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The Iron Mistress (1952) More at IMDbPro »

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12 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
No woman is worth that much., 9 December 2004
8/10
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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12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
The Reel Jim Bowie, 20 September 2006
7/10
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 in 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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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Continues the Legend, 27 March 2005
7/10
Author: skallisjr from Tampa, FL United States

*** This comment 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 9 people found the following comment useful :-
psuedo historical fiction but fun, 8 June 2001
7/10
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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7 out of 8 people found the following comment 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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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
One of my favourites..., 19 July 1999
9/10
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 comment useful :-
Well-done period piece starring Alan Ladd, 8 February 2007
7/10
Author: (chuck-reilly) from Los Angeles

*** This comment 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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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
re: Really good movie, 29 December 2005
10/10
Author: carl170 from United Kingdom

Great Movie.. with the legendary Character Jim Bowie, and the legendary Knive, and how it came to be.

Tales of how Jim Bowie came to become the legend; and how not to fall for the wrong women.

If only he had listen to his brother/s and family about his love. Alan Ladd was excellent in this, as was Virgina Mayo....and he rest of the cast.Great movie. It really is.

Is this released as a DVD yet? Please can someone tell me...???? I would love to get this film on DVD

Maybe even this film could be remade for a new generation with even more detail given to how the knife was made etc, etc

But who would star????

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Weapons, snowballs!., 24 September 2008
8/10
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 dam fine romantic, dandy, drama with a Western legend at its core. 8/10

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Blade Ruiner, 23 November 2007
7/10
Author: writers_reign from London, England

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Gordon Douglas was something of a poor man's Michael Curtiz at Warner Brothers inasmuch as he could turn his hand to just about any genre the studio assigned him to. In the early fifties Alan Ladd had run out of exotic locations to meet Veronica Lake and William Bendix at Paramount and although his greatest performance and greatest Paramount film by far (Shane) was already in the can though unreleased his agent wife Sue Carroll brokered a deal that took him to Warners who, being hip to his stand-out performance in Shane, laid on another 'Western' to welcome him aboard. As a biography of Jim Bowie it fits where it touches and concludes with no reference to the Alamo - probably a bit tricky as Bowie winds up the movie married to the daughter of a Mexican official. That aside it's a fine example of the genre with Ladd on top of his game albeit playing Bowie as a nice guy who can't seem to help killing people, mostly as a result of his involvement with super-bitch socialite Virginia Mayo. In terms of Ladd's overall career it ranks well inside the top half and will surely entertain nine out of ten viewers.

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