Dallas (1950) – full review!

Directed by Stuart Heisler (who’d received his only Oscar nomination for Tulsa (1949) for Special Effects) and written by John Twist this needlessly complex and talky Western with a B movie feel that includes some comedy (intentional or otherwise) might please only fans of its lead actor Gary Cooper who plays a familiar role as a wronged man waging a solo battle of revenge. Coop plays Blayde ‘Red’ Hollister a Confederate army officer who headed west after the Civil War to find and kill those responsible for torching his home and killing his family in Georgia. He’s pretty sure it was the Marlow brothers but he needs proof to satisfy his personal code before he can exact his revenge. Steve Cochran and Raymond Massey play Brant and Will Marlow respectively (Zon Murray appears uncredited as the third). The Marlows have setup shop in and around the growing relatively new titled Texas city. Will has established himself as the town’s banker while his brothers and their henchman rustle cattle to prevent Will’s clients from being able to pay their mortgages so that Will can then seize their lands. One such family that’s falling prey to Marlow’s land grab scheme is the Robles: patriarch Don Felipe (Antonio Moreno) his lovely daughter Tonia (Ruth Roman) and son Luis (Gil Donaldson) who’d been shot and injured by Brant the brother that ‘respectable’ Will can barely keep under ‘control’.

The story actually begins in retiring Marshal Wild Bill Hickok’s (Reed Hadley) town where the lawman come actor stages a shootout with his ‘friend’ Hollister in which he pretends to kill him enabling the rebel to assume another identity in order to freely pursue those that killed his kin. Lucky for Hollister an eastern dandy named Martin Weatherby (Leif Erickson) had just arrived on the stagecoach from Boston to become Dallas’s U.S. Marshal. Since the real Weatherby is hardly qualified for the job at hand he allows Hollister to pretend to be him for a time which causes complications when it inadvertently begins a love triangle with his fiancée Tonia. Several chase sequences on horseback and requisite shootouts are included in the action but there’s no real drama nor question as to whether Cooper’s character will get his man/men and the girl. The showdown between Hollister and Brant is ludicrous enough – he uses a cat to force the killer to reveal himself – but the final showdown is exceedingly tedious – in a darkened fireplace lit room Hollister throws objects taunts and counts bullets while Will fires wildly until he’s out whereupon he rushes the pre-locked door so the two can wrestle until (guess who) prevails.

Barbara Payton plays Brant’s girlfriend Flo who’s not only frustrated with having to live in a dusty remote hideout with a bunch of bandits but also with the lack of brain power her man exhibits when he enables the captured Cooper-Weatherby character to talk his way into an escape. Jerome Cowan plays a townsman Matt Coulter and Will Wright appears uncredited as Dallas Judge Harper.

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