#765) The Tall T (1957)

#765) The Tall T (1957)

OR “Best Budd’s”

Directed by Budd Boetticher

Written by Burt Kennedy. Based on the short story “The Captives” by Elmore Leonard.

Class of 2000

The Plot: After he loses a bet and has to sell his horse, aging cowboy Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott) hitches a ride on a stagecoach that his friend Rintoon (Arthur Hunnicutt) is driving. Traveling with the newlywed Willard & Doretta Mims (John Hubbard & Maureen O’Sullivan) in tow, the stagecoach is held up at a way-station by Frank Usher (Richard Boone) and his young buck henchmen (Skip Homeier and Henry Silva). Upon learning that Doretta is the daughter of a wealthy local copper mine owner, Frank agrees to holding her ransom rather than simply robbing the stagecoach. While they wait for the money to arrive, Frank takes a liking to Brennan, who is aware that he and the rest of the captives will be killed after the ransom is paid. Can Brennan outwit the bad guys and save the day? And what exactly is a “Tall T”, anyway?

Why It Matters: The NFR’s brief write-up highlights the “deftly stylized” landscape in the film, as well as Boone’s work as “the most memorable of Boetticher’s witty, intelligent villains.” An essay by film distributor Michael Schlesinger is a love letter to Budd Boetticher.

But Does It Really?: Perhaps I set my expectations too high because of the Elmore Leonard connection (I liked “3:10 to Yuma”), but even at 77 minutes it was a chore to get through “The Tall T”. There are those who celebrate “Tall T” for being more complex and morally ambiguous than other Westerns of the era, and granted it is that, but it also felt a bit slight to me. At times the film aims for a gripping character study in the vein of “The Naked Spur”, but never fully hits that mark. Further research shows that “Tall T” made the NFR as representation of Budd Boetticher and his “Ranown Cycle” of Westerns, but without that context I could only take the film as face value, which given my track record for disliking Westerns did not bode well for “Tall T”. Based on the Boetticher/Ranown connection and the film’s uniqueness compared to other ‘50s Westerns, I won’t question the NFR standing for “Tall T”, but this was not one of my more memorable movie-watching experiences for this blog.

Everybody Gets One: Oscar “Budd” Boetticher spent the early 1940s working his way up the studio ladder at Columbia from crew member to first assistant director to director. In 1956, Boetticher got the opportunity to direct “Seven Men from Now”, a Western starring Randolph Scott and written by Burt Kennedy. Although the film was recut against Boetticher’s wishes, he enjoyed the collaboration so much that he quickly reunited with Scott and Kennedy for his next film, “The Tall T”. Also making their sole NFR appearance here is Richard Boone, best known at the time as the star of the TV drama “Medic”, who shortly after “Tall T” would begin a six season run in his most famous role as a gunfighter for hire on the Western “Have Gun – Will Travel”.

Wow, That’s Dated: Although we do have to sit through some chauvinism directed at the film’s sole female character, there are amazingly no slams against Indigenous people in this Western (in fact, no Indigenous people at all). Also, day for night shooting: How I’ve missed you.

Title Track: This film adaptation of “The Captives” needed another title because another film was already registered as “The Captives” (though I couldn’t find a record of any film called “The Captives” being released in the late 1950s). “The Tall Rider” was the film’s working title, with Boetticher changing it to “The Tall T” after the nickname for the Tenvoorde ranch, the way-station the robbery takes place at. Strangely, any dialogue referring to the ranch as “The Tall T” didn’t make the final cut, making the title a bit of a puzzler to the casual moviegoer. Side note: The film’s original trailer (embedded above) claims the T stands for Terror. It does not.

Seriously, Oscars?: No nominations for “The Tall T” from the Oscars or anyone else. Budd Boetticher’s sole Oscar nomination came in 1951 for his story of “Bullfighter and the Lady” (see “Legacy” below for more about Boetticher’s love of bullfighting and matadors).

Other notes

“The Tall T” is the second of what has become known as “The Ranown Cycle” following “Seven Men from Now”. The Ranown Cycle got its name because the bulk of them were produced by Randolph Scott and Harry Joe Brown. There were seven films total in the cycle, though the canonicity of some of the later entries not involving Brown or screenwriter Burt Kennedy is debated among purists.
The film is surprisingly faithful to the original Elmore Leonard story, following the events and dialogue of “The Captives” almost completely verbatim. While “The Captives” begins with Brennan flagging down the stagecoach, “The Tall T” begins with the events leading up to that (which are only described in “The Captives” after their occurrence). I understand the inclusion of these opening scenes to pad out the runtime and give the main characters a proper movie introduction, but it means the robbery doesn’t happen until 20 minutes in. When your movie is 77 minutes, you need to hit the ground running. I think it was this stalled beginning that made me lose interest during my viewing. Unsurprisingly, Leonard liked this film adaptation…except for the added opening.
Hats off to Randolph Scott, who was 59 when he made this. His Brennan has more shades of gray than the typical hero Scott played in previous Westerns, but he’s nowhere as disreputable as his character in “Ride the High Country”. I also relate very much to the massive sweat stains Brennan has on his shirt throughout the opening. Been there, buddy. Been there.
Oscar nominee Arthur Hunnicutt is making the most of his limited screen time playing the kind of grizzled supporting part he played in so many Westerns.
Elmore Leonard in particular liked Richard Boone’s performance in this film, saying he “recited the lines just the way I heard them when I wrote the story.” I thought Boone was fine as the main heavy, though I’m not familiar enough with Boone’s other performances to know how much of a stretch this role was for him.
Like Anthony Quinn and countless others before and after, Henry Silva was one of those actors you could cast as just about any non-white ethnicity you wanted. For the record, Henry Silva was of Sicilian and Spanish descent. And sadly, you heard it correctly: Silva’s character’s name in “Tall T” is a certain one-syllable Asian slur that rhymes with “drink”, as in the thing I needed after hearing what his character’s name was.

There are those who argue that at 46, Maureen O’Sullivan was too old to be “the girl” in this movie, but seeing as how the character is a plain Jane-type who everyone is amazed finally got married, I buy it. And as always with Maureen O’Sullivan’s performances, we get brief flashes of some of the genetics she passed down to her daughter, Mia Farrow.
[Spoilers] Man, Willard Mims sucks. He’s just a spineless, totally unlikable character, which I guess is a testament to John Hubbard’s performance. Even the movie’s bad guys don’t like how disrespectful Willard is to Doretta, and I was very grateful they shoot and kill him halfway through the movie.
The “Naked Spur” comparisons start to crop up when Brennan attempts to turn the captors against each other, while also making totally unnecessary moves on Doretta while in a cave together. Come on man, she just became a widow!
[Spoilers] Besides the added opening sequences, the only deviation from “The Captives” comes at the end. Originally, Frank was the second of the three robbers to be killed off, making the death of, ahem, Henry Silva’s character the climax of the story. This obviously had to change for the movie version, which creates a final showdown between Brennan and Frank that feels…off. I can’t put my finger on it, but the movie ending just left me with a feeling of “What was that?” Maybe it was my sixth sense when a movie strays from its source material, or maybe I was just done with the movie by that point. Whatever, let’s go to “Legacy” and get out of here.

Legacy

The Ranown Cycle continued through 1960 with “Decision at Sundown”, “Buchanan Rides Along”, “Ride Lonesome”, “Westbound”, and “Comanche Station”, with Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott collaborating on all seven.
Budd Boetticher spent most of the ‘60s working on the documentary “Arruza” about his friend, famed bullfighter Carlos Arruza. After many delays, “Arruza” finally received its US release in 1972, six years after Carlos Arruza died! Unfortunately for Boetticher, all of the directing opportunities he turned down to make “Arruza” had dried up, and he only made one more movie in his lifetime, the 1985 documentary “My Kingdom For…” about the role horses play in, you guessed it, bullfighting. Budd Boetticher died in 2001, but lived long enough to see his filmography get reappraised through the lens of the auteur theory.
“The Tall T” is one of those movies that Martin Scorsese saw as a kid and absolutely loves. Scorsese was on the National Film Preservation Board in 2000, and between this and “Goodfellas”, Scorsese must have really worked the room that year.