The Lawless Nineties Blu-ray Review
Well, they wouldn't have been gay with John Wayne involved.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, June 12, 2013
My sister likes to recount an anecdote from her college days. Like my father before her, as well as two of his siblings,
my sister went to the University of Wyoming in Laramie. When she was back visiting my father's brothers in New York
City on vacation from college one year, some
doyenne of the cultured class remarked in horror that my sister
would even consider attending school in an
"encampment" where they had shootouts on Main Street and regular cattle stampedes destroying structures right and
left. You see,
this was in the mid-sixties and a western television series called
Laramie had only recently left the airwaves,
and this Manhattanite was quite certain that things hadn't changed in the Equal Rights State in the, oh, one hundred
years or so between the series' timeframe and my sister's college experience. The moral to this story is twofold: don't
take fictional depictions of supposed history as fact and
never tell Wyoming based anecdotes to New Yorkers
(all right, I made that second one up, but you get the idea). Set some twenty five to thirty years or so after
Laramie supposedly depicted the hardscrabble life of the early settlers of the West,
The Lawless
Nineties is another pretty heavily fictionalized look at Wyoming, built around its decision to enter the Union (which it
did on July 10, 1890, becoming the 44th state in the process). Some without a solid grounding in American history
might think that the wide open spaces of Wyoming might seem like the last place in the world to find a roiling culture of
political corruption, but those folks should look into a little scandal called Teapot Dome, which almost brought down the
Harding Administration in the 1920s (until Watergate came along, "Teapot Dome" was shorthand for political
shenanigans of the highest order). The corruption that is depicted in
The Lawless Nineties may in fact not quite
rise to that level of malffeasance, but it gives good guy John Wayne plenty to fight against—and for.
John Wayne was still three or so years away from the superstardom he would achieve in John Ford's
Stagecoach, and
The Lawless
Nineties finds him plying much the same trade he had (and would continue to) for Republic Pictures. Many of these
Republic outings were more or less interchangeable, with Wayne the stalwart hero fighting for truth, justice and the
American Way (which in this instance meant America itself, at least in terms of accepting a new state into the fold), with
the requisite bad guys and equally requisite romantic interest tagging along. But
The Lawless Nineties does
have
at least a few defining elements that help to set it apart from the rest of its Republic pack.
Plot wise, about the only thing that sets
The Lawless Nineties apart from countless other Republic outings is the
fact that Wayne plays a
federal lawman this time, coming to Wyoming to make sure honest, law abiding citizens
can vote freely in the election to make Wyoming a state, something that an organized brigade of bad guys is working
hard to prevent, since evidently the moment Wyoming Territory becomes an official state, lawlessness will instantly end
(there's an appealing naïvete to that concept). Wayne plays John Tipton, who along with buddy Bridger (Lane
Chandler) are sent to Crocket City, which is evidently Ground Zero for the villains (apparently Cheyenne, Laramie and
any number of other burgs didn't make the cut). As the two lawmen are galloping toward their goal, they see a lone
wagon bearing across the plains. John goes to investigate, which spooks the wagon's horses and its occupants, who
fear they're being set upon by a bad guy or, worse yet, an Indian. That allows John to "meet cute" with spunky Janet
(Ann Rutherford) and her father, Major Carter (George Hayes). Of course, the Carters are on their way to Crocket City
as well, with the Major revealing that he's just bought the local newspaper and intends to publicize the lawless gangs
which are attempting to influence the vote for statehood.
Without giving too much away in what is a pretty brisk and to the point film (clocking in at less than an hour),
The
Lawless Nineties telegraphs its chief villain pretty shamelessly (you know when a guy is in charge of The Society for
Law and Order he can't possibly be up to much good) and then proceeds to have Wayne confront and ultimately defeat
the bad guys. Along the way, there are several neat horse chases, two pretty predictable deaths that give Wayne the
chance to emote, and a little comedy relief courtesy of the two African American performers in the film.
It's actually the
casting, including one of those African Americans, that makes
The Lawless Nineties
rather interesting. The same year that Wayne finally burst forth into mainstream success in
Stagecoach, there
was another little film called
Gone
with the Wind which also debuted. Though Ann Rutherford had been working regularly in a glut of B-movies,
including some westerns and the
Andy Hardy series at M-G-M, she had one of her first real chances at A-film
magnificence in
Gone With the Wind. Playing along side her was the ineffable Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, the
indefatigable slave who catered to the O'Hara girls.
The Lawless Nineties has an African American woman
playing a quasi-slave (there's no getting around it, sorry) who some might mistake for Hattie McDaniel, and for good
reason. It's McDaniel's sister, Etta, who chalked up scores of films over a relatively short career, often playing minor
characters who literally did the dirty work. Rather interestingly, McDaniel's character appears here as a sort of love
interest for the
Carter's quasi-slave, Moses (Fred Toones). (Some may object to this terminology, which is
understandable, but there's simply no mistaking the subtext in many of the films of this era. The black performers may
be playing characters who are ostensibly free, but they're consigned to menial labor, often adopting a shuffling
countenance, and almost invariably calling their white bosses "sir".)
Perhaps the most interesting piece of casting is one that some may not even recognize. Major Carter, a dashing kind of
very articulate Quaker-esque character eschewing violence and claiming that all disputes can be settled "peaceably", is
played by one George Hayes. That name may not ring any bells, at least until Hayes' more common nickname of
"Gabby" is prefixed to it. While many film lovers associate Hayes as the inevitable comic foil in westerns, spewing out
toothless "Well, dag
nab it"'s right and left, Hayes actually played a number of more respectable dramatic roles
in his long career, including some with John Wayne (Raoul Walsh's
Dark Command, which I'll be reviewing soon, is another case in point.) Here
Hayes is almost unrecognizable, standing tall and speaking in a quiet yet firm voice. He, rather like Wayne in a way, got
typecast too often in his career, but
The Lawless Nineties hints at what a versatile performer he was and how
much more he was capable of, if given the chance.
