Jeff Arnold’s West

The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans

The Peacemaker (UA, 1956)

 

Ted Post’s first theatrical Western

 

Ted Post was a highly prolific director who worked from 1950 thru 2002, helming very many episodes of TV shows, including over a hundred Westerns like Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Laramie, The Virginian and so on. But he also directed features and is probably best known for the likes of Magnum Force and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Three of these features were Westerns, most notably Clint Eastwood’s Hang ‘em High but also The Legend of Tom Dooley in 1959 with Michael Landon (upcoming review). The Peacemaker in 1956 was his very first big-screen film. Unfortunately, if understandably, it inhabits that twilight world between the big and small screens, and though a theatrical release, looks just like an 82-minute TV episode. It had a very modest setting, cast and crew. Well, you gotta start somewhere.

 

Ted with Clint

 

It was one of only three pictures of Hal R Makelim’s Makelim Pictures Inc (another of the three was a Western too, or sort of, Valerie) and the budget must have been, er, minimal. There are a couple of token location shots (Iverson Ranch, it looks like) but most is done in the studio with painted backdrops. It’s a rather talky ‘town Western’.

 

The film starred James Mitchell, who had small parts in Bob Steele, Allan Lane and Bill Elliott B-Westerns in the 1940s and a slightly bigger role in Devil’s Doorway, Colorado Territory and Stars in My Crown in the 50s but was an actor you wouldn’t really define as a Western specialist. He’s OK, I guess, as the stern-faced new parson who arrives in a town beset by a range war and tries to show that the Bible is mightier than the sword, or the six-gun anyway, even though, as it turns out, he used to be a gunslinger himself till he got religion. At one key point, when the bad guys kill his old-timer friend, he puts down his Bible and picks up that Colt .45 again: is he going back to his old gunslingin’ ways? But by strength of will he forces himself to put the gun back down  So there’s a play on the word Peacemaker.

 

 

The big ranchers are at daggers (or six-guns anyway) drawn with the homesteaders, as was conventional in these yarns, and between them is a railroad man, Gray Arnett (Herbert Patterson, in his only big-screen Western) who at first seems benevolent and civilized, and he pays court to the fair Ann (Rosemarie Stack, Robert’s wife, in her only Western), the storekeeper’s daughter and the town belle, and seems to be winning her favors.

 

But of course he’s a railroad man, so will definitely turn out to be a wrong ‘un, and he duly does. In fact he’s the chief villain (spoiler alert, oops, too late). Ann will switch her attentions to the new preacher.

 

‘Twill be lerve

 

The ranchers are led by beefy Lathe Sawyer (Hugh Sanders, more recognizable to Westernistas, often a sheriff) while the farmers have as leading light Ed Halcomb (Jess Barker, at one time Mr Susan Hayward, five minor Westerns). The sheriff (habitual Warners bit-part tough guy Robert Armstrong, small parts in nine Westerns) who’s supposed to keep the peace between them, is ineffectual, if not downright corrupt, so it’s up to the reverend.

 

Turn thy rifles into plowshares, brothers

 

Probably the most noticeable figure is the railroad’s hired gun, habitual bad guy Jan Merlin as Viggo Tomlin, one of those sneering punkish Skip Homeier-style gunnies, whom you may remember from, say, Guns of Diablo or Cole Younger, Gunfighter. He will be the preacher’s biggest challenge.

 

He’s not really into other cheeks

 

The whole thing is rather earnest, not to say heavy-handed, with a moral that leaves no room for subtlety really, but it’s alright. I’ve seen worse.

 

Crooked railroad man stops Jan shootin’ – for the mo

 

Mind, I’ve seen a lot better too.

 

 

6 Responses

  1. I always get a little confused with Ted Post, Ted Kotcheff or Buddy Van Horn… Maybe because Clint Eastwood is their common denominator…!? Of course only the first one has his place in your western cosmogony because of his massive production. Not sure if Rambo could be listed as a western… Van Horn has filmed one with Gregory Peck relatively forgettable, forgot its title at the moment.

    1. Buddy Van Horn was one of the great stuntmen and worked a lot with Clint. Ted Kotcheff only directed one Western, BILLY TWO HATS.

  2. I should have looked in your Bible before…! The Peck’s western is Billy Two Hats is a Ted Kotcheff one, not Van Horn… And according to the same source ” a good little Western” (even shot in Israel…). My memory seems vanishing in the sunset…

  3. James Mitchell wasn’t bad but he was first a dancer, this man needed in-depth choreography to shine on stage or in film.

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