Chisum

Over the course of his career John Wayne played a few real life characters. Coming immediately to mind are Davy Crockett, William T. Sherman, Frank "Spig" Wead, Genghis Khan and some others with pseudonyms for William F. Halsey and John Grierson. Playing these people would normally impose certain restrictions on an actor who's as larger than life as John Wayne.

But it certainly didn't with playing John Simpson Chisum, New Mexico cattle baron and key player in what has become known in history as the Lincoln County War. Of course the politics involved were a bit more complex than what you would see here. And a whole lot of liberties have been taken with the facts. One of the biggest is the fact that both Chisum and his rival L.G. Murphy died in bed and quite soon after the action of this film.

But if Maxwell Anderson could take liberties and have Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England meet, then why can't we have Chisum and Murphy meeting in a final confrontation? After all it's a John Wayne movie and John Wayne movies can only go in a certain way.

The Duke plays Chisum as the Duke, no more, no less. He and other ranchers are being squeezed by a greedy rapacious businessman in L.G. Murphy as played by Forrest Tucker. Others in the cast worthy of note are Patric Knowles as Henry Tunstall, Glenn Corbett as Pat Garrett, Geoffrey Deuel as Billy the Kid, and Christopher George as Dirty Dan Nodeen.

Chisum has in its cast a whole host of familiar Hollywood faces from the past like Bruce Cabot, Ben Johnson, Hank Worden, Edward Faulkner, all Wayne film regulars. It also has the presence of both Glenn Langan and John Agar.

One of the really great things about John Wayne was the way he took care of people, not as charity cases, but giving them parts in his films when they were down. John Agar and Glenn Langan have small roles in Chisum and both were not doing too good at the time. Agar was Shirley Temple's first husband and made a screen debut in Fort Apache. Langan was a promising contract player with 20th Century Fox in the late forties and is best known for being the Amazing Colossal Man. Both were I'm sure grateful for the work and the paycheck. I remember in McLintock Wayne says to his son Patrick who's looking for a job that he doesn't give jobs, he hires men. That was something in real life he lived up to.

The Lincoln County War has been told in any number of westerns right up to the two Young Guns movies of the Eighties. Chisum is not the best or the worst retelling of the tale. But it is a good John Wayne western and that takes in a lot of territory pilgrim.

Cattle ranchers John Chisum (John Wayne) and Henry Tunstall (an almost unrecognizable Patric Knowles) face off against villainous Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker). Murphy has the corrupt law on his side, but that's okay because Duke has Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid! Fairly by-the-numbers western very loosely based on the real life Lincoln County War. A decent supporting cast, headed by Ben Johnson playing himself. There's also Bruce Cabot, Richard Jaeckal, Christopher George and soon-to-be wife Lynda Day, Andrew Prine, Glenn Corbett, and Geoffrey Deuel as Billy the Kid. All in all, not a bad bunch. It's all enjoyable enough but not one of Duke's best.

This excellent film concerns the real-life land baron living in New Mexico and dealing with the Lincoln County Wars of 1878 . Wayne as the mighty cattle baron Chisum is magnificent . It's one of very few John Wayne Westerns based on historical deeds . The movie is plenty of action , thrills , shootouts , adventures and being pretty entertaining . Casting is frankly awesome with usual Andrew McLagen , John Ford's actors (Wayne , Ben Johnson , John Agar and Hank Worden) . Furthermore , habitual Ford cameraman William H. Clothier (Cheyenne Autumm , Man who shot Liberty Valance , Horse soldiers) giving a colorful cinematography , as well as evocative musical score by Dominic Frontiere , including enjoyable leitmotif . The motion picture was well directed by Andrew W. McLagen , John Ford's known disciple , and he called the film one of his favorites .

The real events were the following ones : This powerful cattle king of New Mexico , John Simpson Chisum (1824-84) living in New Mexico governed by governor Lew Wallace (Ben Hur's author) , he started with a few head of stray longhorns and became one of the biggest individual cattle owners in North America, with between 60.000 and 100.000 head . In 1854 he entered the cattle business , selling beef to Indian reservations, making friendship with Chief White Buffalo (Abraham Sofaer's last film) . In 1867 he moved to New Mexico and established a large spread at South Spring in Old Lincoln County where he prospered greatly . He became involved in the Lincoln County war of 1878-79 in which he opposed the Murphy (Forrest Tucker) and Dolan (Edward Faulkner) faction and backed cattleman Tunstall (Patrick Knowles) , whose gunfighters-cowboys included the handsome Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel's film debut). It is said that Chisum was instrumental in making Billy the Kid an outlaw killer , he used his considerable influence in getting Pat Garret (Glenn Corbett) elected Sheriff of Lincoln County in 1880 and it was Garrett who hunted down and killed the young outlaw . Chisum's cattle brand was the Long Rail , a long , straight mark extending from shoulder to flank . Chisum , who never married, died at Eureka Springs , Arkansas , leaving an state of some 500.000 dollars .

The first few times I saw this movie, I hadn't read the history of the Lincoln County Land Wars.

However, in recent years, with the convenience of the internet at hand, I read the histories along with watching the movie. Compared to the amount of factual change that most movies based on a history put on film, this movie is not far from being spot on.

In fact, the amount of direct action that John Wayne's character, Chisum, took in the film, is probably the element that is the most out of place.

Billy the Kid really did work for an English rancher involved in the dispute. His boss really did fund a rival general store with a lawyer. Both the English rancher and the lawyer were murdered by the faction controlled by the rival general store.

Billy the Kid really did get his outlaw career kicked off in seeking vengeance for his boss and mentor's murder. Pat Garret really was supported for sheriff by John Chisum, who somehow managed to stay out of the thick of the feuding even though his use of huge tracts of public grazing land was part of the heart of the dispute.

So history buffs can safely enjoy this movie knowing that history is just bent a little, and not ripped completely asunder as the case would be with most movies. LOL That said, this is a very entertaining western. John Wayne is on top of his game as a cattle baron, and the supporting cast does a fine job. It includes a bit of everything: rustling, gunfights, stampedes, crooked sheriffs, greedy bad guys, heroic good guys. It has more plot surprises than the normal western (and that is precisely because it kills off certain characters approximately when and how they died in the real events).

All in all, an enjoyable and surprisingly informative film about a real "old west" feud.

Although a few notches below classic Wayne westerns like "Stagecoach" and "Rio Bravo," this film was a masterful return to form for Wayne. This was the first film Wayne did after gaining weight and donning an eye-patch for his work on "True Grit." In this film, Wayne plays an honest, straight talking man of action, not too different from the type character on which he built his career. The supporting characters are very well drawn and the villains resourceful enough to keep the action moving. In a way, this character, though based on an actual rancher, is similar to the character of Dunson in the superior "Red River." Both characters gambled on a long cattle drive from Texas and although "Red River" is about the drive itself, "Chisum" is about what happens to a similar character twenty years after the drive succeeds. At the time the film was released, at least one critic commented on how improbable it was for John Wayne, at the climax of the movie, to have done that much riding, fighting and falling all within the same sequence. As far as I am concerned, that sequence helped prepare me for later action sequences of 1980's action stars like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger and action directors like James Cameron and John Woo. The film is no "Red River" but it is fine western nonetheless.