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John "California Charlie" Anderson in "The Hallelujah Trail" (1965)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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OK, this one edges OT but not entirely and I think you'll see why.

My cable channel was running a 1965 "epic Western romantic comedy" call "The Hallelujah Trail" this month, and I've watched it with a mix of childhood nostalgia and grown-up ruefulness.

This is the kind of movie that Hollywood made in the 60's in a last gasp effort to "fight television." This movie was BIG -- almost Cinerama-size screen, many, many screen-filling vistas of mountains and desert. BIG musical score -- Elmer "Magnificent Seven" Bernstein, the OTHER big Western score man of the 60's(alongside Jerry Goldsmith) to provide Western atmosphere and a title tune in the "Paint Your Wagon" tradition of choral thunder.

BIG cast -- Burt Lancaster and Lee Remick in the main male/female leads, with Jim Hutton(a stylish Jimmy Stewart but more handsome kind of guy) and Pamela Tiffin(one of THE gorgeous young lasses of the 60's) for the younger set. Then Donald Pleasance(transmogrified from pale mouse to ultra-tan macho) and Brian Keith(his usual grumpy, growly self) in main support.

And then these two names grouped together next in the cast list, the whole screen to themselves:

MARTIN LANDAU
JOHN ANDERSON

...and I smiled at that. Here sharing a title card were two veterans of two great Hitchcock movies. Landau was the evil Leonard in NXNW and Anderson was the grimly menacing car salesman California Charlie in Psycho.

And as "The Hallelujah Trail" unspooled, I came to realize: poor Martin Landau and John Anderson. From acting in Hitchcock classics to acting in THIS. Landau's is the more embarrassing role. He plays a Native American called "He Who Walks Stooped Over" and plays it for dumb guy laughs.

Indeed, one reason that The Hallelujah Trail pretty much disappeared after a 1968 Saturday Night at the Movies run was...its one of those "Indian movies" that Marlon Brando hated. They are funny in this one...drunk a lot...cast somewhat as the villains but too dopey to BE villains.

Shall we drop the movie right now? No, let's move forward.

John Anderson is cast as cavalry leader Burt Lancaster's "right hand man" -- the Sergeant to Burt's Colonel who runs a desert fort. As such, this was a meaty, film long role for a guy who often got consigned to short parts like California Charlie. Amazing: in this movie made 5 years after Psycho, John Anderson looks much YOUNGER than he did as California Charlie. Something about the Techniclor and SuperPanavision here, plus likely better make-up, hair styling, and lighting than in Psycho...John Anderson is a fairly handsome guy here, and well matched height-wise to Burt Lancaster. They play a "military man team" of competence and fairness and...well, could this be the best role John Anderson ever got?

No. Because unfortunately he gets some broad comedy to play, some silly humor, and there is none of the intensity or "weight" of the California Charlie scene in this movie. Not that there is supposed to be but..hey, you're in a classic, or you are not.

I watched the cast in "Hallelujah Trail" and conjured up some thoughts about them all. This was a really silly role for Burt Lancaster to play, coming around the same time as such heavyweight material as Seven Days in May, The Train -- not to mention The Leopard. The very next year, Burt would go "wide screen Western" again, but in a much more serious and exciting film, "The Professionals." This one looks like a paycheck job with the exception that Burt plays this role straight and commanding...and helps keep the ridiculous plot "grounded."

Lee Remick was a beauty who had a good career in the 60's, but not much longer. Here's she's a combination of "temperance activist"(anti-alcohol) AND women's rights advocate(Natalie Wood played the same in The Great Race the same year) and we end up with one of those movies where "women as a group are villains" to the more loose and lively lifestyle of the men.

Lancaster and Remick are mirrored by Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin, both of whom seemed to arrive, spark and peak in the 60's, but they ARE stars here -- young stars, he with a certain wit, she with a decided beauty and...it was nostalgic to see them(Jim Hutton died pretty young of cancer, and his Oscar winning son Tim Hutton carried on...with less screen presence than dad, you ask me.)

Brian Keith -- six names down the cast list here, and yet he had GREAT charisma. I never qujte got why Brian Keith didn't make it in movies better. He was like Richard Boone in that regard -- but more handsome. Perhaps Keith "threw in the towel" on tough guy status when he made money and a little history as "Uncle Bill" on the bland sitcom "Family Affair."

Donald Pleasance is incredible here as a grizzled, shaved head old mystic with a deep tan and a rustic manner. I guess he was a better actor than even I thought.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

So much for the actors. The movie? Well it should be guaranteed comedy: Brian Keith wants to drive a shipment of whiskey from Arizona to Denver , like a wagon train, with cavalry protection. But both Lee Remick's anti-booze women and the booze-liking Native Americans want the booze, and a "citizen's militia" of Denver drinkers want it, too. Using the rich, stentorian narration of John Dehner(a good looking actor with a GREAT voice) to guide us, "The Hallelujah Trail" puts all the characters on a collision course that leads to two big action comedy set-pieces : one in a sandstorm where nobody can see each other, and one through a quicksand swamp that gobbles up the booze.

I found some "User Review" on imdb that captured the effect of The Hallujah Trail perrectly: if you were a kid in the 60's, you found this hilarious(I did.) If you are an adult in the 10's....you find this...not funny at all. I wonder what happens to the funny bone in between? Sophistication? That said, Its a Mad Mad World and The Great Race hold up fine, likely because they had adult humor(insult humor, conflict humor) along with the silly stuff. And let's face it: Burt Lancaster isn't anybody's idea of a great comedian.

All that said, and with the requisite wince at the Native American stereotypes(though they ARE presented as shrewd about business matters and cognizant of their power) I found The Hallelujah Trail a nostalgic journey to a type of movie the likes of which we will never see again. Mainly for good reasons, but not entirely . BIG WAS good...the cast was good...the music was good.

And California Charlie never looked better.