Sigma Sampling #2

 

Not Looking for Friends, Let Alone a Designing Woman and Her Clingy Kid

Alone Again, Naturally: Hondo and No Name on the Bullet

HONDO (1953) --- John Wayne enters Hondo with a gun and a dog and that’s as much as any Sigma male needs. It is for narrative with help of romantic interest Geraldine Page and her boy Lee Aaker to show Hondo he’s wrong and that domesticity is, or should be, the life for him. To go it alone in the fifties was bad as shirking during wartime. Hondo looks dangerous as he approaches under the credits, a threat accentuated by 3-D. I must imagine that effect for not yet seeing Hondo in depth (why, oh why … not?). “Angie Lowe” runs for her gun at the sight of Hondo with his mangy dog sporting a deep scar across the bridge of its nose. These are loners of a wasteland but can-dos in a pinch. Per customary in films, especially postwar, they need but to be brought round to service of a woman, her child, her community. Angie is not long recognizing Hondo for a suitable successor to her worthless husband. Latter is Leo Gordon, who really is Hondo in extremis, a natural outcome of anti-social attitudes Hondo has so far shown. “Ed Lowe” is foul-tempered and a back-shooter. He even kicks “Sam,” Hondo’s dog who is uncredited. Ed Lowes of the world are what postwar adjustment was meant to smooth out. If Ed won’t straighten up, then there is Hondo to do harsh job of disposal, in self-defense mind, but getting it done all the same because a civilization he’ll soon be incorporated into must be protected. Hondo is a Sigma with a target painted upon his back, a sitting duck for Angie, little “Johnny Lowe,” even Apache chief “Vittorio” who has specific ideas of how Hondo must be domesticated. Hondo is plain spoken to Angie, insulting her even, this only digging his hole deeper. She’ll observe how well he sharpens an ax edge, shoes a horse, all the while appraising him for ranch duty on her and Johnny’s behalf. “That’s wonderful!” she says when Hondo mentions that he has a place in California, her by now measuring drapes to decorate it. Hondo shows Johnny a quick way to learn swimming, but we know by now that it is Hondo’s Sigma way of life that will drown. His talk to Angie about a man functioning best alone will serve her countermoves toward taming his anti-social, anti-family, position. So Hondo doesn’t like Angie to feed Sam because Sam should be self-reliant like him? That won’t last past eighty-three minutes this movie lasts (for that matter, neither will Sam).

Sigma Men Tend to Trust Their Dog to the Exclusion of Other Humans

A Sigma male will watch Hondo and think it an endorsement of his way of life. No, Mr. Sigma, think again. Soon as we see Angie dressed well for her guest, we know he’ll be a permanent guest. How these 50’s traps crept up on a Sigma … sometimes with civic pride and three-layer cakes like in Bend of the River, or where Johnny (offscreen) crawls into Hondo’s bunk, “put his arms around my neck, made me feel kinda funny, like he was dependent on me.” Yes, Hondo, he and Mom are by now very dependent on you, especially with Apaches broken bad and white folk having to clear out. Where to now but Hondo’s ranch in California? He and Angie pledge never to tell Johnny that his new Daddy shot and killed his old Daddy, but I bet surely the kid would eventually find out had there been a sequel. Would he then become the problem Rock Hudson’s teenage offspring was in The Lawless Breed? Sigmas watching, truly committed ones, know middle-class servitude comes in on soft cat feet, the tender trap Frank sang about and yielded to. Westerns after the war exalted those who in the end would tend home fires. John Wayne’s Hondo learns his lesson sooner than Tom Dunson in Red River, maybe because Hondo had no sidekick other than Sam, nor a temporary woman available when natural impulses called. Angie will answer these needs, but at a high cost, Hondo’s Sigma principles blown away with a desert wind. Will he have cause to regret a decision not really his own once the three relocate? Hondo won’t address this question. It is enough that by an end credit, he has been roped and put in service to rigid creed that is family responsibility.

Just to Be Straight Here: They Didn't Mark Him for Death ... He Marks One of Them for Death

NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959) --- For us to admire a Sigma, let alone adopt him for a role model, there must be virtue back of his silence and withdrawal from mainstreams. Criminality right away robs a man of Sigma status. We wait instead for him to be caught or killed, projecting ourselves upon his exploits only during “fun” parts of Acts One and Two where he does things polite society would deny viewership. Con men thrive, often time prevail, because those they cheat are worse crumbs. Schemers might also form emotional attachment to an intended victim and redeem themselves for a hopeful, if not altogether happy, finish. John Garfield starting out as Sigma in Nobody Lives Forever achieves this, even if we finish in doubt as to his fate. Outright murderers have little chance to survive an end title, whatever their attractiveness or romantic inclination. “Raven” in This Gun for Hire is doomed for acts committed in a first reel, audiences captivated by Alan Ladd’s charisma but knowing they’ll wait for safer follow-ups the new-minted star can survive. Audie Murphy for Universal began as a “kid,” could be handy as a gunslinger but not outright killer, play Night Passage outlaw on Sigma terms if redeemable. Audie Murphy brought Sigma as built-in accessory to all parts he enacted, his sociability having been scattered upon European battlefields. Credibility for conflicted or isolated characters was Audie’s by default, but hold … he had friends and a second marriage that sustained, two sons outcome of that, and we’d like to think family life was relief at least in part from PTSD he had to cope with.

Two Thinking Men Identified So Because They Play Chess

Audie showed up on What’s My Line and did not even bother to disguise his voice. Sigma. Audie didn’t trust a lot of people, and once he went sour on somebody, there was no going back. Colleague Charles Drake in No Name on the Bullet got on well with him; you can tell it by their congenial co-casting here. Hired killer “John Gant” rides into town to off a man he’s never seen but has been well paid to dispose of. Nothing personal, just simple matter of picking an argument and gulling his target to draw first. Gant stays within the law, and the Code, us to decide based on our own code how bad a man he is to choose such depraved means of earning keep. Audie Murphy as John Gant is heaven-sent Sigma casting. We like this star best where revealing least, 77-minute question being who he’s here to kill and why. He will walk alone and prefer it, has intellect (chess player), is foreclosed from love interest by dint of profession. I don’t know another actor who could have played Gant with such conviction as Murphy. Who else carried such baggage with which to work? Audie Murphy wasn’t acting, he was being. Wiser filmgoers early on detected him for the real thing, his popularity greatest in the South, which as we know, is where wisest filmgoers dwelled and still dwell. State of grace No Name on the Bullet achieves is fruit of Audie alone, it understood that other actors were a little nervous around him, not just for lethal former exploits but for his having tapped into screen presence they’d not known and probably never would. Audie opposite bigger names always came off smelling like a rose, if cactus rose. Watch Night Passage James Stewart do his acting thing while Audie just stands, quietly observes, says little if nothing because the scene is already his. Both men had extensive and heroic war experience, but Jim came home more-less whole, if damaged (hearing), Audie a for-keeps paradox who’d forever define Sigma malehood both on and off the screen.