Colt .45 (1950)

Film: Colt .45 (1950)
Stars: Randolph Scott, Ruth Roman, Zachary Scott, Lloyd Bridges, Alan Hale, Sr.
Director: Edwin L. Marin
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 Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roma (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For film historians, when you think of Randolph Scott frequently collaborating with a film director, you think of his seven pictures in conjunction with Budd Boetticher, including movies like Seven Men from Now and Ride Lonesome which are considered classics of the western genre.  Scott, however, made a habit of working with the same directors over-and-over, and one of those men was Edwin L. Marin.  This was the sixth of nine films that the two men made together before Marin's death just under a year after the release of Colt .45.  Marin was one of those directors who simply stood as studio-for-hire being a contract player (but hardly what we'd consider an "auteur" like Boetticher would be considered among future historians), doing long stints at MGM, RKO, and at the end of his career, Warner Brothers.  Warner brought him in conjunction with Scott, and our star of the month, Ruth Roman, Colt .45's leading woman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Steve Farrell (Randolph Scott), a gun salesman who is trying to sell the new Colt .45 repeating pistols to a local sheriff, when suddenly there's a breakout at the local jail with Jason Brett (Zachary Scott), getting out, shooting the sheriff, and then framing Farrell for the crime as he leaves town.  Farrell is locked up for a few months before the new sheriff (Hale) lets him out because he believes him to be innocent.  He vows revenge & to catch Brett, and sets off to steal back his two Colt .45 pistols.  Along the way, he makes the acquaintance of a woman on a carriage ride (in the middle of a gunfight, because this is a western) named Beth Donovan (Roman) who is married to a seemingly blackmailed man named Paul (Bridges), who it turns out is actually fine with working for Brett despite his wife's disgust for the man.  The same can be said for the new sheriff, who is also working in conjunction with Brett (apparently everyone's corrupt that isn't above-the-title), and the almost laughably just Farrell has to go about eventually bringing all three men to justice (though Brett kills Paul in a moment of treachery because we don't want the widow who's going to be hankering for Farrell to get together with the man who shot her husband).

The film is not particularly noteworthy today (it's the sort of forgettable western that's on at 2 in the afternoon on TCM on a Wednesday), but it's interesting to look at from a few curiosity angles.  For starters, the movie is entranced by the title guns.  There's a title card that feels like it was written by a modern-day Republican senator at the beginning of the movie where it says "A gun, like any other source of power, is a force for either good or evil, being neither in itself, but dependent upon those who possess it."  The movie itself tries to prove this by having the evil men (particularly Jason Brett) do ruthless, unspeakable things with the guns and ultimately has one meet his match, while the impossibly honorable Farrell is a worthy possessor of the guns.  The film's glorification of violence is seemingly in-line with the times (violence was always a main staple of the western, and this is no exception), but that title card makes it feel a bit more sadistic as a picture-are all of the people that were killed by Farrell deserving of death, and those that aren't killed by him not?  That Brett kills double-crossing Paul (Lloyd Bridges, dressed in a cowboy uniform that feels more at-home in West Hollywood than the Old West) makes the title card seem like Paul didn't have it coming...but if that's the case, is it appropriate that his wife gets scooped up by the hero anyway?

Roman is good in what could have been a throwaway part as the woman in the center of all of this.  I got the feeling she didn't do most of her riding stunts, but the ones she did were impressive, and she brings a sharp fire to her scenes in the movie, particularly the ones with Jason Brett.  In many ways she resembles Maureen O'Hara, though she doesn't get as good of writing as the redhead did in her John Ford westerns, in that she feels like she belongs in this old west even though the story just wants her to be gorgeous.  The movie actually finds time for her toward the end, and there are moments where she isn't just a damsel-in-distress, but actually putting herself in danger that feel (on a sliding scale) somewhat feminist.  This is the second western that we've seen from Roman so far this month, and we'll return to at least one more before the month's end (with one of her most significant films), but it's easy to see here what Warner saw in her coming out of The Window and how, with Randolph Scott clearly the star, why her celebrity faded almost as quickly as it arose since it's hard to become a fan of her in such an underwritten part.