The Three Godfathers by Peter B Kyne

 

Mawkish

 

Peter B Kyne (1880 – 1957) was an American novelist who published between 1904 and 1940. Many of his works were adapted into film screenplays, starting during the silent movie era. More than a hundred pictures were made from his works between 1914 and 1952, fifty of them Westerns, many of the earliest without consent or compensation.

 

 

Kyne himself regarded his first work, the novella The Three Godfathers, first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1912, as his best story. Indeed, he even called it “a work of art”. It may be, though having just read it, I’d have to say that as art, it is pretty kitsch, at least by modern standards.

 

 

It’s a tale of three surviving bank robbers (the opening has a tinge of Northfield about it), who are referred to throughout as The Wounded Bad Man (he has a bullet in his chest, which will prove fatal), The Worst Bad Man and The Youngest Bad Man, though we later learn their names are Bill, Tom and Bob, respectively. Escaping on foot, they come across a wagon at a dried-up water hole with only a woman in it, who is about to give birth. The baby boy is delivered but the mother dies, after securing a promise from the Three Bad Men that they will be godfathers to the infant, save him and bring him to safety. They set out across the desert for the symbolically-named mining camp of New Jerusalem, suffering extreme hardships, two of them succumbing but the Youngest Bad Man and the baby just making it.

 

The tale is overtly religious, full of biblical allusions and cloyingly sentimental – I’d say saccharine.

 

But it was a best-seller in its day, and it wasn’t long before the movie business took an interest. Already in 1916 it was made as The Three Godfathers by Universal, a six-reeler directed by Edward LeSaint, with Harry Carey as Bob – his son Harry Carey Jr would be one of the godfathers in 1948.

 

 

In 1919, John Ford, no less, would remake it as a five-reeler titled Marked Men, with Harry Carey again in the lead, though this time as his habitual hero Cheyenne Harry, and J Farrell MacDonald and Joe Harris as the other two godfathers.

 

 

 

Ford seems to have had another go at it in the early 20s. According to Wikipedia, “Action is a 1921 American silent Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Hoot Gibson. It was based on Peter B. Kyne’s popular novel The Three Godfathers. The film is considered to be lost.” It co-starred with Gibson John Ford’s brother Francis and J Farrell MacDonald again.

 

 

So already by the end of the sound era the yarn had been made into a movie three times. Tragically, we cannot see these today. So many silent movies have been lost. Woe is us.

 

In 1929 studio boss Carl Laemmle decided to make the story Universal’s first sound Western and first sound picture to be shot outdoors, and this one does still exist. Laemmle’s son, Carl Jr, had just taken over the reins (as a 21^st birthday present) and picked his cousin to direct it (the studio was famous for its nepotism) but Junior had the great good fortune that his cousin happened to be William Wyler. The result was Hell’s Heroes, soon to be reviewed you will be thrilled to learn, which, in my view anyway, is by far the best film version made of the rather tacky tale. But more on Hell’s Heroes soon.

 

 

The following year Universal also remade it as a cartoon, Hell’s Heels, an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit epic.

 

 

In 1936, MGM had a go. Metro’s Three Godfathers (with no definite article), directed by Richard Boleslawski, made many changes to the story, including the names of the characters. It starred Chester Morris as Bob (so that was accurate anyway), with Lewis Stone as Doc and Walter Brennan as Gus. It was a big picture with many qualities and a large cast, shot by four-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg in Mojave Desert locations.

 

 

 

In 1948, John Ford made it yet again, as 3 Godfathers, with John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr as the three bad men. Rather curiously, the characters have changed names, so that leader (Duke) is Bob, while the youngest (Dobe) is Bill. It was made in color this time and beautifully shot by Winton Hoch, again in the Mojave Desert. This film was the most ‘religious’ of them, in that rather sentimental Fordian Catholic way, and in that sense closest to the book, though once again many changes were made to the story, with added characters and plot.

 

 

 

In 1974 there was a TV movie, The Godchild, screened by ABC, in which three Union POWs (Jack Palance, Jack Warden and Keith Carradine) fleeing across the desert to escape both their Confederate pursuers and rampaging Apaches, come across a dying woman and her infant child. They promise the woman that they will take care of the child and get it to safety.

 

 

Animated films such as Ice Age (2002) and Tokyo Godfathers (2003) have taken the plot and run with it. Other films may not have been directly attributable to the Kyne novella but still tapped into the ‘three bad men doing the right thing’ vibe. John Ford (yet again) made 3 Bad Men in 1926, from the Herman Whitaker story Over the Border. J Farrell MacDonald was (yet again) one of the bad men. In it, three outlaws come to the aid of a young girl after her father is killed. This silent had similarities to Three Bad Men and a Girl, of 1915, directed by Francis Ford and with John (then Jack) Ford as an actor. And so on. Because the ‘good badman’ was such a staple Western character, Kyne’s story and similar yarns had an obvious appeal. Consider Four Faces West (1948) in which bank robber Joel McCrea sacrifices his getaway in order to nurse two small boys with diphtheria. The arithmetic is different (one badman and two children) but the story is essentially the same.

 

In 2017 yet another remake was announced, to be written and produced by Stephen L’Heureux, cast unknown, or indeed actual status.

 

So the story has sure got its share of screen time.

 

You could read the original, for interest, and because it’s kind of a landmark. It’s cheap to buy and won’t take you long. On the other hand, it’s pretty mawkish, in my view, and if you don’t read it, you won’t die of heartbreak or be considered unread.