Tonight I watched another Western from my William Castle collection : "Masterson Of Kansas" (1954). The title refers to the legendary lawman Bat Masterson, who should also go down in history as having one of the coolest names ever. Here, he is played with authority by George Montgomery, who is becoming one of my favorite Western stars, right up there with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea. Montgomery is tall and lean, with a handsome but lined face, all required qualities for a gunslinger. Can you imagine if Clint Eastwood had a paunch? It wouldn't have worked. You've gotta be a little on the gaunt side to be a Western hero.
Like Doc Holliday. He is just as legendary a character as Masterson, and he was skinny as a stick because he had tuberculosis. If you know him from movies it may be from Val Kimer's iconic performance in "Tombstone", but I must say that in this movie tonight, James Griffith gave what I think was an equally compelling performance. Less theatrical and more inward, but you couldn't stop watching him because everything he did was total Doc Holliday.
As the movie begins, Holliday has just arrived in Dodge City. This is another instance of coolness that must be mentioned because now, about 140 years later, getting "out of Dodge" has become a universal phrase. Even Martians say it when they are stuck in horrible traffic or in a similarly unpleasant situation from which they seek to remove themselves. So that makes Dodge City super cool as well, as the namesake of that phrase.
Okay, so Doc Holliday has just arrived in Dodge. He isn't interested in Getting Out because he's a badass. Sheriff Bat Masterson is bad too, in a good way, and he wants Doc out. Doc has a bad rep for shooting people, but it's unfair because he's never shot anyone who didn't deserve it. It turns out that Doc Holliday does have a set of ethics, and that he is a pretty loyal dude. After threatening to kill each other, Masterson and Holliday become allies.
A dangerous situation is at hand, because an older local man has been accused of killing his former commanding officer, an Army Colonel who was trying to break a peace treaty in order to steal land from the Indians. The Indians revere this man, who they see as a brother. But a local rancher, who also wants to steal the land for himself, leads a conspiracy to make sure the older man is found guilty of the Colonel's murder, so that he will be hanged. Then the Indian's last protector will be out of the way and the land will belong to the rancher.
Doc Holliday has come to town to gamble and to carry out his vendetta against Masterson, but when he sees what Bat is up against - the rancher and his thugs trying to break a peace treaty - his noble inner nature gets the better of his vengeful instincts, and he teams up with Masterson and Federal Marshall Wyatt Earp to shut the bad guys down.
Now, that's as Western as it gets, when you have Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday all on the same team, and in Dodge City to boot.
You can guess how things are gonna go down for the bad guys, and what's cool about the good guys is that they were all real people. You can Google 'em all. Wyatt Earp wound up right here in Los Angeles later in life. Bat Masterson went east and passed away in 1921. Doc Holliday didn't make it to the 20th century because of his illness. He died in 1887 at 36 years of age, just as the west was being won, which as we know was not not fair to the Indians and which is pointed out in this film and in many other Westerns I have seen. But there were good guys who stood up for what was right, and in the Old West they became legends. "Masterson Of Kansas" was one of the better B-Westerns I have seen, with never a dull moment in the direction, a standard of excellence performance from George Montgomery, and a special notice for James Griffith's potrayal of Doc Holliday. In reading about the Doc tonight on Wiki, I think Griffith's may be the most realistic performance of them all. ////
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Masterson Of Kansas", shot at Iverson Ranch, Griffith Park and Corriganville.
I had a nice hike at Aliso today and saw the coyote again. I posted a pic on FB, but he always runs away...
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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