A Film Farewell to Two Old Pros

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"The Lord's bounty may not be for sale, but the Devil's is — if you can pay the price."

Gil (Randolph Scott)

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Mariette Hartley is mostly known for her work on television programs — except for a time in the late '70s and early '80s when she was so convincing in her Polaroid commercial work with James Garner that many people apparently believed they really were married.

Consequently it is easy to overlook her movie career, but the fact is she did have a movie career, and it started with Sam Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country," which premiered on this day in 1962.

The stars of the show were Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott, two old pros nearing the ends of their careers. It was to be Scott's final film appearance. McCrea would make a few more, but it would be his last significant role.

McCrea played an aging lawman who was hired to escort a shipment of gold through dangerous territory. In hindsight, he kind of resembled Gus and Woodrow in 1989's Lonesome Dove — he had been tough and respected in his prime, but he was way past his prime, and this represented his last opportunity to have an adventure. But he knew he couldn't do it alone. To help him with his task McCrea hired an old friend (played by Scott) who made a living as a sharpshooter named The Oregon Kid.

Scott had more on his mind than making a few dollars a day to guard someone else's money. He was bringing along a young protege and they intended to persuade McCrea to steal the gold rather than protect it. Well, they planned to steal the gold, anyway, whether McCrea went along with them or not. It would be a lot easier on everybody if he went along — but his cooperation was neither expected nor necessary.

On the way, with this as a backdrop, the men spent a night on a religious fanatic's farm where they encountered Hartley, who played his daughter. She wanted to escape her father and planned to elope with her boyfriend.

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To that end, she insisted on joining up with McCrea and Scott the next day, leading to several complications and setting up an eventual reconciliation between McCrea and Scott, who had grown apart in some ways over the years, as even the best of friends can do.

As was so frequently the case, Peckinpah's film dealt largely with the human conflict between values and ideals. It wasn't as violent as his later efforts, most notably "The Wild Bunch," but it was more cerebral; thus it can be recommended to movie fans who do not ordinarily like to watch westerns. It didn't feature as much violence as "The Wild Bunch," but that doesn't mean violence was missing entirely. It simply means it wasn't as brutal as it came to be in later Peckinpah movies.

Violence was always an element — at least — of a Peckinpah movie. But "Ride the High Country" was about more than that. It was about right and wrong; even the naive character Hartley played could see that, but she could also see that it was more complicated than that implies.

"It isn't that simple, is it?" she asked McCrea at one point.

"No, it isn't" McCrea, the virtuous man in this western morality play, answered. "It ought to be, but it isn't."

Right vs. wrong was just one of many themes that were explored in "Ride the High Country." Others were: age vs. youth, chastity vs. debauchery, strictness vs. wickedness. It didn't stop there. "Ride the High Country" was loaded with conflicts.

I know people who only like westerns if they have a lot of shooting, and such people won't be disappointed with "Ride the High Country." But I have always felt that one of the main attractions of a western is the sweeping panoramic views of western landscapes. Much of the modern West is still frontier, even with modern highways running through it; still there are more and bigger cities in the western half of the U.S. than there were a century ago.

In another century it may be as congested as the eastern half of the country — which is why I am all in favor of preserving images of it while we still can.

"Ride the High Country" had some gorgeous cinematography (even though much of it was filmed in the Los Angeles area), but it received no Oscar nominations, not even for its cinematography.

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In hindsight that seems odd, given how its following has grown over the years. In fact, many people will say "Ride the High Country" was Peckinpah's finest movie.

If you have seen "The Wild Bunch," you know that is high praise indeed.

And if that is true, much of the credit goes to Scott and McCrea. Not only did they give riveting performances. They were originally cast in opposite parts — and, quite quickly, came to the conclusion individually that they should swap roles — which they did, and it made all the difference.

A coin flip at the Brown Derby determined whether Scott or McCrea would get top billing in the credits. Scott won, but it could just as easily have been McCrea; their contributions to the movie's success were equal.

Hitchcock Diplomacy

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"I came 4,000 miles to get a story. I get shot at like a duck in a shooting gallery, I get pushed off buildings, I get the story, and then I've got to shut up."

John (Joel McCrea)

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Contrary to what you may have always believed, Alfred Hitchcock didn't spend his whole career directing movies about psychotic slasher killers. True, there was usually a dead body involved — but not always.

In "Foreign Correspondent," the Hitchcock movie that premiered 75 years ago today, there was a dead body or two, but they were elements of the tale, not the tale itself. The story started with a New York editor's concern about the growing crisis in Europe — and his desire to prevent a war and the resultant loss of life — prior to the outbreak of World War II. He was frustrated with the foreign correspondents who contributed little to the public's understanding of what was happening across the Atlantic. He wanted a reporter, preferably one who had covered the crime beat and had no real opinion of what was happening in the world — and could therefore be counted on to provide reasonably balanced reports. (Having covered the police beat as a reporter for a time in my career, I kind of resent that stereotype.) Thus, he chose Joel McCrea, whose character's only initial concern was whether his new appointment would come with an expense account.

After arriving in Europe, McCrea's first assignment was a peace conference in Amsterdam, where he was looking for an elusive Dutch diplomat. The diplomat was assassinated as McCrea stepped out of the crowd to greet him.

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I guess that editor was right about McCrea and the need to have a reporter on the story. In his quest for the assassin, McCrea found himself in a windmill — where, it turned out, the real diplomat was being held. The man McCrea saw shot was a lookalike, a decoy.

That was followed by some spine–tingling Hitchcockesque suspense in which one couldn't help seeing glimpses of things to come. Still, it was a different kind of Hitchcock movie. If you've never seen it — and you think "Psycho" is all you need to know about Hitchcock — you're in for a real surprise — as well as a real treat — when you see it.

McCrea's character really gave his editor what he wanted — an open, inquisitive and creative mind who found all sorts of ways to get around obstacles. McCrea's love interest was 19–year–old Laraine Day, playing the daughter of a local politician. Don't let her age fool you. Her character was very articulate, as when she had to step in at the last minute as featured speaker when the diplomat failed to show up.

"I think the world has been run long enough by well–meaning professionals," she said. "We might give the amateurs a chance now."

And she could be tough, too, when the situation called for it.

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As a Hitchcock fan, I am always inclined to think that any year in which one of his movies was showing in theaters — and that was most of the years in roughly a four–decade span — was Hitchcock's year, but 1940 really was Hitch's year. At the Academy Awards, "Foreign Correspondent" was one of two Hitchcock movies nominated for Best Picture. The other was "Rebecca," which went on to win the award. It beat some pretty good competition, too — "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Philadelphia Story," "The Great Dictator."

I think the Academy made the right choice. "Rebecca" was a better movie, but "Foreign Correspondent" was deserving of recognition as well. Both were fiction, but "Foreign Correspondent" was a vision based on what was known at the time of what might happen in a not–so–distant future. Sometimes, I suppose, the vision was inadequate, but trying to tell the future based on a limited amount of information was what made the project so challenging.

Deservedly, Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director, too — but for "Rebecca," not "Foreign Correspondent."

"Foreign Correspondent" received six Oscar nominations in all. In addition to Best Picture, it was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Black and White Art Direction, Best Black and White Cinematography and Best Special Effects (which isn't hard to understand, once you've seen McCrea crawling along the exteriors of windmills and hotels in scenes that must have served as preparation for the Mount Rushmore scene in "North by Northwest") — but lost all six.