D:
Bernard Girard. P: Norman Retchin. W: Norman Retchin. Ph: Floyd Crosby. M: Leith
Stevens. St: Rory Calhoun (Marshal Tate), Gloria Grahame (Amy Porter), Lloyd
Bridges (Captain George), Joanne Gilbert (Pretty Willow), Vince Edwards (Little
Wolf)
“Hate’s like a disease … That’s what this town’s
got – an epidemic of hate”
One
of the many progeny of Broken Arrow, this
joins the parade of worthy westerns that attempted to redress the balance in
stories centred on white-Indian relations. Produced against a backdrop of
progressive political campaigning for civil rights (it is perhaps significant
that Kirk Douglas was executive producer), it illustrates the point that the value
of the pro-Indian westerns made in the Fifties resides in their cumulative
effect; few of them were original or exceptional in themselves.
Retchin’s
verbose script is practically an amalgam of clichés that proliferated in the
genre after the success of Broken Arrow.
Central character Tate, Indian fighter turned sympathiser, and his Cheyenne
sweetheart, Pretty Willow, are almost direct substitutes for the James Stewart
and Debra Paget characters in the earlier film. The antipathy Tate faces from
his racist town (“Don’t go forgetting whose side you’re on”) provides another close
parallel, with the hero condemned as a kind of liberal appeaser, to use the rhetoric
of the Cold War years. Lloyd Bridges’ Indian-loathing army captain was a staple
of Fifties westerns (Tomahawk; Two Flags West; The Last Frontier), as was the subplot of whites grasping after
gold on tribal land (Sitting Bull, Drums Across the River, The Indian Fighter).
Tate
is stirred to act when Cheyenne chief Yellow Wolf is murdered on the streets of
Sand Creek (a place associated, of course, with one of the worst atrocities in
the history of the Indian Wars), having delivered a plea to George for food and
clothing for his people. The old man’s son, Little Wolf, is the stereotypical
hothead, as implacably hostile towards white society – not least Tate, given
Pretty Willow is his sister – as are the good people of Sand Creek towards the
Cheyenne. A decisive clash seems inevitable.
As
well as striving to make Bridges’ foolhardy commander see sense, Tate must convey
the moral of the piece, and it is commendable that Calhoun doesn’t buckle under
the weight. Likening the town’s enmity towards their despised neighbours as an
“epidemic”, he admonishes Gloria Grahame’s embittered Amy, who lost her husband
in an Indian attack and who parrots the racist mantra that ‘savages’ are unfeeling
brutes. “Maybe you’d like to know what a savage girl does when her ‘savage’ father's murdered?” says Tate. “She cries. She cries just as hard as you did when [your husband] was killed,” reiterating sentiments
expressed by James Stewart in Broken
Arrow.
Much
of Tate’s dialogue has the ring of a sermon, especially when he tries to
re-educate his orphaned nephew. So committed is he to the path of peace that he
barely pauses when the boy is cut down by a Cheyenne brave during a night raid.
Tate is less an individual in his own right than a mouthpiece for the film’s
agenda: violence and hatred benefit neither side in the long run. This subtext was
widespread in liberal-leaning Fifties westerns (White Feather, Comanche, Walk the Proud Land), in which the
Indian Wars proved a valuable allegory for racial conflict, both domestically
and in far-flung Korea.
If
Tate’s steadfastness at times feels forced, Amy’s volte-face towards the end is
even less convincing, in part because of Grahame’s uncharacteristically tepid
portrayal. Believing Tate to have been killed along with Little Wolf in an
ambush (Tate is merely lying low) she takes in the wounded Pretty Willow,
despite resenting Tate’s feelings for the girl, and is disarmed by her
placidity. Clearly, she expected the ‘savage’ of her imagining, not demure,
house-trained Joanne Gilbert. This was, of course, one of the ways in which the
pro-Indian western made its case to the American people: by casting white
actors in Native roles, racial and cultural differences became blurred. (One
must always bear in mind that casting directors had few experienced Native performers
at their disposal, although the lack of opportunities for Indian actors to gain
experience is arguably a measure of how ingrained discrimination was.)
While
Tate bangs the drum for a more tolerant policy towards ethnic minorities, sorely
lacking is a commensurately substantial figure among the Cheyenne. Both Pretty
Willow and Little Wolf, played through gritted teeth by Brooklynite Vince
Edwards, are little more than cyphers.[i] Like other well-meaning westerns, Ride Out for Revenge has much to say
about white racism; little of significance about its Indian subjects.
Kevin Grant
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