1957 in Film: The Tall T

From 1956 to 1960, director Budd Boetticher and actor Randolph Scott collaborated on seven westerns together. These films were made on the cheap, done fast, and loose, with a small budget, and minimal locations. When you watch these films, you can see the restraints given to them, but you also see a unique film universe that was created in spite of it.

These films weren’t just westerns, but they were usually dark psychological dramas, that turned violent and relentless at the drop of a hat. Scott’s hero characters were complex men which ranged from ones bent on revenge, to ones with a code of honor but could be just as brutal as the villains.

One of the best films from the Boetticher/Scott films is The Tall T from 1957, it was their second film together. The script was written by Burt Kennedy, who wrote most of their films, and was taken from a short story by Elmore Leonard.

Scott plays Pat Brennan, a rancher who stops by a stagecoach station to talk to the friendly owner and his son before he moves on into town to buy a bull. He returns from his journey without a horse after losing it in a bet, and he flags down the stagecoach driver Rintoon (Arthur Honeycutt), who is escorting a newly married couple Willard and Doretta Mims (John Hubbard and Maureen O’Sullivan) on their honeymoon.

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The stagecoach stops at the same station at the beginning, where they find the owner and his son dead, killed by a group of robbers. The leader of this group is Frank (Richard Boone), the more mature, and perhaps reasonable of the bunch. His two cohorts are the more innocent and naive Billy Jack (Skip Homeier) and the more trigger happy Chink (Henry Silva).

Mistaking the stagecoach as one full of money, they instead decide to take the group of passengers hostage, after they kill Rintoon. Willard Mims, who is a coward and bargains for his own life, offers up his wife Doretta as a reward. It turns out Doretta’s father owns the richest copper mine in the country, which is why Willard married her, so he suggests her as a ransom.

Although Frank looks disgusted by Willard’s actions, he goes along with it, since he and his gang don’t want to go empty handed. Billy Jack then goes with Willard to negotiate with the father, while Brennan and Doretta are taken to a hideout in the mountains. Brennan is smart knowing they will most likely be dead when the ransom gets here, so he bides his time, trying to come up with a plan for the upper hand. He strikes up sort of a kinship with Frank who respects Brennan, and perhaps the two have more things in common then expected.

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Sometimes their conversation may seem friendly, and in different circumstances you could see they might’ve been friends. But there is a tension between them that creates most of the suspense. There is also a sense of dread and hopelessness in the situation, that makes it dire for Brennan and Doretta.

The Tall T doesn’t need to be flashy to get its point across, yet it remains effective and riveting. Clocking in at a brisk 78 minutes, the film has the rhythm of a short story. But there is depth here, and some harrowing scenes, with themes of greed, lust, betrayal, and isolation.

The barren land the film is set in works to its advantage. The rolling mountains and the framing of Scott against the giant landscape can make it feel vast and empty, while contrasting it to the gangs hideout, it becomes claustrophobic.

Scott first appears on screen, as a friendly jovial presence, usually cracking a smile at his friends. Yet we see the harsh violent man he becomes later, which has been brimming underneath all this time. Scott was an underrated leading man, yet he was still a bankable star. It was probably because of his star power this film could get made the way it was. While Scott isn’t normally a name that is often remembered, he brings a nice gravitas to the role, and a down home goodness which helps us root for Brennan even when he does rather unsavory things.

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The fact that The Tall T exists in such a way is proof at how sometimes these so-called b-movie westerns can be so sneaky among the sensors. Films such as these weren’t given much credence to the bigger budget films, and were usually thought of as the cheap second feature to show in a movie house double bill.

Yet because of that lack of importance, there could be more artistic freedom. Boetticher creates a rather shockingly violent and mature film for a 1950s audience. The irony is if it had cast John Wayne, and given more money, it might not have gotten away with so much brutality.

Western noirs were a special breed of film in the 1950s. Today we might be more aware of the more prestigious westerns of that period, such as John Ford’s The Searchers or Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, both of which are classics of the genre. However, underneath those films, skid row directors like Boetticher could experiment with their films, and work against the studio system. Another successful director like this was Anthony Mann, who made a series of dark themed westerns with Jimmy Stewart, which actually revitalized his career for a new audience.

These films are now considered classics and masterpieces of the western genre. They could be more interesting in how they could get down and dirty, and not play nice all the time. The Tall T is a testament to this kind of filmmaking, and proof that 1950s cinema could be just as dark and subverting as any other era.