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30 Great Westerns
The plot of The Tall T (1957) is as clear
and pure as a mountain stream. While in town on an errand,
affable rancher Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott) loses his
horse in an unwise bet and resigns himself to a long walk
back to his remote homestead. While hiking on the trail,
Pat is picked up by a stage driven by his old friend
Rintoon (Arthur Hunnicutt, doing a dad-blasted fine Walter
Brennan impersonation). Inside the stage are Willard and
Doretta Mims (John Hubbard and Maureen O'Sullivan),
newlyweds who have hired Rintoon to transport them on the
first leg of their honeymoon. The stage travels to a rest
stop, where it is ambushed by three bandits, Frank (Richard
Boone), Billy Jack (Skip Homeier), and Chink (Henry Silva),
who believe they are robbing the regularly-scheduled stage
for its bank money. The bandits shoot Rintoon dead and take
Pat, Willard, and Doretta hostage. Doretta is led into the
station to make dinner for the bandits; while she is gone,
Willard cravenly tells head bandit Frank that he attacked
the wrong stage but that his wife is the daughter of a
millionaire copper baron more than capable of paying a fat
ransom for her safe return. The rest of the film plays out
like an elaborate chess match, with Willard negotiating for
his own safety, the bandits negotiating for the ransom, and
Pat and Doretta waiting for a chance to escape.
Within this simple narrative structure, Boetticher and
screenwriter Burt Kennedy (himself a veteran writer and
director of Westerns) explore one central theme: the
differences that can exist between a human being's public
persona and his/ her hidden thoughts and desires. Willard
dresses like an Eastern gentleman and professes his love
for Doretta, yet beneath this facade he's a wastrel who
married Doretta for her money and betrays her family to
save his own skin. Doretta, too, puts up a front: she
behaves like a good daughter and meek wife, until she sees
Willard murdered by Chink. In a later conversation with
Pat, she reveals that she knew all along why Willard
married her:
Doretta: "I married him."
Pat: "That's not what I asked. Did you love him?"
Doretta: "Yes! Yes, I did."
Pat: "Mrs. Mims, you're a liar. You didn't love him, and
never for one minute though he loved you. That's true,
isn't it?"
Doretta: [pause] "Do you know what it's like to be alone in
a camp full of roughneck miners, and a father who holds a
quiet hatred for you because you're not the son he's always
wanted? Yes, I married Willard Mims because I couldn't
stand being alone anymore. I know all the time he didn't
love me, but I didn't care. I thought I'd make him love
me...by the time that he asked me to marry him, I'd told
myself inside for so long that I believed it was me he
cared for and not the money." The scene ends with Pat condemning Doretta for her
self-pity, before taking her into his arms, advising her
that "sometimes you got to walk up and take what you want,"
and kissing her. Because she is honest with Pat, she won't
have to worry about being lonely ever again.
Like Doretta, the bandits have trouble reconciling what
they do with who they are. Billy Jack, the youngest of the
thieves, tries to act as macho as his compadres, but he is
visibly disturbed when he realizes that Chink is more
sexually experienced that he is. (Pat exploits Billy's
virginal insecurity, and traps him by using Doretta as
sexual bait.) And gangleader Frank, a casual sadist who
cackles maniacally when Doretta burns her hand on a coffee
pot and when Pat bumps his head on a low awning, is a
bundle of contradictions. He calls Doretta "one of the
plainest females" he's even seen, but later he brings her food
and gently covers her up with a blanket as she sleeps. Beneath his
brutal exterior, Frank has delusions of being a respectable
man. He keeps Pat alive just so he can chat about his
dreams of giving up the outlaw life and buying his own
ranch:
Pat: "And you think you'll get it this way?"
Frank: "Sometimes you don't have a choice."
Pat: "Don't you?" --by Craig J. Fischer
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