As we discussed last week, when it comes to the live-action Disney stuff, the benchmark for “does it make sense that this isn’t on Disney+?” is The Castaway Cowboy. That movie is both boring and racist. It is also obscure. Yet somehow, it is on Disney+ and this is not. And I’m not saying this movie is great art, goodness knows. It’s moderately interesting and . . . less racist? It is also obscure. So sure, Jack Elam and The Guy Who Played The Doctor In Support Your Local Gunfighter don’t exactly balance Actually James Garner, but it’s also got both Howard boys?
The Tanner family has bought a farm in what is eventually explicitly Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming (where it was really filmed), in what is implicitly 1889 (it’s mentioned that things are heating up in Johnson County), from their cousin-four-times-removed Perce (uncredited). A mountain man, Thompson (Elam), is staying on it, which he tells them he tends to do on his way through; his partner is a Shoshone man called Two Dog (Frank DeKova, and we’ll get back to this). Thompson tells Mr. Tanner (Steve Forrest) that the local land only gets water by ditch, which flows through the land of cattle baron Ab Cross (Morgan Woodward), who doesn’t care that their deed says they’re entitled to it.
Yeah, we’re going to start with Two Dog. Who is played by a white dude in redface, because of course he is. His partnership with Thompson is based on Two Dog’s mystical connection with wild animals. Mrs. Tanner (Vera Miles) is scared of him, and she’s never told, “Hey, you’re being racist to someone who’s really helpful to us and a hell of a lot less obnoxious than Thompson.” Not just “not in so many words” but not at all. There’s something of a “not around the boys,” but that’s our limit. Her one moment of bonding with her younger son is based on not wanting to summon Two Dog to help him with a wounded hawk.
The Tanner boys are Ronnie and Clint Howard. (Yeah, that’s how long ago this was—Ronnie.) Ronnie plays Virgil, who is clearly in that stage where he’s developing toward manhood but still something of a boy. However, since they obviously don’t have any hired help on the ranch—even Thompson and Two Dog only come and go—Mr. Tanner desperately needs Ronnie to keep things going. He can’t do it all himself, and even Mrs. Tanner is of limited help, especially with a younger boy around to be chased after. Clint as Andrew has something of a fixation on the dog the family left behind and wants to keep replacing Ralph the Dog with Ralph the All Kinds of Other Animals. As far as I can tell, this is the only time the Howards played brothers.
The movie hits a lot of pretty standard Western beats, when it comes to Westerns about families especially. The family is implied to have had something of a hardscrabble past Back East. They’ve apparently started over a number of times, and the question becomes whether this will be the last time, whether or not this is where they are to stay. What’s implied, interestingly, is that Mrs. Tanner often instigates the wish to go and Mr. Tanner takes the blame for moving the family all the time. There’s no fight about it, but there’s the implication that there could be a fight about it.
The movie’s story is not dissimilar to what was happening on the other side of the state at the time. Ab Cross has been in the area his whole life and is descended from some of the first white settlers in the area. For twenty-five years, he says, his cattle have grazed on what is now the Tanners’ land. He is angry that they now cannot, and he retaliates by controlling the water. The specifics are very different, but the causes are much the same. It’s all to do with change, one way or another.
The one thing it’s worth noting is that the story escalates quickly. For a lot of the movie, we’re kind of trucking along with a bog-standard Opening The West movie, and then suddenly there’s a fistfight in a general store and gunfire and who even knows what all. People in Wyoming insist the tornado is ridiculous, though there has been one in the area in recorded history, but it’s basically everything from that moment on that’s Just A Lot. Overall, it’s a decent enough movie. The scenery’s beautiful. Ronnie Howard’s doing pretty well. Clint can’t fake-cry for beans. And then suddenly Ronnie’s got to go dam-busting and it’s all downhill from there. But still better than The Castaway Cowboy.
I had to rent this, because Disney+ failed me; reimburse me by supporting my Patreon or Ko-fi!