Some Things a Man Can’t Ride Around: Budd Boetticher’s Ranown Westerns

Within this topography, Boetticher’s bands of heterogeneous pilgrims seek ambiguous goals. The Kennedy-scripted films set quests for revenge and escapes from savagery among these rocks and stretches of sagebrush. In the Lang scripts, the ramshackle towns become arenas where old scores are settled, or nests of corruption that only violence can purge. All the Columbia films conclude with Scott riding off into the distance, but his departures from the towns exude a nasty bitterness. At the end of Decision at Sundown, he rides out of town clumsily, hungover, and disillusioned, while in Buchanan Rides Alone his exit shows a sarcastic edge. When the mayor of Agry Town tells him, “It’s my town now,” Buchanan replies with a slight smile, before riding off, “You can have it.” A man on a horse retains some integrity while the town dwellers seem stuck in these commercial sinkholes.

The open spaces found in the Kennedy scripts contain their own anxieties. Cultural geographers differentiate “space” from “place.” Space remains abstract, blank, and inhuman—empty, undifferentiated. Place, on the other hand, has something that defines it: a dwelling with roots, or a site to which traumatic memories cling. We could describe Kennedy’s quest films as fables in which Scott guides others through empty space, either to a place where they can finally dwell or to a lonely death. At films’ end, however, he rides back into that empty space, still in search of something he can’t help but recall, yet rarely—if ever—recovers. The male characters written by Kennedy—the good, the bad, and the ambiguous—also seem possessed by a longing for what they call a “place.” The outlaw Frank Usher (Richard Boone) in The Tall T tells Brennan he dreams of a way of life different from that of his roaming band of cutthroats: “I’m gonna have me a place someday . . . I’ve thought about it a lot. A man should have something of his own.” Boone (Pernell Roberts), the would-be bounty hunter in Ride Lonesome, seeks amnesty for his youthful crimes so he can put down roots, explaining to Brigade (Scott) that a man “ought to have somethin’ of his own. Somethin’ to belong to, be proud of . . . I’ve got me a place.”

The western landscapes Boetticher and his cameramen frame not only ground dramatic confrontations but reveal a view of life. The setting never disappears from the picture, no matter how intense the drama becomes. Each shot establishes an extraordinary sense of spatial continuity of the sort that the great French critic André Bazin (who had described Boetticher’s Seven Men from Now as “an exemplary western”) taught us to appreciate in films. Rather than constantly cutting his scenes into large-scale close-ups, Boetticher exploits the western genre’s sense of expansive space, bringing out its depth through carefully layered compositions, as contrasting groups scatter across the frame. Too often, widescreen westerns rely on the horizontal expanse such aspect ratios supply; Boetticher, in contrast, casts our gaze into the distance. In one shot in The Tall T, Brennan in the foreground dresses a deer for supper, while Chink and his fellow outlaw Billy Jack (Skip Homeier) chow down around a campfire in midground and Usher carries a plate of food to the woman tucked away in the mine shaft in the background. Only Anthony Mann’s westerns create a comparable sense of depth. But while Mann’s compositions tend to be starkly dramatic, Boetticher stresses the frame’s “emptiness”: an open space, still and unresponsive, that can suddenly burst with threat or action. These harsh and inhuman landscapes stage ordeals where men and women are tested, revealing their courage or cowardice, their faithfulness or deceit.

In some of these films, Scott’s characters speak of a place they own, but we never see one, nor do we learn much about them. When Usher in The Tall T asks Brennan to talk about his place, he responds, “It’s not much, not yet anyway.” Brennan stresses to Mrs. Mims (Maureen O’Sullivan) and to Usher that he lives there alone, without a wife. In all of these films, Scott remains isolated, a wanderer without visible home or family. Keeping to themselves, his characters become defined by what they don’t say. Men who talk too much, like the cowardly bookkeeper Willard Mims in The Tall T, are judged to lack Scott’s silent manhood; they simply “don’t amount to much.” Scott, in contrast, leaves much unspoken. When Usher tells Brennan, “Ain’t right for a man to be alone,” he simply replies with a typically laconic comment, “They say that.” When, in Ride Lonesome, Carrie Lane (Karen Steele) says to Brigade, “You just don’t seem like the kind that would hunt a man for money,” rather than justify himself, he responds simply, “I am.” In the final confrontation of that film, the villainous Frank (Lee Van Cleef) confesses he had almost forgotten killing Brigade’s wife years before. Brigade states dryly, “A man can do that.” In these and many other exchanges, it is what Scott does, not says, that matters; that which remains unspoken motivates his actions and defines his character.

Loneliness haunts this country, and all the characters feel it, joining together more often out of vital necessity than out of compatibility, as Usher explains his riding with the murderous Chink and Billy Jack. In Comanche Station, when the young outlaw Dobie (Richard Rust) explains to Cody (Scott) how he fell in with Ben Lane (Claude Akins) even though he had no desire to ride outside the law, Cody indicates he understands by saying, “A man gets tired being all the time alone.” Ride Lonesome (with its resonant title) reveals the camaraderie that grows between men traveling together in this land. After Boone tells Whit (James Coburn) about his “place,” Whit asks if he could maybe work on it for him. Boone explains to Whit that after riding at his side for five years, he won’t be working for him but will be an equal partner. In surprise, Whit asks, “How come?” to which Boone replies, “’Cause I like you, Whit.” As much astonished as he is pleased, Whit responds, “Well, I never knew that!”

Partnerships in Boetticher’s westerns grow from shared journeys and perils. These groups assembled by chance may end with killings (Cody kills Lane in Comanche Station, Brennan shoots Usher in The Tall T)—or in friendships. Here, bonds between men depend on sensing another’s worth and obeying strict codes of behavior. The growing tension between Scott and the outlaws may end in deadly shoot-outs, but his opponents refuse to descend to trickery or shooting a fellow in the back (“Couldn’t enjoy it if I did you that way” becomes a repeated line). As they bed down for the night in Comanche Station, Dobie and Frank (Homeier) discuss how men either measure up or don’t. Dobie says, “My pa, he used to say, ‘Dobie, no matter what you do or who you do it to, make sure you amount to something.’ . . . Like Cody, he does . . . amount to something.” As he turns over to sleep, Dobie adds with a shrug, “My pa, he never did amount to anything.” The Kennedy scripts, in particular, run through variations on the outlaw pairs who ride along with Scott for a spell: from Usher’s two sadistic sidekicks in The Tall T to the more innocent Dobie and Frank in Comanche Station, whose allegiance seems to waver between Lane and Cody, and finally Ride Lonesome’s quite sympathetic Boone and Whit, who are granted the grace at the film’s end of avoiding killing anyone, riding away toward the promise of amnesty and partnership on Boone’s place. As in many westerns, such homosocial bonding supplies these movies with an emotional core. Boetticher’s films continue the tradition of male desire that critic Leslie Fiedler claimed, more than the European heterosexual romances, typified American mythology—the eroticism that unites Huck and Jim, Hawkeye and Uncas, and Ishmael and Queequeg in their voyages through American space.

Yet women also haunt these films (with the exception of Buchanan Rides Alone, which basically lacks female characters). Their presence both complicates and motivates the action. They rarely form romantic couples with any of the male characters, remaining mere objects of desire, like Carrie Lane, whom Boone and Whit gaze at from a distance in Ride Lonesome. The women attract both the outlaw characters (who speak of their desire fairly directly) and Scott, who rarely expresses it—other than to admit sometimes that a woman “ain’t ugly.” Although clearly drawn to these women, Scott keeps his desire to himself and usually leads them to another man. More than the women who become spectacles for all the men, dead or missing wives truly drive Scott’s actions in Comanche Station, Ride Lonesome, and Decision at Sundown. Female phantoms hover over the male-dominated action of these films, obsessing Scott and sealing his isolation. Most remarkably, rather than the visually fetishized, desirable women, it is Mrs. Mims, described as “plain as an adobe wall,” who comes closest to forming a romantic couple with Scott. The film ends as the pair walk to their horses to ride back to town, Brennan putting his arm around her as he intones the ambiguous line: “It’s gonna be a nice day.”

The late, great critic of the American cinema Andrew Sarris offered the best description of Boetticher’s westerns: “constructed partly as allegorical Odysseys and partly as floating poker games where every character took turns at bluffing about his hand until the final showdown.” Sarris’s invocation of poker goes to the heart of these films. Curiously, while poker forms a defining motif in many westerns (as in Ford’s films, or in the TV show Maverick, for which Boetticher directed the initial episodes), poker games play no direct role in the westerns Boetticher and Scott made at Columbia. But their literal absence masks a deep metaphorical presence, as Sarris intuited. The contests of masculinity in these films may culminate in moments of violence, but such dramatic shoot-outs remain relatively brief. It is the lead-up to these final showdowns that creates suspense throughout the narratives and brings out the core values of the films. The men size one another up; with jabs of dialogue and anticipatory challenges, they probe the strengths or weaknesses of potential foes or partners. Such male rivalry demands playing one’s cards close to the vest, maintaining a poker face, and, especially, as Sarris claimed, bluffing. Scott’s carefully measured words and illegible stone face (Bazin praised his “sublime lack of expression”) mark him from his first appearance as a master of this game. The men place their bets for openly declared stakes: a bounty or reward, a hostage (the unstable Billy John, played by James Best, in Ride Lonesome, or Manuel Rojas’s sympathetic Juan de la Vega in Buchanan Rides Alone), and, ultimately, the woman as prize. In The Tall T, the kidnapped Mrs. Mims represents both a ransomed hostage and a potential romantic partner.

The restraint that poker calls for defines the classic western hero that Scott embodies so well. Although quick on the draw, he is slow to anger or violence. More than an action hero, Scott projects a strangely contemplative figure, watching and sizing up situations in silence. He remains impassive, like the landscape that surrounds him, confident that in the end he has the winning hand. A game of poker, though, turns not only on a player’s skill but upon his luck. More than competing against the others, a poker player determines the favor of fortune. A turn of the wheel of chance reveals the western hero as lucky, justifying the posture that marks him as amounting to something. Here the bluff plays its role; one must act as sure of one’s luck when nothing guarantees it. A nearly sublime sequence from Ride Lonesome beautifully stages both the power of the bluff and the deciding role of chance.

Brigade, Boone, Whit, Carrie Lane, and the prisoner Billy John have camped for the night within the remains of an abandoned station after holding off a Native American attack. Brigade’s horse has suffered a fall, and he is now tending to it. When Carrie asks how the horse is doing, Brigade explains, “Got it in his head he’s down for good. Hurts him to stand, won’t even try.” He will stay with the horse through the night, to “let him know he’s not alone.” The next morning, the group prepares to leave. As Brigade leans down to unshackle Billy John, the outlaw suddenly pulls out Boone’s Winchester, which he has managed to steal during the night. He places the barrel against Brigade’s stomach, saying he is going to cut him in two if they don’t release him. Boone, however, intervenes, asking Billy if he has pumped a round into the rifle he holds. He explains he never rides with a bullet in the chamber to avoid accidentally shooting his leg. Billy considers, then claims Boone is lying. “There’s one way to find out,” says Boone as he aims his six-gun at Billy. Billy hesitates. Brigade stands pat. Carrie watches, and Boone cocks his gun. Finally, with a shrug of resignation, Billy drops the rifle. Boone walks over, picks up the rifle, pulls the trigger, and, as it fires, says, as if shocked, “I could have swore!” The horse Brigade has been nursing suddenly rises, startled to his feet by the gun’s report. Boone gestures toward the horse now pacing lightly around the corral and adds, “Looks like we don’t have to shoot him either.”

This gem of a scene lays out the logic of the bluff. Boone bluffs Billy, who folds under the risk he would take, showing he is all talk. Crucially, when Boone shows his hand by firing off the round, the shot not only humiliates Billy; it rouses the horse from his trauma. The western hero displays more than machismo; he takes a certain stance, founded in humor as much as braggadocio—and ultimately shows a willingness to risk his stake; he embraces chance as his partner. But the kicker of the scene—the horse’s sudden return to life—proves that taking the risk not only demonstrates one’s luck but also endows the westerner with a certain grace.

That grace defines not only the characters’ actions but also the actors’ performances and the calm assurance and sense of humor of Boetticher’s direction. Boetticher unfailingly hits the mark in each scene, confident that the elements will fall into their proper places, within the vast and seemingly unfriendly space of the West.

This set offers, then, five modestly budgeted films, intended as parts of the double-feature programs popular in 1950s America. More than the “super westerns” of that decade, like Shane or High Noon or The Big Country, these films remain, as Bazin claimed of Boetticher’s Seven Men from Now, enduring exemplars of the American genre. Boetticher doesn’t display the West of epic triumphs and Manifest Destiny. Instead, he sketches characters more stoic than romantic, striving against fatal circumstances, undergoing a voyage that interweaves unspoken desires, physical hardships, and hostile terrains—and yet maintaining both an individual code of honor and a sense of humor. It is a West in which each character is tested and often transformed; in which outlaws may be revealed as either irredeemably evil (like the young killer in The Tall T who muses, “I ain’t never shot me a woman before”) or strangely redeemed (like Boone and Whit, granted amnesty at the end of Ride Lonesome). The women may prove to be images of faithfulness, like the blind man’s wife at the end of Comanche Station, or be revealed as unworthy of the hero’s devotion, like the dead wife in Decision at Sundown. But within this uncertain world, the figure of Randolph Scott’s lone rider endures as a man who truly amounts to something.