One of my favorite characters in American history has always been Sam Houston. I've tried to read everything I could about the man and his life and work. It's a story that has its protagonist at the center of all kinds of events in our history from the Indian Wars of the South serving with Andrew Jackson even before The Battle of New Orleans right up to his heroic fight to keep Texas in the United States before the Civil War. His is the story of America during her growing years.
We've never really had an adequate biographical film of Houston. Sam Elliott did a very good job covering a period between his abrupt resignation as Governor of Tennessee right up to the events of San Jacinto in a made for TV film, J.D. Cannon in an acclaimed episode for the Profiles in Courage series did a wonderful job dramatizing those events as Governor of Texas as he led the losing battle for the union. Houston has been played on the screen by such people as Richard Dix, Richard Boone, Stacy Keach, and here by Joel McCrea.
Had this film been given a really top production by a major studio like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, etc. this could have been one epic film. Joel McCrea is superb casting in the role, Houston was a big man, well over six feet tall and McCrea certainly is impressive physically that way. The problem is that this was done by Allied Artists, Monogram Pictures dressed up so to speak. If The First Texan had a decent budget, someone like John Ford or Raoul Walsh to direct it, Houston might have had a biographical film worthy of the man.
The facts as to the Battle of San Jacinto are pretty accurately set down. The romance McCrea is given with Felicia Farr is something else. Houston was divorced from his first wife Eliza Allen and did not marry Margaret Lea until the middle of the 1840s after Eliza died. Divorce was mighty rare in those days.
Joel McCrea is always a favorite of mine as a cowboy hero, it's with great reluctance I give The First Texan a less than stellar review, but the subject deserves a lot better than a B western from Allied Artists.
Maybe Sam Houston will one day get either a film or a mini-series worthy of him. Until then I suggest one read Marquis James's biography of him. James is one great writer his prose is practically lyrical and you'll get a great feel for the subject in reading him.
