Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Saturday, August 15, 2009




Mexico Be Scary in 1953





A curtain of dread hangs over 40’s/50’s films set in Mexico. Crossing that border always proves to be a mistake. To vacation there like Barbara Stanwyck and family in 1953’s Jeopardy is sheer lunacy, with audiences by then well conditioned to expect the worst when characters venture south. It was one thing to lam for Mexico like Robert Mitchum on oft-occasions. Others gold-hunted there at considerable risk (Bogart in Treasure Of The Sierra Madre most prominent). Horrific fates awaited those reckless enough to cross into seeming Hell. My never having been there is no coincidence. For repeated and traumatizing exposure to Sierra Madre, Border Incident, Jeopardy, and Blowing Wild (among lots of others), it’s likely I never will. There were complaints by Mexican officials of defamations to their country. Almost anything set below the Rio Grande amounted to that. Mexico was where noir was darkest and all bets were off. Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil was final pay-off for a decade where every border sign should read: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here. By no more than chance, I’ve looked at a brace of Mexico-set features and come away wondering if that country got a raw deal in movies. I’d not venture a yay or nay for said lack of personal experience, but impressions formed early and reaffirmed often die hard, and facts of the matter are, I wouldn’t follow even Jane Greer into such foreboding territory.























Blowing Wild played our TV stations often between school and supper. "Gringo Giant" Gary Cooper wildcats for oil, hauls nitro, and fights banditos. All of this is patently derivative of better films John Huston, Howard Hawks, and even King Vidor directed. There’s no period remove to assure us that conditions are improved in modern Mexico. This is modern Mexico, and our own nineteenth-century West was never wilder. Cooper brings in wells and bandits repeatedly level them. Pal Ward Bond begs from fellow Americans as did Fred C. Dobbs, and everyone they encounter deals off the bottom. To travel Mexican roads is to be assured of bandit intrusions. Law enforcement seems so overrun as to have given up. I kept wondering why Cooper didn’t pull the hell out for someplace safer, for this seems too dicey a venue even for him. Mexico is where soldiers of fortune head after every other option plays out. That was always the case in movies and would remain so. Cooper moseyed down again within the year for Garden Of Evil, and then Vera Cruz, Mexico’s undoubted idea of a bad will ambassador tarring that nation’s image in theatres worldwide. His reason for so many trips was actually a prosaic one of tax avoidance, as Cooper saved considerable income by working outside the US during 1953-54. He was an aging star beyond the streak of prestige parts he'd enjoyed in the forties, despite an Academy Award for High Noon. Everyone knew Coop could act, but most were happiest watching him pump rifles and crack heads. Outside of westerns, Mexico was the last setting where he could believably do these things. Blowing Wild doubtless played havoc with tourism down there, but this was 1953 and many films of similar disposition had gone before it, Jeopardy by mere months. That was contempo-set as well, with roads treacherous as ones Cooper drove nitro over. Bandits are absent, but convict killer Ralph Meeker finds comfortable refuge on Mexican byways with few impediments along those desolate avenues of escape. A woman alone, in this case Barbara Stanwyck, will certainly be abducted, thanks to local police immobilized by endless miles of desert bleakness. Blowing Wild and Jeopardy take place in Mexico because we’d never believe such things could happen within our own borders.








Jeopardy is less known than another thriller directed by on-the-ways-up John Sturges. Bad Day At Black Rock was later by a year and in color. It’s higher regarded thanks to Spencer Tracy and exceptional character support, but even at similarly brief run times (Black Rock is 81 minutes, Jeopardy 69), the earlier one plays tauter. Jeopardy is a small gem that served no purpose other than to support bigger pictures and play nearly always on dual bills. I’d hesitate calling it a B, despite relegation to program status these mostly occupied. Jeopardy was produced mainly to absorb overhead run up hourly by a large company struggling against shifting tides of a sometimes hostile marketplace. The ad shown here was for Chicago’s first-run. Jeopardy played with Confidentially Connie, another MGM release sans color, loosed to theatres increasingly in demand of multi-hues for combatting television’s rise. Both were remarkably low-budget. Jeopardy had a negative cost of $589,000 and Confidentially Connie finished for only $501,000. These were cut-rate figures for 1953 product from a major studio. A close look at United Artists Theatre policy shows why they had to be made for a price. Adult admission to 1 PM was just forty-six cents (exclusive of state tax) and kids got in for a quarter throughout the day. Lean times required more show for the money, thus neighboring Roosevelt Theatre offered a Universal combo of comparable modesty, Desert Legion and Ma and Pa Kettle On Vacation, and at the same prices. It was tough and getting more so to earn profits on such humble fare. Had Jeopardy cost a few nickels higher, it would surely have gone into loss columns as co-feature Confidentially Connie ultimately did. As it was, there was $1.2 million in domestic rentals and $438,000 foreign, for an eventual profit of $285,000.






























Vehicles like Jeopardy and Blowing Wild were the purest distillations of what their stars did well. One’s tempted to dismiss Cooper and Stanwyck as playing such formula in their sleep, but for me, it’s pictures like these (she’s in both) that go to the very essence of talents fully matured and aware of iconic status they’d achieved. Cooper and Stanwyck long since understood those aspects of their personas that suited best a paying public. Let younger stars open new ground and assume risks thereby. These two were welcome for delivering, again and again, variations so slight upon previous roles as to be almost indistinguishable. Stanwyck in Blowing Wild is near-identical to the Stanwyck of The Violent Men, which came within a following year. Both fed off momentum established ten years before with Double Indemnity. Stanwyck was an actress of a certain age whose playbook allowed but for slight variants … it seemed she was always either victim or murderess. BS was just too bigger than life and freighted with audience expectation (for melodrama heatedly played) to pass inspection as a mere leading lady. Joan Crawford tended to shuttle as well between opposing sides of the law. Both actresses were preferred either pointing guns or struggling to get beyond range of them. Bette Davis might have had an easier time of the fifties had she followed closer their lead. Jeopardy’s Chicago ad snipes A Woman In … over the film’s title to assure patrons as to content and Stanwyck’s time-honored role in it. The thing that’s remarkable is how fresh and dynamic she always was on such frequently trod ground, and often in pictures not so good as Jeopardy.

4 Comments:

Blogger radiotelefonia said...

BLOWING WILD is quite a rarity and I'm not at all surprised that you didn't write any line about its director; my fellow countryman Hugo Fregonese.

He was a talented and a very good filmmaker, but also one who did his greatest films in Argentina, including APENAS UN DELINCUENTE (similar in style to THE NAKED CITY, totally shot on location... but a much better and memorable film by quite far).

Last year, Filmoteca, an Argentine television show, presented a week of, mostly, his American films that later became available for download. When introducing the films, the hosts mentioned that the common link about them is that they all feature characters trying to escape from something, or in the case of the main character of DONDE MUEREN LAS PALABRAS from himself. Among the films they showed were MARK OF THE RENEGADE, BLACK TUESDAY (which is a partial remake of APENAS UN DELINCUENTE) and SEVEN THUNDERS (dubbed, because the only print that they were able to rescue was a television print).

If Fregonese films deal with people trying to escape from something, it is known that he was always uncomfortable in any place. Shortly after DONDE MUEREN LAS PALABRAS, MGM purchased the rights to the film and the director spent a year in the studio rejecting each one of the scripts that they brought to him.

When he finally began to make films in English, he was always unhappy with the studios and most of his films were actually done for independent producers, yet he always managed to work with top stars. BLOWING WILD, in fact, is an entertaining film but not really among his best.

But shortly after BLACK TUESDAY he got fed up of Hollywood and went to Europe where his decadence began. It is not the case of SEVEN THUNDERS which is a very good film. But SAVAGE PAMPAS is an extremely disappointing film that should have never been shot; it is better to watch the original film, PAMPA BARBARA (with which Fregonese graduated to director, although it was mostly filmed by Lucas Demare), a film that anticipated the John Ford cavalry trilogy and WESTWARD THE WOMEN.

1:21 AM  
Blogger Mike Cline said...

Don't have to go to Mexico these days...Mexico came to us.

12:46 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Radiotelefonia, "Blowing Wild" is indeed rare nowadays. There's only a laser disc if you want to view it, and I've not seen any television runs for years. It's not owned by WB anymore, as rights went to Richard Feiner some time back.

6:02 AM  
Blogger radiotelefonia said...

John, it is shown nowadays "Cinecanal Classics", owned by LAPTV (Latin America Pay Television Service), an ensemble from Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures and Fox Latin American Channels.

Look at these captures:

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/4893/blowingwild1gv0.jpg

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/6069/blowingwild2gj8.jpg

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/4052/blowingwild3tc5.jpg

8:04 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024