Perhaps no one ever fell asleep while watching a Walsh flick. They are so loaded with action. His films were tightly edited, designed to show that action as ever-moving... there is never a dull moment. Each scene has a beginning, middle and end and yet each is woven into the overall fabric of the film seemlessly. The stories always played out in his head and he was able to usually achieve exactly what he wanted as the cameras began rolling. He was so strong about this aspect that he could be tough on those around him, particularly those who disagreed with him. He had no problem reminding anyone who the boss was.
I have always thought of him as a John Ford-type. They played in the same genres, were tough old birds and believe it or not both wore an eye patch. More coming on that.
Albert Edward Walsh was born in New York City in 1887 to Irish-Catholics. He and his brother, future silent film star George Walsh, were mischief-makers and always fancied themselves as great adventurers. By age 15, Raoul ran away from home, never to return. He first shipped out to Cuba and then did some wrangling and roping in Montana and later Mexico. His first acting gig was on the stage but then he started drifting west. By the time he got to Los Angeles and an undertaking gig, he was determined to make it in movies. By 1912, he was playing cowboys in a gaggle of oaters.
He began working for one of filmland's earliest directors, the famed D.W. Griffith, who employed Walsh as an actor and sometimes as a co-director. Griffith was making The Life of General Villa (1914) and sent Walsh to Mexico to direct some scenes with the real Pancho Villa and Walsh also ended up playing the young Villa. He also worked for Griffith again the following year in Birth of a Nation, playing John Wilkes Booth.
He continued acting and directing (sometimes together) throughout the teens in numerous silent films, none of which requires elaboration. He made quite the splash steering The Thief of Bagdad (1924) with Douglas Fairbanks in one of his most famous roles. The movie was such a sensation that Walsh's name was bandied about more often and he was unquestionably given better material. He helmed What Price Glory (1926), The Loves of Carmen and Sadie Thompson, both 1927 the latter of which, as it turned out, would be his last acting role. These three are among the numerous Walsh films that would one day be remade, sometimes more than once.
In 1928 he began directing and acting in a Cisco Kid yarn, In Old Arizona. While driving on a desert road, a jackrabbit busted through his windshield, causing Walsh to lose sight in his right eye. He dropped out of the picture completely. Warner Baxter stepped into the acting role and won an Oscar. Walsh would never act again.
He began and ended the 1930s in style. The Big Trail (1930) is an exciting wagon train western with John Wayne, in his first starring role, leading the trek. Most of Walsh's work during the 30s was at Paramount and it was not a good pairing. Remember, this was the studio that greatly honored directors and this was a director who liked that. But his work there is not particularly memorable. Perhaps he was too rough around the edge for the studio's delicate tastes.
By 1939 he was at Warner Bros, the perfect studio to employ him. This was a studio whose main thrust in those days, at least, was crime stories. They started their association with one of Walsh's best, The Roaring Twenties. It concerns the lives of three buddies, newly out of the service, and bootlegging in and around New York's great saloons. It didn't hurt that it costarred James Cagney (in his last gangster film for 10 years) and Humphrey Bogart (who was soon to embrace stardom).
Wayne returned to work with Walsh in 1940's Dark Command, co-starring Claire Trevor, Walter Pidgeon and Roy Rogers, an energizing tale of Quantrill's Raiders of Civil War Days.
They Drive By Night (1940) is a lively tale but oddly changes course midway. The main thrust of the story concerns the exploits of wildcatter trucking brothers (Bogart and George Raft) during Prohibition. Then it becomes more the story of a corporate boss's insane wife. This story isn't as interesting as the former but it does contain the best acting in the film, thanks to Ida Lupino.
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| With Bogie & Lupino on the set of High Sierra |
She and Bogart joined Walsh again for High Sierra (1941), the film that would make the actor a star. (His brother, Raft, had turned down the part. Thank you, thank you.) Bogart gave the nice guy-killer role all the right touches as did Lupino as his Girl Friday who loves him far more than he loves her. (He is smitten with Joan Leslie.) This is pretty close to a perfect film in all areas, with an ending that is well worth waiting for.
Cagney turns in one of his most engaging comedy performances as a Gay 90s dentist in love with a beautiful young woman with lots of admirers in The Strawberry Blonde (1941). Rita Hayworth had her first substantial role although she was billed under Olivia de Havilland who had a larger part. The film was based on the play, One Sunday Afternoon, and Walsh would remake Blonde under the original title in 1948 with Dennis Morgan. It was not so good.
Manpower (1941) concerns two friends who work on a road crew for the power company who both fall for the local chanteuse. It starred Raft and Edward G. Robinson with Marlene Dietrich playing the canary. It was fascinating to watch these three but c'mon, Roberston and Dietrich? I dun' thin' so, Lucy.
Walsh worked with Errol Flynn in the next four films. They Died with Their Boots On (1941) is a very colorful but historically inaccurate biography of George Custer. Desperate Journey (1942) ripped with thrills as five Allied pilots (one of whom was a future president) try to make it back to England after being shot down in Germany. Gentleman Jim (1942), a biography of bare-knuckled boxing champ, Jim Corbett, was near and dear to Walsh because it is set in the New York of his childhood. Arguably, Flynn's best performance came with Objective, Burma (1945), a gritty war story and just the kind of film Walsh loved making... men in war or against evil forces. Their pairings were so successful and although Flynn was more often paired with WB's other great action director, Michael Curtiz, he claimed Walsh was his favorite of all his directors.
Walsh's next four films starred Virginia Mayo, in real life somewhat a marshmallow but who could tear up the screen with gutsy performances. She once said she owed the dramatic part of her career to Walsh and I certainly agree. She and Joel McCrea starred in Colorado Territory (1949), which is High Sierra remade as a western and a good one.
White Heat (1949) is not only one of the best from Walsh but also for Cagney, in a return to gangster roles and the best one of them all, the deeply-damaged Cody Jarrett.. How he didn't win an Oscar is a mystery to me. And we won't hold the Mayo since she was his most dangerous and duplicitous moll.
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| Cagney bullying Mayo in White Heat |
Across the Great Divide (1951) with Mayo and Kirk Douglas in his first western as a marshal on a manhunt was underwhelming but it was a Walsh western which is ok with me. Then he took to the high seas for his next three. The best was Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) with Gregory Peck in the title role and Mayo as his lady love and based on the C.S. Forrester novel.
Then came two B efforts, but very colorful ones. Peck was back as a seal poacher in love with a Russian countess, Ann Blyth, in The World in His Arms (1952). That same year came Blackbeard the Pirate, a childhood favorite of mine, aided immensely by performances from a fierce Robert Newton, lusty Linda Darnell and hunky Keith Andes.
Battle Cry (1955), based on Leon Uris' popular novel, is one of my favorite war movies ever. I say that because of the fact that it's as much about Marines' private lives as it is about war and as a result we learn more about soldiers and become invested in their outcomes. It also has a crowd-pleasing cast headed by a dynamic Van Heflin and Aldo Ray with other roles filled by Tab Hunter, Nancy Olson, Dorothy Malone, Raymond Massey and James Whitmore.
The rest of Walsh's career was certainly devoid of the greatness of his films of the 1940s. He made three so-so westerns with Rock Hudson and three of Clark Gable's late-in-career misfires. But there are two that I very much enjoyed, critics be damned. Jane Russell gives one of her finest performances in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), about nightclub hostess (hooker, if you prefer) who ends up owning much of Honolulu shortly after the the wreckage of Pearl Harbor.
Walsh's final film is A Distant Trumpet (1964). It seems appropriate that he was back at WB for the last one. It is a routine cavalry-v.s-Indians yarn but gorgeous to look and very popular because it costars Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette. I have no doubt that Walsh was happy to the end his six-decade and 120 theatrical film career with a western.
He had been suffering from various physical problems in the last several years of his life, primarily losing much of his sight in his good eye. He died on the last day of 1980 at age 93 from a heart attack.
Walsh, unquestionably a pioneer in the movie business, might have attained greater acclaim had there not been the inevitable comparison to John Ford. But as it stands, without calling a great deal of attention to himself (as Ford did), he gave us some outstanding films that featured straight-forward storytelling. Overall, I loved his work.
Next posting:
Character actors
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