1952 Western
From RKO
Directed by Howard Hawks
Starring
Kirk Douglas
Dewey Martin
Elizabeth Threatt
Arthur Hunnicutt
Buddy Baer
Steven Geray
Henri Letondal
Hank Worden
Jim Davis
Iron Eyes Cody
Howard Hawks was looking for another western to direct. He had been for several years, virtually since he wrapped production on the John Wayne-Montgomery Clift film, Red River (1948). Finally he bought the rights to western writer A. B. Guthrie's 1947 novel, The Big Sky. Guthrie had won a 1949 Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Way West. He also wrote the 1956 novel These Thousand Hills which was turned into an unsuccessful 1959 film.
Guthrie also wrote the screenplays for the magnificent Shane (1953), which was filming in virtually the same Wyoming location and at the same time as The Big Sky, and also Burt Lancaster's The Kentuckian (1955). Guthrie loved stories of the Old West, aided no doubt by being raised in Montana, and he was an excellent chronicler of those times.
Whether fortunate or not, Hawks and his screenwriter, Dudley Nichols, took Guthrie's work and changed it significantly. Nichols, in turn, didn't get a single word on screen that wasn't approved by Hawks. In fact, the director changed a lot of Nichols's words as well.
Hawks was high on his cast except for the two leads. He originally wanted Gary Cooper and Arthur Kennedy. Then he wanted Cooper and Clift (who wasn't comfortable doing westerns and didn't want to do another), then Robert Mitchum and Marlon Brando. At one point he told studio head Howard Hughes that he would wait a year to start filming so he could get the busy Mitchum. He waited the year but no Mitchum.
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| Dewey Martin |
Finally Hawks hired Dewey Martin to play Boone Caudill (the main character in the novel), an actor he directed a year earlier in The Thing from Another World. For the other lead he finally settled on Kirk Douglas simply because he liked his intense physicality and no one else was working out.
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| Kirk Douglas |
As the Blackfoot woman who is used as a pawn in a business deal with the Indians, Hawks chose a model he'd been dating and who had never made a movie (and would never make another). Elizabeth Threatt was the South Carolina-born daughter of a Cherokee father and a British mother. She would speak no English in the film.
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| Elizabeth Threatt |
Hawks was very high on grizzled Arthur Hunnicutt for a major role as Boone's uncle who is also the colorful narrator of the film, much as Walter Brennan had been in Red River.
A friend of mine liked to say The Big Sky is not a western but a midwestern. I always crack up. I get it, too, since it's set on the Missouri River. It would not be out of line to call it an adventure film because it is a rollicking one.
Douglas and Martin meet in the wilderness, spend a few nights together and quickly become good friends. (More on this later.) They head toward St. Louis where they meet up with Hunnicutt. The three of them join up with Hunnicutt's Creole pal Steven Geray to take an expedition up the Missouri River and into the Yellowstone River. Along with 30 other (mainly) Creole trappers, they board the Mandan, a keelboat, to seek trade with the Blackfoot tribe in competition with the Missouri Fur Company.
Hunnicutt is the one responsible for bringing along Threatt, whom he rescued several years earlier from an enemy tribe. She is the daughter of the Blackfoot chief and her presence and return is expected to facilitate trade. Also along is Poor Devil (Hank Worden), a kind but mentally-challenged Blackfoot who will prove his worth in the months to come.
Threatt's presence, of course, proves a threat for the two friends, each of whom falls for her and one of who will marry her by the finale. Their falling out occupies a great deal of the film's latter half. There are others, of course, who find the keelboat's crew to be a threat. There are numerous skirmishes with non-Blackfoot Indians and also employees of the Missouri Fur Company, headed by Jim Davis (one day Jock Ewing of TV's Dallas).
There's a fire on the boat, Douglas is separated from his party and shot in the leg, Threatt is captured by Davis and his men and while all ends well, it is anticlimactic considering all that has preceded it. As I see it, Hawks made a rambunctious, exciting film with an interesting glimpse of male friendship as its centerpiece.
That friendship has a decided homoerotic aspect to it. Hawks had a predilection for male love stories. I would like to know why that was so but in lieu of knowing, I'll settle for enjoying. Most famous perhaps is the homoerotic relationship of Monty Clift and John Ireland on their cattle drive in Red River. That was some frothy dialogue. Here it's not as obvious but it's there... Douglas and Martin lying against a log and holding those long, silent glances, one running his hands through the other one's hair, touching one another. It changes with the appearance of the woman and yet it's always there.
There is a historical aspect to the film that particularly strikes my fancy. Guthrie was adept at exploring the unexplored. In the Lewis and Clark tradition, things here appear so authentic. Guthrie and Hawks both had a love of the land and everything associated with it. And these characters are a tough, heroic band of loners, hustlers, adventurers and misfits, they are portrayed as men of strong loyalty, camaraderie and genuine friendship.
The keelboat is not often the mode of transportation in films of the rivers and it provides for great excitement with its durability, a certain hominess and a band of brothers working together.
If there's a downside... and I think there's a serious one... it's that Hawks insisted that a great outdoor adventure, filmed in Wyoming's Grand Tetons, be done in black and white. I mean... what in the hell was he thinking? His explanation for this in his biography is rather cavalier if not idiotic. It's so idiotic it doesn't warrant repeating. But what possible benefit did he seek to gain by using black and white? He only needed to check the dailies that George Stevens was producing on his glorious Technicolor presentation of Shane to see what smart was. It could have made a good film great.
The acting is uniformly good as well. Douglas doesn't have to do anything particularly special to be convincing in these pioneering sorts of roles... he just is... he just does. Throw some buckskins on him and throw away his comb and I am utterly convinced. I am sorry that he only gave the film one-and-a-half pages in his 500+ page autobiography but he did manage to include details of his S&M affair with Threatt that continued beyond the filming.
Some of Douglas's fans appeared a little confused in 1952. Earlier in the year his The Big Trees was released.
I've noticed that none of Dewey Martin's costars who are subject of biographies have ever said anything personal about him. I wonder why that is. Douglas doesn't ever mention him and Hawks's biography says nothing personal. But I liked this actor, liked his looks, liked his lowkey acting.
Threatt said she couldn't stand Hollywood... the phoniness, the ass-kissing, the meanness. Since most of her career took place in the Grand Tetons, one pauses to inquire what Kirk Douglas might have had to do with her decision to flee the business after one outing.
Hunnicutt was a great character actor, bursting with, well, character. Funny, irreverent, the country bumpkin type he was often the smartest guy in the room and not nearly as old as he appeared.
Hawks also loved heroes... if they weren't already heroic, Hawks did what he could to turn some men into heroes. Hawksian women, as they were called, were often one of the guys and often every bit as heroic. I always found him to have a great sense of adventure. His films kept me fascinated and entertained.
In addition to filming at the Grand Tetons, the Snake River in both Wyoming and Idaho stood in for the Missouri River and St. Louis was filmed on the backlot of 20th Century Fox.
Let's go behind the scenes on location:
Next posting:
a director
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