Winchester ’73, 1950. Directed by Anthony Mann, written by Borden Chase and Robert L. Richards. Starring James Stewart, Millard Mitchell (guy looks just like my Grandpa Schilling), Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, John McIntire and both Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis in small, unrecognizable roles.
Note: Circumstances prevented me from attending last evening’s Blue Dahlia preview. Winchester ’73 plays Saturday, September 16 at 7:00pm and Sunday, September 17 at 5:00pm on Turner Classic Movies.
Everybody loved Jimmy. Loved the way he waved at you from his front porch, washed his car regularly, kept his lawn mowed. You could see him at dusk, walking the streets, a neighborhood-watch thing. At times I heard a couple of punks chuckle that the old man couldn’t do much, but they were tame with him around. The guy had four sweet kids and a wife, loved his dogs but always petted your cats. I know that ‘way back in the day he tried to be an architect but watched the Depression eat that dream right up. Fought in the big war, really fought too, a pilot. That meant seeing a lot nasty things. Didn’t seem to bother him, really, though you could see something simmering behind his eyes. He lived a long time, even scratched out a collection of poems that’s still thumbed through in nursing homes around the country. Like I said, a great guy.
But if you sat with him for awhile, you’d hear some stories. And I mean stories–not just some garbage about how he could get a square meal for a quarter back in the day, but stories that, well, a couple of times they had my hair up on end.
Like the time he was Lin McAdam in Winchester ’73. That Lin, boy, the guy could shoot. Shoot rifles or Colts, with a speed and accuracy that suggested he hadn’t just fired at cans on a post. His cowboy hat wasn’t a community theater prop, it had a jagged ring of sweat around its band, and it wouldn’t fit any but the head of the man that wore it on long rides through the west. You ask him: Had he killed a man? Jimmy would keep talking, saying “Well, now…” He’d been shot at, been beaten nearly to death, had arrows pierce his saddle, but… and here’s a laugh, he was never thrown from a horse. Horses, Anthony Mann once said, seem to take to Jimmy. They’d turn and look for him when they heard his voice, like they wanted him near.
In Winchester ’73 Lin came into town looking for his brother and found a celebration: a shooting contest, the winner won a Winchester ’73. That magnificent rifle, one in ten thousand they said! Gave one to the President, even. When Lin came to town he was really looking for his brother. And if it hadn’t been for Earp, who took everybody’s guns, it would’ve ended right there, with either him or Dutch–Mike was his real name, the one their father gave him–dead. Shot through the heart, quick. One shot would’ve done it: both brothers could hit a sparrow’s forehead at a hundred yards. They learned the skill from their father, but Dutch used it to rob stagecoaches and eventually to murder their old man. So they just circled one another until the contest started, which, of course, Lin won. But he never got a chance to fire the thing, as that brother, Dutch, and his henchmen beat the tar out of Lin and took it from him.
But had he killed a man? Jimmy would smile and recall the heat, the heat… it was unbearable, and those little watering holes, oh boy, they were like ovens. What was the place–and Jimmy would do that thing, snapping his fingers flaccidly, silently–oh, yeah, Riker’s Hotel & Bar. Made that place for the film, and it looked like Bud, one of the set designers, painted the sign while he was drunk. The colored water they used as whisky was warm as spit, but the coffee was actually ice cold water. Once, Jimmy thought he and Millard were going to die from the heat and the food. Heat like that and they serve piping hot bowls of Mann’s famous chili. That’s not wise, its just not wise.
Jimmy enjoyed remembering that place, even if it was the spot that Dutch had that Winchester taken from his character Lin, first by an Indian trader played by the great character actor John McIntire. Cheated dumb Dutch out of it in a card game. Then Little Bull killed John, the gun trader, and took it himself. When Little Bull and his men were slaughtered by the cavalry, the gun went to that coward, Steve, the one in the movie who’s engaged to Shelley Winters. But Steve’s yellow and he knew it, so it wasn’t any trouble for Waco Johnny Dean to kill Steve and take the Winchester and kidnap his girl to boot. Then, what do you know, Waco joins Dutch in a robbery, and gives the gun to the bastard to keep them from killing one another, and the circle was complete. Dutch has the damn thing in his grubby hands again. But it was never about the gun, Jimmy said. No, it was never about the gun.
But had he killed a man? Well, Waco was played by Dan Duryea, who always seemed a bit half cocked in real life. Jimmy laughed at the thought: you never knew what he was going to do, but he was a swell guy. A guy like that would have played nothing but a serial-killer nowadays. Thinking back, Duryea could seethe, too, like he’d seen too much in the world to trust even a hearty laugh. He really filled that role out, that Waco Johnny. Waco Johnny Dean. The way he looked down at Jimmy’s Lin McAdams, eager, and poured that whisky like it was nothing to having a drink and shooting a man down. And when Lin took Duryea’s arm and bent it, he bent it back hard, why, you’d squirm in your seat and stretch your own arm because it looked like it hurt like hell. And his face… Jesus. Lin looks like he’s really going to break Duryea’s arm. When it’s done old Dan, Waco Johnny Dean, he looked like he really wanted to pop Jimmy’s Lin across the chops, whether it’s in the script or not. Telling the story, Jimmy catches himself, because he’s a bit out of breath. Maybe he relished twisting poor Dan’s arm just a bit too much. Maybe he understood Lin just a bit too much.
Jimmy talked about chasing Dutch into the mountains, of him and McNally, who played Dutch, hauling after each other while they dragged cameras around that God-forsaken wasteland. It was brutal. They were thirsty but they didn’t take a drop of water ’til it was over. And when it was over–and Lin shot his brother down–he just hung his head down. No words, no gloating. Nothing but the job’s done, and he wished it hadn’t ever have happened. Then he walks into town and the whole thing’s over. Just like that.
He was a sweet old fellow, that Jimmy, as nice a man as you could ever hope to find. But he didn’t use his kindness to shield cowardice, or shallowness, or a simple politeness at the expense of actually seeing the real world. Onscreen, the pain is evident in his face. The hate and frustration are boiling just under the surface. Don’t ever call Tom Hanks the new Jimmy around me–the boy’s just not tough enough to face himself like Jimmy could. Jimmy lived next door to all of us, but like all of us he read the papers, he saw friends die, knew injustice, and dreamed the strange hallucinations that make us all want to fly, or cry, or hide for the violence we might commit. Jimmy knew he was as capable of bumbling around with an invisible rabbit as he was of being a backstabbing bounty hunter or driving a woman much younger than him to suicide. Just like Lin McAdam. And George Bailey. And Scottie Ferguson. Nearly demented men, obsessively chasing something they know will warp them.
Though you can see trace elements in Jimmy’s earlier pictures, it all began with Winchester ’73. All of the troubled Mann westerns and the crazy Hitchcock stuff started with Lin McAdam nearly breaking Dan Duryea’s arm, with Lin taking his brother down on a hot Arizona bluff.
But did he ever kill a man? It’s nothing to brag about, Jimmy says, quietly. Try it once, even in a movie, and you’ll never get it out of your head.
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