Tonight's motion picture was "Bend Of The River" (1952), starring James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy and Rock Hudson. It's a classic Western and part of my personal dvd collection. I'd started out to watch "Christmas In Connecticut", which I got from the Libe, but the disc wouldn't play, so in a pinch I chose "Bend". Even though I've seen it several times, it never fails to entertain. Jimmy Stewart (pronun.) plays "Glyn McClintock", a frontier guide who is leading a band of settlers from Kansas Territory to Oregon. The settlers are headed up by Jay C. Flippen, another actor whom you've seen in many movies. Flippen intends to build a town in the foothills of what looks to be Mt. Hood. He wants his settlement to be agrarian and community oriented, a place of good old fashioned values, away from the material lures and violence of towns like Kansas City, which was overrun by bad men, the reason for his leaving.
Flippen doesn't know that Stewart was one such man. He was a Border Raider, as they were called, but that is in his past. He's trying to make an honest living now, and he is doing a good job of guiding the settlers through Indian Country as they make their way to Portland, where they will load up on supplies for the Winter. Early on, as the group has made camp for the night, Stewart rides on ahead to scout the trail for the next day's journey. Doing so, he comes across a vigilante gang who are about to hang a man for horse thievery. Stewart stops the gang in it's tracks to rescue the guy (Arthur Kennedy), who turns out to have been a Raider himself. He and Stewart know one another by reputation.
Like Stewart, Kennedy seems a decent man who has put his thieving ways behind him. He didn't steal the horse as his accusers claimed. He says that a man with a past can't get an even break. Regular folk won't ever let you forget what you've done, but Stewart trusts him. They are birds of a feather, and now, Kennedy - an expert gunman - will help Stewart escort the settlers on the remainder of the road to their new home.
During their stop in Portland, Flippen has purchased enough food to last the settlers through the Winter. The local businessman who brokers the goods (Howard Petrie), is a magnanimous sort - friendly and outgoing, he basically runs the city. He tells Flippen that he'll have their supplies shipped upriver post haste, and offers to help with anything else the settlers need. The group boards a steamboat (absolutely classic) that will take them most of the way to their destination. For mild comic relief, the boat is captained by a courtly Southerner (Chubby Johnson) whose first mate is Stepin Fetchit (playing a character named "Adam" - I love it).
In Portland, Stewart and Kennedy met a handsome gambler (Rock Hudson), who is now along for the ride because he took a liking to Flippen's daughter (Lori Nelson). All is well, and when they get to the foothills of Mt. Hood, the settlers find a wide space of prairie that looks suitable to put down stakes. In a montage, they set about the work of building their town. When they are finished, a month has passed and Winter looms, and yet they still have not received the supplies they purchased from Howard Petrie, the Portland town boss. They're running low on food. Flippen says they'll run out in a week or two. Stewart and Kennedy ride back to inquire about the delay. There, they find Portland in the midst of a Gold Rush. Petrie is making money hand over fist selling goods to the miners. Everything has gone way up, including food prices. Petrie is no longer the benevolent businessman he seemed to be. Portland has Gold Fever and he means to cash in on it. When Stewart asks him about the supply shipment, he tries to brush him off, telling Stewart not to worry, the goods will be shipped up shortly, in three weeks to a month at most. "But that's what you told us a month ago"!, Stewart bellows. "Those people can't wait another month. They'll have starved by then"! Howard Petrie gets indignant at this, claiming that the settlers aren't his problem. "Nobody forced them to live in the middle of nowhere", he says. "Look around, I could get ten times what they paid me for that food! If they don't wanna wait I can always give them their money back"!
With this, Stewart explodes. I don't know how many Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart Westerns you've seen, but Howard Petrie probably saw none, or he wouldn't have tried to mess with Jimmy. As nice as he is in movies like "It's A Wonderful Life", that's how tough he is in the Mann Westerns. Even Lee Van Cleef would back away. After thoroughly trashing Petrie's office, Stewart hires some local roughnecks to load the settlers' supplies onto Chubby Johnson's Steamship. The supplies had been sitting on the dock all this time, awaiting transport, but Petrie had put the delivery aside to concentrate on the Gold Rush.
Now there is gonna be trouble. Howard Petrie gathers a posse to follow the boat, which will have to stop at a waterfall. Stewart and his men will have to take the supplies by mule the rest of the way. That will slow them down enough for Petrie to stop them. Meanwhile, Stewart's right hand man Arthur Kennedy has decided to remain in Portland for now. He has fallen for Jay C. Flippen's older daughter (Julia Adams, who would later be taken away by The Creature From The Black Lagoon). She was wounded by an arrow in an earlier Indian attack, and had gone to Portland to recuperate. Now she has decided she likes city life. Kennedy is all about money. Though he presents himself as a reformed criminal, his greed may be cause for alarm later on.
While driving the pack mules through the hills, Stewart's hired hands run into some gold miners who offer to buy the goods. At first, they tell the miners the supplies aren't for sale; they belong to the nearby setllers. But then, because Harry Morgan is in the cast, and because - before he became Officer Bill Gannon on "Dragnet" - he always played Weasels and Troublemakers, you just know he's gonna cause a problem. When the gold miners offer the hired hands $100,000 dollars for the foodstuffs, Morgan devises a sneaky plan to sell them the food.
So at this point you've got a ton of different things happening. You've got Stewart, a former Raider who's trying to go straight, attempting to deliver the food to the starving settlers. You've got Howard Petrie, the bigshot Portland boss, trying to stop him. You've got ace gunslinger Arthur Kennedy - another former Raider who may or may not be reformed - hanging back in Portland with Julia Adams. If the Creature From The Black Lagoon finds out she's there, Kennedy will be in for a surprise, but we'll have to wait on that score. Finally, you've got Harry Morgan, who had "troublemaking" stipulated in his contract, cooking up a plan to knock off Jimmy Stewart so he and the other thugs can steal the food and sell it to the newly rich gold miners. I guess Morgan didn't see any of the Mann/Stewart Westerns, either, or he'd have known better than to make such a stupid move.
Anyhow, is that one hell of a plot, or what?
Your answer is "Yes, Ad, it is".
Now you understand why I can watch "Bend Of The River" over and over again and never get tired of it. It really is one of the greatest Westerns ever made, with spectacular location photography in glorious Technicolor. You can't beat the Mann/Stewart combo, and you can check out their other classic collaborations such as "Winchester '73", "The Far Country", "The Naked Spur" and "The Man From Laramie". I of course give all these movies Two Huge Thumbs Up, and "Bend" is my favorite of the bunch. Highly recommended for Western fans and anyone who loves Jimmy Stewart. ////
That's all I've got for the moment. I forgot to mention that we had good singin' in church yesterday. We'll be having our Christmas services coming up, so be sure to come out to hear the choir, featuring Yours Truly in the Tenor section (and I'll be singing solo tenor on Sunday December 22nd).
And how about them Rams? They crushed Seattle, and if they can win out, they've still got a shot at the playoffs. Stay tuned and I'll see you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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