Classic Film Guide

Alamo, The (1960)

Produced and directed by John Wayne, with an original screenplay from James Edward Grant (The Sheepman (1958)), this overlong epic about the famous 1836 battle against impossible odds (that one must never forget) that took place in San Antonio won an Oscar for Best Sound. The film was nominated for Best Picture, as was Supporting Actor Chill Wills (his only Academy recognition), William Clothier's (his first) Color Cinematography, Stuart Gilmore's (his first) Editing, and Dimitri Tiomkin’s (High Noon (1952)) Score and Original Song "The Green Leaves of Summer" (with Paul Francis Webster, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)). The cast also includes Wayne as Davy Crockett, Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie, Laurence Harvey as Colonel William Travis, Frankie Avalon, Patrick Wayne as Captain James Butler Bonham, Joseph Calleia, Veda Ann Borg, Denver Pyle, Hank Worden, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams as Lieutenant 'Irish' Finn, and Richard Boone as General Sam Houston. The print which TCM airs typically includes the sequences which were cut from its premiere for the theatrical release, making the film's length just under 3 ½ hours.

In case you (somehow) don't know the story, Travis (Harvey) was given the assignment of slowing down the Mexican tyrant, General Santa Anna (aka Santana) and his 7,000 troops, in order to give Houston (Boone) time to form & train an Army to secure the Republic of Texas, in 1836. The last stand defense took place at a (now iconic) mission in San Antonio. With twenty-seven of his own soldiers, Travis was assisted by knife wielding Bowie (Widmark) and his hundred or so loyal volunteers and former congressman Crockett (Wayne), with his thirty Tennessee volunteers. The film shows Juan Seguin (Calleia) arriving with some non-American locals joining with the "Texicans" as well; the official total number of defenders equaled 189. The fateful engagement itself (e.g. the climactic battle), which shows that all of these brave men were killed, consumes less than 30 minutes of screen-time at the end. The rest of this fictionalized historical drama details a couple of military maneuvers (one to blowup the enemy's super cannon and another to steal their cattle for food), features various "patriotic" speeches, or concentrates on relationships: a testy one between Travis and Bowie, a brief romance between Crockett and a Mexican beauty (Linda Cristal), Travis's right hand man Captain Dickinson's (Ken Curtis) with his wife (Joan O'Brien) and daughter (Wayne's daughter Aissa), Crockett's with his men which included Beekeeper (Wills), young Smitty (Avalon), Thimblerig (Pyle), & the Parson (Worden), and even a blind woman (Borg) with her husband Jocko (John Dierkes).

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