Plucked From Tubes, Into Your Theatre

 

Fort Dobbs (1958) Is Clint Walker Standing Tallest

I’m nonplussed by any heavy dumb enough to pick a fight with Clint Walker. He walks into a saloon like Mount Whitney uprooted from the ground, wiser of us ceding space to him, or surrendering where we are quarry he seeks. I never bought “Major Reisman” felling such mighty oak as "Posey" in The Dirty Dozen, even where it’s tougher-than-tough Lee Marvin. Walker was always a gentle giant, quiet-spoken because otherwise he’d scare hell out of anyone on sight, Walker a player who had to underplay lest he overpower the lot. His sort is why kindred Godzilla had to enter cities at such plodding pace. We needed time to absorb his gigantic-ness. Big men thrive best where treading gentle. Randolph Scott’s adopted son wrote a book where he shared advise gotten from Dad, to wit, men of size should not dress flashy … opt instead for dark and conservative. Randy was perceptive enough to go with a safe, if neutral, impression upon people who might otherwise be intimidated by him. Was Godzilla a tranquil green for this sensible reason? At least it softened blows of his burning down Tokyo yet again.

Back to Walker then … imagine him fed up and marching to WB executive wing for a contract showdown. I would not have wanted to be the guy saying no to him. Wonder how he stood up to Jack Warner during well-known contretemps over work burden and pay. Jack surely hid behind a human wall of minions, though we may assume Clint was represented by comparative mite-size agency who’d not frighten bosses out of negotiating space. Fact is, Clint Walker had a congenial relationship with Jack L., and sometimes lunched with him. Any man of average or less size likes having a giant for a pal, especially when wading into space where there are other giants potentially less friendly. I saw Clint Walker at a couple of fan meets, had his gracious help for a Yellowstone Kelly post back in 2010. Overlapping shows hosted Virginia Mayo and Richard Eyer, both from Fort Dobbs with Clint, and you wonder what such reunions were like. Just a nod, maybe a hi, or did they pass without recognition of one another? This was in the nineties, going on forty years after Fort Dobbs folded up. How many specifics do any of us recall from so far back? For me, less every day.

WB cowboys not as robust recalled Clint fixing up a backlot horse stall for a weight room. He could have bench-pressed pick-ups had space been larger. Imagine being Ty Hardin or Will Hutchins, cocks of the Warner walk … then here comes Clint. Latter was obliged to doff his shirt where screen circumstance called for it, or didn’t, Walker seldom a burden upon the wardrobe department. There’s a night scene in Fort Dobbs where Virginia Mayo gazes frankly upon his manly pecs, her naked under a blanket, having woke after he rescued her from river torrent and took off her clothes because, well, she’s soaked and might after all get pneumonia (a handy means in Code movies for heroes to check out goods before committing). Walker was thus there for display purposes, a physical specimen not to be believed, his a male opportunity to realize what distaff staff at Warners (and elsewhere) coped with in order to act in movies, Virginia Mayo's an opposite sex equivalent of career spent painted and posed. She is refreshingly natural and un-made up in Fort Dobbs, and for my money more attractive than where overbaked by costumers and face-alterers. Mayo surely appreciated that for the effective performance she gives here.

Whether Clint could act was less a concern, and who cared, because the man could sure ride, knock heads plumb off shoulders where needed (in fact, fist work was minimal because who had ghost of a chance against him?). Armed with fine Burt Kennedy dialogue, little of that because “Gar Davis” is a man of fewest words. Walker has opposition that is chatty Brian Keith, him a reprise of Lee Marvin as spoken for by Kennedy in Seven Men From Now. When a thing is good enough, you can safely do it again, and again, as Kennedy had, and would, right from ’56 (Seven Men) through ’60 (Comanche Station). Kennedy was asked why his work afterward fell below quality of these from a decade before. He replied that the business had so changed, plus audience feel for how westerners should comport … old standards, codes of honor, swept aside by attitudes altered for keeps. Kennedy, Boetticher, others of the older school, surely felt alone in what was left of a western landscape. Soon enough, the genre itself would winnow out. Fort Dobbs is of pleasing piece with better known Renown projects for Randolph Scott that Kennedy wrote and Budd Boetticher directed, even as the story runs more along Hondo lines. I wondered at first if Fort Dobbs was a remake, or mimicry to go uncredited. Someone’s fresh idea for a western was fated to be grist for others with ideas less fresh, seizing a best of what worked before with hope the homage would not be too apparent.

Came across Fort Dobbs from a TCM broadcast wide and HD, which I recalled little enough so it would seem new, credits settling my right choice via scribe Kennedy, Max Steiner for music, Gordon Douglas the director. Economical yes (negative cost: $886K), but there is sweep to locations, action manifest, plus Warners hand-shaking again with TV, now a partner toward grosses a Fort Dobbs could never get were it not for tube-to-turnstile kids (and grown-ups) who wanted more of Clint Walker and were willing to pay for him. I’d be remiss not to mention these ads and posters. They are, as always, whipped cream on pudding that is Warner work of the late 50’s, whether it’s Walker being sold (here or for Yellowstone Kelly), Jim Garner (Darby’s Rangers), Kook Byrnes (again Yellowstone Kelly … and Darby’s Rangers), or Tab/Nat (sounds like a candy, and is, based on The Burning Hills and The Girl He Left Behind), not ignoring Cash McCall with Jim/Nat. Warners would in fact tickle teen pulse right into the 60’s with Susan Slade and further Troy/Connies. I lived through all this, regrettably in rompers, for what joy it would have been to pant for each jump from couch to concessions (King of the TV-bred lot? I say Rio Bravo, notwithstanding Duke and Dean). Fort Dobbs can be had from Warner Archive.