The Iron Mistress

Born in 1796, Jim Bowie packed a hell of a lot of living into his 40 years. An adventurer, a frontiersman, a slave trader, land owner, and knife fighter, Bowie did it all before his death at the Alamo in 1836. Most famously, he's known for inventing a particularly nasty-looking knife that was named after him, the Bowie knife. Why then with a life as adventurous and exciting as his is the 1952 bio-pic The Iron Mistress so dull?

Traveling to New Orleans in 1825, Jim Bowie (Alan Ladd) is looking to sell lumber from his family's mill. A backwoodsman more comfortable in the bayou, Jim is more than a little uncomfortable in the big city. He meets Narcisse (Douglas Dick), a well-to-do French land owner, and is then introduced to his sister, the very pretty Judalon (Virginia Mayo). Jim is drawn to her instantly but quickly discovers trouble surrounds her wherever she goes. The young knife fighter wants bigger and better things though, wants riches of his own. Land, cotton, slaves, it doesn't matter. Young Mr. Bowie intends to take the world by storm.

To say that this 1952 biography plays fast and loose with the history is a generous statement. What's true? There was a man named Jim Bowie, he had a wicked-looking knife created for him, and he was in Louisiana and Texas in the 1820s and 1830s.  Other than that? This could be any movie about an enterprising young businessman.  I'm a fan of Bowie historically and anything remotely connected to the Alamo, but even I can find little redeeming in this story.  It drags along at 109 minutes -- but feels much, much longer -- and is bogged down in the period look from the costumes down to the sets. The story simply tries to do too much, never focusing on anything specific, or for that matter....interesting.

The movie's fatal flaw comes in the casting. I'm not a huge fan of the typically wooden Alan Ladd to begin with, but he is a poor choice to play Bowie. The real-life Bowie was a particularly nasty guy so right off the bat Ladd is backed into a corner with this 1950s whitewashing of the historical, real life person. But whitewashing or not, Ladd appears to be sleepwalking. He gives Bowie little to no personality through his adventures. Even Sterling Hayden in The Last Command was better than Ladd. Of a big cast that leaves little positive impressions, Mayo is all right as the manipulative Judalon, Joseph Calleia plays Moreno, Bowie's opposition (later starring in John Wayne's The Alamo), Anthony Caruso the treacherous Sturdivant, and George Voskovec as a Quaker friend of Bowie's.

A movie about a famous knife and its creator doesn't disappoint in that regard. Several knife fights highlight the otherwise slow-moving and dull story. One has Bowie strapped at the wrist to Caruso, fighting in a ring surrounded by a mob. Another has Bowie running from armed riders trying to kill him, and even the infamous Sandbar Fight is dealt with in surprisingly gruesome fashion. The best scene by far has Bowie -- armed with his knife -- fighting a man armed with a sword in a darkened room. A beautifully put together, tension-packed sequence, great to look at and exciting on top of it. Also a plus, the scene where blacksmith James Black (David Wolfe) creates the original Bowie knife.    

Returning to the actual history, the story picks up in the last half hour as Bowie heads to Texas where he meets future wife Ursula De Veramendi (Phyllis Kirk), the daughter of the governor. This last half hour has solid pacing and actually picks up some momentum heading into the finale. The ending itself is ridiculous, basically setting up the last few years of Bowie's life without his knife. It is a deeply flawed biography of a very interesting historical figure with just enough going for it to mildly recommend.

The Iron Mistress <---TCM trailer (1952): **/****