Roger's
reviews have appeared in McClatchy-Tribune News
Service, Orlando Sentinel, Spin Magazine, The World,
Orlando Magazine Autoweek Magazine among others.
He is the founder and editor of Movie
Nation.
“The
Lusty Men” has a homoerotic title, Robert Mitchum
and Arthur Kennedy and a rodeo setting with Susan Hayward
as the woman set up to “come between them.”
The possibilities in that are many, considering its bisexual
director and the ways he toyed with male relationships
and female archetypes in such classics as “Rebel
Without a Cause” and “Johnny Guitar.”
Sure enough an overtly “butch” woman or two
slips past the censors, even if they aren’t the
focus of the movie. Even if the plot of “Lusty”
lapses into the predictable, there’s sure to be
something interesting to unpack in a Ray picture.
“Lusty Men” is groundbreaking in a much more
conventional way. Rodeo had been featured in some of the
earliest silent films, which used real life rodeo competitors
to show off their roping, riding and cow-punching skills.
But it was an alien world to the Wisconsin-born, former
Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice, folk-music-connected, Federal
Theatre Project trained Ray.
So
Ray makes this love triangle melodrama a rodeo “explainer,”
using grandstand announcers to detail the rules and traditions
and dangers of each event. Real rodeo footage is edited
into events that “legendary” bull rider Jeff
McCloud (Mitchum) and cowhand/protege Wes Merritt (Kennedy)
compete in.
Editing
emphasizes the man-vs.-beast violence of the sport, especially
in those “safety last” good ol’days
when even veteran cattlemen didn’t know diddly about
how to evade a goring/stomping by a Brahma bull who doesn’t
like to be ridden and just “threw” you.
Safety and rodeo clowning evolved over the decades. But
the character “types” and the reasons they
do what they do haven’t changed in “The Wildest
Show on Earth.”
It’s
a way for fellows far from the center of the universe
with an archaic professional skill set to change their
luck, their fate and their cultural invisibility.
“For
a little bit there,” crusty rodeo cowboy Jeff intones,
“you’re a lot more than you was.”
But that isn’t what married man Wes will admit to
when he talks about his motivations for trying his luck.
“A
fella’s bankroll could get fat in a hurry, rodeoin’,”
Wes muses. “I wanna toss a rope over my own cow,
just once.”
He
dreams of owning their own place. Jeff has met Mrs. Merritt
(Hayward). And whatever she says about their current state
— her keeping a modest cabin that’s not their
own, him just a ranch hand with access to a war surplus
Jeep — everybody involved knows the stakes.
Jeff
has taken one fall too many, “busted my last three
ribs” and just limped back “home” to
Big Springs, Texas. He ducks into the dusty hovel he grew
up in, jaws with the old timer (Burt Mustin) who owns
the family “ranch” now, and meets the Merritts,
who keep stopping by.
The Merritts need $5,000 to buy the Old McCloud place
from old Jeremiah. And they ain’t getting there
fast on cowhand cash.
“Wes tells me you once made three thousand dollars
in one day, rodeoin,'” Louise asks Jeff.
“That’s right.”
“And threw it all away,” she quizzes.
“Oh,
I didn’t throw it away. It just sorta’ . .
. floated.”
Mitchum, the quintessence of manly cool in his day, is
effortlessly credible as McCloud, a tough guy who rode
hard, earned big and partied and frittered it all away
on fancy saddles, boots and a cowboy’s idea of high
living.
Louise
may be tempted by the dollar signs, the shortcut her man
might master to get them to their $5k quicker —
if he doesn’t get hurt or killed. But most of her
reservations are given voice by others.
Crusty
Jeremiah describes the McClouds as “the most shiftless
family ever to hit these parts.” A lady rodeo performer
(“Ain’t no ladies around here,” cracks
notwithstanding) wants to know if “Jeff ever made
a pass at you,” on meeting Louise. Other women swoon
or sulk at hearing Jeff’s name, and about his mentor/”partner”
relationship with Wes, once he’s gone behind his
wife’s back and started competing.
Wes?
He’s dreaming of that yet-to-be-written Garth Brooks
tune, “Rodeo,” with lines about “It’s
the roar of a Sunday crowd, It’s the white in his
knuckles, The gold in his buckle, He’ll win the
next go ’round.”
Louise
is the only one who envisions the unborn Garth and his
song’s dark side — “a broken home and
some broken bones, Is all he’ll have to show, For
all the years that he spent chasin’ This dream they
call rodeo.”
Ray
sets all this up with a montage of a “rodeo days”
parade, clever quick cuts that put Mitchum straddling
that stall, dropping down on that one bull he shouldn’t
have ridden and his slow limp through an empty, windswept
and litter-strewn arena — his belongings stuffed
into small duffle bag — a rodeo rider who hits the
end just shy of 40.
Other
scenes of veteran riders chewing the fat and rodeo groupies
hanging around, man-hunting and husband-stealing, immerse
us in this living-in-a-trailer/always-on-the-road life,
which Louise finds herself hurled into without her consent.
Mitchum’s
Jeff has been around the block. He knows the conflict
that’s coming. He doesn’t have to lean into
any hunch about “chemistry.” Hayward and Mitchum
set off the sparks that tell us what could happen. It’s
just a question of “Will it?” and “What
then?”
The
atmosphere and intimacy of this time-tested story, even
the squarish “Academy” aspect ratio of it
all, lower expectations for this black-and-white-but-not-noir
classic. It looks, feels and sounds like a very good B-movie
with an A picture’s cast and producer (Jerry Wald),
which is what it is.
The
film embraces — at arm’s length — the
pageantry and romance of rodeo, but never loses its cynicism
about this risk-your-neck-for-a buck “sport.”
Veteran character actor Arthur Hunnicutt gives voice in
many digs at the high-risk/low-returns lifestyle in portraying
a busted-up hanger-on whose rodeoing days are long gone.
“Booker” shows off his “most busted
leg in the world” to newbies who fork over a quarter.
“Twenty years rodeoin’ done that. Leg busted
nine times, kneecap five, and the ankle four… Nobody’ll
ever beat it unless they jump off one of them New York
skyscrapers!”
But nothing will break the fever of a man who catches
it, not even the concern of the prettiest hash joint waitress-turned-wife
ever.
Guys
like “rodeo tramp” Jeff may serve up jaundiced
endorsements. But nothing he or anyone else says, poetic
or discouraging or both, expresses anything but blind
optimism about their “chances” and the bargain
they struck to take them.
“There
never was a bronc that couldn’t be rode, there never
a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed. Guys like me
last forever.”
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