Two new Blu-rays from Kino Lorber Films showcase early 1950s Paramount pictures starring Alan Ladd, a beloved star with at least two unusual qualities. First, it was written into his contract that he had to take his shirt off at least once per movie. I’m joking, but not really. Ladd’s persona boasted a smoldering pin-up quality that you just don’t find in John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, and many other Hollywood he-man idols of the period, not even obviously handsome men like Cary Grant. I’m not saying they weren’t sexy, but they didn’t flaunt the beefcake. Ladd did. He was shorter and slighter than most others, but he used what he had.
Second, while his clean-cut blond demeanor often projected a character of strict moral code, Alan Ladd balanced this with a tough-guy persona that could be morally complex, ambiguous or dark. He established this complexity with his star-making role as the antihero of This Gun for Hire, an early noir directed by Frank Tuttle in 1942. Alan Ladd carried that vibe throughout his career.
These qualities are on display in William Dieterle‘s western Red Mountain (1951) and John Farrow‘s sea adventure Botany Bay (1953). Actually, Botany Bay was filmed in 1951 but held back for release until two years later, so both films show Ladd at the same moment in his career. In both films, Ladd’s protagonist is on the “wrong side” but attracts our sympathy anyway. Let’s take a closer look.
Alan Ladd as the Outlaw in William Dieterle’s Red Mountain
Like many Westerns, such as those of Budd Boetticher, Red Mountain opens with a distant lone figure on horseback dwarfed by natural vistas of rock and sand during the credits. When we get a closeup, it’s of the rider’s left leg in spur and stirrup. Of course, we see the horse’s legs too.
Then the camera follows the dismounted man’s legs, in jeans and chaps, as he walks into a gold assayer’s office identified as Broken Bow in Colorado Territory. The camera follows the legs inside the office, where we see the back of a man weighing gold on a scale. Scales are a symbol of justice and gold that which corrupts justice. A bullet drops on a scale, and the assayer turns to recognize the intruder in fright. “You!” he says, amid other panicked things, before pulling out his gun and getting killed.
It appears we’ve witnessed a murder, although when we finally hear an explanation in the final scene, we’re told the assayer “drew first”, and that puts a different perspective on what we’ve seen. Our assumptions are based on never having seen more than the legs of the shooter, who was presented as one determined, relentless hombre.
In the next scene, the hysterical townsmen are up in arms over the assumption that the killer must be Lane Waldron (Arthur Kennedy), an ex-Confederate POW released from the Civil War, which is in its final month. While the ineffective sheriff points out that they’re jumping to conclusions without proof because they’re prejudiced against Southern “traitors”, they all rush off for a necktie party (that is, of course, a hanging).
In her commentary, film historian Samm Deighan identifies this frustrating “mob justice” element as a subtle dig at contemporary McCarthyism on the part of Dieterle, who fled to Hollywood from Hitler’s Germany and consistently made films with anti-fascist messages. She links many of the themes and structures with other Dieterle films instructively. Deighan’s McCarthy criticism makes the name Red Mountain a loaded quality, to be sure.
As the yahoos are about to hang Lane after some off-the-cuff kangaroo-ism, he’s suddenly rescued by Alan Ladd’s character, who will identify himself as Brett Sherwood – as in Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood robbed from the rich? That would make him an outlaw, and he’s our number one suspect for the opening murder if we go by those jeans, spats, and the horse.
Our suspicions will be confirmed as the relationship between Brett and Lane becomes instantly complicated. Lane’s slightly tomboyish lover, Chris (Lizabeth Scott), an able gal in jeans and a flannel shirt who shoots a couple of guys here and there, goes along for the headstrong ride, and they’ll make quite the triangle. The triangle will add another angle when the notorious General Quantrill (John Ireland) joins the narrative of Red Mountain and quickly bonds with Brett. Quantrill is identified as “not liking women”, and he’ll remark of Brett that “he was my blind spot”.
The fiercely outspoken Chris argues with Brett’s sympathies as a Confederate soldier, even bringing up slavery to counter his rhetoric about freedom. He admits she has a point and says they have to work out their problems themselves without “Northern agitators”, which is a very 1950s Southern position. As Deighan notes, Red Mountain is really addressing contemporary America more than the Civil War.
As Brett speaks of what he’s seen and suffered in answer to Chris’ memory of her family’s massacre by Quantrill’s Raiders, Franz Waxman’s now romantic, now excited score lilts into a mournful rendition of the Union theme, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic“. That motif will recur in heroic mode during the final moments, during a literal flag-waving shot as Brett transitions to quoting Abraham Lincoln, “our president”.
Brett’s political and moral journey in this Colorado wilderness is the explicit theme of Red Mountain, and it’s negotiated by two elements besides Chris’ blonde attractions, though they help. One element is Quantrill, a figure used more mythologically than historically. The second is Brett’s uneasy surprise at learning that Quantrill is mostly supported by Native American fighters, and this is the first element that causes Brett to rethink his loyalties. Quantrill calls them “youths”, and many are literally very young.
In real life, Quantrill learned guerrilla tactics from the Cherokee, who had a Confederate regiment. In Red Mountain, Quantrill compares himself to Julius Caesar, “who had quite a way with subjugated races”. He expresses a pan-Indian vision with himself at the top: “I already have a treaty with the Utes. I’ve talked to the Cheyennes, the Comanches, and the Arapahoes. This is the greatest alliance ever made, a Confederacy of all the Plains Nations.”
That’s heady stuff and quite beyond the real Quantrill. Like Caesar, this fictional Quantrill believes in not interfering with cultural traditions (“I’m not trying to turn them into Christian knights”), and scalping is identified as such in his philosophy of moral relativism and necessity. A more progressive film could have mentioned the history of scalping by white bounty hunters, but Red Mountain isn’t going that far.
In aiming to entertain a mostly Caucasian American audience, Red Mountain posits this alliance with “Indians” as a troubling quality, but as usual with Westerns and especially the more complex ones, it likes to acknowledge the other side of the fence. While the actors playing “Indians” are the usual mixed assortment of extras, Jay Silverheels plays the leader, Little Crow, who engages in a startling dialectic with Quantrill when revealing that he secretly speaks perfect English. “Are we not brothers?” asks Quantrill, and Little Crow answers, “We are not brothers, white man. The deer travels with the coyote for fear of the snake, but the coyote is not brother to the deer.”
Also prominently visible is Italian-born Iron Eyes Cody, who convinced everyone he was Native American and who, indeed, had a Native American wife and adopted children. Like other noted figures, his life expresses an immigrant’s will to become Native American culturally, if not racially, either by adoption or assertion, to re-invent or eschew however he was defined at birth. Such things occurred, as expressed most glibly in the Irving Berlin song “I’m an Indian Too“. In Red Mountain, this choice reflects ironically on the depiction of Quantrill’s Raiders as disguising themselves in blue Union uniforms, not to mention the confusion of loyalties by Brett and Lane.
The wrap-up of Red Mountain is typical Cavalry-and-Indians mayhem in picturesque New Mexico locales, with stuntmen falling dramatically off high rocks and stuff. This standard vigorous action is the least interesting part of an otherwise thoughtful, philosophical Technicolor western scripted by John Meredyth Lucas, George F. Slavin and George W. George and carried by its strong cast. Jeff Corey, Neville Brand and Whit Bissell have minor roles.
Alan Ladd as the Captive Criminal in John Farrow’s Botany Bay
An uncredited John Farrow relieved an ailing Dieterle on some days during Red Mountain, but Botany Bay is all Farrow’s baby. Scripted by sprightly crime novelist Jonathan Latimer from the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall of Mutiny on the Bounty (1932) fame, Botany Bay is a seafaring tale about prisoners exiled to New South Wales (later called Australia) to establish a colony for the British Empire under King George III. England had shipped many convicts and undesirables to the American colonies, but that outlet was now lost to them. As with America, Australia was an English colony settling a land where natives already lived, and that issue will be raised by the script.
From a technical viewpoint, Botany Bay is never less than a visually ravishing, even awe-inspiring Technicolor production. Master cinematographer John B. Seitz not only provides one brilliantly lit composition after another, many of them taking advantage of fog effects, but he accommodates Farrow’s penchant for sometimes elaborate camera moves. A perfect example is the opening shot, which lasts over a minute and introduces us to several characters while panning across a dank, dark, oppressively ceilinged, L-shaped set representing London’s Newgate Prison.
A vivid character actor named Skelton Knaggs, who appears oddly androgynous, is drawing a large chalk skull on the wall. The camera follows him to the right, passing in front of Alan Ladd’s character before the shot settles on a deep view of the other crowded aisle as an official walks forward to post a notice on the opposite wall. This is how we learn that several prisoners are being exiled to the new colony.
Alan Ladd plays Hugh Tallant, an American medical student who, as in Red Mountain, was trying to reclaim what was stolen from him and resorted to crime. His antagonist is Captain Paul Gilbert (James Mason), who presents himself as the “peace-loving” tough-but-fair captain of the Charlotte, the ship transporting 800 convicts. He symbolizes England and English law, which are identified as cruel, unfair, and miserable.
In the snide aristocratic style perfected by Mason, Gilbert is clearly a sadist who enjoys provoking infractions that he can punish while blathering about law and order. This element makes the story of Botany Bay resemble Mutiny on the Bounty, though it goes in a different direction. Despite being a color historical epic, the dark, foggy shots, and the captain’s cruelty make Botany Bay often seem like a noir film.
There are many female prisoners, but the only one in bright red lipstick and off-the-shoulder gowns is Sally (Patricia Medina), an actress who was also (she alleges) trying to reclaim her property. She and Tallant give each other simmering, smoldering glances while Gilbert snakily offers to make her voyage pleasant. He does give her privilege to the resentment of the other women, but she proves resourceful enough to deflect his deeper interest by implying that she knows Gilbert’s wife and rakish brother-in-law. That’s one sign of how Latimer’s script is excellent with characters and their shifting associations, and surely that’s one reason he frequently collaborated with Farrow.
In its 94 minutes, Botany Bay manages to put the characters through many cruel and emotionally fraught paces before we arrive on shore. The silent aboriginals (played by African-Americans) cause unease to the disembarking convicts, but someone says, “They’re as harmless as fowl in a barnyard.” Later, Tallant opines that if they’re like American Indians, they’ll leave the arrivals alone “if we leave them alone”.
The fact that this advice isn’t taken in the climactic scene is how the aboriginals become a karmic deus ex machina that finally sets things right for Tallant. His attempts to rectify his situation have proven dismally useless, and that’s another noir-ish factor. Despite his many efforts at heroism and stuntwork, Tallant remains a powerless plaything of fate.
Also in the cast are Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the governor, Murray Matheson as a prisoner of political conscience who proves of little help, Jonathan Harris (his film debut) as one of Tallant’s friends, Malcolm Lee Beggs as a rotund double-dealer, Anita Sharp-Bolster as a sneering prisoner who gets punished, Dorothy Patten and John Hardy as an unfortunate mother and son, and a few imported koalas and kangaroos who are mighty cute.
Franz Waxman provides the sweeping score. The process photography of the great Farciot Edouart, a fixture at Paramount, is especially important to the meticulously achieved scenes of ocean waves behind the camera’s rolling moves and the careful sound design of creaking and other effects. Yvonne Wood’s costumes, Alma Macrorie’s editing, and the art direction and sound deserve kudos.
Podcaster Heath Holland provides a commentary that shows him as a fan of Botany Bay and those who made it. He states that he’s unable to confirm reports that Mason partly modeled his portrayal of Gilbert on Farrow, who had a reputation as at least a tough taskmaster. He also reports that Botany Bay was filmed in 1951 but released two years later. When it was filmed, Alan Ladd was among the most popular stars in Hollywood and was about to get even bigger.
In 1953, several months before the release of Botany Bay, audiences saw him in Shane, the phenomenally popular western from George Stevens that remains Alan Ladd’s most famous film. That story ends iconically with a boy pleading for Shane to come back. Surely, there are few old-school stars we’d so like to come back. He died at 50, and we should have had more classics from him. What we have demonstrates a magnetic, resilient, somewhat sad presence whose popularity can easily be grasped. Alan Ladd makes us feel for his unfairly wounded characters, and we love him.