Cowboys & Indians / April 2010 / Sagebrush Shakespeare

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Sagebrush Shakespeare

More than four centuries ago, William Shakespeare wrote his longest play and one of his greatest tragedies, Hamlet. It tells the powerful story of a young man who sets out to find his father’s killer, until he is sidetracked by a Mexican bandit named Santana.

Wait, that can’t be right.

Actually, that’s the plot of Johnny Hamlet (1968) , or Quella sporca storia nel west in its native Italian, one of a handful of films to transfer Shakespearean source material into the western genre. Given the familiarity of the Shakespeare canon and its profound impact in the annals of literature, it’s not surprising to find such transpositions of his works. Their versatility has been tested in a variety of ways, from Cole Porter adapting The Taming of the Shrew into the popular musical Kiss Me Kate to Ian McKellen’s performance of the title role on stage and screen in Richard III, set in a fictional fascist-inspired 1930s Britain.

Threads of the Bard have been woven into countless modern stories. Every young cowboy who fell for an Indian maiden over the objections of his parents can be traced back to Romeo and Juliet, while tales of jealous husbands and conniving ranch hands often echo the themes of Shakespeare’s Othello. The 1956 western Jubal may have been based on the novel Jubal Troop by Paul I. Wellman, but it’s hard not to pick up shades of the Moor of Venice in this classic tale of a cheatin’ heart.

Glenn Ford stars in the title role as a drifter “runnin’ from bad luck” who is hired by gregarious ranch owner Shep Horgan (Ernest Borgnine). Shep’s restless wife, Mae (Valerie French), is taken with the new ranch hand, though he rejects her advances. “You’re the boss’ wife,” he protests. “What of it?” she responds. But, just as in the play, it takes an act of betrayal from another source to bring the matter of Mae to Shep’s attention.

While in Othello it is the trusted associate Iago who tells Othello that his wife has been unfaithful (though she is innocent of anything beyond an unwise flirtation), in Jubal that villainous role falls to Rod Steiger as Pinky, who is jealous of both Mae’s affection for Jubal and Shep’s promotion of him to ranch foreman. Steiger, one of the movies’ great rogues, tears into the role with near psychotic abandon. “Steiger is so mean as Ford’s rival,” writes The Motion Picture Guide, “you’ll hate him for the next three movies after seeing this.”

Pinky tells Shep that his wife has been unfaithful with Jubal, driving Shep into a jealous rage. What happens next does not follow the climax that Shakespeare envisioned‚ he never wrote lines such as, “Hey, Pinky, you know what your trouble is? You got a whole mess of splinters in your britches. Why don’t you try pulling ’em out?” But the parallels are so evident that reviewers of the film called it “Othello out West.” Still, no knowledge of Shakespeare is necessary to enjoy Jubal for what it is‚ a tense, action-packed western featuring memorable performances in all the lead roles; excellent support from the likes of Charles Bronson, Noah Beery Jr., and Jack Elam; and the stunning scenery of Wyoming’s Grand Teton mountains.

The aforementioned Johnny Hamlet is happily more imaginative than its lazy English title implies, though the production got off to a rocky start. Director Sergio Corbucci, perhaps the best-known spaghetti western visionary after Sergio Leone, came up with the idea of a western take on Hamlet, but when other commitments took precedence Corbucci offered the film to Enzo Castellari, who was near the beginning of his own formidable career in European cinema.

Set in the post-Civil War era, Johnny Hamlet begins when Johnny (Andrea Giordana) comes marching home and discovers that his father has been gunned down, allegedly by the Mexican bandit Santana. Apparently the murder has already been avenged by Claudio (Horst Frank), Johnny’s uncle. But Hamlet, just as he did in Shakespeare’s play, has his doubts. Worse, his mother has already married Claudio. Something is not just rotten in the state of Denmark.

Joined by his friend Dazio (Gilbert Roland adds a marvelous Old Hollywood charm here), Johnny makes some inquiries in town and eventually turns up Santana, still alive and with a story to tell about some missing sacks of gold. Now he has both Santana and Claudio’s men after him and must endure a horrific attempted crucifixion before ultimately exacting his revenge.

Although no spaghetti western can approach the depth and power of what is widely recognized as Shakespeare’s most profound commentary on the human condition, in a manic and offbeat way Johnny Hamlet manages to do justice to its classic source material. But, as with most of the better cowboy movies to emerge from the Spanish deserts of Almeria, there’s an alien feel to the timing and framing of the action when compared with Hollywood westerns, as long, mostly silent scenes of building suspense explode in sudden bursts of violence, with each gunshot echoing like cannon fire.

The dialogue, dubbed from a hodgepodge of languages spoken by the international cast, is, not surprisingly, the weakest element, but some of Shakespeare’s words make the cut. Using one of the most famous scenes from the original play, Corbucci introduces the characters at the beginning of the western, quoting Shakespeare to open the film.

Ranches replace castles and gunplay settles scores instead of swordplay, but the darkly designed production of Johnny Hamlet, with its sinister foreboding and the sharing of characters’ inner monologues to propel the plot, would be right at home in any Hamlet production, from the high school stage to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mix in an evocative score from Francesco De Masi and the result is a movie that is tough to find at the neighborhood video store but is worth the effort to do so. Your best bet is a German DVD release from Koch Media, under the title Django: Die Totengraber warten schon.

After Hamlet, King Lear is often cited as one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, and it has been a source of inspiration for at least two westerns. The first, Broken Lance (1954), which stars Spencer Tracy as the unlikely Western patriarch, also has roots in the biblical tale of Joseph, though officially it is a western remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1949 film noir House of Strangers.

Tracy rarely had a stopover in the western genre, but with this film and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), filmed back-to-back, he made the most of his opportunities. In Broken Lance, Tracy was top-billed as the stern cattle baron Matt Devereaux, who leads a destructive raid on a copper mine to prevent the pollution of the water on his land. Joe Devereaux, the only one of Matt’s four sons who has any genuine affection for his gruff father, takes the blame for the raid and lands in prison.

During Joe’s incarceration, his three brothers rebel against their father, provoking him into a fatal stroke. When Joe is released, his mother (played by Katy Jurado, always a welcome sight in a western) tries to talk him out of revenge, but a showdown becomes inevitable when Joe is attacked by his brother Ben (Richard Widmark).

As with Jubal, it is not necessary to get the Shakespeare parallels to appreciate the film, though they add a deeper context to the sons’ betrayal of their father. Tracy’s polo-playing experience came in handy for the riding scenes, many of which he performed himself, since it was tougher to hide the presence of a stunt double in the penetrating eye of a CinemaScope production. And at age 54 he set a standard for handling a bullwhip that wasn’t topped until Indiana Jones.

For a far more literal adaptation of King Lear, there is King of Texas, a television western that aired on TNT in 2002, starring Patrick Stewart in the title role. It was the type of project that had been developed multiple times before but never to fruition. As director Uli Edel explained in a TNT interview, “When Patrick Stewart approached me to do King Lear with him, I started to think about Anthony Mann, the old western director. He planned his whole life to do a King Lear version and never could get the money from the studios. Even Howard Hawks said that Shakespeare’s King Lear could become a wonderful western. But it never was done. So I’m very proud that I can do it now with Patrick Stewart.”

The film opens at the Lear ranch on the anniversary of Texas’ independence. John Lear (Stewart) calls his three daughters into a sitting room and announces his intention to divide up his 200,000 acres (“every acre paid for in blood”) based on how well each daughter explains the depth of her love for him. Flattery comes easy for Susannah (Marcia Gay Harden) and Rebecca (Lauren Holly), but Lear’s loyal youngest daughter, Claudia (Julie Cox), believes her actions should speak louder than empty words. Lear, however, is outraged by her attitude, and Claudia is banished from her home and stripped of her inheritance. As in Shakespeare’s play, the silver-tongued siblings ultimately turn their father out at the first opportunity, leaving Lear to wander the desert, haunted by their betrayal to the point of madness.

King of Texas may appeal more to Shakespeare aficionados than western lovers for the ease and precision with which it relocates a tragedy set in ancient Britain to post-Alamo Texas. Stewart’s voice tends to fluctuate between his native accent, which would suit a classic King Lear performance, and the twang necessary to deliver lines like, “I’m givin’ the ranch over to you three gals.” But he’s too accomplished an actor not to make you feel the character’s anger, remorse, and fear of oncoming insanity.

No doubt there will be more such blends of Shakespeare and sagebrush to come‚ after all, it’s hard to find a better source of material. Hopefully the next attempt will put a western spin on Richard III. How could any western filmmaker resist a play where the most famous quotation is, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

 

Issue: April 2010

Filed under: Travel, Leisure, Lodging