My Romance with Movies: Guilty Pleasures: Blowing Wild

1953 Adventure

From Warner Bros

Directed by Hugo Fregonese

Starring

Gary Cooper

Barbara Stanwyck

Ruth Roman

Anthony Quinn

Ward Bond

Ian MacDonald

Juan Garcia Garza

Cooper is on his bunk. Stanwyck comes in, puts down the sheets and towels, walks over to him and plants a big kiss. He wipes it off.

Why do you fight me, she barks.

You have a husband.

You could have been my husband, Why aren't you?

Because you're no good, Marina, he says. You're just no good.

That did it. That got me to the ticket booth. To say that I was mad about Stanwyck is an understatement. She was one of the most watchable actresses I have ever encountered and with a few exceptions of some of her earliest films, I think I've seen them all. So let me tell you... as outstanding as she was up on that silver screen, when she was no good, there was no actress quite so capable of arousing my attention.

To be fair, not all of her movies were great. Entertaining to me, yes, although a goodly amount of them were programmers, little B entertainment pieces never intended to bring out the klieg lights. Blowing Wild is such a film. Stanwyck loved to work, hated sitting around. Producer Milton Sperling was a friend and asked her to take the role after Lauren Bacall declined it. Cooper was a dear friend which made the decision easier still. They made two good films together in 1941 (Meet John Doe and Ball of Fire) and the thought of doing another one with him caused her to quickly sign on the dotted line. She knew it wouldn't win any Oscars... they all did.

The plot concerns two oil wildcatters (Cooper, Bond) in some unnamed South American country (though filmed in Mexico). Their one derrick is blown up by bandits, leaving them without a peso to their names. Cooper runs into Roman, a stranded showgirl, who also has no financial means to get out of the country, and by the time she does get the fare she has decided not to go because she has fallen for Cooper.

Bond decides to accost a man on a darkened street for money to eat. Cooper hears the scuffle and joins in but soon realizes the man in question is Quinn, a good friend of both Cooper and Bond. They had worked together some years earlier on another oil prospect that hadn't worked out. Quinn offers his pals jobs in his own oil fields. He is now quite prosperous in the business. Cooper asks if Quinn's wife, Marina, is with him and Quinn says yes. Cooper declines the offer.

Cooper and Bond get a job hauling nitroglycerin in a rickety truck over bumpy roads (oh I'm sure). They are harassed by the same bandits again although they reach their destination after blowing up a bridge before the bandits can reach them. Bond, however, takes a stray bullet in the leg. When they get back to town, they find they have gotten gypped out of the promised wages for the dangerous journey.

Bond and Cooper dodging bullets

While Bond mends in the hospital, Quinn again offers Cooper a job as field boss and he accepts it, which includes lodgings on Quinn & Stanwyck's property. He has just arrived and resting on the bed when the above conversation takes place.

A short while later Stanwyck visits the men at the oil fields and as they leave to go home, she invites them to a race. She is on horseback while the men are in a roadster with Quinn driving. For me, one of the exciting things about the film was this race. Stanwyck and her stallion are magnificent. She even wins the race. The actress admitted she was never happier in movies than when she was on a horse.

The thrust of the story is two-fold... the bandits and the unrequited love between Stanwyck and Cooper. On the latter, Stanwyck never lets up, never stops trying to get him to love her. She's heard of his relationship with Roman and confronts her at the blackjack table. While it didn't come to blows (and don't I wish it had), it is a heady brew watching these two out-jab one another. Stanwyck and Quinn also have some fierce scenes over her love for Cooper.

The bandits capture Quinn and Cooper at one point and the leader (Garcia Garza) advises that there will be a $1000 protection fee per well and Quinn has 18 of them. Quinn considers paying while Cooper is disgusted... so much so that he moves into town where he can readily see more of Roman.

Stanwyck and Quinn get into a terrible row in front of an oil derrick on their property. He quickly tries to make up for it by kissing her passionately and while doing so, she pushes him into a well where the machinery grinds him up.

They probably didn't rehearse

The attached clip at the end shows the final confrontation between Stanwyck and Cooper. She is then killed in an explosion at the exact spot where she killed Quinn as the bandits swarm the property.

At the end Cooper, Roman and Bond board a boat for the States.

I never minded Cooper... I certainly saw many of his films. I thought he was a lazy actor but one who often played the learned everyman. I didn't mind that he had little to say. I minded that he always had little to say. I felt much the same about Brando's mumbling, Sandy Dennis' neuroses, Jack Lemmon's nervousness. I always thought a few directors should have whispered less in their ears whereas someone needed to tell Cooper more. I usually tended to focus on his costars.

Bacall was probably right to turn down the film although she could never have brought the high drama to the part that Stanwyck does. I've never found any actress to play the evil wife better than this one. The following year she would do it again (to wheelchair-bound Edward G. Robinson) in The Violent Men, none of whom held a candle to her violence.

Quinn was getting close to the end of his long grip on the B film. There was probably never a B film that wasn't better with this man in it. His characters were often easy to anger but somehow so cerebral in talking things out. That voice, so strong as is the face and the laughter always came easily. His best work, coming soon, coincided with his older years.

Relaxing with Cooper, Roman, Quinn

I always liked Roman. I was drawn to her dark beauty, the sexy voice and the strength she brought to her characters. She didn't play wimpy. She rarely shouted. In fact the more I think about it (and I did sit back and rub my chin whiskers), she didn't even speak all that much, certainly here, but in most of her films. How could that have possibly worked out like that? Did she have it written in her contract that she didn't want to say much? I assume there's a relationship here with why she never became a super star.

While the film does have a few interesting scenes, overall it's routine and one wonders what the attraction was for these stars.

Perhaps it was the reunion aspect. Serial womanizers Cooper and Quinn, who became even better friends while making Blowing Wild, had previously worked together in 1936 on The Plainsman. One evening during Wild they were drinking on the beach with Stanwyck and Quinn's girlfriend (his wife was at home) actress Suzan Ball when they heard they won Oscars... Cooper for High Noon and Quinn for Viva Zapata.

Cooper and Roman made Good Sam (1948) and Dallas (1950). Bond worked with Cooper in Adventures of Marco Polo (1936), Sergeant York (1941) and Unconquered (1947). Bond worked with Stanwyck in The Bride Walks Out (1936) and The Moonlighter (1953) and with Quinn in City for Conquest (1940).

Quinn and Stanwyck costarred in California (1947) and the pair of them joined Bond for 1939's Union Pacific. In his very frank autobiography, One Man Tango, Quinn said that he was never very comfortable being around Stanwyck. Temperamentally, on the screen at least, they seem like a male and female version of the same person. He could not understand why his friend Cooper found so much to admire about her.

Cooper liked being in Mexico again with so many friendly señoritas but during this shoot he likely remembered more vividly the severe injuries he received in the bridge explosions. Production was briefly shut down while he recovered.

I must assume that since no one expected much from the film from the outset, it may explain why the studio didn't want to spend money on color. The grainy black and white look makes the outdoor drama look cheap. It could have stood a rousing musical score but it, too, was absent. It may all explain why Argentinian Hugo Fregonese was given the directorial assignment. Ford and Hathaway would have declined the job had they been offered it. B films usually got B directors. Fregonese never scored a big hit among his 20+ American films, many of which were westerns.

I admit the guilt isn't as strong as the pleasure although I've never said to anyone you must go see it. Unless, of course (and isn't this going full circle?), you're a big Barbara Stanwyck fan. The lady does not disappoint.

Here's that clip we discussed: