The Outlaw Variations: The Ranown Westerns’ Finely Drawn Antagonists

Nevertheless, Frank Usher, the trio’s leader, played beautifully by Richard Boone, insists that he has an affinity with Brennan. In fact, they understand each other almost instantly. Usher holds the aforementioned craven husband, Willard Mims (John Hubbard), who all but offers his new bride to the killers, in indignant and entirely deserved contempt. While Willard swears he won’t tell a soul about the holdup if he’s allowed to go, Brennan tells Usher that even if he were to say yes to such a proposition, Usher wouldn’t believe Willard. With a grin, Usher replies, “Yeah, it’s dumb even talking about it, ain’t it?”

Henry Silva’s gunman character answers to the racist nickname Chink (Silva, a great character actor, was of Sicilian and Spanish lineage, but in old-school insensitive Hollywood, he was frequently cast in Asian roles) yet is nevertheless admired by his cohorts for his skill. “He keeps trying to prove that he can shoot better than any man alive, and he can,” Usher says of the cold-blooded gunman. He’s hardly sympathetic, but he carries himself with something almost like integrity, content to be rotten through and through. Brennan is ultimately able to manipulate him by suggesting that Usher may double-cross the gang. Because for Brennan, the possibility of an alliance with Usher—who feels for Brennan in a way he can’t bring himself to care about his “young guns”—is unthinkable.

The “we might have been friends” conundrum is turned on its head in Decision at Sundown (1957). Scott’s target here is a wheeler-dealer named Tate Kimbrough, who among other things has the town of Sundown under his thumb. Bart Allison, Scott’s would-be man-of-vengeance, winds up, as I have written elsewhere, “an abject failure as a hero, and a mixed success as a bully.” Point being that, were he just a little more put-together, Allison could have been exactly the sort of despised operator that Kimbrough built himself to be.

This town bully is played by John Carroll, the kind of character actor you look at and say, “I’ve seen that guy before,” probably because you have. We first glimpse him here as he’s informing the mistress he’s throwing over, Ruby James (Valerie French), that he doesn’t need her, or anybody else. Kimbrough is imposing in a bluff way, but rather easily put off. That said, when the final confrontation is forced, Kimbrough tells the resentful townfolk gathered in the bar, “I’m in no hurry. No hurry at all.” He doesn’t seem brave, exactly, but contrasted with Allison’s nearly manic state at this point, Carroll’s Kimbrough has a certain, well, dignity. The movie’s finale surprises in ways that Boetticher has prepared you for subliminally (particularly in its depiction of Ruby).