Jubal **** (1956, Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Felicia Farr, Rod Steiger, Valerie French) – Classic Movie Review 6832

Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Felicia Farr, Rod Steiger and Valerie French star in an impressive early Delmer Daves psychological Western movie, a tragic morality tale, intriguingly inspired by or loosely based on William Shakespeare’s Othello, though it is actually from a novel by Paul I Wellman.

Borgnine plays rancher Shep Horgan, whose frustrated wanton woman wife Mae (Valerie French) sets off the plot by falling in love with wandering cowboy Jubal Troop (Ford), who is found injured by Shep and brought in to his ranch, where he becomes the new cowhand. Jubal rejects Mae’s sexual advances as he is more interested in wagon train traveller Naomi Hoktor (Farr). Steiger is inevitably cast as in the Iago role as the grudge-bearing, mean foreman Pinky Pinkum, feeding Borgnine’s jealousy as his lying confidant.

Jubal is a brooding, intense, superior Western, tellingly acted by a rugged, able cast who look and sound just right, beautifully photographed in Technicolor and CinemaScope by Charles Lawton Jr and moodily directed in awesome landscapes, filmed along the Grand Teton Range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The lake in the movie is Lake Jackson.

Jubal Troop is the name of Ford’s character and the title of the source novel by Paul I Wellman, adapted by Daves and Hughes.

Also in the cast are Valerie French, Charles Bronson, Noah Beery Jr, Jack Elam, Basil Ruysdael, John Dierkes, Robert Burton, John L Carson, Michael Daves, Juney Ellis, Don C Harvey, Robert Henry, Robert Knapp, Larry Hudson, Ann Kunde, William Rhinehart and Guy Williams.

Jubal is directed by Delmer Daves, runs 100 minutes, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Russell S Hughes and Delmer Daves, is shot in Technicolor and CinemaScope by Charles Lawton Jr, is produced by William Fadiman, is scored by David Raksin and Morris Stoloff, and is designed by Carl Anderson.

Steiger and Daves clashed on how to play Pinky, but Steiger got his own way to play him bitter and like a coiled spring after the producer sided with him. Glenn Ford recalled: ‘Whatever Rod was doing in his role for Jubal probably worked for him. He was intense, I’ll tell you that.’

Felicia Farr (born on October 4, 1932) also stars in Delmer Daves’s The Last Wagon (1956) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6832

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