Dodge City

This is one of the better old-time westerns because:

1 - It is a very fast-moving story. No lulls here. 2 - The hero of the story (Errol Flynn) is a very likable guy. 3 - The gorgeous Technicolor (not many color films made around this time) which looks even bolder and brighter on the DVD. 4 - The story sports a good combination of action, drama, romance and comedy. 5 - A very young Olivia de Havilland at her prettiest

This was one of the first westerns to feature a well-known actor, helping to give the genre a boost in reputation. Bruce Cabot and Victory Jory are credible as villains. Alan Hale is tolerable in his normal role as the buffoon. The only disappointment was Ann Sheridan, a beautiful woman who did not look as attractive in this film and had a role much smaller than one would believe from the billing she gets on the DVD back cover.

I like Errol Flynn, but I don't think he's at his best in westerns. This one has a "clean up the town" storyline, plenty of action, but perhaps too much comedy, given the course of the plot. For the most part it's a typical product of Warner Brothers' golden era, with Flynn's usual supporting cast, including Olivia de Havilland, Alan Hale, and Guinn Williams.

The film does have one very interesting sequence, especially in light of future movie history. In a saloon scene about halfway through, a group of cowboys with northern roots, or at least Union sympathies, start singing "Marching Through Georgia." Not to be outdone, another group, led by Williams, begins to sing "Dixie." Before long, punches are thrown and a mammoth brawl breaks out.

Sound familiar? Except for the fight, the scene resembles the song duel in "Casablanca", made at Warners three years later. Although the screen writers aren't the same, I have to think this was the inspiration for the battle between "Wacht am Rhein" and "Les Marseilles."

Warner Bros. Spared no expense in making their mark in the western genre. Errol Flynn plays a former soldier of fortune newly arrived to Dodge City, a town envisioned as the ideal family destination that's become a Mecca of licentiousness, ruled by a smooth-talking murderer (Bruce Cabot), who buys cattle on credit and has his backers killed when they try to collect.

Flynn reluctantly becomes Sheriff to clean the place up. Alan Hale as Flynn's sidekick provides a tonic of comic relief. The film has tonal shifts from happy-go-lucky to tragic, and doesn't pause to catch its breath. There are three great action set pieces: a cattle stampede, a saloon brawl that escalates to near-comic proportions, and a spectacular train hijacking sequence, all staged with virtuosity by director Michael Curtiz. Olivia De Havilland plays a well-bred miss who blames Flynn for the death of her brother. But, to no one's surprise, the two end up falling in love.

You quickly get past Flynn's posh accent, and with his dashing leading man persona, he makes for a believable cowboy. Ann Sheridan's part as a dance-hall entertainer is terribly underwritten, and barely worth mentioning. The color photography is stunning, even if the themes are black and white. Still, I found Dodge City thoroughly enjoyable.

In the film's introduction on Turner Classic Movies, Ben Mankiewicz had as a guest Alan K. Rode, a Michael Curtiz biographer. Mr. Rode said Flynn's agent was opposed to him doing Dodge City because he felt Flynn was not a good fit for a quintessentially American genre as a western. And De Havilland wasn't happy because she wanted to be working and preparing for Gone with the Wind.

Olivia de Havilland is really attractive here, fresh faced and brunette with big dark eyes. She looks so thoroughly American. Any normal man would want to throw himself at her feet, show her his bankbook and genealogical tree, and beg her to marry him. Marry -- not simply cohabit, because she's not that kind of girl. It's strange too that she look like an ex prom queen when in fact she was born in, where, Tokyo? And into a famous British family, responsible for the design of the superb DeHavilland "Mosquito" of World War Two fame.

Errol Flynn came from a professional family too. His father was a marine biologist and a professor in Tasmania. But you'd never know it from Flynn's personal history. His autobiography, "My Wicked Wicked Ways," is full of humorous anecdotes, although the best revelations must have been edited out.

(Eg., he owned a house on Mulholland Drive with a glass ceiling in the guest bedroom so that he and his friends could creep into the attic and laugh at the goings on.) He's an Irishman here with a brawling and rebellious past. It was the last movie in which they tried to explain his Brit accent to the audience.

The rest of the cast will look familiar to any Warners aficionado -- Frank McHugh, Ward Bond, Alan Hale, Big Boy Williams. There is a great fight scene, outrageously overdone, resulting in the near total destruction of a barn-like saloon. The brawlers smash through the wall into the meeting of the Lady's Temperance Society next door. And nobody even gets a bloody nose, no matter how many chairs have been smashed over his head. It isn't as comic as the saloon fight in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," but it's a big one and it IS funny.

The movie features Frank McHugh as an honest and courageous newspaper editor who is about to expose the chief heavy, who is by the way a complete stereotype with not a decent bone in his body. Victor Jory, a slimy henchman, comes into the office, threatens McHugh, and smashes him across the face with a small heavy whip. I wonder if Ford saw this before making "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence."

Come to think of it, before the fight scene, some ex-Union soldiers begin singing "Marching Through Georgia," which annoys the Confederate veterans who strike up, "Dixie." The two groups face off and sing at one another. The same sort of competition reappears in "Casablanca," under the same director, Michael Curtiz.

Flynn wears a broad-brimmed flat-topped cowboy hat. This must have been a liminal period for cowboy hats. Before then, cowboy hats were huge and round topped with a slight crease down the middle. Tom Mix wore such a hat in the 20s and John Wayne made a couple of Gower Gulch masterpieces wearing a fifty-gallon corker. Ten years after "Dodge City," cowboy hats came to resemble ordinary fedoras with smaller brims, sometimes twisted upward in odd ways, like a vaudeville comic's. A little bit of hat iconography there.

The plot's entirely conventional. The good guys versus the bad guys, with nothing in between. Well -- that's how the universe is really put together, isn't it? Oh, how I hate Alpha Centauri.

One bothersome thing. A careful historiographical search reveals that, the cast of characters in this movie notwithstanding, absolutely no cowboy has ever been named Wade, Matt, Cole, or Yancey. The historical record shows no evidence of the use of such names, and goes out of its way to emphatically deny their existence in the Old West. It is also an established historical fact that the most common name among cowboys was Montmorency.

Hadn't seen this for years but was able to relax and get a kick out of it.

"Dodge City, Kansas - 1872. Longhorn cattle center of the world and wide-open Babylon of the American frontier - packed with settlers, thieves and gunmen".

"Dodge City... rolling in wealth from the great Texas trail-herds... the town that knew no ethics but cash and killing".

Enter trail boss Wade Hatton, cunningly disguised as a dashing Errol Flynn........

Dodge City, an all action Western from start to finish, finds Errol Flynn {in his first Western outing} on tip top form. Based around the story of Wyatt Earp, Michael Curtiz's expensively assembled film charms as much today as it did to audiences back in 1939. All the genre staples are holding the piece together, dastardly villains, pretty gals, wagon train, cattle drive, iron horse, Civil War, shoot outs, fist fights and of course an heroic Sheriff. All neatly folded by the astute and impressive Curtiz. Aided by Sol Polito's fluid Technicolor enhanced photography, and Max Steiner's breezy score, Curtiz's set pieces shine as much as they enthral. A burning runaway train and the finest saloon brawl in cinema are the stand outs, but there are many other high points on which to hang the hat of praise.

Very much a male dominated film, it's with the ladies that Dodge City fails to reach greater heights. Olivia de Havilland, who is always a feast for the eyes in Technicolor, disliked her role as Abbie Irving, and it's not hard to see why. There is not much for her to get her teeth into, it's a simple role that demands nothing other than saying the lines and to look pretty. Ann Sheridan as Ruby Gilman gets the more sparky role, but she sadly doesn't get that much screen time. Which is a shame because what little there is of Sheridan is really rather great.

Those problems aside, it's with the guys that Dodge City is rightly remembered. Flynn attacks the role of Hatton with gusto and a glint in his eye. When he straps on the Sheriff badge for the first time it's akin to Clark Kent shredding his suit to become Superman. Yes it's that exciting. Bruce Cabot and Victor Jory are growly and great villains, while comedy relief comes in the fine form of side-kickers Alan Hale and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams. Dodge City sets out to entertain, and entertain it does. In a year that saw other notable and lauded Westerns also released {Stagecoach, Jesse James and Destry Rides Again} give credit where credit is due, Dodge City deserves its place amongst those offerings. Most assuredly so as well. 8/10