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13 reviews in total

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48 out of 50 people found the following review useful:
Colourful Biopic., 19 November 2009

Author: jpdoherty from Ireland

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

After more than ten years with Paramount Pictures one of their biggest stars Alan Ladd signed a new seven year contract with Warner Brothers. His first movie for that studio was the colourful biopic THE IRON MISTRESS.The star had just completed his masterpiece "Shane" for Paramount which was about to be released but THE IRON MISTRESS reached theatre screens first.

Of all the pictures Ladd would make for Warners over the next seven years THE IRON MISTRESS is about the best of them! Beautifully photographed in Technicolor by John Seitz it tells the story of impoverished lumber merchant Jim Bowie (Ladd) who came from the backwoods of 1820's Louisiana and rose to become a property tycoon through land speculation, gambling and - some say - by other unorthodox methods. Along the way he would make some bitter enemies in the resentful New Orleans business world and for his protection he designed the famous knife that bears his name and which gives the film its title. Bowie acquired something of a bad reputation because of some dubious business dealings and also his knife-wielding dispatch of many of his adversaries. Nevertheless, his reputation not withstanding, Jim Bowie's name has gone down in American folklore as one of the heroes who died in the famous Battle of The Alamo in San Antonio Texas in 1836. THE IRON MISTRESS is based on a book by Paul Wellmann and was fashioned into a fairly good screenplay by James R.Webb. Henry Blanke's colourful production was ably directed by Gordan Douglas.

However, although John Beckman's Art Direction and George James Hopkins' set designs are spot on for the lavish gambling halls and bars of New Orleans, the picture is marred by too many indoor studio exteriors. A main street scene of the city near the beginning looks like a stage play and Bowie's family home in the Bayou marshland is so unreal it cheapens the movie. Unconvincing also is the scene where Bowie goes to have his famous knife forged! Firstly the blacksmith's name simply couldn't be Mr. Black, could it? And why on earth would the blacksmith (David Wolfe) fuse part of his treasured meteor fragment (which he has under lock and key) into the making of a knife for a complete stranger? ("your knife has a bit of heaven in it sir - or a bit of hell"). Nonetheless there are reasonably good performances throughout! Virginia Mayo steals the acting honours as the scheming, spoilt socialite who sneers at Bowie's marriage proposal ("What do you want me to do - live in a cabin in the wilderness?"). Ladd is his usual laconic self and watch out for the pint-sized actor being surrounded by smaller players particularly the actors Richard Carlyle and Dick Paxton playing his two brothers who are actually smaller than Ladd. And also in the well staged Ballroom sequence Mayo's flat shoes can clearly be seen under her gown in a low angle shot as she dances the aptly titled Virginia Reel with our star. A plus for the movie is a marvellous climactic set piece of a sword and knife fight in a dark room where only intermittent flashes of lightning make it possible to see the two antagonists in mortal combat.

Another plus for the movie is the terrific score by Max Steiner. His main theme is an anthem-like piece which points up, not only Bowie's backwoods antecedents, but his tenacious determination to make something of himself. Then there is the gorgeous theme for Judalon (Mayo) which the composer fashions into a ravishing love theme and we are treated to some wonderful strident action cues in the unmistakable Steiner manner for the various knife fight sequences. THE IRON MISTRESS is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but it has good atmosphere and enough flair and colour to hold the interest!

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27 out of 32 people found the following review useful:
The Reel Jim Bowie, 20 September 2006

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

After a decade at Paramount Sue Carol negotiated a new studio contract for Alan Ladd at Warner Brothers. Sad to because her husband's greatest film was ready for release at Paramount and they had no great urgency to feature him in the publicity. But that's another story.

Alan Ladd became another one of a good list of players to take on the role of Jim Bowie. He plays him as heroic as Richard Widmark, MacDonald Carey, Sterling Hayden or Jim Arness did. Problem was of all the legends of the American frontier, Jim Bowie was probably the one who got the biggest whitewash in history.

The man was a thoroughgoing scoundrel. As a merchant he was as unscrupulous as a latter day robber baron. He was involved in several land swindle scams. He also bought and sold slaves as well. And he wasn't even honest in that. He and Jean Lafitte had a fine racket for a while with Lafitte capturing runaways in Texas and bringing them back to the U.S. for Bowie to sell, not necessarily back to their original masters.

He did have a knife built to his specifications as per the film and with his activities he did tend to get into a lot of violent disagreements. That's the Bowie knife, the Arkansas toothpick, the Iron Mistress of the title.

But Ladd plays Bowie as heroically as the legends have him and as the novel by Paul Wellman has him. He's caught between two women, the selfish French creole aristocrat Virginia Mayo and the daughter of the Governor of the province of Coahuila in Mexico which included Texas, Phyllis Kirk.

Bowie was a violent man in a violent era. Ladd plays him like he was Shane and he was being faithful to the novel if not the real Bowie. But then we've never seen the real one on screen any time.

Still for those who liked Ladd's portrayal of Shane, The Iron Mistress is a good film for you.

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18 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
psuedo historical fiction but fun, 8 June 2001

Author: Jay Harris (sirbossman6969@yahoo.com) from United States

This is an adventure story using fiction to tell about the early years of James Bowie,prior to his martyrdom at the Alamo a few years after this film ends. This is a typical romantic adventure story with Alan Ladd giving an erstwhile honest portrayal in the role that Richard Widmark did years later in THE ALAMO. Mr Ladd was short in stature,but you would never really know that,. as all of the actors were either his height or 1 or 2 inches either way. Virginia Mayo is as usual very beautiful & well dressed,She was never considered a great actress but she could portray a very selfish woman with perfect ease. The rest of the cast is just what you would expect in this type of vehicle. Good production values with a very good knife fight in a dark room with only lightning bolts to highlight the action. A bit long at 112 minutes, but entertaining. a low *** rating or a 7 on the IMDB scale

as always

Jay Harris.

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21 out of 27 people found the following review useful:
No woman is worth that much., 9 December 2004

Author: tmwest from S. Paulo, Brazil

In Brazil this film was known as "Nenhuma Mulher Vale Tanto" (No Woman Is Worth That Much)a very appropriate title. It could be described as a "Mississipi Western", from what I know there are two more of this type, "The Mississipi Gambler" and "The Gambler from Natchez", both came out later and were probably inspired by "The Iron Mistress". The film starts showing Jim Bowie (Alan Ladd) and his brothers together with their mother at the "bayou" where they live. Ladd goes to New Orleans to sell lumber, becomes friend with a painter, and is challenged for a duel by the aristocratic De Bornay. They end up becoming friends and Ladd falls madly in love with his sister, beautiful, but spoiled Judalon(Virginia Mayo). He gambles, makes a lot of money in land speculation and also creates the famous knife. The film shows in detail how the first knife was made, by adding metal from out of space. The knife is so impressive that I could not help thinking about the sword in "Kill Bill", they are two of a kind. Ladd is forced to kill many people because of Mayo, who is attracted to him, but an aristocratic name is what she wants to marry. The Technicolor is great, Alan Ladd has the best performance of his career and Virginia Mayo is very convincing. The film is very unusual, not a work of art, but as pure entertainment few could match it.

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Alan Ladd's "Arkansas toothpick", 9 April 2003

Author: cowboy7642 from Alexandria, VA

Alan Ladd heads a fine cast in this film biography of Jim Bowie, a life that was marked by thrilling adventure and violence which ended at the Alamo. Bowie's travels take him to New Orleans where fate takes a hand and changes the course of his life and American history. A central figure in the film is a beautiful but vain and selfish Creole girl with whom Bowie is hopelessly smitten. This girl is responsible for the deaths of several men over a period of many years, because of duels, accidental killings or outright murders. Bowie himself is obliged to fight duels for various reasons and his expertise with a knife becomes legendary. His reputation, forged by the iron mistress, follows him like a shadow throughout his life as he tries to put the young woman and his violent past behind him. The film has beautiful color, lavish sets and Max Steiner's brooding music score.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Weapons, snowballs!., 24 September 2008

Author: JohnRouseMerriottChard from United Kingdom

Jim Bowie sets off to sell lumber in New Orleans, but once there he is captivated by the beautiful Judalon de Bornay and finds that life here is vastly different to that of home. Getting himself into many scrapes on account of his feelings for Judalon, Bowie invents a new kind of Knife, the Iron Mistress, and from here a legend is born.

Nobody should go into this picture expecting a Jim Bowie biography, in fact Western fans who haven't seen it should be advised that it barely registers as a Western piece. What it is, is a fine picture that certainly appears to be undervalued {if a little under seen} on the IMDb site. It's full of dandy men fighting and duelling with honour and guts, beautiful women that are surely worth fighting for, and of course it introduces us to the legendary Bowie Knife.

It's based on a Paul Wellman novel, and by all accounts the film is pretty loyal to Wellman's ideals, it doesn't however take us all the way to the Alamo. Alan Ladd takes the lead role of Bowie, shiny blonde hair and brooding for all he is worth, fans of his performance in Shane should definitely check this one out, it's a great performance from Ladd, the kind that makes the gals go gooey and the boys to thump their chests. Virginia Mayo is Judalon and positively simmers with sexual beauty, the character is akin to a viper, and the pot boiling sexual tension is palpable in the extreme, she is in short, a woman men will die for.

Some scenes are just terrific, a duel in a darkened room that is only lit by the odd flash of lightning thru a window, a knife fight as two men with one armed tied to each other face off in a circle of honour, and of course Jim Bowie in every encounter, his violent gutsy bravado fearsome as his reputation escalates. At the time of writing only 141 people have voted on this picture, only 10 people have bothered to write a user comment for it, that's a shame because although it may not be a Western as such, it's a damn fine romantic, dandy, drama with a Western legend at its core. 8/10

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11 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Continues the Legend, 27 March 2005

Author: skallisjr from Tampa, FL United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

As with most films, story details had to be compressed to fit it into a normal running time, but it still catches much of the flavor of the novel. The Alan Ladd portrayal is believable, though Paul Wellman's novel takes the saga all the way to the Alamo and the film ends long before that. However, it has the feel of a good period piece.

The manufacture of the famous knife is foreshortened from that of the book, where Bowie discusses the design in detail with Black, the man who forges the knife. The action in the forging of the iron is quite dramatic and worthy of the reputation that the knife .. er .. carved out.

The "duel in the dark" sequence was dramatically enhanced by momentary flashes of lightning, which wasn't half as ruthless as in the novel, where the entire duel was fought in pitch black.

Major spoiler: The end of the film has Bowie treat the knife in sharp contrast to what happened in the novel, and for that matter, history (he gets rid of it). This may have been to create a Hollywood happy ending, but is a major shift from the novel, and from history.

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8 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Well-done period piece starring Alan Ladd, 8 February 2007

Author: (chuck-reilly) from Los Angeles

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Viewers of this film shouldn't confuse anything here with actual history. By all accounts, Jim Bowie was a violent, unscrupulous fellow who later became a raging drunk after his wife and child died. Whether or not he died fighting at the Alamo, or just simply died there confined to his bed, has never been determined by any historian. That said, Alan Ladd does a fine job as an "heroic" version of Bowie in this film, taken from the popular 1950's novel of the same name. Virginia Mayo never looked better than she did in this film. The fact that her character has very few good qualities only helps the film and her performance. The production values of this film are high and in keeping with the standards of the day for period pieces. Director Gordon Douglas does excellent work with his cast, despite the mediocre material and some dubious history in the script. This movie did very well at the box office upon its release, and it's easy to see why.

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11 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
One of my favourites..., 19 July 1999

Author: Davo-CC from Brisbane, Australia

I've never really been a fan of westerns, I didn't grow up with them and I always thought the genre was overrated personally.

Occasionally however a film comes along which has distinct appeal despite its genre, this is such a film. I'm not 100% sure why I liked it or why it stood out from the pack, there is a certain intangible aspect to it which really appeals; the closest thing that I can think of is `The Mountain' (1956, Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner), it is a film which I believe has that same intangible quality.

I'd recommend this one for both western fan and non western fan (like myself) alike.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Too much soap opera, not enough of the actual life of James Bowie!, 12 September 2010

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

While I am no expert on the life of James Bowie, I know enough to realize that this Warner Brothers production is pretty limp. Instead of focusing on the man's actual exploits (and they were many and amazingly wild for a man who died so young), the film focuses too often on a soap opera-like relationship between him and some dame (Virginia Mayo)--and I assume most, if not all, of this was made up for the movie. It's a shame, as the man was truly a rugged individualist and a bit dangerous--just the sort of thing that SHOULD have been a lot more interesting than this film.

There are a few things I wish the film had shown, they would have made it more fun and interesting. In the crazy duel run amok where Bowie is shot (which is in the film), the actual evens are even crazier and bloody--not only was Bowie shot but he was smashed in the head with the gun butt and stabbed with a sword--a sword that got stuck in him!! As the assassin tried to dislodge it, Bowie eviscerated him with his knife!! Also, there is really nothing about Bowie and the War for Texan Independence--not just his death at the Alamo but all the fighting he did BEFORE this! Because of this, the film just seems very incomplete and focuses on the dullest (and probably apocryphal) aspects of his crazy life.

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