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Tag Archives: claire trevor

Stagecoach 1939 (Part Three)

02 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by simon682 in Uncategorized, Western Approaches

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Andy Devine, claire trevor, Dallas, Donald Meek, George Bancroft, John Ford, john wayne, Stagecoach 1939

Nine Characters in Search of an Author  Continued

Everything in Stagecoach is balanced. The major plot line of Ringo’s search for justice is balanced by the trials of each of the others. We have balance among the travellers. Each connects strongly with another in a deliberate act of pairing  and we have a balance between the “aristocratic and  privileged characters  – Lucy Mallory, Hatfield and Gatewood” and the “disreputable and/or powerless – Dallas, Doc Boone, Peacock and Ringo.” (Jim Kitses). There’s balance between the number and sequence of the exterior shots of the huge landscape the stage is travelling through and close-up shots of characters inside the stage. Balance between travelling shots and resting shots, between night and day. There is also the revealed balance between social status and moral goodness. I’ve mentioned before a touch of Charles Dickens about Stagecoach. John Ford’s view of the world is “democratising and egalitarian, indeed even rabble-rousing” You’ll find something similar in A Christmas Carol and Bleak House. “it is the misfits and losers who are the soul of the new nation.” The Bob Cratchitts the Tiny Tims and Joe the crossing sweeper.

The Ringo Kid: John Wayne

There is no getting away from it. Despite the fact he has the least lines of dialogue, is far from being the best actor, is awkward in his costume, has his most famous scene shot with an unfocused camera and is seldom allowed to move and talk at the same time, John Wayne’s is the most memorable performance in the film. Anyone wishing to do a PhD on what makes a star could do worse than begin here.

He’d been tried in a major role before, it had bombed at the box office and he’d spent ten years churning out B movies at a rate of 8 a year. Production companies were reluctant to put money into a film starring John Wayne: David O Selznick wanted him replaced. But John Ford knew he was right for the role. He made considerable sacrifices in order to keep Wayne. He didn’t intend to make him a star but when he watched the completed film he knew that that was what he had done. That “He (Wayne) will be the biggest star because he is the perfect everyman” (John Ford)

Film_516w_Stagecoach_original

Those of us who had grown used to Wayne as an established part of western casting are surprised to see how young the actor looks in Stagecoach. He was in fact 31.

Much of his success has got to be down to pairing his character with Claire Trevor’s Dallas. Who incidentally was paid five times more than Wayne. She is brassy and hardened by experience though gentle and vulnerable. Her attractiveness is not showy or exotic. Ringo is an innocent who has experienced the hurt and pain but has not yet been able to turn this to durability and wisdom. He’s decent and brave and prepared to stand up for Dallas. She in turn protects him. She understands a great deal that passes Ringo by. They shield each other and given time will nurture each other. And cinematically they look wonderful together.

Ringo and Dallas“It’s one of the most stunning entrances in all of cinema.” (Edward Buscombe). Not quite his debut in films. Wayne had in fact already appeared in 83 movies by the time he twirls his rifle, shouts “Hold it!” and dollies into an out of focus close-up against an obviously painted backdrop. Ford expressed an intention to re-shoot the scene but never did. He must have realised that for all its manifest faults this is an almost perfect moment. It’s right up there with Orson Welles’ first appearance in the shadowy Vienese doorway  in The Third Man, without the enigmatic smile. Wayne’s face is sweat stained and dusty and wears a look of purposeful innocence. You know straight away (we’ve been given clues) that this is the hero; the guy we’re going to be rooting for. The rooting continued for forty years and ended with a presidential eulogy.

John Wayne was bigger than life. In an age of few heroes, he was the genuine article. But he was more than just a hero—he was a symbol of many of the most basic qualities that made America great. The ruggedness, the tough independence, the sense of personal conviction and courage—on and off the screen—reflected the best of our national character.

It was because of what John Wayne said about what we are and what we can be that his great and deep love of America was returned in full measure.

Rosalynn and I extend our deepest sympathies to his family.

President Jimmy Carter 1979

Even the costume declares our allegiance to him. Levis worn outside his boots with the trouser bottoms rolled up, a western shirt and a leather belt. Take away the braces, neckerchief and cowboy hat and you’ll see “everyman” wearing the same on every city street in the world 77 years later.

hero_EB20110801REVIEWS08110809999ARHe’s on his way to Lordsburg to avenge the murder of his father and brother. The film defies our expectations by having him immediately put under arrest,  disarmed and manacled. He uncomplainingly takes his place on the floor of the stage and with barely a line of dialogue establishes himself as a source of decency, a reassuring presence, a calming influence and a protective knight. The relationship with Dallas is done purely though the eyes. For those who think of Wayne as a rugged actor at best who keeps himself free of sentiment, these scenes are eye-openers. 

Peacock: Donald Meek

So close to being a purely comic character and yet so necessary to the plot, the story development and the denouement. There are three running gags. One is people always getting his name wrong (Peacock is the opposite of an aptronymic name), the second is everyone assuming he is a priest when in actual fact he is a whisky salesman (outside the world of Graham Greene they don’t often mix) and third that he keeps on insisting that he comes from Kansas City Kansas when everyone else assumes he comes from Kansas City Missouri. This last one is  one of those jokes that works best without explanation.

Stagecoach_034PyxurzHe represents the ordinary people of who moved west and took up the jobs that needed to be done. He tries to act as an intermediary on any verbal fights that break out (particularly between Northerner Boone and Southerner Hatfield (Kansas played a complex role in the Civil War)) and is actually a caring and solicitous figure during and after the birth of Mrs Mallory’s baby. 

His main role is as a foil to the comic genius of the character (and portrayal) of Doc Boone. Like Kansas in the Civil War Peacock is badly wounded during the journey but survives due to help from the North (Boone).

Buck and Curly: Andy Devine and George Bancroft

The sort of actors that make westerns work. John Sturges talked about the need to succeed in a film with those characters who come below the stars. The need to beef up the middle. These are tried and tested character actors; Bancroft provided convincing honesty and strong authority to many a film and Devine was a sort of engaging cross between John Goodman, John Bellucci and Lou Costello. He’s a big man with a wonderful high pitched cracked voice that just doesn’t fit with the build. The two characters represent the transport and law  that opened up the West and gave it its first semblance of order.

450px-Stagecoach-shotgun

Curly is the authority figure of the stagecoach  and a particular father figure to Ringo. Buck is more of a brother. Curly knows exactly what is going on in and around the stage, Buck hasn’t the faintest idea but is hard-working and diligent and brave. The two keep up a dialogue that is something more akin to two monologues that occasionally intersect. Curly: prescient, direct, questioning. Buck: wandering, self-concerned, comic. They are a device for setting the background, for moving both stagecoach and story onwards, for contrast with the passengers, for helping the audience navigate between viewpoints and for the pure entertainment value of their scenes.

hqdefaultCinematography

This deserves an entire post of its own. Stagecoach deserves a special place in cinema history for a lot of reasons not least the cinematography. Bert Glennon not only shot some of the most spectacular exterior shots  seen up to that point in films but also (with Ford) developed a way of shooting interiors that inspired a generation of film makers. The low shot, chiaroscuro, multi shadowed scenes from inside the inns at the way nations were re-created two years later by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane and from imagesthen on in almost every “noir” film made in the next thirty years. Welles was credited with transforming the appearance of films. Indeed his achievement with Citizen Kane is fully deserving of all the plaudits it has received but even he admitted that John Ford and Bert Glennon had done it first.

Who Got Paid What?

John Ford  (Director) $50,000

Dudley Nicholls (Screenwriter) $20,000

Claire Trevor $15,000 – $20,000 (depending on source)

John Wayne $3,700

Andy Devine $10,624

Thomas Mitchell $12,000

George Bancroft $8250

Donald Meek $5416

Louise Platt $8541

John Carradine $3666

Berton Churchill $4,500

As you can see, of the major stars only John Carradine (father of David, Keith and Robert: all future stars of Westerns) got paid less than John Wayne.

Bibliography

Horizons West (Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood) by Jim Kitses

Stagecoach by Edward Buscombe

Westerns by Philip French

The Western by David Carter

John Wayne The Man Behind the Myth by Michael Munn

The BFI Companion to the Western Edited Edward Buscombe

The New Encyclopaedia of the American West edited Howard R Lamar

It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own by Richard White

Footnote

These commentaries make little reference to the significant role played in the film by Native Americans. That is firstly because I’ve chosen to look at the film as a social comedy that is an allegory for the establishment of American civilisation in the West and secondly because I intend to return to the issue of how Native Americans were portrayed in this and other films in future posts.

 

Stagecoach 1939 (Part Two)

30 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by simon682 in Uncategorized, Western Approaches

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

claire trevor, John Carradine, John Ford, john wayne, Louise Platt, stagecoach, Thomas Mitchell

Nine Characters in Search of an Author

Forget that this is the film that established John Wayne as a star. Forget everything you know about John Ford films. Forget that it is a western and sit back and watch Stagecoach. It’s 97 minutes of genius: a stage play set in a stagecoach. You can even fast forward the violence and lose very little (other than one of the best chase scenes in cinema history and four deaths, unseen but registered in the facial reactions of women).

“John Ford doesn’t make pictures about good guys and bad guys. He makes films about people. They bend or they break or they hold on depending on the sort of people they are.”  John Wayne

And here we have nine of the best character studies to be squeezed into any film, let alone into an action film. Nine characters who can be taken separately of collectively. This isn’t a showcase for a Hollywood star (the star incidentally was Claire Trevor and not John Wayne: the Oscar actually went to Thomas Mitchell for his skilful and charismatic portrayal of Doc Boone). David O Selznick tried to get Ford to exchange his unknown leads for Garry Cooper and Marlene Dietrich and when Ford refused, withdrew his financial support, dismissing it as “just another western”. It might have been if Cooper and Dietrich had been cast.

Stagecoach_104PyxutzThis, as John Carradine later wrote, was an ensemble piece. “Ford had never intended that the Ringo Kid establish Wayne as a box-office draw. The film had an ensemble cast and of all of us actors who rode that stagecoach, Wayne had the least lines of dialogue.” quoted in John Wayne The Man Behind the Myth  by Michael Munn

Let us take a closer look at the characters and the actors who played them.

Annex - Wayne, John (Stagecoach)_06

Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Louise Platt, Thomas Mitchell, Berton Churchill, Donald Meek and George Bancroft all in costume for a publicity shot.

Mrs. Lucy Mallory:

The cast are introduced to us in approximate order of social status. American society at the start of the film (as represented by the town of Tonto) is structured and hierarchical. And like many social groups or institutions based on hierarchies has no supporting adherence to meritocracy. This is in many senses a doomed society. The journey takes us from this old world – representing as it does rejected values of old Europe and the Eastern states of the union – to the frontier where a new society is being forged. As the leading member of the old aristocratic world, Mrs Mallory will find the journey fraught with difficulties and will only find a place in the new order once she has accepted a new set of values (rather poetically coinciding with her giving birth to the baby who represents the future of the United States.

7313_4_screenshotWe don’t quite know how to take her on her first entrance. We’ve grown accustomed to finding something to admire in most of John Ford’s female characters. We are drawn towards having a modicum of respect but it takes 90 of the film’s 97 minutes before we actually come to like her. She’s haughty and dismissive of Buck Rickabaugh’s attempts to be civil and helpful. She significantly turns down the idea of a cup of coffee (the true drink of the West in films) in favour of a “cup of tea” (the European drink -albeit Asian in origin) and at all times acts as though it is her right (not simply her privilege) to be treated with deference and respect by anyone she meets.

She is from a Southern plantation family, which is as aristocratic as America allowed itself. Like all members of such families she has suffered a fall from grace at the hands of the forces of democracy through the Civil War. She is now the wife of an cavalry officer who we presume had fought for the Confederacy but has now joined the US military. The symbolism of this is never brought to the fore in the movie but is of great significance. Her perception that social status is more important than individual qualities is revealed by her respective treatments of amiable Buck and dubious Hatfield. She knows he is morally compromised but  chooses him as companion rather than a more virtuous traveller.

Hatfield:

Like all the characters in the coach he has been carefully selected to be representational (in this case of the lost Southern society based on wealth, breeding and privilege).

The English concept of the “gentleman” can perhaps be best described by the story of two such fellows being washed up on a desert island and proceeding to spend seven years each separately building a shelter, searching for water and hunting food. When rescued that were each asked why they hadn’t combined their efforts. “But how could we?” they answered. “We’ve never been formally introduced.” The point being that social rules and conventions outweigh common sense, judgement and decency.

We see him staring at Mrs Mallory in the street and, shortly afterwards, from a hotel window. If Southern gentleness counts for anything, it is good manners. Such behaviour hardly corresponds. A seed is planted that these two may have more in common than we are told. His line (spoken to himself) “An angel in a jungle” doesn’t fit a brief glimpse of a frosty woman putting on airs in a Western street.

Stagecoach_116PyxurzJust as the coach is ready to leave he announces that he will be travelling to Lordsburg: “Marshall, make room for one more. I’m offering my protection to this lady. I can shoot fairly straight if there’s need for it.”

We have to wait a long time for any truthful snippets of information about his past but the Marshall’s response tells us plenty:”That’s been proved too many times Hatfield“. We are given enough clues to make an educated guess that he has killed people in a very ungentlemanly manner. It’s hard to know just why Mrs Mallory accepts his protection other than an acceptance of his suitability because he speaks well and that she is embarking on a dangerous journey.

These two, together with dishonest banker Ellsworth Gatewood, represent the supposed civilised world that the stage is leaving behind. The same values that America is leaving behind as it pursues the frontier. Gatewood arrives in Lordsburg but is immediately arrested, Mrs Mallory gets there but only after she has shown gratitude and compassion to those she would have considered her inferiors. (Mrs Mallory’s is a journey to self-knowledge. There is no complete epiphany but she changes enough. The baby she has, at the second staging post, will complete this journey for her, and be ready for the new world. Hatfield shows signs of possessing qualities but is unable to break free of the anachronistic straitjacket of his upbringing. He doesn’t survive.

Dallas and The Doc

The counterbalance to these two are from the opposite end of acceptability. Dallas and Doctor Josiah Boone are on the stagecoach without any choice: they are being driven out of town. Dallas because she has found that the only way she can earn her living is through prostitution and the doctor because he is a drunk. Tonto (the Arizona town the coach sets off from) is under the moral direction of a self-appointed group of neo-purists. There is more than a hint of a witch-hunt going on here. It isn’t the only element of the film that relates every bit as much to the year the film was made as the year it was set. Both of the town rejects are fabulous characters and both are brilliantly played. They were created by Ernest Haycox, the writer of the short story the film is based on, but much credit must go to screen writer Dudley Nicholls for turning them into characters Charles Dickens would have been proud of. There is a definite hint of Mr Micawber in the grandiloquence of the doctor’s stoical encomiums on being forced into the coach. Especially when Dallas appeals to him for help.

“We are the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice my child. These dear ladies of the Law and Order League are scouring out the dregs of the town. Come on. Be a proud, glorified drag like me.”

thomas-mitchell-stagecoach-8

Thomas Mitchell as Doc Josiah Boone

They give each other something that no-one else in Tonto seems able to offer them. She treats him with the respect you’d think was owed to a decent, educated man of medicine. He treats her as an equal; as a fellow human being surviving in a cruel world and hoping for something better.

He ups the quality of his remarks. He isn’t going to bow down to the self-righteous harridans who have taken control of the town and ask their pardon. Instead he continues to take pleasure in pointing out their faults; at one stage combining gallantry towards Dallas with comparing the Law and Order League with Les Tricoteuses.

“Take my arm Madame la Comptesse. The tumbril awaits. To Le Guillotine!” The soundtrack plays a jaunty march version of We Shall Gather at the River. The Doc is leaving town on his own terms. Dallas, though distraught, takes courage from him. To board the coach she must raise her skirts and reveal some stocking. This causes excitement among some male by-standers who are both titillated by the reveal and cruelly amused at her discomfort. In a defiant moment she deliberately flaunts a little more leg and in the instant de-masculates the men and horrifies the women. The (supposed) good people of Tonto are exposed as hypocrites and Dallas too gets to leave town in a moment of glory.

stagecoach 8

Her ordeal is by no means over though. Mrs Mallory’s friends seem happy to entrust her to the protection of a murderer but cannot countenance her travelling with Dallas, who they cannot even refer to in human terms.

“Mrs Whitney, you’re not going to let your friend travel with that creature?”

Even so early in the film it is obvious that the usual conventions of the western have been smashed to pieces. The paradigms of good and evil reversed and confused. Dallas and the Doc survive the journey ok. In fact they are responsible for several of the others coming through in one piece. They may be social outcasts (so many people arriving in the United States were) but they possessed the human qualities required to forge the new frontier. Two brilliant characters, two people worthy of the highest respect, two magnificent acting performances by Claire Trevor and Thomas Mitchell.

To be continued…

 

 

 

Stagecoach 1939 (Part One)

27 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by simon682 in Uncategorized, Western Approaches

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

andré bazin, claire trevor, duchess of malfi, jim kitses, John Ford, john wayne, stagecoach

Western Approaches  :  Episode 7

Is Stagecoach the perfect western or not a western at all? The story of a journey by horse-drawn coach from Tonto to Lordsburg, or the story of the birth of modern America? Is it a revenge tragedy in the style of John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi or Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy  or is it a love story? The story of perseverance in the face of great hardship; a time spent in the wilderness? An epic journey of a kind that stems back to Homer, Thomas Mallory or Sir Philip Sidney? All of these things or none at all? Let’s first dismiss the none at all. This is a truly great film of redemption and transformation: a demonstration of the qualities that are to form a new country in the aftermath of civil war: a comedy of manners and status that questions the assumptions of society. It is a film of and for women about which prominent female reviewers said

600x265xstagecoach.jpg.pagespeed.ic.THKuzP4iVa

“One of the most exciting experiences the cinema has brought us” (C.A. Lejeune) and “One of the most exciting Westerns I have seen for years” (Dilys Powell).

Influential French critic André Bazin was absorbed by the film. Orson Welles watched it forty times as he tried to work out how to emulate the cinematography. It scooped a couple of Oscars (a thing westerns have always found hard to do) and would have picked up many more if it  hadn’t been released in the same year as Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Goodbye Mr Chips, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Dark Victory.

images

Is it a Western?

There are two major storylines in Stagecoach: the journey from Arizona to New Mexico by coach with a constant threat of attack and the story of  Ringo trying to exact revenge for the murder of his father and brother. Each of these storylines culminates with an act of violence: an Apache attack fought off by the occupants of the stage and then by the arrival of the cavalry and a shootout on the streets of Lordsburg. The combined denouements last a total of nine minutes in a film of 100 minutes. Remove them and there is nothing left that can be regarded as archetypal of the western. The characters are as likely to be found in a Restoration drama; the landscape of Monument Valley (which later became synonymous with the western) had never been used before in a major film, the storylines deal with social class, child-birth, love and acceptance. If a morality play deals with the victory of good over bad then it is a morality play.

It would make a very good stage-play. All the world’s a stagecoach and all the men and women merely players.

Is it the Classic Western?

André Bazin certainly thought so. He saw it as being as perfectly symmetrical and balanced as a wheel, the spokes of which were history, society, psychology and iconography.

More simply it can be seen as an epic journey in a vast landscape. The size and majesty of the exterior world both diminishing the affairs of mankind to trivialities and to expand the greatness of human achievement to match the towering sandstone buttes of Utah. The constant and dangerous threat of attack by Geronimo and his Apaches a re-telling of the story of Scylla and Charybdis. Survive the snows of the desert mountains or face the Apache war party. Surely impossible to survive both.

Jim Kitses in his excellent book Horizons West breaks the film down into five distinct sections. He doesn’t actually equate these to a five act play but I see no reason why he shouldn’t. Good plays show us how real people react in real situations and how the situations shape the people and vice versa. Stagecoach would, as I have already said, have made a very good play.

stagecoach 8

The Prologue

Two scouts report to a cavalry outpost that Geronimo and his Apaches have left the reservation and are out to wreak terror on the region. We see a stagecoach crossing a wide deserted prairie.

Act I : Tonto

The stagecoach arrives in Tonto. One by one we are introduced to the passengers who are to make the journey from there to Lordsburg. This being a Comedy of Manners we get to meet the characters in social class order. First Mrs Lucy Mallory, the wife of a cavalry officer who has been travelling on the coach and is invited to “rest her limbs” in the hotel. All characters are established with efficient precision. Between the coach and the pavement we discover she is meeting her husband and that he is nearer to hand than she thought and she sees a man she thinks she knows. This turns into the second passenger, Hatfield. Introduced as a “notorious gambler”, he is actually a Southern gentleman fallen from grace and making his living through a pistol and a pack of cards. He joins the coach in order to protect Mrs Mallory. We are later to learn that this isn’t the first time that their paths have crossed. The driver of the stage goes into the sheriff’s office to enquire about his ‘shotgun (the man who sits  beside the driver as security). We discover that he is out with a posse in search of escaped convict, the Ringo Kid (which starts a second storyline). Ringo has vowed revenge on Luke Plummer for the murder of his father and brother. Buck (the driver) tells the sheriff (Curly Wilcox) that the Plummer boys are in Lordsburg so Curly decides to ride shotgun himself. That makes four.

Annex - Wayne, John (Stagecoach)_06

Meanwhile we have the true nature of Tonto established by the drumming out of town of the local prostitute and the drunken doctor by the Law and Order League; a group of hatchet faced women with no more love and charity in them than could be placed in a snuff box. It is made immediately clear that both the doctor and the harlot are dignified and decent people who are out of tune with the imposed moral harshness of the town (perhaps representing Eastern values). The doctor, Josiah Boone, attempts one final drink on credit at the saloon where he is introduced to fellow traveller Samuel Peacock who must be the mildest, least assuming whisky salesman west of the Mississippi. The two are soon joined at the hip by Boone’s stronger personality (and the attraction of the whisky drummer’s samples).

Thus with seven people aboard, the coach leaves town. We’d seen a payroll being deposited in the bank and as the coach passes the banker flags it down and climbs aboard with a valise containing $50,000 in stolen money.

Act II : The Journey to Dry Fork

images

The coach is stopped by Ringo in one of the most famous entrances in film history. He is immediately put under arrest by Curly. The journey continues through a magnificently forbidding landscape. At Dry Fork they discover that the cavalry (including Mrs Mallory’s husband) have moved on and that there will be no escort. They have a vote to decide whether to continue or turn back. Over lunch pre-existing social conventions are brought into focus when none of the supposed superior characters will sit near the prostitute Dallas.

Act III  : Dry Fork to Apache Wells

Buck Rickabaugh (driver) takes a mountainous route to avoid Apaches while Curly continues to ponder how Gatewood could have got a telegraph message from Lordsburg if the wires had been cut. At Apache Wells Mrs. Mallory gives birth attended by Doc. Boone and Dallas. Dallas reveals more and more evidence that it is she, and not the Tonto Law and Order League, who possesses genuine moral and human goodness. Ringo who has been increasingly impressed by Dallas, but who doesn’t know her past, proposes to her. She tries to help him escape. First signs of an Apache presence in the stealing of spare horses, the disappearance of the wife of the man who runs the station and smoke signals from the mountains.

Act IV  : Apache Wells to Lordsburg

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will kick off summer screening series, "Hollywood's Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939," on Monday, May 18, with a big-screen presentation of "Gone with the Wind." The 10-film 70th anniversary celebration, which will run through August 3, showcases all of the Best Picture nominees from a landmark year that saw the release of an exceptional number of outstanding films. All screenings will be held on Monday evenings at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Pictured: George Bancroft, John Wayne, and Louise Platt in a scene from STAGECOACH, 1939.

At Lee’s Ferry they discover the residents have been murdered and the buildings and ferry burnt. They improvise a river crossing and are just celebrating imminent safety when the Apaches attack. Then follows one of the most celebrated chase scenes in westerns. The cavalry arrive at the last minute just as ammunition runs out and Hatfield is about to use his last bullet to save Mrs Mallory falling into Apache hands. Peacock and Hatfield are wounded (Hatfield fatally).

Act V : Lordsburg

On arrival Gatewood continues to find fault with everything but on revealing his name is arrested by the local sheriff who has heard of his theft (the telegraph connection has been re-established). Ringo walks through the town with Dallas who tells him of her past. He tells her he wants to marry her anyway and if she’ll go to his ranch (in Mexico) he will join her as soon as he is freed from prison. He goes off to confront the Plummers and kills them in a showdown.

Epilogue:

Curly is waiting to arrest Ringo and take him to prison. Ringo accepts his punishment and has climbed onto the wagon that will take him to gaol. Dallas is asked if she’d like to ride part of the way wth him and is helped aboard by Doc. Doc and Curly then start the horses and send Ringo and Dallas off together to a life in Mexico. Curly offers to buy Doc a drink. With a sparkle in his eye and absolutely no intention of conforming to the social expectations of the world he’s left behind Doc says “Just one”. The audience don’t believe him.

 

 

 

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  • A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe
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Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

Award Free Blog

Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

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