La Reine des rebelles

Western freely based on a real heroine including noisy action , go riding , assaults, and crossfire . This is the legend of outlaw Belle Starr and how she became the West's most wanted - and desired woman . The career of Wild West outlaw Belle Star is chronicled in this vintage western about lawlessness and war . At the end of the Civil War, an embittered Southern belle joins forces with a Confederate guerrilla leader to raid Union towns.¨Belle Star¨1941 by Irving Cummings boasts a good cast with Gene Tierney , Randolph Scott , Dana Andrews ; this is the best rendition about Belle Starr's character in which the setting is the Civil War and its aftermath . Belle's family has lost their house and land to Yankees, then she marries Confederate guerilla leader Sam Starr and they continue activities against exploiters until she is shot riding to alert Sam to a trap , while Confederate guerrilla leader to raid an Union town . Belle Star is a female bandit with an itch to ride with other Western legends . She makes her way around the Old West , usually wearing male garb . This Southern belle joins forces with Southern captain commencing a long and troubled relation . Bandit Queen & Desperadoes Who Killed For Her!. Her Name Was A Proud, Fierce Challenge Flung Defiantly At The West! Into the Cimarron Badlands came a new west queen! The exciting loves and battles of America's first "Two-Gun" Woman!.First of the West's Flaming "Gun-Molls"! The Petticoat Terror of the Ozarks!.She Was a Wonderful Sweetheart...But a Terrible Enemy! Miss Gene Tierney flames to stardom as The Bandit Queen !. No woman was ever a more tender sweetheart...or a more relentless champion of right! A great new screen personality !..Bandit Queen of a Lawless era !

This classy film concerns this known heroine and her romance with Confederate Sam Starr/Randolph Scott . This is a highly romanticized retelling with thrills , feats , shootouts and little connection with history . Here Belle Star is decently played by Gene Tierney as a vulnerable and embittered woman who is on the receiving end of society's injustices . Trio starring : Randolph Scott as Sam Starr , Gene Tierney a Shirley/Belle Starr and Dana Andrews as Major Thomas Crail give acceptable interpretations , being well accompanied by regular Westerns secondaries as Chill Wills , Shepperd Strudwick as John Shepperd , Elizabeth Patterson and Louise Beavers. Being filmed in brilliant Technicolor in the "Jesse James" Country .The motion picture was well directed by Irving Cummings .

There are various adaptations based on this historical character : ¨Belle Starr's Daughter¨ (1948) by Lesley Selander with George Montgomery , Rod Cameron , Ruth Roman . ¨Belle Starr¨ (1980 TV Movie) by John A. Alonzo with Elizabeth Montgomery , Cliff Potts as Cole Younger , Michael Cavanaugh . And ¨Belle Star¨ 1968 with Elsa Martinelli, Robert Woods, George Eastman , the only Spaghetti Western ever shot by a woman, Lina Wertmüller , who directed competently and under pseudonym, Nathan Wich .

The film is freely based on Belle Star , the actual events are the following ones : Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed Starr (February 5, 1848- February 3, 1889), better known as Belle Starr, was an American outlaw who gained national notoriety after her violent death. She was a known bandit who joined other outlaw legends, the James gang, the Youngers and the Dalton boys . She associated with the James-Younger Gang and other outlaws. She was convicted of horse theft in 1883. She was fatally shot in 1889 in a case that is still officially unsolved. Her story was popularized by Richard K. Fox - editor and publisher of the National Police Gazette - and she later became a popular character in television and films. Allegedly, Belle was briefly married for three weeks to Charles Younger, uncle of Cole Younger in 1878, but this is not substantiated by any evidence. There are numerous claims that Belle's daughter Pearl Reed was actually Pearl Younger, but in Cole Younger's autobiography (quoted in Glen Shirley's "Belle Starr and her times"), he discounted that as rubbish and stated what he knew truly of Belle. In 1880, she married a Cherokee man named Sam Starr and settled with the Starr family in the Indian Territory. There, she learned ways of organizing, planning and fencing for the rustlers, horse thieves and bootleggers, as well as harboring them from the law. Belle's illegal enterprises proved lucrative enough for her to employ bribery to free her colleagues from the law whenever they were caught .On February 3, 1889, two days before her 41st birthday, she was killed. She was riding home from a neighbor's house in Eufaula, Oklahoma when she was ambushed. After she fell off her horse, she was shot again to make sure she was dead. Her death resulted from shotgun wounds to the back and neck and in the shoulder and face. Legend says she was shot with her own double barrel shotgun, tohugh murder goes on unsolved. Although an obscure figure outside Texas throughout most of her life, Belle's story was picked up by the dime novel and National Police Gazette publisher Richard K. Fox, who made her name famous with his novel Bella Starr, the Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James, published in 1889 . This novel still is cited as a historical reference. It was the first of many popular stories that used her name.

"What's a legend?" a little girl asks her grandfather at the start of Belle Starr. "A legend is the best part of the truth," he answers before explaining the legend of the famed female outlaw. I love everything about this western, including the thoughtful, touching script. The scenery is great, the story is exciting (especially for those who don't know about Belle Starr), and the acting is top-notch. How many times are you going to see Randolph Scott cry in one of his westerns? I've seen fifty of his movies and only seen tears three times.

Gene Tierney is a vision, so delightful, vivacious, and beautiful it's no wonder she was a top tier actress for the next ten years. This was only her third movie, but her screen presence feels like she's a Hollywood veteran. She's wild, tough, yet remarkably feminine. When you watch her in this movie, you realize what a crying shame it was that she wasn't discovered just one year earlier to play Scarlett O'Hara. She plays a Southern belle turned outlaw in this western, angry because her family lost everything in the Civil War. Teamed up with fellow outlaw Randolph Scott, they fall in love.

Dana Andrews is a military man on a mission to catch the bandits. But as soon as he sees how beautiful Gene is, he falls for her, too! Including Louise Beavers as the "Mammy" role (since she's a superior actress than Hattie McDaniel, she could have easily been in the 1939 classic), and Shepperd Strudwick, Elizabeth Patterson, and Chill Wills in the supporting cast. I highly recommend this classic. It's not often there's a female lead in a western, and Gene Tierney is fantastic.

Gene Tierney stars as Belle Shirley, the feisty daughter of a Missouri plantation owner during the Civil War era. Her father was killed by "Yankee devils", and when her brother Ed (Shepperd Strudwick) returns home to tell her that the South has surrendered, she's devastated. Things only get worse when Yankee carpetbaggers show up, stirring up the "colored folk" and causing misery to the good, Confederacy-supporting Missourians. When Belle learns of a Confederate outlaw named Sam Starr (Randolph Scott) who is causing no end of trouble for the Union army in the area, she joins up with him, and the two fall in love. Also featuring Dana Andrews as the local Union Army commander who also has eyes for Belle.

Those with any knowledge of the real Belle Starr story will know that about the only thing this movie has in common with the real person is that they were both white females. The real story of the much-married mother of two who was also a bandit across multiple states is instead swapped for a "South will rise again!" Civil War revenge fantasy that traffics in regrettable racial stereotypes and exaggerated distortions. While the moment Randolph Scott calls Louise Beavers an "Ethiopian elephant" is bad, the recurring motif of Strudwick trying to tell jokes, even on his death bed, is worse. The film is given the sort of lavish Technicolor treatment that helped make Jesse James a hit in 1939, but that film had a better script and a better director.

If anyone is expecting any true notes out of this film concerning Belle Starr they are in for a sad disappointment. One of the very few things that this film got right was that Belle Starr as befit a lady to the manor born rode side saddle. You wouldn't catch Calamity Jane doing that.

If you saw this film you would think that Belle's career ended a few years after the Civil War was over. In fact Belle's time on earth was 1848 to 1889 and in that period Belle Shirley married several times, the last being a Cherokee Indian named Sam Starr. No hint of that background in Randolph Scott, he plays the part as the real Randolph Scott was, a courtly southern gentleman from Virginia.

I don't know if Gene Tierney was in the Scarlett O'Hara sweepstakes, but in playing Belle Starr she does it in the fiddle-dee-dee tradition that Vivien Leigh did in Gone With The Wind. She's got all the men in the area ready to do and die for her and that includes Dana Andrews the Yankee major who is from Missouri also and has a real case of the hots for her. But Dana does his duty no matter how distasteful it is and Tierney's heart is only for Randolph Scott.

The real Belle was quite a bit more earthy a character and had a few children as well. One of them, a daughter became the madame of a brothel later in life. This film is entertaining with Tierney acting like Scarlett O'Hara and the plot lifted from that other Twentieth Century Fox classic about a Missouri outlaw, Jesse James.

Belle Starr will never make the top ten list of any of the cast members.

That's an actual line of dialog from the script. Really.

The Belle Starr story, never actually told in the movies (partially because the real story isn't that interesting..) is told here in early Hollywood color and all the vim and vigor with which they revered the South. The plot hook is that one of the aforementioned "darkies" actually tells the fable as the narrator. Without spoiling the movie, Belle and her husband continue fighting after the War Against Treason, using those traditional Civil War Southern values of robbery, assassination, treason and protecting known criminals to keep Missouri safe for, well,the same people it was safe for before the War. Hey, it works in the movie.

The point made by vitaleralphlouis in his review is well taken. How dare we criticize Hollywood for showing how a loving mammy would help keep Belle safe, or that another "darkie" (their word, not mine) shows Belle's antagonist how disgusting he was. We all know that negroes formerly held as slaves had nothing but love for their former (or in this case present) slaveowners.

This is a classic example of a movie obviously made with care, but looked at today 99% of its viewers would wonder what was in the coffee they served at the story-pitching conference. Because even as a joke, this kind of movie could never be made again, and if there's one good thing you can say about Hollywood, that's it.

Oh, and by the way: a moment of silence for black actors like Louise Beavers who could only find work like this in her era.