.
.
Decent but lacks spark
.
.
The Command was the first Western – the first Warner Brothers movie, in fact – in CinemaScope and indeed, the Wilfred M Cline photography (California standing in for Wyoming) does make the most of long, snaking wagon trains and zigzagging columns of soldiers. They threw budget at it.
The star wasnot terribly charismatic, though. Guy Madison (1922 – 96) was popular because of the successful TV show Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, which ran from 1951 to 58 for no fewer than 113 episodes. During the 1950s, some episodes were cobbled together and released as feature films. Madison and his comic sidekick Andy Devine also did the show on radio for several years (you can hear the first episode here and it’s fab). Madison was very handsome and very popular, especially with women viewers. The popularity got him roles in eight Westerns in the 1950s, including The Command, but once the Wild Bill series was over he struggled to get work and ended up doing low-grade Italian westerns in the 60s.
As the title suggests, The Command was an Army Western. The story tells of a cavalry doctor, Robert MacClaw (Madison), obliged to assume command in the field when his commanding officer is killed by Indians. It’s a post-Custer scenario with Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho out in big numbers (quite a few Westerns had this post-Custer scenario). The basic conflict of a doctor leading men to kill Indians is potentially an interesting one. He defends himself thus: “I’ve got a uniform and a conscience. Right now, the uniform covers the conscience.” Neatly put. Sadly, though, this potentially interesting aspect is left unexplored by the weakish script.
.
.
.
The screenplay was written by Russell Hughes, only his third Western (though he later did the very good Jubal), together with writer/director of many a trashy movie, Samuel Fuller. Fuller is a great figure among auteuristes and cinéastes but I never saw the quality there, I’m afraid. I Shot Jesse James, Run of the Arrow and Forty Guns are essentially pulp fiction movies which leave a slightly unpleasant taste in the mouth. Fuller was better suited to black & white tough-guy war films and noirs and I don’t think he ever really understood the Western.
The story of The Command had huge, but untapped potential because it was based on a novel, Rear Guard, 1950 (first published as The White Invader in The Saturday Evening Post) by James Warner Bellah (left). Bellah wrote 19 novels and very many short stories, especially for the Post, and several of them were taken up and made into movies – notably by John Ford, for example all three of Ford’s John Wayne cavalry movies 1948 – 50.
.
.
With the CinemaScope and a first class cinematographer, with budget, and with such a story as a base, the movie The Command ought to have been better. That it was ordinary is down to the screenplay, the less than stellar (though solid) acting and the direction by David Butler, who was excellent directing Bob Hope comedies but didn’t really do Westerns. He directed some (and some TV shows), San Antonio with Errol Flynn being about the best (though Raoul Walsh, uncredited, directed some of that), and the Doris Day Calamity Jane, if that’s your thing. Of The Command, Butler himself said, “That picture was made as a filler, and it grossed more money than any other picture that year at Warner Bros.” So he got something right – and indeed, the action scenes are pretty good and the movie perfectly satisfactory. But it could have been more. Imagine it with John Ford directing and, say, William Holden as the Army doctor – as he was, later, for Ford in The Horse Soldiers.
.
.
Some good action scenes, especially towards the end
.
Though made in ’53 and shown in ’54, The Command had none of that Broken Arrow semi-pro-Indian slant that so many Westerns, even Bs, were given. It harks back to the 40s. The Indians are savage non-persons who may be shot down in large numbers without compunction – indeed, to cheers. Madison says they possess “a child’s logic” and avers that they are “lacking civilization”. That was, in fact, something of a Bellah trait.
Ray Teal is good in it (he always was) as the arrogant and roughneck Army surgeon and Carl Benton Reid was also formidable as the hard-baked colonel. But probably the best actor was James Whitmore as the experienced, dust-covered cavalry sergeant lumbered with the doc who knows nothing of tactics but who finally acquits himself well. The relationship he and Madison build is well done. They say Denver Pyle was in it as an infantryman but I didn’t spot him. Curses.
.
The star wasnot terribly charismatic, though. Guy Madison (1922 – 96) was popular because of the successful TV show Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, which ran from 1951 to 58 for no fewer than 113 episodes. During the 1950s, some episodes were cobbled together and released as feature films. Madison and his comic sidekick Andy Devine also did the show on radio for several years (you can hear the first episode here and it’s fab). Madison was very handsome and very popular, especially with women viewers. The popularity got him roles in eight Westerns in the 1950s, including The Command, but once the Wild Bill series was over he struggled to get work and ended up doing low-grade Italian westerns in the 60s. 
The story of The Command had huge, but untapped potential because it was based on a novel, Rear Guard, 1950 (first published as The White Invader in The Saturday Evening Post) by James Warner Bellah (left). Bellah wrote 19 novels and very many short stories, especially for the Post, and several of them were taken up and made into movies – notably by John Ford, for example all three of Ford’s John Wayne cavalry movies 1948 – 50. 
7 Responses
Perhaps you could expand of the fictional setting beyond: "It’s a post-Custer scenario with Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho out in big numbers." As you may remember in The Plainsman 1936 the 5th Cavalry and General Merritt are riding to join the army of General Crook after the Little Big Horn, and in Buffalo Bill 1944 General Blazier and cavalry ride to reinforce the army of General Crook after the Little Big Horn. If I remember correctly in "The white Invader" the command was also going to reinforce the army of General Crook after the Little Big Horn. I am thinking of writing about a fictional battle where the reinforced armies of Terry and Crook fight the Sioux and may wish to include their fictional reinforcements as well as their real ones. So hat do you remember about the purposes and destination of the command in the movie The Command?
Hello Mark
Not much to add, I'm afraid. But I'd like to read your account when it comes out!
Jeff
Hi Jeff, Regarding your comments about Guy Madison, He came home one night, switched on the TV, on came a Cheyanne episode 2 actually that consisted of stock footage from the Command & The Charge at Feather River. Madison called his lawyer & instituted a lawsuit against Warner. Madison not only ended up on the gray list, but was relegated to the B's in Europe & God forbid dinner theater shows. Madison deserved better.
Hello Dennis
Thanks for your interesting comment. I guess that wouldn't make Madison too popular with the movie-moguls, and it explains why his career declined so much. Thanks for the inside info!
Jeff
Jock Mahoney got strong-armed out of his “Yancy Derringer” hit. Self-produced, CBS demanded a piece of the production. Mahoney flatly refused, and CBS cancelled it. Flatly. There’s an obscure movie called “Money, Women and Guns” which appears to be four TV scripts cobbled together, and might have been Mahoney’s putative comeback series. Mahoney went on to some Tarzan programmers, and lost his health to a malarial location shoot. He finished as a henchman on “Batman”. Mostly Catwoman episodes, so there’s a consolation.
‘The Command’ was as an early morning, coffee-and-a-Western watch, DVRed from TCM. Enjoyable, although Jeff is completely correct about its attitude towards Native Americans: cannon fodder, quite literally. The spitting of Harvey Lembeck’s Gottschalk character is not quite as comedic as the filmmakers envisioned and Dimitri Tiomkin’s score is overly busy, in my opinion. Still, Madison acquits himself well, and Whitmore is fantastic. Seeing the sweeping action sequences in CinemaScope in a big movie palace – wagons, cavalry and mounted Native Americans moving at full speed across the screen – must have been quite the experience. It’s worth your 94 minutes.
Dear Jeff (if you’re still out there),
In fact “Calamity Jane” is my sort of thing. And “The Command” was my alltime favorite movie forever! until “How the West Was Won”. (For now it’s “Crouching Tiger…”.)
The racism of “The Command” is unforgivable. But I insist this movie was less genocidal than the standard issue of the day. The Doc’s concern to spare the Indians from smallpox contradicts an actual military tactic of our colonial past. This glimmer of Indian humanity startled my seven-year old self, although the lesson didn’t strike home until “Little Big Man”.
Another old movie “fault” that has to be graded on the curve is pacing. D.W. Griffith established that pace should be languorous until the climax. Only silent comedies used MTV editing. The last modern film to hew to Griffith was “Goodfellas”. I’m amused by whippersnapper reviewers who cite the action at “The Command” ‘s finale, though bored up to that point. They have completely fallen for Griffith’s device! The climax was alright, but the build-up is carried by roiling plot and personalities that are beyond the perception of ADD moderns.
When I was seven I only comprehended melodrama, i.e. good guys pulling together against bad guys. The fractuous coalition of Capt. MacClaw’s command was utterly astonishing! I think that holds up quite well.
Finally, there’s a problem with almost all historical fiction that most stories handwave, but this one ties up with a bow. If your hero changed history, like we just saw him do, how come I never heard of him? Most fictions just leave this hanging. It’s analogous to a pop tune without a final note, just fading out—the Beatles were good about finishing up. “The Command” ‘s final note is that MacClaw is not a latter-day Belisarius with more cavalry conquests ahead! He’s going to be a frontier doctor with Joan Weldon at his side—and that’s a richly rewarded obscurity. — M.Warner