Silver Lode (1954)

Film: Silver Lode (1954)

Stars: John Payne, Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Dolores Moran

Director: Allan Dwan

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on John Payne: click here to learn more about Mr. Payne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Payne left Fox in 1947.  Payne had struggled at the studio, thinking that they hadn't used his talents as well as they should have, and walked away from an extremely lucrative offer since his contract with the studio extended another four years and was worth $670k (worth almost $9 million today).  He worked in noirs for a while, but nothing that was particularly noteworthy, and by the early 1950's he was largely a star for hire in B-and-C Grade westerns for various studios, including some on Poverty Row.  The actor who had been a poor man's Tyrone Power for much of the 1940's was clearly in the waning years of his career when television came with an offer that he couldn't refuse.  Before that, though, we're going to take a look at one of those films, a western Payne made for RKO called Silver Lode.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Dan Ballard (Payne) who on the day of his wedding to Rose Evans (Scott) is charged with murder, in this case the murder of Fred McCarty (Duryea) who also happens to be a marshal that's bringing him in to justice.  While Dan eventually tells Rose he did kill McCarty's brother, he didn't murder him, and didn't shoot him in the back as alleged, and the money that he won off of him was through a bet rather than theft.  The film progresses as the town continues to turn against Dan, particularly after several bodies start to pile up as we learn this is all a ruse-that McCarty is the one wanted for crimes, and in fact it's a case where he's going to kill Dan no matter what happens.  With the help of a local "saloon gal" named Dolly (Moran), Rose & Dan end up clearing his name, and defeating McCarty in a final shootout.

The movie is clearly a ripoff of the successful High Noon from two years previous, except in this movie the entire town turns against Dan rather than just leaving him in the lurch.  The movie is also not subtle about its critiques of the Red Scare, in this case literally calling the main character McCarty (an allusion to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who after years of dominating the press was in 1954 seeing his meteoric rise slip to a point where by the end of 1954, he would be publicly censured by the US Senate).   Unfortunately, though, it's not a particularly good movie, thanks in large part to the actors.  While Duryea is always a treat and I quite liked Moran's sassy hooker routine (even if it's not breaking new ground), Payne & Scott don't work here.  Lizabeth Scott is a star we profiled in our first season of Saturdays with the Stars, and I generally like her even though her highly-stylized method of acting is not something many are a fan of (her critics call her wooden).  But here it doesn't work, and she blends in to the scenery.  The same can be said for Payne, who is not great in the lead even though this might be the best work we got from him this month.  His character has to take a lot of wild swings, and there's not enough emotion in his work to really get that across.  After spending a month with him, I have to side with Fox...he was no Tyrone Power.

Payne's career changed in the coming years to television.  His most significant role was the lead in The Restless Gun, one of the many TV westerns that dominated the ratings in the late 1950's coming off of the success of Gunsmoke.  Payne only lasted two seasons on the show, and never really recovered the momentum he had in the mid-1940's with Sentimental Journey and Miracle on 34th Street.  He was hit by a car in 1961 on Madison Avenue that nearly killed him, and while he made a full recovery, he spent most of the rest of his career doing sporadic work on TV and in movies before dying of heart failure in 1989 at the age of 77.  Next month, we're going to move down the call sheet and talk about a character actor, in this case one who also eventually found his way into TV westerns, but while he never had his name above the title like John Payne, he starred in some of the most important movies Hollywood ever made.