Jeff Arnold’s West

The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans

Jack Slade (AA, 1953)

 

He’s a bad man

 

While big color A-Westerns were coming out in 1953, the likes of Paramount’s Shane, MGM’s The Naked Spur and Warner Bros’ Hondo, the humble black & white mid-budget oater was also in full spate. In fact the early 50s were the heyday of such pictures. Allied Artists’ celluloid sausage machine churned out one a month that year and Jack Slade was released in November.
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It was not the usual fare, though. It is dark, brooding, grim, violent, almost a tragedy.
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Nice 50s posters. I like the French one best because it highlights Dorothy’s derringer.
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It is supposedly based on fact but of course that was a doomed enterprise for a Western movie. Believe it as history at your peril. The real Joseph A Slade (1831 – 64) was a stagecoach superintendent who rightmy or wrongly gained a reputation at the time as a killer. Born in Carlyle, Illinois, he grew up there and then served in the Mexican War. In the 1850s he was a freighting teamster along the Overland Trail, and in the late 1850s became a stagecoach driver in Texas. He then became a stagecoach division superintendent along the Central Overland route. He helped launch and operate the Pony Express in 1860 – 61. As superintendent, he enforced order and assured a regular supply of horses, thus ensuring a reliable mail and passenger service.
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Jack Slade
 
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In March 1860, Slade was ambushed, shot several times and left for dead by Jules Beni, the dishonest and drunken station keeper at Julesburg, Colorado, whom Slade had fired. Slade remarkably survived, and eighteen months later Beni was killed by Slade’s men after ignoring Slade’s warning to stay out of his territory. This affair grew and grew until it was a cause célèbre all over the country. Slade himself, the legend went, had shot Beni to pieces, body part by body part, while he was tied to a corral post. He then cut off Beni’s ears and used one for a watch fob. Before long Slade was a bloodthirsty professional gunfighter with 22 notches on his gun.

 

 

In fact only one killing by Slade is undisputed, that of a certain Andrew Ferrin, a corrupt employee, in May 1859. But his ferocious reputation, combined with a drinking problem, caused his downfall. He was fired by the Central Overland for drunkenness in November 1862. He moved to Virginia City, Montana, where after an alcohol-fueled spree in which he is said to have held a derringer to the head of a judge (seems perfectly reasonable behavior to me) he was lynched by local vigilantes on March 10, 1864, for disturbing the peace. His wife, Maria Virginia (maiden name unknown) had his body immersed in alcohol to preserve it so that she could take it back to Illinois for burial but it did not work, the corpse rotted and Slade had to be buried in Salt Lake City, Utah, on July 20, 1864. Such are the facts.
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Highly entertaining
 
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In 1871 Mark Twain wrote an account of his travels in the West in the early 1860s, Roughing It. This highly entertaining book was enormously popular and it greatly contributed to the Slade legend. Twain met Slade and got a real frisson from the encounter. “I found him so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of his awful history.” You get the feeling that Twain loved to tell of Slade’s victims and their grisly fates. It’s an interesting illustration of how even at the time exaggeration was an integral part of Western tale-telling. To read Twain, you’d think Slade was a bloodthirsty serial killer on an unprecedented scale, and we are told with hushed delight about his 26 shootings (Twain added a few more for luck).
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Sam Clemens meets Jack Slade
 
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You’d think therefore that Jack Slade would be the ideal subject for the Hollywood Western. In fact, though, there were remarkably few portrayals. The best was certainly George Bancroft as Jack Slade in James Cruze’s silent Western The Pony Express in 1925. Bancroft was splendid, and his villainous Slade, who not only interferes with the US Mail but also organizes the slaughter by Indians of wagon train settlers, has a big part. 
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An entirely fictional Slade is in the 1941 Randolph Scott picture Western Union and there was a 1955 Stories of the Century TV episode about him, almost as fictional, which you can watch on YouTube if you wish. It’s pretty bad.

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A certain John Dennis Johnston played a ‘Lefty’ Slade in the 1999 made-for-cable fantasy Western movie Purgatory but I don’t think this Lefty, who was shot to death in Tombstone, is Jack.

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In 1955 AA came out with a sequel, The Return of Jack Slade, with the same director as the ’53 picture, but this was a story of an imagined son of our Jack Slade and so can’t really count.

So really, only two celluloid Jack Slades even remotely resembled the real one.

 

 

In Jack Slade, the story opens with a quote from Mark Twain:

 

 

There was such magic in that name. SLADE! A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous, and the most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains.

 

 

Then we see a young boy, Joey (Sammy Ogg) in ‘Carlysle’, Illinois who throws a stone at a bully and accidentally kills him. Joey’s loving daddy (Nelson Leigh) takes him away to Texas to avoid the consequences and on the way they meet up with the kindly Tom Carter (Harry Shannon) who takes a shine to the lad. When the stage is held up and a wicked bandit knocks the boy down and shoots his dad dead, Joey swears he will kill all bad men. Tom gives him a Navy Colt to do it with (the boy fires it into the camera) and adopts the youth, who chooses the name Jack now, and he grows up with Tom in San Antone. Well, I suppose it could have happened…

 

 

Seven years pass. We now see Mark Stevens as a grown Slade, back from the war (we assume the Mexican War) as an officer, dark of mien and telling Tom how he has killed many a man. Immediately he gets into a fight with Lee Van Cleef in a saloon. “I’m gettin’ mad, soldier boy,” Lee tells Slade. “And when I’m mad, I’m bad.” Of course Jack dispatches Lee pronto but he does seem to draw trouble to him alright, “like a dead horse draws flies.”

 

 

Now a Lassiter-ish man in black, Slade joins a wagon train to Colorado, killing some attempted robbers on the way, and goes looking for station manager Jules Beni in Julesberg to get a job, only to find out that the drunken Beni (Barton MacLane) has just been fired by the boss, Dan Traver (Paul Langton), who then gives the job to Jack. So now he’s a superintendent.
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Barton is Jules Beni
 
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Not only that, he meets Virginia Maria Dale (Dorothy Malone) and they hit it off right away (as indeed who would not?) He warns her that he is no good but she won’t listen and they are married.
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It’s lerve at first sight
 
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There are some Clantonite rustlers, the Dantons, stealing company stock. Jack goes to their ranch and casually shoots them all down but finds a frightened boy (David May) cowering in the corner, just the same age he was when his daddy was shot, and Jack wants to adopt him, but one of the rustlers isn’t quite dead and shoots the boy dead. Jack is distraught, and drinks.

 

 

It’s all downhill from there on, what with the demon drink and all. Here, though, is where it starts to get a bit more interesting. There is an attempt to find out what makes a killer tick. His wife says, “He kills, he drinks, he hates himself.” But why? Childhood trauma, a violent nature, wartime experience? Or all of them? Mark Stevens does this part quite well. Stevens was an artist and singer who had grown up in England and Canada and got into amateur dramatics in his Ohio home. Darryl Zanuck took him up and a contract at Fox was the result. They darkened his red hair and gave him roles in noirs. He never won major star status, though he led in quite a few lower-budget Westerns. In the 50s moved into TV, directing Wagon Train episodes. He ended his Western career with a Spanish spaghetti/paella western (he was living in Spain, running a restaurant and writing novels). In Jack Slade he is somber, grim, sweat-stained and unsmiling, very far from a hero. “Funny,” he says, “the one thing I hate most in the whole world is a killer. I guess that’s why I don’t like myself too much.”
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Beni gets the drop on Slade. Not for long.
 
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Disgruntled and vengeful Beni teams up with some more outlaws, the Prentice boys, and they are gunning for Slade. Slade goes straight to their cabin to kill them. Beni escapes but Slade shoots the Prentices efficiently, though one surrenders. This one plays the guitar and in the saloon had sung (Slade says, rightly, that he has a nice voice) mocking songs about Slade, who clenched his teeth. This fellow, though, comes to a memorable, if gruesome end. Slade hangs him. The director, with a deft touch, has the corpse’s feet strum the fallen guitar as the body swings from the tree branch.

 

 

In an unlikely plot twist, Slade’s old guardian has fallen in with the Prentice/Beni gang and Slade shot him when he came out of the cabin. Oops. Back in the saloon, drinking, Slade tells the barman, “I’m a bad man.” It’s undeniable really. Especially because he then maims a little girl in a hit-and-run as he gallops down the street. Though Judge John Litel tries to calm them, the townsfolk rise against him. “I say hang him!” a couple of townsmen cry. They did love their lynching. The mother of the injured girl tells Slade, “This country will be a lot better off when all you gunmen are dead and buried.” That has the ring of truth too. Her speech reminds me of Amy Kane’s in High Noon,Marian Starret’s in Shane and Edith Cabot’s in Canadian Pacific. They all rail against the destruction wreaked (or is it wrought?) by gun men.
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The showdown
 
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Well, the inevitable showdown, which takes place in the ratty old saloon (one of those in which the bar is just a plank over some barrels), is splendid. The main reason is that Virginia Maria participates – with a derringer! You know how I like derringer Westerns. And Dorothy Malone, come to that.
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Blam!
 
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Slade must fall. It was Hollywood morality. He was too bad to survive. But he doesn’t fall to Beni. An earlier character is re-introduced to do that job. This character sententiously announces, “So died Jack Slade, a builder of empire in the West.” Well, as we know, that was not how he died, and he didn’t build an empire. In other respects, though, it was an accurate summary.
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Dead ‘n’ buried
 
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As low-to-mid budget Westerns go, I think this one is pretty darn good. It has something. It’s historical hokum, of course, but when have we let that stop us?

 

 

It was directed by Harold Schuster, who started as an actor but become a respected editor. As a director he did Fox’s successful My Friend Flicka in 1943, and Dragoon Wells Massacre, which I also quite like. Otherwise, though, he only did Western TV shows.

 

 

The writer on Jack Slade was Warren Douglas, who also wrote Dragoon Wells Massacre, as well
as The Night of the Grizzly and a lot of Cheyenne and Sugarfoot episodes. There are some thoughtful parts to the Jack Slade script.

 

 

The picture was produced by Lindsley Parsons, who wrote so many of those 30s Monogram programmers, including the John Wayne ones. He sure knew Westerns.

 

 

Stevens is good (it was perhaps his best Western), Malone beautiful, some of the support acting – though unstellar – solid. The direction and writing are more than competent. It all adds up to a decent little Western.

 

11 Responses

  1. Had this film been directed by say,Sam Fuller or Joseph H Lewis it
    would have,by now, been lionized by the "auteur" set.
    Sadly Schuster's name does not register with that crowd.
    I recently viewed the full length restored version of THE GOOD,THE BAD AND THE UGLY-Schusters film is far more violent and disturbing.
    Kids are either trampled under the hooves of drunken cowpokes,
    or gunned down by crazed gunslingers-old duffers are caught in the
    crossfire of barroom shoot-outs and so on.
    The emotional violence of the film is unrelenting especially when
    Slade is forced to hang the guitar playing kid he tried to direct
    onto a law abiding path.
    Full marks to Jeff for uncovering these almost forgotten gems.

    1. Yes, you're right, the auteuristes would have loved such a movie by Samuel Fuller. What they saw in him I'll never know.
      Jeff

  2. Yep, a decent little western indeed! I only got to see it for the first time within the last couple of years and I found it a most unusual (for its day) and gripping piece. Very downbeat. But then the sun shines at Dorothy Malone's appearance (didn't it always?).

  3. Don't forget Kirk Douglas as "Cactus" Jack Slade in "The Villain". Or, rather, you can forget it. It's not very good.

    1. Was Cactus Jack a Slade? I forgot that. But I sure don't want to watch the movie again to verify that, not unless I really have to.
      Jeff

  4. RIP Dorothy Malone, a beautyfull
    actress . And one of my favorite western actresses. See e.g. Quantez, Last Sunset and Warlock.

    1. I absolutely agree. 18 Westerns from Frontier Days in 1945 to The Last Sunset in 1961. My favorites: Colorado Territory, Jack Slade and Tall Man Riding. She was very beautiful and a fine actress.
      Jeff

  5. Come on Jeff, one more effort! Kathy Jurado is feeling very lonely among all these guys in your Western actors list and it seems that the Dorothy Malone fan club is growing every day! Even if parity has never been too much western…
    About Jack Slade, I have been happily surprised by the film which sounds very modern by the themes,the violence (the hero running his horse on a child who could be crippled for life, an other child killed…), the weight of the fatum worthy of a classic tragedy, the flawed hero showing so many weaknesses, turning his back to a foe, killing a friend by mistake, becoming an alcoholic. The turning coat city, the hero loneliness since his childhood… And Stevens is highly credible, amazing he did not make more westerns. 1953 is for sure one of the best vintages ever!
    JM

  6. Of course in 1953, even the darkest hero could not have the gruesome end of the real Slade, yet…
    JM

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