The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951)

Film: The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951)
Stars: Glenn Ford, Edmond O'Brien, Rhonda Fleming, Alan Reed
Director: Leslie Fenton
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Rhonda Fleming-click here to learn more about Ms. Fleming (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


As I mentioned in our kickoff discussion of Rhonda Fleming, this is really the first time we've had a star of the month who had a significant, interesting film career prior to becoming a leading woman.  While other actresses we've profiled (save for Lizabeth Scott who just started at the top) worked their way up in the film industry, Fleming had significant supporting parts in films that are still widely seen today like Spellbound and Out of the Past.  As a result, though we're starting with The Redhead and the Cowboy, our first real look at her career as a leading woman, I want to make sure to plug that we're kind of already three chapters in with Fleming as a star.  The early parts of her career were tied to David O. Selznick, when she was a supporting player, but while she technically became a leading lady under Selznick, she became a star when she left him, heading over to the studio that would be her home for her biggest years in Hollywood, Paramount.


(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Glenn Ford playing Gil Kyle, but really playing Glenn Ford because that's who Glenn Ford always played.  By that I mean he plays a stoic, honorable, but gruff (and handsome-can't forget handsome) cowboy who doesn't have time for politics, even though we're in the middle of the Civil War and everyone is taking sides.  He is joined by Edmund O'Brien's Maj. Dunn Jeffers, who is either a Union officer or a confederate spy (the last twenty minutes are so convoluted you'll be forgiven for never following which he ends up being).  Kyle is drawn to Candace Bronson (Fleming) who is a confirmed Confederate spy, trying to get to the Confederates information about a caravan filled with gold, which will be used to further the Civil War as it's 1865 and it's clear the South have the losing hand.  The movie follows them on their (brief-it's only 82 minutes journey), eventually coming across Fred Flintstone himself, Alan Reed, playing a bombastic Confederate colonel.

Reed's work here is arguably the most noted if anyone remembers this film at all today, as he's scenery-chewing fun as the colonel, clearly a double-crosser in a movie that needs him to liven up the picture.  The movie actually has a lot of promise as a historical curiosity even if it's not that good.  Taking place in 1951, the movie is not exactly friendly to the Confederate cause, but it doesn't really play every Confederate as morally bankrupt either.  Fleming's Candace, for example, is a double-crosser but she's also clearly destined to end up with our hero, so she can't be all bad.  It's interesting to see Reed come in as someone it's easy to see the audience rooting against to stop the grey areas we're getting with these characters-Candace isn't necessarily a good person, and we don't actually find out why she supports the southern cause, just that she does, but she's someone that we are expected to forgive because Gil does.

Fleming, unfortunately, doesn't do a lot with this plump material, unusual for a female role in a western circa 1951 (or, let's be honest, circa any era).  She plays Candace as a gorgeous object-of-desire, delivering her death stares with great gusto but not necessarily embracing the weird material for all its worth like she did in Out of the Past.  This might be because this is a standard western at Paramount rather than an auteur-esque film noir, but it's striking to see her not finding the same level of intrigue that she did with Meta Carson before her because Candace Bronson is a ripe opportunity for an actress as written.  Her work here is standard, trading on her beauty rather than her actorly abilities, and as she has the only properly interesting character in the film, the movie never rises above okay.