Chisum

Over the course of his career John Wayne played a few real life characters. Coming immediately to mind are Davy Crockett, William T. Sherman, Frank "Spig" Wead, Genghis Khan and some others with pseudonyms for William F. Halsey and John Grierson. Playing these people would normally impose certain restrictions on an actor who's as larger than life as John Wayne.

But it certainly didn't with playing John Simpson Chisum, New Mexico cattle baron and key player in what has become known in history as the Lincoln County War. Of course the politics involved were a bit more complex than what you would see here. And a whole lot of liberties have been taken with the facts. One of the biggest is the fact that both Chisum and his rival L.G. Murphy died in bed and quite soon after the action of this film.

But if Maxwell Anderson could take liberties and have Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England meet, then why can't we have Chisum and Murphy meeting in a final confrontation? After all it's a John Wayne movie and John Wayne movies can only go in a certain way.

The Duke plays Chisum as the Duke, no more, no less. He and other ranchers are being squeezed by a greedy rapacious businessman in L.G. Murphy as played by Forrest Tucker. Others in the cast worthy of note are Patric Knowles as Henry Tunstall, Glenn Corbett as Pat Garrett, Geoffrey Deuel as Billy the Kid, and Christopher George as Dirty Dan Nodeen.

Chisum has in its cast a whole host of familiar Hollywood faces from the past like Bruce Cabot, Ben Johnson, Hank Worden, Edward Faulkner, all Wayne film regulars. It also has the presence of both Glenn Langan and John Agar.

One of the really great things about John Wayne was the way he took care of people, not as charity cases, but giving them parts in his films when they were down. John Agar and Glenn Langan have small roles in Chisum and both were not doing too good at the time. Agar was Shirley Temple's first husband and made a screen debut in Fort Apache. Langan was a promising contract player with 20th Century Fox in the late forties and is best known for being the Amazing Colossal Man. Both were I'm sure grateful for the work and the paycheck. I remember in McLintock Wayne says to his son Patrick who's looking for a job that he doesn't give jobs, he hires men. That was something in real life he lived up to.

The Lincoln County War has been told in any number of westerns right up to the two Young Guns movies of the Eighties. Chisum is not the best or the worst retelling of the tale. But it is a good John Wayne western and that takes in a lot of territory pilgrim.

The first few times I saw this movie, I hadn't read the history of the Lincoln County Land Wars.

However, in recent years, with the convenience of the internet at hand, I read the histories along with watching the movie. Compared to the amount of factual change that most movies based on a history put on film, this movie is not far from being spot on.

In fact, the amount of direct action that John Wayne's character, Chisum, took in the film, is probably the element that is the most out of place.

Billy the Kid really did work for an English rancher involved in the dispute. His boss really did fund a rival general store with a lawyer. Both the English rancher and the lawyer were murdered by the faction controlled by the rival general store.

Billy the Kid really did get his outlaw career kicked off in seeking vengeance for his boss and mentor's murder. Pat Garret really was supported for sheriff by John Chisum, who somehow managed to stay out of the thick of the feuding even though his use of huge tracts of public grazing land was part of the heart of the dispute.

So history buffs can safely enjoy this movie knowing that history is just bent a little, and not ripped completely asunder as the case would be with most movies. LOL That said, this is a very entertaining western. John Wayne is on top of his game as a cattle baron, and the supporting cast does a fine job. It includes a bit of everything: rustling, gunfights, stampedes, crooked sheriffs, greedy bad guys, heroic good guys. It has more plot surprises than the normal western (and that is precisely because it kills off certain characters approximately when and how they died in the real events).

All in all, an enjoyable and surprisingly informative film about a real "old west" feud.

For those of us who love him, there's something about a John Wayne movie that kind of makes it immune to criticism. You can fault his no-frills acting style, the pious patriotism, the oft-uneven supporting cast, the predictable fight scenes, But even a lesser Wayne film still has John Wayne, and for his fans, that's nine-tenths of the battle in determining whether it's a good film.

"Chisum" is not going to convert non-Duke fans. On its own merits it's a serviceable western with good action sequences, some incredible vistas of the Mexican countryside (supposed to be Lincoln County, New Mexico) by cinematographer William H. Clothier, and an interesting if not always coherent storyline that places Wayne's title character, John Chisum, as more of a remote icon than active player in the proceedings, especially in its second half. Much of the film focuses on young William Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel), a former gunman better known as Billy the Kid now trying to live "clean and forward, all the way" with the help of a fatherly rancher named Tunstall (Patric Knowles, Will Scarlet to Errol Flynn's Robin Hood some 32 years before).

Geoffrey Deuel didn't go on to much of a career after this, and it's not hard seeing why. In "Chisum" his shallow characterization exudes no visible menace even after Bonney, well-provoked though not well-reasoned, turns against the law. I'm not sure how much of it was Deuel's fault. The script works against him, setting Bonney up as a decent, humble guy to the point of boringness, and director Andrew V. McLaglen only adds to the emasculation by showcasing Deuel's shy smile and his character's rote romancing of Chisum's niece. One scene freezes on Bonney holding a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other. I don't think Marlon Brando could have acted his way out of Deuel's bind.

Other actors come off better, especially Forrest Tucker as the chief heavy, Lawrence Murphy, who showcases an affable menace that makes him a good foil to Wayne's straightforward Chisum; Glenn Corbett, who plays drifting gambler Pat Garrett, hard but decent, who joins Chisum and befriends young Bonney until he turns into The Kid again; and Christopher George, whose Dan Nodeen is a nasty bounty hunter obsessed with killing the Kid. One nice thing about this film is seeing these actors, all best known for TV series work, stretching out beyond their popular identities of the period. George makes the strongest impression as the cold-eyed Nodeen.

"You just had to kill him," asks a sheriff when Nodeen brings in the body of a wanted man.

"No, less trouble that way," Nodeen replies.

Ben Johnson and Richard Jaeckel also have their moments as companions to Chisum and Murphy respectively, as does Andrew Prine as a lawyer who switches sides halfway through. There are many other performances, too, most good and all detracting somewhat from Wayne at the center, though Chisum does assert himself from time to time.

"Chisum" may be too busy a film that way, with too rambling a focus even when its on Wayne. There's one scene where Chisum looks after an old Commanche chief which should have been cut, while others need trims. But director McLaglen keeps a firm rein on things most of the time, and the story does move. His mentor was John Ford, but while McLaglen lacked Ford's nuance and depth, he was better at delivering action sequences, both in terms of frequency and originality. "Chisum" gives you plenty of action, none better than the final battle at the Lincoln general store between Billy and the baddies with Chisum riding to the rescue.

The first time I saw "Chisum," I was stuck at a sleepaway camp and hating life in general. Something about seeing John Wayne on a horse made the world seem right again, even if the film was kind of hokey with that silly title music and all. Years later, I still relish this film, in some ways more than I did then, despite its flaws. "Chisum" is not a showcase for Wayne's greatness, like "The Searchers" or "Rio Bravo," but it's a nice film to have around for those of us who don't need him justifying our love every time out.

Although a few notches below classic Wayne westerns like "Stagecoach" and "Rio Bravo," this film was a masterful return to form for Wayne. This was the first film Wayne did after gaining weight and donning an eye-patch for his work on "True Grit." In this film, Wayne plays an honest, straight talking man of action, not too different from the type character on which he built his career. The supporting characters are very well drawn and the villains resourceful enough to keep the action moving. In a way, this character, though based on an actual rancher, is similar to the character of Dunson in the superior "Red River." Both characters gambled on a long cattle drive from Texas and although "Red River" is about the drive itself, "Chisum" is about what happens to a similar character twenty years after the drive succeeds. At the time the film was released, at least one critic commented on how improbable it was for John Wayne, at the climax of the movie, to have done that much riding, fighting and falling all within the same sequence. As far as I am concerned, that sequence helped prepare me for later action sequences of 1980's action stars like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger and action directors like James Cameron and John Woo. The film is no "Red River" but it is fine western nonetheless.

One of my favorite John Wayne westerns, Andrew V. McLaglen's Chisum, centers around the fact based Lincoln County land war around the late 1800's. This film features John Wayne in the twilight of his remarkable 200+ film career. Playing Chisum, Wayne's no-nonsense attitute fits the title character well. This time, Wayne is up aganist Forrest Tucker who plays Lawrence Murphy, a whealthy land owner who plans to take the town and then take Chisum's land as well. Chisum's neighbor, Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowels) also doesn't like Murphy's plans, and hires a young man to work on his ranch, his name is Billy the Kid (played by Geoffrey Deuel). Chisum, who has heard of him, doesn't exactly approve of him in town at first especially since Billy the Kid has an eye for his niece Sally (Pamela McMyler). Chisum eventually begins to like Billy right when he starts killing several of the town's deputies and Murphy's handymen, this is right when the war starts. Chisum has a handful of action and adventure sequences and wonderful cinematography by William H. Clothier and a fine western/adventure music score by Dominic Frontiere. The all star cast also includes John Wayne regulars- Ben Johnson as Chisum's sidekick, Bruce Cabot playing the sheriff who handles Murphy's dirty work, Andrew Prine playing Chisum's lawyer, Glenn Corbett turns in a fine job as playing Pat Garrett and Christopher George and Richard Jaeckel turn in their usual cowboy villians as the bounty hunters. George's wife, then Lynda Day also makes a small appearance as Andrew Prine's wife. Also look for small roles by John Agar and Christopher Mitchum.