Tonight's movie was selected from my ten pack Western Collection, on which I am now running low because I have been pounding them too quickly. Like you, I can't get enough Westerns. The movie was "Sierra", starring a new favorite actor : Audie Murphy. I reviewed Audie in "Kansas Raiders" a few weeks ago, and I've seen him in a few other films too (all Westerns). He plays his roles essentially the same way in every movie, with the same expressions, same way of reciting lines, etc. That is because he was not first and foremost an actor, but was a famous WW2 Hero who was recruited to become an actor after the war. He had the looks to pull it off, and for Western movies he could ride a horse. So he was more of a Movie Star than a trained actor, but he had a lot of charisma in his ultra serious persona, and he could hold the screen with the best of them.
In "Sierra" he plays a young man who is holed up in a cabin, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains in central California (filming locations were in Utah). He lives up there in isolation with his Pa, a man who was put on trial for a murder he didn't commit. This happened in the town at the foot of the mountains. Pa was found guilty but escaped before he could be sentenced, taking young son Audie with him, way up high into the Sierras, too high for anyone but the most hardy to follow.
They have been living undiscovered up there, making a living from capturing wild horses and selling them to gold miners and other cut-off-from-society types. As the film starts, Audie is watching a wild herd cavort around a small valley below his perch in the rocks. Suddenly there is noise behind him. The herd runs off, and he turns around to see a pretty young woman who has arrived out of nowhere.
She is Wanda Hendrix, who would become Audie's wife after this film was completed, though their marriage only lasted two years. Wanda lives in the town below. She had been riding her horse but became lost. Her horse ran off and here she is, way up high in the Sierras, having discovered Audie Murphy and the secret cabin in which he lives with his fugitive - but innocent - father.
Audie and Pa are then presented with a dilemma, because Wanda Hendrix - who is from town - has heard of Audie's Pa, and though she seems like a nice gal and not of the mindset of the mob that wanted to hang Pa, Audie must decide if he can trust her to let her return back down the mountain by herself. Will she tell her own people about the fugitives and the cabin?
Audie is super serious and suspicious as he always is in his movies, and so he decides to accompany her back to town, to make sure she doesn't reveal the secret.
Along the way, she is bitten by a rattlesnake. He saves her life; she falls in love with him, and almost vice versa.......but he still places the protection of his Pa above vulnerability.
A truckload of stuff happens after this, once again because of major league screenwriting talent, even in a formula Western. The main theme is What Price Justice?
Should Audie Murphy, a no nonsense son, risk his father's life by exposing their hideaway? Or should he confront the vengeful townsfolk with the truth of his father's innocence, which he knows they won't believe because they are hiding the real killer, who lives among them.
Audie Murphy in real life was the most decorated soldier in WW2. In real life, his combat experience caused him major psychological problems, big time PTSD, which caused Wanda Hendrix to divorce him. He had nightmares of combat.
When we moved to Rathburn Avenue in 1970, there was a paraplegic veteran who lived around the corner on Etiwanda Street with his wife and daughter. This man's backyard would have been less than 75 yards from ours as the crow flies. His name was Perry. He was always in a wheelchair and you would see him out front, weeding his yard. He never said hello, but always nodded when you walked past. We were just kids, anyway. We had no idea what he'd been through. But my Mom and Dad knew about Perry. They told me he was best friends with Audie Murphy, and that they had been in the same Company during the war. Afterwards, when the Valley was being developed in the late 1940s and early 50s, Perry bought all the houses on Etiwanda between Nordhoff St. and Sunburst Ave, four houses in all. Houses were only 12 to 15 thousand bucks back then, so Perry probably got a loan or maybe he got the money from his disability settlement.
But the kicker is that his best friend Audie Murphy also bought a house right around the corner, on Rathburn Avenue. Yes indeed. And he lived in the house for a while before moving to Encino after he became a movie star. The Audie Murphy house was four doors north of the house we moved into in 1970, and it was only two doors north of my late friend Mike's house. I don't know exactly when Audie Murphy lived there, probably in the early 1950s, and maybe not for long, but he did live in that house for a time, next to his best friend Perry, who lost his legs in the war.
Audie Murphy was a combat hero and a movie star, but it came with a huge price because war is not glorious, despite how it is often portrayed in movies and literature, and especially in politics and historical accounts. What it is, is pure horror. And from what I have read, Audie Murphy was tormented by his experience.
He died in a plane crash in 1971. Wanda Hendrix continued to love him, despite their divorce. She died at 52 in 1981, of pneumonia brought on by alcoholism.
Such is life, often the stuff of tragedy. But also, within such lives, often times much is done, much is accomplished.
Audie Murphy went from Texas kid to War Hero to Movie Star before he died at age 46.
His second wife, Pamela Murphy, who was married to him when he died, became an employee at the Sepulveda VA Hospital, where my Dad got his health care for the last 30 years of his life. Pamela Murphy had taken the VA job because Audie's mental problems and his gambling had left them broke when he died, and the VA had seemed like the natural place for her to apply. They hired her, and she worked in Admittance for years and years. I took Dad to all his VA appointments from about 1998 to 2008, and every time we went, we would see Mrs. Murphy in the lobby with her clipboard, helping the vets to see their doctors. Some were young, from Iraq. A few were older, WW2 vets like Dad. Most were from Vietnam era. Pamela Murphy looked to be in her late 70s then, but she just kept right on working, helping soldiers at the VA Hospital in Sepulveda.
Everybody in the lobby knew she was Audie's wife, but she had a respect and high reputation that was all her own.
So there's a little bit of history for you. See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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