The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance **** (1962, James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles) – Classic Movie Review 2347

‘Together for the first time – James Stewart and John Wayne – in the masterpiece of four-time Academy Award winner John Ford.’ Well that’s the advertising. The reality is that, though director John Ford’s 1962 Western may not be a perfect masterpiece, it is an extremely interesting movie, one of his most intriguing and rewarding.

It helps a lot that it is very strongly cast with James Stewart as Senator Ransom Stoddard, the lawyer hero, John Wayne as the rancher Tom Doniphon and Lee Marvin as the notorious gunman Liberty Valance, who terrorises the town of Shinbone. Stoddard returns home to Shinbone for Doniphon’s funeral and recounts his story to the local newspaper editor.

First coming to Shinbone years ago, Stoddard was robbed of his all when his stagecoach was held up on his way to town by Valance. Stoddard gets a job in the kitchen at the Ericson restaurant and there meets his future wife, Hallie. When Valance destroys the newspaper office and attacks the editor, Stoddard takes him on and stands up to him.

Vera Miles provides the romance as the attractive waitress Hallie, and the movie co-stars Edmond O’Brien scene-stealing as Dutton Peabody, the drunken editor of the Shinbone Star, as well as Andy Devine as Link Appleyard, Jeanette Nolan and John Qualen as the Ericsons, Ken Murray, Lee Van Cleef and Woody Strode, the star of Ford’s 1960 Western Sergeant Rutledge.

The main problem is that it looks studio and set bound, the result of too much filming at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, though there was also shooting at Janss Conejo Ranch, Thousand Oaks, California, and Jamestown, California, for the final scene.

It is also a shade overlong at a full two hours (123 minutes) and rather slow-moving, with the two stars belatedly appearing in their first pairing together looking a wee bit elderly for their roles. But, on the other hand, the movie is very attractively photographed by cinematographer William H Clothier in glorious black and white, full of fascinating, now classic, much-played sequences, and has a considerable style and certainly achieves the mythic grandeur it is going for.

Ford makes something special out of it with the help of the Stewart-Wayne combo and his stock company, and it is a fine movie that ranks only just very slightly below the level of his greatest work, Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers.

Also in a typically fine John Ford ensemble cast of repertory players are Strother Martin as Floyd, John Carradine as Major Cassius Starbuckle, Denver Pyle, Carleton Young, Willis Bouchey, Robert F Simon, O Z Whitehead, Paul Birch, Joseph Hoover, Charles Akins, Gertrude Astor, Earle Hodgins, Jack Kenney, Anna Lee, Jack Pennick, Slim Talbot and Jack Williams. It’s character actor heaven.

Screen-writers James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck (also the Sergeant Rutledge writers) base their screenplay on the story by Dorothy Johnson. Edith Head’s costumes were Oscar nominated.

Wayne called the film a tough assignment. While the other actors had well-rounded characters, he saw his role as merely functional for the plot. ‘I just had to wander around in that son of a bitch [Tom Doniphon] and try to make a part for myself.’ Someone suggested that his role was complicated and full of ambiguity. He replied: ‘Screw ambiguity. Perversion and corruption masquerade as ambiguity. I don’t like ambiguity. I don’t trust ambiguity.’

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2347

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