Celebrate Randolph Scott's Birthday by Watching FRONTIER MARSHAL (1939)
This classic Tombstone Western presents a very different Wyatt Earp and Doc
My wife often complains that I have a more interesting birth date than she does. I was born on January 8th, so I share my birthday with Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Steven Hawking, John McTiernan, José Ferrer, and Kim Jong Un. She believes that her co-birthday celebrators are less interesting but I disagree. She gets to hang out with Rutger Hauer, Edouard Manet, Richard Dean Anderson, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, and Randolph Scott who is one of the all-time big guns of the American Western Oeuvre.
If you ask a random assortment of film fans which actor they most associate with classic Westerns, you’re likely to get John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or James Stewart as a first response depending on the person’s preferences. If you ask me though, I’ll shout out Randolph Scott!
Like John Wayne and James Stewart, Scott’s career spans from the early “white hat” days of the Western to the post-modern deconstructive era, but I think that his “average” film is better than the average film of either Wayne or Stewart. Sure, at their peak they are all pretty equal. The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Naked Spur, and The Shootist are all peak entries in the genre, but you’ll note that two of those films have both Wayne and Stewart. In many ways, their careers are not merely parallel they are co-stars whose films follow a similar style and narrative feel. Yes, I’m even counting Stewart’s films with Anthony Mann. While many argue that the Mann Westerns were when Stewart set aside his “good boy” image and began to explore darker characters, I’d argue that those who do are overlooking his performance in the Thin Man series. Stewart has always been able to bring an edge to the “nice guy,” though Mann’s films do use that talent wonderfully.
Randolph Scott’s peak Westerns include the Budd Boetticher films such as Seven Men from Now, Comanche Station, and Ride Lonesome. All three are absolute masterpieces, but it’s Ride the High Country that is his true standout for me. Like The Searchers and The Naked Spur, Ride the High Country deconstructs portions of the Western genre to create something deeper and richer. Where those films show the dark side of the heroic character, and the potential that there are no real heroes, Ride the High Country shows that even the seemingly bad man can be redeemed. The film is brutal, beautifully shot, and sadly satisfying in the end.
All of those films are pinnacles of the genre and the real merit, in my opinion, of an actor comes when he’s starring in something that is rough around the edges. Something that borders on bad, but is saved by the strength of the performance and charisma of the participants. The quintessential example of a bad film that is made enjoyable by the sheer force of will of the actors is Krull. It’s not a Western, it’s really silly, but the actors are so sincere (and the Glaive is so cool when it finally shows up) that they make the film work.
There are numerous films that fall into this category in the Western genre, but one of my all time favorites is Alan Dwan’s film Frontier Marshal (1939). Like a lot of Westerns, it’s a film about Wyatt Earp. I don’t know if there is a figure who has had more Westerns made about them than Wyatt Earp. Every time I turn around there seems to be another variation on the Tombstone story popping up. From John Ford’s classic My Darling Clementine (a remake of Frontier Marshal) and John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun to George P. Cosmatos and Kevin Jarre’s Tombstone and Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, the man has been the subject of numerous masterpieces of the Western genre. In fact, those four excellent films merely scratch the surface. Heck, there was even a Star Trek episode reimagining the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Ever since Stuart N. Lake wrote the “fictional biography” of Wyatt Earp, the man has captured the imagination of audiences and that fascination has lasted generations. We may be seeing an example of how the West “prints the legend” to paraphrase Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, but what a wonderful example it is.
In Allan Dwan’s 1939 film Frontier Marshal, Western legend Randolph Scott stars as Wyatt Earp and Cesar Romero stars as Doc Halliday. Yes, you read that right Halliday. The studio didn’t want to get sued, America has always been litigious, so they changed the name just slightly. They changed the characters of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp significantly from many other depictions. There is very little of the deep friendship of many Tombstone tales here and the Earp is far more moral than modern audiences are used to. Yet it is Scott’s charm, and Virginia accent, that make one believe that real friendship develops between Earp and Doc. Or at least that real respect exists between them.
There are two main conflicts in Frontier Marshal. Naturally, we get the historic conflict between Earp, Clanton, and Curly Bill, though it has a bit of a twist. We also get an interesting love triangle surrounding Doc Halliday and two women (one representing the Frontier and the other Civilization). This romantic conflict is far more interesting than the historic one and the one that ends up driving most of the violence in the film. It also provides fertile soil for Cesar Romero to use in what is a fantastic performance.
The film is extremely well shot, especially in the parts where it was filmed on location. Frontier Marshal is filmed in and around Lone Pine, California in the shadow of Mount Whitney. It’s one of the most beautiful locations in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains and I highly recommend that you find a way to drive up 395 to see it. The combination of piles of volcanic debris, large granite boulders, and looming crags gives a hard edge to the film. That Lone Pine is also close in proximity to Mammoth Lakes, a place of Alpine beauty, means that the location can provide tremendous shifts in appearance from stark to lush depending on the film. In the case of Frontier Marshal, we get all of the jagged starkness and none of the lush beauty and it fits the relatively morally dark material perfectly.
Cesar Romero’s Doc is a complex and interesting character, and as is often the case in Earp films, Doc steals the show. But not in the way you might imagine. Romero’s performance here is subtle and well crafted. Like his performance in The Thin Man, Romero is down to Earth in Frontier Marshal. He’s no where near as over the top as his later performance as the Clown Prince of Crime. Okay, his cough is less than convincing, but his portrayal of the internal conflict of a doomed man who doesn’t want the rot that is killing him physically and mentally to corrupt the good that he left behind in civilization is really complex and beautiful.
Scott’s performance as Earp is the most bizarre performance of the character I’ve ever seen. It’s a very good performance, and Scott is both beautiful and charming in the film, but the performance is dissonant for a long time Earp fan. This Earp behaves so differently than how Earp is typically portrayed. Stuart Lake’s depiction, the real historical Earp, and most modern films show Earp as a complex character of great darkness. He may be fighting against a greater evil at the moment, but he’s not a good guy. The portrayal of Earp in Emma Bull’s excellent novel Territory perfectly captures the modern Earp, and that Earp is one ruthless S.O.B. He’s in the right, but he’s downright horrifying.
Scott’s Earp, on the other hand, is a really nice guy. He’s easy going and disarming. He solves problems with the minimum of force necessary. He’s more like Raylan Givens than Wyatt Earp. In fact, that’s the perfect comparison, because have no doubt that when push comes to shove this nice guy will kill you just as dead.
Scott is the ideal actor for this combination of rube and ruthless. From the Ranown Westerns to Ride the High Country, Scott has shown that he can bring a real haunting anger to his characters. People often forget that he played opposite Cary Grant in My Favorite Wife, and comes across as the more attractive of the two. In Frontier Marshal, Scott is gorgeous, fit, charismatic, but nice in a way that beggars belief. And if that wasn’t enough dissonance, Scott adds a bit of Southern charm to the mix. For all that the performance makes me uncomfortable, it is completely endearing. The performance is a make or break for the film. Because the Earp of the film is a Boy Scout, he could be too saccharine and ruin everything. Scott’s charm prevents that from happening and turns a silly film into a masterpiece.
My only critique of the film is that Dwan is too reliant on the use of sets and rear projection on the close up shots. He sets up some magnificent establishment shots, such as the one above, but when the action zooms into the principals the rear projection only serves to show the weaknesses in that technique of backdrop. Black and white films normally minimize this, but Mount Whitney looks so good in black and white that it doesn’t in this case. The sound design is excellent and the transfer that streamed on Criterion Channel last year is gorgeous. I hope I can purchase a copy on Blu-Ray or 4K in the future because this is a film I want to watch repeatedly.
The film is an absolute classic. So much so that John Ford remade the film as My Darling Clementine. While there are a few differences between Frontier Marshal and My Darling Clementine, Ford made a point of borrowing some shots directly from the Marshal and inserted them into Clementine. And if my eyes didn’t deceive me, some of the set design of Frontier Marshal informed Tombstone as well (I’m thinking of the saloon performance here).
Happy Birthday Randolph and thank you for making so many wonderful films.