The Return of Draw Egan

Almost a hundred years ago, at this writing (April 2015), William S. Hart and writer C. Gardner Sullivan were creating a type of motion picture that set the pattern for hundreds of westerns to come, maybe even thousands.

It was called "the good bad-man" story, in which a robber or other law-breaker gets converted, often through the love for a good woman.

In "The Return of Draw Egan," that woman is played by "Marguery" Wilson, who is usually known as "Margery." Her 1916 eye make-up is awfully obvious and even garish, but ignoring that lets one see she really was attractive, and one can easily understand why Draw Egan would want to change his ways.

Fleeing from a posse, Egan is invited to a town, Yellow Dog, where he meets her and other good citizens and there the story actually begins.

Having been a fan of William S. Hart even before actually seeing any of his films, I was already prepared to like "The Return of Draw Egan," and I was grateful to find it on YouTube, in a pretty good-looking version.

I can highly recommend this to anyone who will watch it with the 1916 context in mind. Remember, this was pioneering work. I love it, and hope you do too.

A fairly standard silent western without much to lift it out of the standard mold. Although Hart would later become extremely proficient at choosing his vehicles, this one doesn't have much to recommend that would draw attention to it -- for Hart fans only.

Return of Draw Egan, The (1916)

*** (out of 4)

Bandit Draw Egan (William S. Hart) goes into the city of Yellow Dog where he's mistaken for a good man. A society man offers him the job as Marshall and he reluctantly takes it for reasons we don't know. He eventually falls in love with a local woman (Margery Wilson) but soon a former foe (Robert McKim) arrives in town and threatens to blow his identity. The more films from Hart that I see the more I'm coming to realize that he loved playing the bad guy who for some reason decides to go straight. THE RETURN OF DRAW EGAN runs around 50-minutes and it's an extremely fast-paced and exciting Western but at the same time you have to wonder why Hart didn't try and explain things a little better. By 1916 he was already a major star so perhaps he just felt audiences would accept whatever they were given and that's why his bad guy just turns good for no apparent reason. What impressed me most about this film is Hart's direction as he really does a fantastic job at making the thing feel very realistic. The locations all look wonderful and Hart manages to use them to build up a terrific bit at atmosphere that really makes you feel as if you're in this town and there's no hope for anything good until Hart's character shows up. The director also does a wonderful job making sure there aren't any slow moments as we get out of the gate with an action scene as well as close with one but everything in between contains a nice bit of drama and thankfully things never get slow. There's no question that this is the type of role that Hart has been playing for a few years so it fits it nicely. That terrific face of his is just perfect for the silent pictures and he has no trouble getting across a good performance. Both Wilson and McKim add nice support in their roles. At just 50-minutes there's really no twists or turns that you won't see coming. Everything pretty much happens exactly as you'd expect it to but this really doesn't take away from any of the entertainment.

The return od Draw Egan is a 50 minutes early western from 1916 with iconic William Hart. It can be considered as a masterpiece with Hart playing a bandit becoming a honest Marshall in a corrupted town. William Hart has a luminous face with a sharp look for every situation, don't miss his fast shooting. Salloon's scenes are a success with lot of tension between the corrupted and the honest. The return of Draw Egan might be one of the very first western to present this situation we'll see in lot of later westerns, well I'll have to find titles with similar subject in that early era. And William Hart is really a great actor, I just regret he didn't go further.