Best Westerns Series: Barbara Stanwyck
I take a look back at Barbara Stanwyck’s 10 Westerns, released from 1935 to 1957.
Annie Oakley (1935)
Barbara Stanwyck played the sharp-shooting Annie Oakley in George Steven’s lighthearted biopic. Just 28, she lit up the screen with plucky toughness and clever charm in one of her earliest starring roles.
Annie falls for Toby Walker (Preston Foster) after she beats him in a shooting contest in her Ohio hometown. Walker happens to be part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show that depicts the Indian Wars and tours the U.S. and Europe with Bill, Sitting Bull (Chief Thunderbird) and others. The show’s promoter Jeff Hogarth (Melvyn Douglas) adds Annie to the cast and her legend begins to grow.
She pines for Toby even after he nearly blows her finger off with an errant shot and is fired. In a hysterical late scene, Sitting Bull chases Toby, who’s come to Annie’s show, on city streets in full native regalia, and reunites him with her. Standing around talking to fans, Toby’s asked if he knows Annie. As Sitting Bull arrives with Annie in tow, Toby confirms, “Do I know Annie Oakley!” It’s a great last line.
Watch Annie Oakley at Prime Video
The Furies (1950)
Anthony Mann works his Westerns magic with Stanwyck as Vance Jeffords, daughter of land baron T.C. (Walter Huston). T.C. wants to clear Mexican squatters off his vast ranch called The Furies, but Vance, a real cowgirl, stands in his way. She’s friends with one of the families and sticks up for Juan Herrera (Gilbert Roland) when her father threatens to hang him for horse stealing, which he does anyway.
It’s that kind of movie. In an earlier scene, Vance throws a pair of scissors at T.C.’s girlfriend Flo (Judith Anderson), disfiguring her face. Shot in black & white by cinematographer Victor Milner, who won the Academy Award, it’s a stark film that’s been described as a Freudian Western due to the unusual Jeffords’ family dynamics.
Vance’s plan for the future involves Rip Dawson, owner of an abutting property. She decides Rip is the man for her, but he rebuffs her at first. After Juan’s death, Vance is determined to take The Furies away from T.C., with the help of Rip. They agree to team up.
A footnote to the story is Juan’s mother (Blanche Yuka) gets revenge on T.C., who has a classic slumped over dying scene at the end.
In his review at Filmycks, Michael Roberts said about Stanwyck:
“She has the intensity to play quiet and loud and to make each choice hit the mark, and her ‘common girl’ beauty and intelligence shines through. She commands the screen and manages to look radiant and appealing in a gown or in a pair of jeans.”
About the director, he observed:
“Mann carves out an area of exploration that in many ways he made his own, continuing the ‘psychological’ Western cycle of the 1950s in a string of celebrated collaborations with actor James Stewart.”
Those films are Bend in the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954) and The Man from Laramie (1955).
Watch The Furies for free above.
The Moonlighter (1953)
The many sides of Stanwyck are displayed in Westerns. One of her stronger roles is that of cowgirl Rela in Roy Rowland’s oater. Rela’s torn between the Anderson brothers, Wes (Fred MacMurray) and Tom (William Ching). Her old beau Wes faces a hanging for moonlighting (rustling cattle at night). An angry mob takes the law into their own hands, but strings up the wrong man. Freed from jail, Wes advocates against lynching and eventually heads back to find Rela who’s now shacking up with Tom.
After a bank robbery goes bad (Tom’s killed), Rela follows Wes who’s been double-crossed by his partner Cole Gardner (Ward Bond). During a treacherous horse ride on a narrow trail that passes under several waterfalls, Rela confronts and kills Cole and finds Wes tied up. He agrees to give himself up and return with Rela. As they cross back, she plunges into the water and is rescued by Wes, which of course wins her back, especially since Tom is no longer in the picture.
Fans of Stanwyck and MacMurray in Double Indemnity from 11 years earlier will appreciate the noir touches. Wes speaks in short, clipped phrases and has a perpetual chip on his shoulder. Rela rolls with the punches and can give a good slap. The Hollywood icons also appeared together in Remember the Night (1939) and There’s Always Tomorrow (1956).
In his intro to the film on TCM, host Ben Mankiewicz commented:
“Stanwyck was a natural in Westerns. She enjoyed the rough and tumble aspects of a typical Western. She often did her own stunts, completely unafraid of potential injury. Look for a scene of her going down a waterfall in the movie. She wound up bruised significantly, but she was a consumate professional, perhaps to a fault, and never delayed the film according to director Roy Roland.”
Watch The Moonlighter on Apple TV
Blowing Wild (1953)
Stuck in Venezuela with her hard drinking husband Ward
“Paco” Conway (Anthony Quinn), Marina (Stanwyck) woos her former flame Jeff Dawson (Gary Cooper), an oil prospector who has eyes for another woman in town, Sal (Ruth Roman). It’s more of a black & white noir story directed by Hugo Fregonese and less of a Western with Marina making unreasonable demands, Jeff blowing her off and Sal waiting for her opportunity to snag him.
Stanwyck is a peak shrew mode in the role, screaming that she’ll blackmail Paco if he leaves with Jeff. When Paco dies in what appears to be a machinery mishap, Marina lets it slip that she pushed him. In the final scene, bandits attack and Marina’s killed, setting the stage for a happy ending for Jeff and Sal.
Watch Blowing Wild free above at Amazon Freebee
Cattle Queen of Montana (1954)
The girl from Brooklyn can sure ride and shoot. As Sierra Nevada Jones in this ordinary effort from Allan Dwan, Stanwyck heads north from Texas with a herd of longhorns, but runs into problems from both the Blackfoot tribe and rancher Tom McCord (Gene Evans), who doesn’t appreciate the competition.
Undercover calvary officer Farrell (Ronald Reagan) investigates the sale of guns to the tribe by McCord and comes to the aid of Jones (he calls her Jonesy), which she returns during one of the many gunfights. Sierra sides with Colorados (Lance Fuller, who’s white), son of tribal leader Natchokoa (Anthony Caruso, also white) and is reviled by town folk for being an “Indian lover.” She actually loves the handsome Farrell, who she walks away with hand-in-hand at the end.
In the New York Times review credited to an “A.W.,” Stanwyck was described as “pretty as a Western sunset in her curly, carrot colored hairdo.” However, the writer noted she’s “given little to do except chase around the lush mountain greenery and shoot it out with the bad men, both white and red.”
Watch Cattle Queen of Montana for free above.
The Violent Men (1955)
In this film by Rudolph Mate, who also directed Stanwyck in Union Pacific 16 years earlier, Stanwyk plays Martha Wilkinson, wife of cattle baron Lew Wilkerson (Edward G. Robinson), a cripple who’s obsessed with acquiring all the land in a valley by any means necessary. When one of his tough guys Ward Matlock (Richard Jaeckel) wantonly murders a couple of the targeted settlers, John Parish (Glenn Ford) decides to fight back.
The devious Martha two-times her husband with his partner/brother Cole (Brian Keith) while hoping to somehow kill off Lew so she and Cole can take over once Parish is dealt with. Her low moments include begging Cole to stay with her despite his love for local Mexican woman Caroline (May Wynn, who was not Mexican) and sending Lew to his apparent death during a fire at their ranch house when she tosses his crutches into the blaze. But he survives and when Lew arrives back at the torched ranch to find Martha and Cole celebrating their victory, the joke is clearly on them as Parish bests Cole in a duel and Caroline does in Martha, who’d spewed racist comments at her.
It’s a wonder Stanwyck could play characters as vile as Martha.
Watch The Violent Men for free above.
The Maverick Queen (1956)
Stanwyck continued her swath through Westerns in this Joseph Kane yarn. This time she’s a saloon owner with connections to the Hole in the Wall Gang led by Butch Cassidy (Howard Petrie) and Sundance (Scott Brady), minus the “Kid” sobriquet. They’re bad guys who Kit Banion (Stanwyck) hires to frighten local rancher Lucy Lee (Mary Murphy).
Kit has a thing with Sundance until she meets Jeff Young (Barry Sullivan), a Pinkerton detective who comes to Lucy and her teams’s rescue during a campout when the gang shows up. Sundance is jealous and gets into several fights with Jeff; the last one results in Sundance’s death with a knife in his back.
Typical of Stanwyck’s feisty Western roles, Kit plays the men to her advantage until she takes a bullet in the final shoot-out. It’s a classic dying scene with Kit uttering the word “Jeff” while she lays in his arms and then slumps over. Jeff and Lucy ride off to live another day.
Watch The Maverick Queen for free above.
Trooper Hook (1957)
In Stanwyk’s most sympathetic Westerns role, she portrays Cora Sutliff, a woman who was abducted by Apaches. Cora lived with the tribe and had a child with Chief Nanchez (Rodolfo Acosta) before being rescued by Sgt. Clovis Hook (Joel McCrea) in Charles Marquis Warren’s black & white oater.
The standard insults are hurled at Cora and her so-called “half breed” boy, Quito (Terry Lawrence) by men in town. Hook plays the good guy and defends her and Quito whenever necessary. As he attempts to escort them via stagecoach back to where her husband Fred (John Dehner) lives, Nanchez follows them. Hook’s able to make a deal with Nanchez that lets them proceed, but when Cora arrives home, Fred has no interest in the boy. During the final chase scene, Fred shoots Nanchez and he gets hit as well, setting up a future for the soon-to-retire sergeant and his freshly emancipated lady friend and her controversial child.
Watch Trooper Hook for free above.
Forty Guns (1957)
By this point in her career, Stanwyck specialized in playing powerful women who stop at nothing to get what they want. Her Jessica Drummond in Sam Fuller’s black & white drama is different in that she’s not the daughter of a rich man. A local landowner, Jessica has Tombstone under her thumb until U.S. Marshal Griff Bonell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix) ride into town. It’s a reunion for Stanwyck and Sullivan, who appeared together in The Maverick Queen the year before.
The movie begins with the gang of 40 or so, led by Jessica’s bad-guy brother Brockie (John Ericson), tearing up Tombstone. Griff jails Brockie and Jessica promptly gets him released. Then, she falls for Griff after he saves her during a flash tornado.
The ending — Jessica, who’s just recovered from being shot by Griff, chasing him down the street expressing her love for him — seems out of character. In the original version, she was killed by Griff, but the studio wanted a happy ending.
Stanwyck would only act in three more movies before pivoting to her TV role as Victoria Bailey in The Big Valley from 1965–1969.
Watch Forty Guns for free above.
Cecil B. DeMille’s Union Pacific (1936) co-starring Stanwyck as Mollie Monaghan is currently not available for viewing at any streaming service.
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