Forty Guns (1957)

Film: Forty Guns (1957)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Gene Barry, John Ericson

Director: Samuel Fuller

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the late 1950's, Barbara Stanwyck was entering her fifties, and after nearly 30 years atop the Hollywood food chain, film roles were starting to dry up.  Like some of her fellow leading ladies (including Joan Crawford & Bette Davis), the "women's pictures" that had made them stars were out-of-fashion, and would largely evaporate in the decades to come, not really seeing a proper resurgence until the 1980's (then in the hands of actresses like Jessica Lange & Sissy Spacek).  While Crawford & Davis would wait to make the jump via guest spots, and never really went fully into the small screen (they instead would launch the "hagspolitation" trend that would briefly spring from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane's massive success), Barbara Stanwyck would start to go the route of "lesser" stars of her era by moving into television, first in an unsuccessful anthology series that was eponymously titled The Barbara Stanwyck Show, and then by the mid-1960's, as Victoria Barkley on The Big Valley, which saw much more success.  Before that happened, though, she made her last celebrated big-screen picture, Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Bonnell brothers, led by oldest brother Griff (Sullivan), a former gunslinger who now works for the Attorney General.  He's trying to arrest one of Jessica Drummond's (Stanwyck) hired guns.  Drummond is a cowgirl who owns a large swath of land, but skirts the law, though not as much as her younger brother Brockie (Erickson), who regularly trashes the nearby town knowing that his sister will cover for him, and in the opening sequences shoots the town's marshall, even though he's blind.  This sets up something of an incestuous love triangle between the three figures, as Griff quickly sets his sights on arresting Brockie...but also is very much in love with Jessica, who has to decide between the love of this honest man or defending her ne'er-do-well brother.  In the end, the brother makes it easy for him, after escaping from prison and using his sister as a human shield, providing Griff with the noblest way to kill him.  The ending shows Jessica likely forgiving Griff, and riding off into the sunset with him.

The movie was not "important" at the time the way it is now.  Samuel Fuller is a director that commands a lot of respect today amongst cinephiles, but at the time wasn't considered in the same league as someone like a John Ford or a George Stevens.  As a result, this was made on a shoestring budget...but you'd never know it.  The cinematography, in particular, is glorious & inventive.  There are a number of long shots & tracking shots (including one that lasts for a full three minutes), and it is shot creatively...it's easy to tell that people like Francois Truffaut saw this movie & were impressed.  The movie has two great songs, including the western classic "High Ridin' Woman" that feature as wonderful (if totally unnecessary) interludes.  This isn't a Poverty Row western, obviously (as is evidenced by the Fox label and Stanwyck's name), but it has the aura of a Poverty Row western in the best sense, where every cent is on the screen.  This includes Stanwyck's performance, proud & delicious as Jessica, and doing stunts that actresses half her age would've shunned (including being dragged by a horse at the age of nearly 50).

Stanwyck's television career would end up being a big part of her life, and a successful one.  The Big Valley wasn't exactly a ratings smash (it was toward the tail-end of the TV western craze, and it showed by never making the year-end Top 30), but made Stanwyck one of the biggest names on the small screen during its four year run, and won her an Emmy.  She'd go on to win another Emmy after a long sabbatical from film in 1983 for what would be her final major role as Mary Carson in The Thorn Birds, which would be the second-highest rated miniseries of all-time after Roots.  Stanwyck died in 1990 at the age of 82.