I Never Miss a Walter Matthau Western

So I was watching The Indian Fighter(1955) the other night. Kirk Douglas has the title role, and he is "muy mas macho" in it, gritting his teeth, going mano y mano with Native American warriors and pretty much forcing himself on his Indian Maiden love interest (Played by Italian Elsa Martinelli.)

But much to my surprise, there was Walter Matthau in this movie, and he had SECOND billing (in some places..third elsewhere.) This was full 11 years before Matthau achieved stardom(for the first time with Jack Lemmon, and for the only time with an Oscar win) in The Fortune Cookie. It was a long steady move up from the supporting actor ranks, but here he was with second billing way back in '55. Oh, well, nobody else had the "name" to be billed higher. It was Kirk Douglas's show, all the way.

There is a scene early on in The Indian Fighter where Douglas and Matthau ride horses together. Not side by side...Matthau follows(he's not a star yet.) But retroactively, Matthau IS a star here, so we get "Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." It is most odd to see and yet -- Matthau handles it well enough. Matthau played villains a lot in those days. He was tall enough and formidable enough to pull it off. He turns out to be the villain here, too. But not during this horseback ride.

The Indian Fighter was Matthau's second movie. His first had been a Western, too, for Dougla's "terrible tempermental twin" Burt Lancaster. That one was The Kentuckian. Matthau opined, "I think Lancaster looked at me, realized this guy's no competition in the looks department, and cast me."

I haven't seen The Kentuckian in years. All I remember of Matthau's villain in that one is that he was good with a bullwhip(he whipped Lancaster) and Lancaster ran a final footrace to kill Matthau before he could load his gun and kill him.

Lancaster kills Matthau in The Kentuckian. Douglas does NOT kill Matthau in The Indian Fighter -- he turns him over for Native American justice. Matthau gets that at the end of a flaming arrow(and screaming the Wilhelm scream. And its a stunt man.)

Its too bad for Matthau in The Indian Fighter. He has much of the charisma and presence he would have as a star, but he doesn't have a script. His lines are few and perfunctory. His villainy just sort of shows up. He's clearly more intelligent than the lines he has to say. Its tough starting out in the movie business.

The weirdest thing in The Indian Fighter is how Matthau is "paired up for villainy" with none other than Lon Chaney, Jr. The actor had been fine as The Wolf Man but by the fifties he looked sad and tired and boozy -- its hard to root AGAINST Chaney in this movie as a bad guy because he looks and sounds so sad. And dumb. And Matthau has to keep doing scenes with him, pitched much higher in intelligence and energy than Chaney. (Though I did like the character name GIVEN to Chaney: Chivington. You don't hear THAT name a lot.)

Kirk Douglas must have liked working with Walter Matthau, because he gave him another supporting role in "Strangers When We Meet" (1960) as a villainous suburban husband and then gave him a NEAR co-lead in the very great modern Western "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962) which was the favorite movie of Kirk Douglas AND Michael Douglas, and A favorite of Matthau. (Matthau also loyally showed up for a Jewish ceremony of some sort hosted by producer Robert Evans at Kirk Douglas request. There are photos of it in Evans autbio.)

The Indian Fighter has its charms: gorgeous Oregon scenery in CinemaScope; a "fair take" on white/red relations, a surprising dollop of sex and violence. Plus legitimately good actors in Douglas and Matthau.

Alas, the script ain't that great, and the movie is now dated (Dougla's substitution of rape for romance is non-starter, today.)

But we will always have Our Walter Matthau Western.

And that's a good thing.