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Not the world’s greatest Western but Fred superb
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Not everyone thought Fred MacMurray the greatest Western star but, you know, in Quantez, his seventh of eleven oaters (depending on your definition of a Western) he is absolutely superb.
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The movie itself is good without being great. It was a rather typical Universal offering of the 1950s, which had some good cinematography of attractive Western locations, workmanlike directors and writers, and quality acting of a slightly sub-stellar kind. Universal didn’t have the wealth of MGM, Paramount or Warners but they did produce solid, even quite classy ‘smaller’ pictures, and this is one.
Quantez was directed by Harry Keller (left), who had been an editor at Republic for years (he worked on the delightful John Wayne picture Angel and the Badman), doing lower-budget Westerns and noirs, before graduating to directing Allan Lane oaters in 1951. Quantez was his first Western for Universal, and the following year he would direct another one with Fred, Day of the Badman, which was rather good.
The chief weakness of Quantez is that although we get some nice and typical Universal out-of-doors shots at the start and end (Sonoita and Coronado, AZ locations) the majority of the picture is done on unconvincing studio sound stages. In many ways the small cast (really, it’s just five outlaws and a visiting drifter) and the intense interaction between them, as well as the studio settings, combine to make it a stage play, more suitable to the theater. The CinemaScope was wasted. Fortunately, the writing and acting is good enough to carry it off. Often, Westerns that have limited action and outdoors settings and are very talky are pretty weak. In fact The New York Times review of the time said, “Very little happens, and what does happen, mostly snarling conversation, could hardly be duller. In an era when even the poorest Westerns manage to vibrate with flying hoofs, bullets and arrows, this one remains static, turgid claptrap.” That was too unkind. This Western gets away with it. It is tense and powerful.
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We open to dramatic Herman Stein music as five riders cross a desert. We soon discover they are outlaws being pursued by a posse. They are led by sneering tough-guy Heller (John Larch). Gentry (Fred) is a shrewd and canny number two. And we have Teach, a young gunman (John Gavin) and El Gato (Sydney Chaplin), a ‘man who knows Indians’. And there is the gorgeous Dorothy Malone as Chaney, Heller’s woman. They avoid the posse and take refuge in Quantez, a dusty border village which is strangely deserted (not the first time this has happened in Westerns, eh, e-pards?)
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They arrive in Quantez
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Right away Larch has gloated over shooting down a man in the robbery and Fred has said that there was “no need to kill him”. Fred is also gallant to Dorothy and cares for the horses (rather like Robert Ryan in The Professionals) so we know he’s a classic good badman, in the William S Hart tradition (though more gritty and modern). And indeed, this is the persona he develops when they are holed up in the ghost town. MacMurray handled it with consummate skill. Unshaven, taciturn, good with a gun, he is totally convincing as a badman, yet he clearly has good-guy qualities. And indeed he proves finally heroic.
John Larch (right) was rarely better (maybe as Dirty Harry’s chief of police). Usually a policeman, soldier, attorney or politician on TV, Larch had a good line in Western TV shows and big-screen oaters too, starting with a small part in a Bill Elliott oater in 1954, then bad guy Bodeen in Seven Men from Now (and by the way, men with –een names are invariably baddies in Westerns), Man from Del Rio, and, in 1957, a small part in another Fred Western, Gun for a Coward. His craggy face and bulbous nose are instantly recognizable. If anything, in Quantez, he is too bad, and the writing and direction should really have moderated the badness a little. Westerns which have good guys with weaknesses and bad ones with saving graces are always better. But he’s pretty damn objectionable as the gang leader and we are happy when he gets his just deserts.
As for Ms Malone, I think I am in love with her still. Oscared and Golden Globed as she was, I couldn’t care less about Peyton Place, I just think of her losing out to Anthony Quinn as Henry Fonda’s amour in Warlock, being Jeff Chandler’s lady-love in Pillars of the Sky, hovering between Rock and Kirk in The Last Sunset, dallying with Randy in The Nevadan, being ‘the other woman’ in Colorado Territory, and being John Lund’s squeeze in Five Guns West (same writer as Gun for a Coward). Best of all, for me, was her going to the aid of her man Jack Slade with a derringer in a bar fight. That’s my kinda gal. Anyway, she was fab. And here, she is in many ways the central character. All the gang fancy her (and she flirts with them all in her attempt to escape). She is frightened, vulnerable, yet gutsy. It’s a great performance.
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La Malone
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El Gato turns out to be a double agent (spoiler alert, oops, too late) because though white, he grew up with Cochise’s Apaches and hates the white eyes. Ironically, the Apache he betrays his fellow gang members to is Cochise – well, it’s Michael Ansara anyway, who was Cochise in the 1956 – 60 ABC serialization of Broken Arrow. It doesn’t so El Gato any good, though. He falls, pierced by an Apache arrow. (Oops. Again.)
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Ansara is an Apache but not Cochise
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The fight in the horse waterhole is pretty good and there’s a pianola (I do like Victorian gadgets in Westerns).
When Puritan, a wandering minstrel, appears (James Barton) we get La Malone at her sexiest, for he is also a portrait painter and she sits for him in a red décolleté plongeant. But I guess you have to be a man. Anyway, more importantly for the plot, he sings a song of one John Coventry, gunfighter extraordinaire, and it pretty well immediately becomes apparent that Fred’s character ‘Gentry’ is really this Coventry. He is on the run from gunslinging and has vowed never to kill anyone again. Ah, but will he keep his vow? For there is bound to be a Larch/MacMurray showdown in the final reel…
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The minstrel arrives
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It’s all exciting stuff.
No, it is, actually, within the limits of 1950s Universal mid-budget Westerns.
The ending symmetrically mirrors the opening, when the (surviving) gang members gallop out pursued by Indians, just as they had galloped in being pursued by the posse. Finally, Fred…
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On the set
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No, that would be a spoiler too far.
Good Western, though, despite the limitations, and MacMurray was rarely better.
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12 Responses
I thoroughly concur with your excellent review, Jeff.
I personally have a bit of a problem with westerns that trap the characters on a sound stage set for much of the picture, often resulting in too much talk and too little movement. But of those movies I think "QUANTEZ" manages to succeed the most.
Malone is wonderful of course and Fred was indeed terrific in his role here. I found him a very good westerner more times than not (by a long way).
A recommended watch.
Yup.
The best 'studio' Westerns were those like High Noon or The Gunfighter which were really urban psycho-dramas which built tension to breaking point.
But most Westerns need the great outdoors – as John Ford knew (except he forgot it in Liberty Valance).
Jeff
Many westerns are mostly urban! Gunfight at the OK Corral, Warlock, Rio Bravo, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Shootist, Liberty Valance, Silver Lode to name a few. Urban westerns are as important and quintessential to the genre as the wild outdoors ones. The taming of the frontier was made thanks to the cities development, because of the mines, the train bringing the business, the banks – to rob – and "civilization". The city itself is just a camp at its beginning and can even become a ghost town. The city whatever its evolution and destiny, carries many themes and myths of the genre and many films are concentrating most of their action in the city. The city will become the major frame of the noir films as a logical conclusion once the wilderness has been vanquished and the national epic is over. By the way, very few noirs are shot in the grands espaces, it is not by accident.Among the exceptions, High Sierra is interesting as Walsh will transform it in Colorado Territory. JM
Yes, many Westerns are urban, but they only work if the writing, acting and directing are top-notch. They rely on building tension and interplay between the characters. The very best are wonderfully claustrophobic. But many people will watch a Western hoping for thundering hooves, dust and desert, Indian attacks and all the rest.
Jeff
Well, your top notch list argument is also valid for the outdoor ones! And if we want top notch only, your blog would have to focus on the 5 revolvers only which would be sad… But I see your point, when a film is weak, at least the spectator can find some consolation with the gorgeous landscapes. JM
That's true.
Jeff, keeping on exploring Fred McMurray career, I have not spotted a Sam Wood 1940 film, Rangers of Fortune, with Gilbert Roland and Albert Dekker. It does not yet appear in your studies, do you know it and do you have any idea of its value !? A couple of days before, I was saying that Fred was not very lucky with his westerns films directors but it is surprising to see big names for the rest of his filmography – also Michael Curtiz for Dive Bomber, beside of Billy Wilder and thus Wood, an important director of the forties even if it is not considered the same since. Mc Murray was a big Hollywood star so how could we explain this gap ? JM
Jeff, The Oregon Trail and Dorothy Malone have no relationship. Yes…?
Jeff I was 100% sure you had committed an essay about Dorothy Malone not so long ago but unable to retrieve it. We all now how much in love you are, did I dream of it !?
Yes, I did write a Malone-a-rama. I’m a bit of a fan. Looks like it’s another post that got lost in the transfer to the new host, durn it. I must rewrite. Dot deserves Western credit.
Don’t you keep a copy of your writings…!?
Usually but not always.