SIX-GUN JUSTICE SPEED LISTEN—NEVADA SMITH

In this Six-Gun Justice Podcast Speed Listen ® installment, co-host Paul Bishop digs into the history of the Steve McQueen revenge Western Nevada Smith and tells you everything you need to know in under 15 minutes...give or take...

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to this Speedless and installment of the Six Gun Justice Podcast, featuring everything you need to know about the Western film Nevada Smith, starring Steve McQueen in under 15 minutes, give or take. I'm Paul Bishop, my compadre Richard Prosh, and I co-host the full-length episodes of the Six Gun Justice Podcast, but ride solo for our own Speedless and bonus installments. Recently, Kelsey Norman and I discussed Nevada Smith for an episode of a Steve McQueen centric podcast. We talked about McQueen's role in the Magnificent Seven for an earlier episode, and it was fun to talk Westerns with Kelsey again. I will link to both Speeding Bullet episodes in the show's notes, this Speed Listen installment. Since recording the Nevada Smith episode for Speeding Bullet, I've had some further thoughts about the film and want to share them here. The first appearance of Nevada Smith was as a secondary character in Harold Robbins' novel The Carpet Baggers, a Ramona Cleft inspired by the life of Howard Hughes. Robbins presents Nevada Smith as a cowboy who breaks into movies by volunteering to perform a risky stunt, becomes fabulously wealthy as a cowboy movie star, and becomes proprietor of a Wild West show. Reputedly, Robbins based the character on a combination of real life cowboys turned actors, Tom Mix, William Boyd, and Kem Maynard. Robbins' best-selling pot boiler was turned into a blockbuster film of the same name by Paramount Studios in 1964, with George Papard as Jonas Cord, the main character based loosely on Howard Hughes, and Alan Ladd as Nevada Smith in what would be his last film role. With the success of the carpetbaggers, Paramount looked for a way to capitalize on the film's popularity. If there was money to be made, Paramount wanted it. Annelyn Ladd was a bankable star, so the initial idea was to spin off the character of Nevada Smith in a continuation film. However, Ladd's untimely death at age fifty made that impossible. Undeterred, Paramount turned to Oscar nominated screenwriter John Michael Hayes, who would handle the script duties on the carpetbaggers. Hayes determined the best path to follow was to write a prequel featuring Nevada Smith based on the limited backstory provided by Harold Robbins in his novel. The movie Nevada Smith premiered two years later in 1966, starring Steve McQueen in the title role, Brian Keith as a Jonas Cord character, and Suzanne Plaschet. Produced and directed by Henry Hathaway, the movie is a solid and lavishly mounted revenge Western, with the script's narrative sending his hero from Texas to California via chain gang of the Louisiana Bios. Hathaway had made a lot of Westerns during his long career, and in many ways, Nevada Smith was his attempt at making one last classic American Western. In the film, McQueen takes on the role of the young, uneducated half breed Max Sand, who will later adopt the name Nevada Smith. When Sand's parents are tortured, robbed, and slaughtered by three men, Max believes he has no other option in life but to pursue revenge. His burning hatred is all Max has left. Without it he might as well be buried beside his parents. The killers are clearly defined. Martin Landau plays the knife scarred psychotic womanizer Jesse Coe, a morose and purposely evil character. Baudry, played by Arthur Kennedy, comes across as a friendly, charming, smooth talker. But beneath that facade he is a weak and corrupt back shooter, and Carl Malden is a cynical bad man named Tom Fitch, who is clearly the alpha dog of the pack, an intimidating sociopathic bully with a total lack of compassion. Against these three men, Max stands no chance of success, giving his dogged desire for revenge a subtle underlying death wish, not suicide by lawman, but suicide by outlaw. While in naive pursuit of his quarries, Max comes across traveling gunsmith Jonas Cord, played by Brian Keith. Hungry and lost, Max attempts to rob Cord using a non functioning handgun he found while wandering in the desert. Cord is more bemused than threatened and displays a surprising compassion toward Max. When Max explains his deadly pursuit, Cord thinks he's foolish. He tries to explain the emotional cost of revenge, but his counsel falls on deaf ears. When he can't talk Max out of his obsession, Ford feels obligated to give the totally ill equipped Max half a chance of success. Becoming a mentor to Max, Cord teaches him the skills of a gunslinger, how to shoot, to shoot on time, and to shoot straight, telling him, Now you get to where you can do that with either hand when you're half drunk or half awake or inside a dark room or off the back of a running horse, you might stand a chance. A small chance. Cord also gives Max another solid piece of advice on how to find the minis after. Advice which today has become an investigative cliche. Follow the money. Cord reasons if the three killers are flush with stolen money, they'll head for the closest place to spend it and steal some more. McQueen loved to play with props. Knowing the movement kept the audience's eye on him. When Cord gives him a silver dollar, McQueen repeatedly slaps it back and forth in his hands. This constant upstaging became an obsession with McQueen and often annoyed other actors to distraction, which was another part of why McQueen did it. When shooting the Magnificent Seven, McQueen constantly grated on Star Yule Brenner's nerves. McQueen would play with his hat, his gun, check his bullets, etc, constantly drawing attention to himself and away from Brenner, eventually leading to an explosive confrontation, which is all the more ironic as Brenner had insisted McQueen be given the second lead role in the first place. Truly no good deed goes unpunished. But I digress. After leaving Court, Max becomes a dogged man tracker as he learns to read and write, how to follow clues and sign, and how to use fear to make his quarry sweat after the killing starts. My favorite line in the film deals directly with this process when Jonas Cord explains It ain't that easy, kid. Findin' them's one thing, killing them's another. The three men Max is pursuing have separated, making the movie more a series of vignettes connected by a thin thread as opposed to a cohesive through story. However, each of the confrontations builds to the next, with added complications and character growth as Max begins to understand what Cord was trying to tell him about the cost of becoming a hardened killer, cost to both himself and those who help him. With the help of Nisa, a Kiowa dancehall girl played by Janet Margolin, Max catches up with the first of the killers, Jesse Coe, in a hotel saloon in Abilene. Going on the offensive, Coe smashes a chair into Max's face. The stunt was performed with a barrier of thick bulletproof glass, positioned between McQueen and the chair. This greatly enhanced the impact of the scene, making it appear extremely realistic to the audience. However, if you watch closely, you can see the plexiglass wasn't entirely hidden from the camera. The confrontation between Max and Co escalates into a knife fight, which spills over into the nearby cattle pins. At one point, Max crouches behind the fence railings and opens a gate to let the cattle out. As they charge the opening, some of the cattle make it through cleanly, but others knock down the fence, forcing Max to dodge the flailing legs and hooves of the stampede. In reality, the knocking down of the fence was accidental, and McQueen was very nearly trampled for real. Shots of Max rolling clear of the hooves were added later when it was decided to use the unplanned footage. Max eventually kills Ko, and you won't believe the scream that comes out of Landau's mouth while he's being gutted by a bowie knife. But Max is also severely wounded in the process. Nisa, the Kiowa dancehall girl, takes him to her tribe's camp and nurses him back to health. While there, Max learns a whole lot more about what it means to be human when they inevitably become lovers. The cattle pen scenes were shot at the Laws Railroad Museum near Bishop, California. If you look quick, you can spot the Sierra Mountain Range in the background, which is anachronistic as there are no mountains near Abilene. There is also an interesting twist of Hollywood history between McQueen and Landau, going back to 1955, when out of 2,000 performers who auditioned for Lee Strasberg's exclusive theater school that year, they were the only two accepted. While the knife fight between Max and Jesse is one of the best you'll find in any Western, it creates a major problem. The action comes at the halfway point of the film, which means the screenwriter and director had to find a way to raise the odds and top the scene or the film would lose all momentum and go flat. Here kudos must be given to the screenwriter who finds a way to escape the dilemma. In pursuit of his next target, Max discovers Baudry has been caught for another crime and is incarcerated in a deadly swamp encircled prison in the Louisiana Bayos. The idea of Max purposely getting himself arrested and sent to the same prison in order to get to Baudry is brilliant and helps set the film apart. It also keeps the audience watching to see how in the world Max is going to pull this off and still be able to go after the final killer. While in the swampy prison world of the jail, Max meets Pilar, Suzanne Plashet, a local Cajun girl working in the rice fields near the convict's camp. In the prison, Max befriends Baudry and persuades him to escape with him into the swamp. Once there, Max, of course, plans to kill him. Unaware of this, Pilar obtains a boat and navigates the desperados through the swamp. The boat capsizes early on and Pilar is bitten by a venomous snake. Inevitably, Max kills Baudry, and Pilar dies from the snake bite. The extended prison sequence, which is strangely prescient of Papillon, which McQueen would star in seven years later, goes on a bit too long and seems oddly out of place in a western. However, the scenes are so engaging I was totally willing to suspend my disbelief, which is more than can be said for several other aspects of the film I'll discuss in a minute. After killing Baudry, Max completes his escape from the swamp and turns his attentions to Tom Fitch, the last murderer. Still blinded by revenge, Max infiltrates Fitch's new outlaw gang, calling himself Nevada Smith. Fitch knows Max Sand has killed both Co and Baudry and is coming for him. Though he accepts Nevada into the gang, Fitch is wary. As the gang rides out to commit a gold transport robbery, Max is inconveniently spotted by Jonas Cord, who calls out his name. Max ignores him and the gang rides on. Fitch, however, now suspects one of his men is Max Sand. As the gang greedily scoops up the stolen gold, Max watches from a hill. Fitch, realizing Nevada Smith is actually Max Sand, grabs his share and flees. Max pursues him and corners him next to a creek. Fitch tries shooting Max while pretending to surrender, but Max is faster and puts a bullet in Fitch's gun hand. Fitch gives up and asks Max to kill him quickly. Instead, Max shoots Fitch several more times, inflicting painful but non fatal wounds to knees and elsewhere. As Fitch lies in the creek bleeding profusely, Max demands Fitch beg for his life. Fitch calls Max a coward, which makes Max decide Fitch is not worth killing, and rides away as Fitch continues shouting at him. While the outcome of this confrontation would be seen as predictable today, viewed in the context of the time the film was released, it most likely would have come across as a fresh twist. Walking away from violence, especially in a film set in the Wild West, was an attempt in the socially conscious sixties to deliver a powerful message. Overall, the film is an odd mix of strengths and weaknesses. The biggest problem is Max Sand is supposed to be sixteen years old, which was more than a stretch for the thirty six year old McQueen. It's hard to imagine what the producers were thinking at the time. However, McQueen was paid five hundred thousand dollars and a percentage of the film's back end profits to take the role, so his star power must have been one of the influencing factors. But in trying to act young, McQueen makes his character appear somewhat mentally challenged, and while years passed during the course of the film, McQueen's hair and sideburns always remain the same length, in the same signature style, casual, but obviously professionally groomed. Once you recognize it, you can't unsee it. Another major issue is the idea of McQueen portraying a half breed. With his blonde hair and blue eyes, McQueen certainly doesn't look half Kiowa. Even though Paul Newman would play a similar role a year later in nineteen seventy seven's ombre, the whole notion would be far fetched in any decade other than the sixties, when the civil rights movement was in full flower and race and ethnicity loomed large in the popular consciousness. The movie was also released at a time when Westerns were becoming much more violent. However, Henny Hathaway follows his old fashioned established movie making habits, which undermines the impact of the opening torture scenes of Max's white father and Indian mother over gold, and it fails to establish Co, Fitch, and Boudry as bastards who truly need killing. Suzanne Plashet is exotic and surprisingly believable as Pilar, but while having a definitive impact, she is underused. In an interview, Plashet once stated her love scenes with Steve McQueen in the movie were horribly awkward for both of them, as they had enjoyed a completely platonic friendship since she first came to Hollywood, and he had very much taken on the role of a big brother to her. With this revenge storyline and its episodic nature, Nevada Smith could be cast aside as a predictable actioneer. However, I found I was able to overlook the film's shortcomings for a number of reasons. First, despite the miscasting of McQueen, he somehow manages to make his performance resonate. McQueen always seems to naturally have an aura of unstable dynamite around him. His brooding physicality makes it hard to take your eyes off him as you wait for him to explode. This quality helps McQueen's performance rise above whatever the quality of the film he is in. Next, Brian Keith is solid as the itinerant gunsmith Jonas Cord, who takes naturally to the role of mentor. His relationship with Max is paternal in nature, offering Max the emotional handhold he lost with the murder of his parents. Keith's gruff portrayal of Cord has depth and emotion. You believe Cord truly cares about what happens to Max. This comes across well in the dialogue, as in this instance, when he tries to talk Max out of his missions of vengeance. Cord says, Look, just to find them, you're gonna have to comb out every saloon, gambling hall, hog farm, and whorehouse between here and Mexico. What do you think you're after? Three preachers? You're gonna gun em down at eighty yards when they're coming out of a church social? You're hunting three men who steal because they're too damn lazy to work and they kill because they love to. They hide out like rats in the garbage, so if you're gonna get 'em, you're gonna have to eat, drink, and wallow in that garbage right with em, till you get so you think like em and smell like 'em. Max replies, I'll do what I have to do. Cord tells him, All you got going for you is some blind Indian revenge. Max says, I'm half white. And Cord finally tells him, You're all helpless. And while Carl Malden is suitably menacing as the main villain, backed up particularly well by Martin Landau, it's the professionalism of the secondary characters that keeps the film on track. Pat Hingle is a prison trustee, and Howard DeSilva is a Louisiana prison camp warden, along with Iron Eyes Cody and Strather Martin. Interestingly, while Strather Martin's character, Barney, is taking a bath at the hotel, he is twice called Strother. And then there's the not yet WKRP's blonde bombshell, Lonnie Anderson, with a head full of brunette tresses playing a dancehall girl who greets the cowboys upstairs at a hotel. This leads to another reason I rate the film highly. Jonas Cord's warnings about the cost of vengeance and the ability to recover from tragedy in other ways can be seen to begin slowly working on Max. The life lessons Cord taught do not fall fallow. Instead, they lead to a deeper character change within Max, which plays out in the film's finale. The film Nevada Smith straddles a number of different strategies to produce an impossibly complex set of expectations. For me, this multilayered examination of vengeance and its effects on the human spirit raised Nevada Smith from mundane to memorable. Thanks for listening to this bonus speedless and installment of the Six Gun Justice Podcast. Remember to check out our website at sixgunjustice.com for regularly updated reviews, articles, and interviews from the best of the Western wordslingers. Until next time, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and don't even think about getting arrested and sent to a prison in the Louisiana bios. Adios, I'm out of here. Let's ride the city.