Uma Cidade que Surge

1939, the greatest year in film history, produced a number of classic westerns (John Ford's STAGECOACH, George Marshall's DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, Cecil B. DeMille's UNION PACIFIC), and while Michael Curtiz' DODGE CITY may not be in quite the same league, it represented a considerable gamble for Warner Brothers, and had a major impact on the career of it's star, Errol Flynn.

Prior to DODGE CITY, there had NEVER been a successful western with a non-American leading man; foreign actors were considered too alien to the settings and action of this most American of genres. But there had never been an actor like Errol Flynn, the wildly successful Tasmanian who had proved himself as comfortable on a horse as with a sword in his hand. Coming off the most prolific year of his career (THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, THE DAWN PATROL), Flynn had become such a box office draw that the WB decided it was worth the risk to star him in a big-budget western.

The risk paid off, as DODGE CITY was a major hit for the studio!

As Wade Hatton, an adventurous 'soldier of fortune' who decides to try his hand herding cattle in the 'Wild West', Flynn looks too boyishly handsome to be true...but teamed (yet again!) with Alan Hale and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams (a new 'drinking buddy' for his off-screen carousing), he proves himself more than a match against the desperadoes ever present in these films. When his boss, Col. Dodge (veteran WB character actor Henry O'Neill), needs a man to bring law and order to the town named after him, the fast-shooting, incorruptible Hatton (loosely based on Wyatt Earp), is his only choice.

Of course, with Flynn present, it was nearly inevitable that Olivia de Havilland would be on hand, as well, although a tragedy early in the story would delay their romance for a bit. Meanwhile, corrupt town boss Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot, another off-screen pal of Flynn), plots to rid 'his' streets of the annoying crusading sheriff.

Adding to the fun is rising star Ann Sheridan, as a saloon singer who is also Surrett's mistress. In her first film with Flynn, she matches his rakish, 'devil-may-care' attitude, and would go on to make two more movies with him (EDGE OF DARKNESS and SILVER RIVER).

Featuring broad comedy by Hale and Williams (including one of the most memorable barroom brawls in screen history), a terrific large-scale climactic shootout, and Flynn and de Havilland's potent on-screen chemistry, DODGE CITY offered audiences all the elements they expected in a western...with Technicolor (one of the first major westerns to use it), and a famous Max Steiner score, to 'sweeten' the mix.

There is a curious twist at the film's end; Dodge City now tamed, Col. Dodge informs our heroes that another community, Virginia City, needs their help, in what looks like an obvious lead-in for a sequel. While VIRGINIA CITY would be made, in 1940, again directed by Curtiz, with a Max Steiner score that repeated the DODGE CITY themes, and starring Flynn, Hale, and Williams, their names would be different, and the film would NOT be a sequel to DODGE CITY!

With the success of DODGE CITY, Errol Flynn proved his profitability in westerns, which would became a staple of his career. He made a total of eight at the WB over eleven years, and, in fact, made more westerns than swashbucklers OR war movies.

The western 'experiment' completed, Flynn and de Havilland now returned to tights and medieval gowns, to join Bette Davis in THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX...

In 1866, Kansas, the American civil war has just finished and the armies disbanded. The building of the West begins, and in 1872, the new city of Dodge City is ruled by violence and shootings. The Irishman Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn) is a man adapted to these days and presently is conducting a group of pioneers, including Abbie Irving (Olivia de Havilland) and her reckless brother, to Dodge City. Once in the city, Wade is invited to be the local sheriff, and an incident makes him accept the position. He tries to clean up the cattle town, ruled by the powerful outlaw Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot) and his gang, with the support of the decent local people.

"Dodge City" is a western with an excellent pace. The athletic Errol Flynn is excellent in the role of a fair man, and Olivia de Havilland is very beautiful. The story has no plot point and is very conventional, but there are good scenes, such as the dispute between the future and the past, symbolized by the race between the train and the stagecoach and the fight in the saloon. I like, but I am not a great fan of western movies; however, "Dodge City" is a great entertainment. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Dodge City"

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