situation.

Try as I may, I can't believe that these frontier townspeople are so squeamish about hanging this punk. Even as Vaughn claims, he did not do the actual shooting of Meyer, he's as guilty of the murder of this peace officer whether he pulled the trigger or not. The attitude expressed in such films as True Grit and Hang 'Em High is far more typical of the times than Good Day For A Hanging.

Of course in all this MacMurray is called to put on badge again and it's his testimony that actually convicts Vaughn. Still public opinion gradually turns against him for what I can see, no discernible reason. The controversy puts a strain on his relationship with Blackman as well as with fiancé Margaret Hayes.

Best performances in the supporting cast are from Edmon Ryan who plays more of a modern defense lawyer in this western. Still he does do a fine job. And I particularly liked Kathryn Card as Meyer's widow. Her scenes count and you will remember her performance over everyone else's in Good Day For A Hanging.

Fred MacMurray was not overly fond of westerns. In his salad days with Paramount he only did one, The Texas Rangers and during the fifties he did a few of them before becoming a Disney star. His famous quote was that he never felt at one with the horse'. His riding scenes were probably doubled, but in the scenes in town MacMurray acquits himself admirably.

But this one in the last analysis was an eastern/western.

It's hard to say enough good things about this script. "Good Day For a Hanging" as about a man who tries to warn a town that makes him sheriff when their sheriff is killed during a robbery that if he starts to do his job he will see it through. He was once a robber with the same gang years since, and the sheriff helped him to go straight. They do not believe him; even his daughter turns against him to side with her ex-boy friend, who swears he innocent but was identified by the man as a murderer whose deed was seen with his own eyes. The young man is ordered hanged, and the sheriff stands his grounds, and is vindicated. To this very strong storyline are added many townspeople on both sides of the argument, mostly against the sheriff, played with honesty by Fred MacMurray. The leader of his opponents is played by Edmon Ryan, the sheriff's wife played by fine actress Maggie Hayes and the boy played by Robert Vaughn. The production values are the best of MacMarray's three major westerns, with script by Daniel Ullman, John Reese and Maurice Zimm, taut direction by the great Nathan Juran and cinematography b y Henry Freulich which looks very well. Among the others in the large cast are many familiar actors of quality, including Denver Pyle, Joan Blackman, Kathryn Card, Wendell Homes, Stacey Harris, James Drury, Bing Russell, Russell Thorsen and Howard McNear. There is one good scene after another in this remarkably dramatic and entertaining script; MacMurray is all right but the part could have benefited from a performance by someone with a stronger theatrically-trained voice. The slow build of resentment against the sheriff whose stubbornness may bring the gang down on the town again sets up a grand climactic confrontation and a satisfying ending, vindicating the Sheriff's judgment. A nearly-great western.

Seeing this today -- an inexpensive 1958 undistinguished Western with talent in the declining years of their careers -- is a curious experience. The studios ground out hundreds of these in the 1940s and 1950s until inundated by the flood of TV westerns that were even cheaper. Towards the end of their life trajectory there was some attempt to distinguish them from TV fare by calling them "adult Westerns," meaning that the plot was more than twenty-one years old.

But it's instructive to watch something like this from a distance of almost half a century. A few points leap out at the viewer unbidden. One, for instance, is that this particular piece owes an awful lot to "High Noon," a highly successful inexpensively made Western with an aging star, released eight years earlier. The marshall begins his career with the support of the entire town, loses it, and winds up standing alone, even against the wishes of his family. The ticking off of Gary Cooper's sources of support -- relentlessly, inexorably, one by one -- in "High Noon" was sometimes a bit hard to swallow, but the arguments against supporting Marshall Kane (there's a "Marshall Kane" in this one too, the writers not having stretched too much) at least involved sometimes rather complex motives. They wanted Cooper out of town for various reasons, but all of them more or less plausible. Here, a couple of drinks from the defense counsel and all the aldermen and town councilmen ("the town's most respected citizens") are against hanging the kid. Nobody seems to think very hard. Oh -- and the defense counsel is a sight to behold, personally insulting MacMurray and having a fist fight with him, wearing a perpetual sneer, and using oily and insinuating locutions. (No penalties for overacting.)

The second things that leaps out at the viewer is the script. We've grown so accustomed to hearing period speech in recent Westerns that it comes as a shock to find not even a perfunctory nod to periodicity in this movie. Every character speaks as if it were 1958 instead of 1888. And as if they were all middle-class screenwriters living in Hollywood. The grammar is eighth-grade perfect and there is not a regionalism in sight. You get the impression that if someone had said anything like, "I don't know nuthin' about that -- I laid down the snaffles under the ramada by the remuda," everyone around him would be frozen into tonic immobility.

The acting is, for the most part, okay. MacMurray is a competent professional, Robert Vaughan does an excellent psychopath while breaking into tears during the trail in order to gain the jury's sympathy. Emil Meyers is always good, although his part here is too small. His widow is overplayed by the actress. And, as I say, the defense counsel belongs in a Cecil B. DeMille movie.

I'm glad I watched it. It's a genuine period piece. They no longer turn out Westerns like this. They turn out cheaply made slasher flicks in their stead. I think I prefer Westerns like this.

I agree with the previous comment that the dialogue was too contemporary. My late father, Daniel B. Ullman, was the screenwriter and I recognize his personal style very clearly when MacMurray says to Ruth Granger, "Don't talk like an idiot." Much too modern a turn-of-phrase and exactly what my dad would say to any of us during a heated argument! It's nice for me, personally, to hear such lines. They keep Dad alive for me. He wrote nine of "The Fugitive" TV series and borrowed heavily from our family life for names and places. In this picture, MacMurray's character is Ben Cutler. That was my maternal grandfather's name. Other movies of Dad's included "Badlands of Montana", whose main character is Steve Brewster. My brother's name is Steve. In "Kansas-Pacific," there is a Mr. Bruce featured.

The parallels to "High Noon" are quite flattering. I confess I didn't pick up on that.

I agree that the characters and sentiments are broadly drawn, but that is a comforting respite from much of today's fare. Give me stories about people over machines anytime.

So nice to know that folks are still watching Dad's movies 25yrs after his passing.