Along the Great Divide

Making his screen debut in John Ford's 1948 cavalry western Fort Apache, John Agar seemed to have all the makings of a star. In the next two years, he starred in two more John Wayne movies, holding his own alongside the Duke I always thought.  But after Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949, that stardom never came for Agar.  Instead, he was relegated to B-movies where he worked consistently into the 1970s and 1980s.  A good if not great actor, Agar was often cast as a second or third banana, the key supporting character, like in 1951's Along the Great Divide.

This western from director Raoul Walsh is an interesting one for several reasons. For one, it was star Kirk Douglas' first western, first of many really as he would return to the genre often during his career. Building off Douglas' strong performance in the lead role though, 'Divide' is a dark western, not like the whitewashed, bland westerns that were so often the product of the 1950s.  It had the potential to be extremely dark at that, but it is the 1950s, and we're not talking a spaghetti western here (unfortunately).  As I was watching this Walsh western though, I couldn't help but think that I'd seen this movie before.  It took me about 15 minutes in, and I had it figured, but I won't give it away yet. Read the plot summary and see if you can figure it out too.

Riding through the desert, U.S. Marshal Len Merrick (Douglas) and two deputies, Billy (Agar) and Lou (Ray Teal) stumble across a lynching. They save rancher Pop Keith (Walter Brennan) from another rancher, Roden (Morris Ankrum) who claims that Keith rustled 15 head of his cattle and murdered his oldest son in the process. Merrick can't prove either way if Keith is guilty or innocent but overpowers the lynch mob, promising to take the old rancher into the nearest town, Santa Loma, for a fair trial.  They hit the trail, picking up Keith's daughter Ann (Virginia Mayo) along the way.  But as they cut across the desert hoping to reach the next waterhole in time, Merrick sees that Roden has kept his word and is charging after them, ready to shoot them all to gain vengeance for his son's death.

This isn't a dead-on comparison where I'm saying they were identical movies, but it's pretty damn close with a few tweaks here and there.  Two years later, director Anthony Mann revamped this basic story with 1953's The Naked Spur, a classic western that is far better remembered than Along the Great Divide.  The story and characters are just too close for Mann not to have been influenced by this western.  Yes, certain things were changed. Douglas is a Marshal, not a bounty hunter like Jimmy Stewart. Brennan isn't a bad guy the way Robert Ryan was, but other things certainly ring true.  Janet Leigh is a spot-on copy of Mayo's character, and Agar and Teal were basically reworked into Ralph Meeker and Millard Mitchell.  I don't say any of this as a judgment or condemnation of The Naked Spur, a western I very much enjoyed.  Instead, I think it speaks to Along the Great Divide which jumps up a notch in my book because of how heavily it influenced 'Spur.'

By 1951, Kirk Douglas was a star, but still a rising star.  His best work was still ahead of him, but his Len Merrick character certainly shows the potential of his ability.  He was an intense actor, capable of high drama and comedy at the same time, and he always had quite a presence on-screen, especially when handling a majority of his own stunts.  So in his first western, Douglas shows a knack for playing that heroic lead who isn't so heroic.  His good guys always had a sense of being not quite so good, men with checkered pasts that rear their ugly heads at the worst possible time.  That is Len Merrick in a nutshell, a marshal trying to prove himself, partially for some sort of redemption for a past deed gone horribly wrong, one that still plagues his mind.  I liked this character though from the start as his ultra-driven motivations take over, pushing those around him to the limit as they struggle with a lack of water in the blazing desert heat.  A good first performance in a western, and a strong indication of what is to come.

More than just The Naked Spur, 'Great Divide' reminded me of several other movies, similar stories with a group of people trying to survive the hell that is the desert. At different points I thought of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Professionals, 3 Godfathers, Yellow Sky and several other westerns and quasi-westerns.  That's basically my only real complaint here with Walsh's western. The story is predictable, and if you're paying attention at all, you know the ending almost from the first scene.  Walter Brennan played his fair share of bad guys, but it's clear this old, coot of a rancher isn't a killer.  It can be a little cookie-cutter at times as the story develops, the pieces falling into place.  On the positive though, it's never boring at 88-minutes, and Walsh films enough on location in the Sierra Madres and Mojave Desert to recommend the movie on just a visual level.  Filmed in black and white, that desert has an intimidating beauty about it, daring riders to come on in and see if they can make it.

I thought Douglas stole the movie here as the tortured U.S. Marshal, but the rest of the cast led by Brennan is nothing to shake your head at.  His Pop Keith character isn't a killer, but he's got a devious streak in him that the story keeps you guessing with as to his actual background.  Mayo as his daughter Ann is the necessary love interest, an easy on the eyes love interest at that.  Agar especially represents himself well as young deputy Billy who looks up to Merrick like a big brother while Teal plays a character he played countless times in other westerns, a gunslinger willing to go on either side of the law, usually the side that pays better.  Ankrum is good as rancher Roden while James Anderson plays his surviving son. An unfortunately little known western, but one I enjoyed very much. Definitely worth watching too if you're a fan of The Naked Spur.

Along the Great Divide <---TCM clips (1951): ***/****