La femme qui faillit être lynchée

WOMAN THEY ALMOST LYNCHED (1953) opens with a bang and never lets up for its entire running time. I don't think I've ever seen a Republic western as good as this one, packed with incident, filled with a great cast of performers, several of them playing famous outlaws, smoothly directed and expertly edited, and boasting an array of powerful female characters like you've never seen in one western before. I would say that Audrey Totter as bloodthirsty Kate Quantrill steals the show but then I'd be giving short shrift to Joan Leslie who more than holds her own against Totter right up to the end. The two characters start out as fierce antagonists who get into a shouting match at the scene of a massacre of Union soldiers and it only gets worse from there, descending into a spectacular barroom catfight and eventually into a gun duel on the town's main street that doesn't resolve things at all. It gets even more interesting as it goes along and we learn more about both women and watch as the anger subsides and they come to more than one level of understanding. Totter even gets to sing two lovely songs in the film, although I can't confirm that she did her own singing.

And they're not the only strong women in the cast. The mayor of the town is a big woman named Delilah Courtney (stage singer Nina Varela), who owns the local lead mines and rules over things with an iron hand, resorting to hangings when anyone breaks the rules of neutrality. Then there are the saloon girls at the Lead Dollar Saloon, who worked for Leslie's brother (Reed Hadley) and then for Leslie's character, Sally Maris, and give her all sorts of advice and assistance throughout the film. One of them is none other than Ann Savage, most famous as Vera, the hard-bitten femme fatale from Edgar G. Ulmer's B-noir classic, DETOUR (1945). Fans of that film will be pleasantly surprised at how charming and attractive Savage could be in other roles. Also on hand is Virginia Christine, a veteran character actress who usually played housewives and suburban moms, but handles herself quite adequately in her saloon role.

The setting of the film is quite unusual. The time is 1863, at the height of the Civil War, and the locale is a little town in the Ozarks that straddles the border between Missouri and Arkansas, one Union state and one Confederate state. Mayor Courtney declares strict neutrality and orders the Union and Confederate troops to stay at least five miles away from town. One of her lead mines supplies the North and the other supplies the South. John Lund, top billed, plays a Confederate officer working undercover as a mine foreman. Brian Donlevy plays Colonel Quantrill, who leads a renegade force of rebel fighters working chiefly on their own and violates the neutrality rules when he brings his men into town. These men include Frank James (James Brown), Jesse James (Ben Cooper) and Cole Younger (Jim Davis). The town is full of men from both sides of the war and the slightest provocation could trigger a violent confrontation on the spot. In fact, the catfight between Kate and Sally begins because Sally is adamant about preventing Kate from singing "Dixie" in the saloon.

Also in the large and colorful cast are Minerva Urecal and Ellen Corby as outspoken town ladies; Richard Simmons ("Sergeant Preston of the Yukon") as a Union army captain whom Kate tries to charm; Gordon Jones (Mike the cop from "The Abbott and Costello Show") as a Union army sergeant; Richard Crane ("Rocky Jones, Space Ranger") as a Union Army lieutenant; and Reed Hadley ("Racket Squad") as Sally's brother, who still suffers heartache from losing Kate to Colonel Quantrill two years earlier. Donlevy had played Quantrill quite memorably three years earlier in KANSAS RAIDERS for Universal. Jim Davis went on to star in the Republic-produced TV series, "Stories of the Century," in which his character, railroad investigator Matt Clark, went after famous outlaws like the ones depicted here, in episodes that used stock footage from Republic westerns like this one. In fact, the opening montage of this film, showing Quantrill's murderous raid on Lawrence, Kansas, relies on footage taken from an earlier Republic western, DARK COMMAND (1940), in which Walter Pidgeon played a character based on Quantrill.

The direction is by Allan Dwan, who'd been directing by this point in his career for 42 years. The screenplay is by Steve Fisher, a specialist at different kinds of pulp genre films (LADY OF THE LAKE, DEAD RECKONING, THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO) and he juggles the different characters and plot elements so well that no one gets lost or cut from the action. Every major character, and I count at least a dozen of them, gets their share of great scenes. Only one is written out early on to pave the way for the bold actions required by another.

Republic brought over auteur favorite Nicholas Ray to direct JOHNNY GUITAR the following year, in lurid Trucolor, with Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge as dueling female antagonists and that film has always gotten extraordinary attention from western scholars and feminist film critics seeking to focus academic respectability on a film rich with Freudian themes and flamboyant theatricality. My sixth sense tells me that ordinary western fans would prefer WOMAN THEY ALMOST LYNCHED. I wish this film were better known and better appreciated.

One of those unusual westerns with two women as the central characters... such as in "Johnny Guitar" and "Jubilee Trail," among others. During the Civil War in a town run by ruthless people, bad Kate has it in for darling Sally but stay tuned to the climactic ending to see how this all works out. Definitely a cheap oater with few production values, but it does have lively performances from Joan Leslie and Audrey Totter. If you know these actresses, then you know who plays whom. Fourth-billed Leslie is actually the star of this dopey-titled film and is always a joy to watch. For those who love women fight scenes, this has one of the fun ones. So glad I have it on my homemade VHS as this little-seen film is unlikely to ever be on DVD.

The movie is unusual because the ladies are the powerful ones in this movie. Audrie Totter is the cowgirl Emma Peel Because of her sexy leather pants and riding boots. Audrey is also the opposite of Emma because of her evil disposition. Warren O'Leary.

This may be a Republic B-western, but it is an action-packed and highly entertaining melodrama under the skillful hand of veteran director Alan Dwan. Not only that, but a year before the cult classic JOHNNY GUITAR, we have another feminist western with both a barroom brawl and a shootout between two women, in this case Joan Leslie and Audrey Totter, as well as a tough female mayor who owns the local lead mine. We also get appearances by Frank and Jesse James and the Younger brothers, riding with Quantrill's raiders at the end of the Civil War.

Nevertheless, putative stars Brian Donlevy (as Quantrill) and John Lund (as the mine foreman) take a back seat to the women as far as the action and main plot go. Even longtime Republic star Reed Hadley barely makes an appearance (as Leslie's brother) before being shot down in the first reel, giving the plot its "inciting action," since his younger sister must now take over the saloon he owns and the debts he owes. The film's only faults are some tedious expositions presented through a couple of pretty heavy-handed dialogue scenes towards the beginning and again towards the end. Otherwise, there are lots of unpredictable variations on the genre, especially for a Republic western. There are even a couple of songs, sung by Audrey Totter as a saloon singer.

On the Missouri-Arkansas border, a town has proclaimed neutrality in the Civil War. Under the rule of Mayor Nina Varela, they can get away with it, because she owns the lead mine and, as the opening narrator tells us us cheerfully, they hang anyone who violates it.... with a lynching going on as we begin.

Into this mix comes Joan Leslie, looking for her brother, Reed Hadley. He's immediately shot by John Lund, leaving Miss Leslie with a money-making saloon and lots of debts. Adding to this mess, come Quantrill's Raiders, led by Brian Donlevy, who's married to Audrey Totter, who was going to marry Hadley until Donlevy carried her away; now she's mean, and gunning for Miss Leslie, who's in love with Lund, because this is one of director Allan Dwan's movies, where symbolism carries the freight, and the dark/light twins at the center of this conflict are Miss Totter and Miss Leslie.

Miss Totter has a heck of a time, sauntering around in leather trousers with a sneer on her face, Brian Donlevy constantly putting her down. Miss Leslie is the good girl, unable to get a job as a schoolmarm, who turns readily to being, as she puts it, "a honky-tonk queen." The women running the town talk slightingly of men in a way that sounds photo-feminist, but with Union troops to the north and Southern troops to the south, and all the men in town the dregs of society -- who drink a lot but are very respectful of the women -- it's an uneasy equilibrium, a stasis that will last until the end of the War, Can Miss Varela hang enough people who threaten the situation to last until then?

When people talk about the weird symbolic westerns of the 1950s, they usually talk about JOHNNY GUITAR. This one is even crazier, because the people in this movie think they're sane.