The Consolations of Junk Art, Part II: The Incredible Hulk Television Series

"Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." – Dr. David Banner.

We continue this glimpse at the deep and satisfying consolations of junk art with a look at one of Your Correspondent’s favorite television shows as a boy, The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982).  And yes, I was once a child.

If the criteria for good junk art is that it provides some of the comforts and consolations found in high art, then, believe it or not, The Incredible Hulk fills the bill.  I had not seen it since its initial run, and seldom thought of it since.  However, when I spied a boxed set of the entire series for next-to-no money, the nostalgic impulse was too great and I succumbed.

Let me insert here my feelings, in general, on films and television shows adapted from comic books:  Your Correspondent could happily go to his grave without seeing another one.  Superhero films seem to support the entire film industry right now, crowding out films for adults, films of taste and subtlety and films that are, at least, different.  An orgy of CGI-generated destruction is not an orgy I wish to attend, thank you very much.

However, The Incredible Hulk television show dates back to a time that did not have the crutch of special effects to lean upon, and depended instead on story and character.  I opened the boxed set with a bit of trepidation: very often I have returned to boyhood favorites only to find that the memory was better than the actuality.

Oddly enough, with The Hulk, both were true.  The series is both cheesier than I remembered, and, in ways, more profound than I could have hoped.

For those of you unfamiliar with Hulk-dom, let’s recap the opening narration of the series:  Dr. David Banner: physician; scientist. Searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have. Then an accidental overdose of gamma radiation alters his body chemistry. And now when David Banner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs. The creature is driven by rage and pursued by an investigative reporter.  The creature is wanted for a murder he didn't commit. David Banner is believed to be dead, and he must let the world think that he is dead, until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him.

So, what we have is Les Misérables told as an episodic science fiction television show.  There is no reason in the world for this thing to work, but it does against all expectations.

Let’s look for a moment at the junk component.  The Hulk was not only a creation of its time, but a mirror of the obsessions of the 1970s.  There were episodes set in discos, amongst truckers and CB radio enthusiasts, in kung-fu schools and there were even digressions in ghetto-chick; tropes included bio feedback, ESP and mind-reading, pop psychology and past-life regression.  But even moving away from the preoccupations of a fairly tacky decade, the writing on The Hulk was too often doughy and simplistic even by network television standards, the problems too rote and elementary, and the resolutions too pat and easy.

And yet.  And yet…

There is something real and … emotionally moving going on in The Incredible Hulk.  Let’s start with the protagonist, Dr. David Banner (played with real sympathy and sweetness by Bill Bixby).  Banner experiments with gamma radiation after losing his lover in a car accident.  His researches lead him to the conclusion that some people in moments of extreme stress or anger find remarkable physical strength … and that those energies start at a cellular level.  Racked by guilt – why did he not have these resources of strength when he needed it? – he tried to duplicate the cellular variations on himself through exposure to gamma radiation.  The tests backfire, and now, in moments of stress, he mutates into a gigantic, green monster (Lou Ferrigno). 

In short, Banner is not a hero in the conventional sense, but someone haunted by the physical manifestations of his own shortcomings; he is tormented because he looked deep inside of himself and found himself wanting.

Every episode, Banner comes into the worlds of new people in new cities and new states, always seeking that elusive cure for his condition.  Because of his inherent decency and humanity, he is often with the underclass or downtrodden, using his considerable medical and scientific gifts to improve the lives of those around him.  And, with clockwork regularity, he leaves these new-found friends once his secret is out and his opportunity for a cure evaporates.  But the real tragedy of Banner is that he is a man running away from himself; the one thing no man can ever successfully do.

McGee (played with conviction by Jack Colvin), his nemesis, is not cardboard cutout, either.  Working for a cheap, tabloid newspaper (think the National Enquirer), McGee sees the Hulk as an opportunity out of the minor leagues and into the bigtime.  But, as the series progresses, the Hulk becomes both an obsession and a beacon.  An obsession because McGee will not let-go, even when in jeopardy of ruining his already shaky career, and a beacon because the Hulk comes to represent to McGee all that is marvelous and unexplained in the world.

Every episode ends with poor Banner once more hitchhiking to the strains of the “Lonely Man” theme by Joseph Harnell, a piano lament in a minor key.  But next week will be exactly the same, no matter how many people Banner meets, or how close he comes to finding a cure.  He will never unburden himself of his own weaknesses, his own fears, or of the monster he carries inside of himself.  It is a perfect existential tragedy.

The Incredible Hulk is junk but it is glorious junk because of the weight it bears – sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully.  It is not a comic book show, but a tragedy told in comic book tropes.  It is impossible to take in the whole series and not feel a sense of sadness, of sympathy or of empathy for the benighted Banner.

Yes, I will lose the respect of many of my readers, but The Incredible Hulk is not junk … and it may even be art.   Of a type.

The Consolations of Junk Art, Part I: Star Trek

“Was it not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? I remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp—there is much to be got from all these.” --- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”  -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Cooper Beeches (1892)

Two very different concepts on the curative power of art, written only one year apart.  However, recent events have led me to believe that it may be Sir Arthur and not Mr. Wilde who was closer to the mark.

Your Correspondent has recently been thinking of the pleasures of pop art versus those found in the Fine Arts, the proper subject of this blog.  Dealing with multiple responsibilities, I relaxed within the warm confines of some delightful junk art.  It has gotten me thinking that often, when tired, that it was not towards the highest, but, rather, towards the lowest that I went for succor and comfort.  Why, I wonder, would that be?

The reasons are multiple and, as is usual when considering art of any type, complex.  It would be too easy by half to say that junk art provides only expected sensations, and, consequently, comfort, pleasure and even a kind of solace.  Nor do I think that good junk art was created solely for the groundlings, who are unworthy (or unwilling) to interact with the higher branches of the fine arts.  No … I would argue that good junk art stimulates essential pleasure centers of the brain, pleasure centers that were meant to be stimulated, and that need that stimulus in order to remain healthy.

So, we have to agree when Sherlock Holmes says that art’s keenest pleasures are often to be derived in its least important and lowliest manifestations.  (It is important to remember here, too, that the Sherlock Holmes stories are junk art of the very highest pedigree.)

I have been enjoying a great deal of junk art over the past couple of weeks, and wanted to share both the delights and pitfalls to be found in them.  And how better than to start with that global phenomena, Star Trek.

For those readers who have not been living in a cave for nearly the last 50 years or so, Star Trek started as a science fiction thriller on network television in the 1960s.  It fairly limped along for three seasons until the network pulled the plug in search of something that would generate better ratings.

Normally, the result would’ve been that the vast majority of American viewers simply opened another beer and moved onto to some other program.  But Star Trek would not die.  It was saved once during its initial run by a letter campaign that ensured the final two seasons, and once it was off for good, it was kept alive in syndication, comic books, novels, fan fiction and on the convention circuit.

A decade after the last television episode saw the first, big-budget film adaptation, and the franchise has not stopped for breath since.  There have been 12 movie adaptations, and five later television series.  It does not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

As with any huge entertainment franchise, there is much that is good and much that is bad in Star Trek.  Your correspondent has a soft spot for the original series, starring William Shatner and the late Leonard Nimoy, and likes Star Trek: The Next Generation a great deal.  But … it’s all still junk.

Though there will be calls for my head on a pike, the ugly truth is that when Star Trek is good, it’s pedigree junk, and when it’s bad, it’s nearly unwatchable.

What’s the good?  Well, Star Trek will often confront questions on the nature of the human condition … but only in the most surface and reassuring way.  Vindications of our simple humanity and calls for universal tolerance and progress are all good things.  And when these homilies are delivered by an actor with real gravitas (such as Patrick Stewart, who played the Shakespeare-quoting Captain Picard), they can sound wonderfully profound.  However, their profundity is of the Reader’s Digest sampler kind; propositions no one is really going take issue with, and never to be examined in any depth.

This often makes terrific television and compelling movies, but it is not art of a high order.  In short, Star Trek is an imitation classic – it is Shakespeare for those too tired, or uninterested, in the real thing.  But, unlike Shakespeare, any real profundity is brought to it by the viewer, and is not really inherent in the text.  But its deficiencies are not the point … Star Trek, in terms of high-minded themes translated into compelling drama still manages to get the job done.

What’s the bad?  Well … like many offerings that generate obsessive fan-bases, Star Trek is often its own worst enemy.  Too often plot, character development or even the underlying philosophy of the concept are driven by demands of an entrenched fan-base.  That kind of outward direction has killed greater modes of artistic expression, and for a franchise it can be the kiss of death.  (For an example of this, look at the disaster that is Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country.  Designed as the farewell film of the original cast, it is little more than a litany of shtick, none of which seems to make sense in context of the story.)

Another problem is that, with an enterprise like Star Trek (sorry), it is impossible not to come to the well too many times.  Though it is often reinvented with tweaks that give the appearance of freshness, the franchise is filled with tired blood and should be put out of its misery.

Wait … I hear you saying, isn’t the whole point of this the consolation of the arts?  Indeed it is.  Your correspondent admits that when he is tired, there are few things more comforting that an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Just listening to Stewart mouth the platitudes and homilies that Star Trek provides in great profusion can be a tremendous solace.  It is also a delight to know that someone, somewhere, believes that the race will continue to exist hundreds of years from now, and will even move out into the stars.  Finally, while Star Trek would never argue in favor of the perfectibility of the human race, it continues to underscore what is worthy, heroic and noble in our natures.

And that’s not junk.

Encores! Presents: Lady Be Good

What a joy it is to live in near the good people at Encores!  As readers of this column know, Encores! is dedicated to recreating vintage musicals that have not seen the light of day for decades.  The team, led by Jack Viertel, resurrect book, orchestrations and choreography of these lost treasures, and the result is often nothing less than magical.

That alchemy was in evidence this week when the team recreated Lady, Be Good, with score and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, and a book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson.  The original Broadway production opened in 1924 – a 90 year old musical! – and starred the team of Fred and Adele Astaire.

The story is gossamer thin – brother and sister Dick and Susie Trevor are evicted, leaving them on their bed in the street.  In order to eat (and find a rich wife for Dick), they crash the garden party of socialite Jo Vanderwater; however, Dick really loves Shirley Vernon and wonders if he can sell his affections for money.

Meanwhile, Susie meets a charismatic hobo back from Mexico, who may (or may not) be heir to a fortune.  Add to that a scheming lawyer, mistaken identity and comic hijinks both high and low, and you have the makings for one of the first Broadway musical comedies.

Where to begin?  The cast that Encores! has managed to gather is marvelous.  Danny Gardner and Patti Murin star in the roles originated by the Astaires, and they consistently hit just the right note of light screwball musicality.  They open the show with the delightful Hang On To Me, a song that has fallen into some undeserved obscurity, but is quite special in its lilting beauty.  Also terrific is their syncopated number, Swiss Miss, which guys everything Swiss, from chocolates to cheese.  (Good thing the Swiss are not currently protected by the P.C. police…)

Jeff Hiller and Kirsten Wyatt shine incandescently in the supporting comedy roles, and sell We’re Here Because in a manner to bring down the house.  Watch for both Hiller and Wyatt in the future … they are meant for great things.

Douglas Sills has the plum role of shyster lawyer J. Watterson Watkins.  Sills – his slick 1930s handsomeness working to good effect – has a wonderful voice and superb comic timing.  The Encores! performances are really staged readings, and Sills manages to milk the necessity of holding bound copies of the play’s book for maximum laughs.  He nearly walks away with the show tucked neatly in his jacket pocket, along with his showy pocket square.

Colin Donnell shines as Jack Robinson (yes, that’s the name), the hobo who may also be an heir.  A sweet-voiced juvenile, he shows to great effect both musically and comically.  His duet with Patti Murin, So Am I, is a charmer.

Special mention must be made of Broadway legend Tommy Tune, in a special cameo as the Professor.  In a medley of rich, primary colored costumes, the leggy Mr. Tune comes onstage whenever the plot needs a lift – age has not withered Tune, and his smiling interruptions are great fun.  Even today, Tune radiates good cheer.

Rob Fisher is the guest conductor of this edition of Encores! and Lady, Be Good was directed with a deft and light touch by Mark Brokaw.

As always with Encores!, the show is open only a brief time.  The last performance of Lady, Be Good is February 8.  Buy, steal or beg a ticket – it’s not to be missed.

The Party (1968)

I had so much fun reading American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller, that I decided to briefly write about some of my favorite comedies.  So it was a double bit of serendipity to learn that the 1968 cult hit The Party recently made its way to Blu-Ray and DVD.  If you have not seen this film – and it’s unlikely that you have – get yourself a copy.  You will not be disappointed.

The Party is the only collaboration between Peter Sellers (1925-1980) and director Blake Edwards (1922-2010) that was not a Pink Panther film.  In fact, after shooting the second Panther film, the hilarious A Shot in the Dark (1964), both men vowed never to work with one-another again.

Edwards then conceived a film that would be a tribute to the great silent clowns of his boyhood.  According to Edwards, his childhood was largely an unhappy one, save for the moments of transcendence afforded by such clowns as Buster Keaton (1895-1966) and Harold Lloyd (1893-1971).  He often allowed this silent-screen era slapstick sensibility to creep into his work (look, for instance, at the epic pie fight in The Great Race), but a strictly silent film was a challenge he wanted to set for himself.

Always contemptuous of the Hollywood scene, Edwards conceived of a silent film about an incompetent and accident-prone actor, blackballed by Hollywood but inadvertently invited to a swanky soiree where he wreaks havoc.  The initial screenplay was little more than 60 pages long, and was mostly the set-up for gags that would be improvised on the set.

But who would star in it?

After much internal debate, Edwards decided to bring the project to Sellers, who instantly fell in love with it.  Edwards encouraged Sellers to create a character – a fish out of water who was basically decent, but inherently accident-prone.  Out of whole cloth, Sellers fashioned Hrundi V. Bakshi, the world’s worst actor.  The Party opens with Sellers as Bakshi starring in desert opus Son of Gunga Din, ruining take-after-take and unexpectedly demolishing the key standing set. 

However, his ends up on a party list rather than a kill-list, and from that simple premise, Edwards and his cast improvised the movie, shooting in sequence to ensure that the story flowed properly.

The Party is a remarkable film for its time, and for ours, as well.  The story is so lose and improvisatory, and the narrative arc, such as it is, so fluid that one could easily mistake it for a French comedy of the era.  That Edwards was able to get away with such a high-cost gamble is quite an achievement, and it seems unlikely that something similar would happen again today (unless it involved ray guns or superheroes). 

In addition, it is, for all intents and purposes, a silent film.  Though there is dialog, very little of it moves the story forward, and most of it would take up some three single-spaced pages of text.  It’s not surprising that so many people have been either confounded or disappointed in The Party; it’s the world’s only all-talking silent movie. 

The root of its genius is that both Edwards and Sellers understood on a deep and profound level physical comedy.  They were able to mine gold from simple set-ups.  Here is perhaps my favorite sequence in the film:  Bakshi desperately needs to relieve himself, and finally finding a lavatory, struggles with his environment:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tByH1uM_fnI.

The film resided in limbo for a while, never really finding its audience.  I was lucky enough to see it on late-night television in my boyhood before it seemed to vanish completely.  Since its release, it has acquired something of a cult following, with many ardents of both Sellers and Edwards championing it as their best film.  We wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is something very special, off-the-beaten-track, and splendidly funny.

Happily, Sellers is surrounded by a talented supporting cast.  Special kudos must go to Steve Franken (1932 – 2012) as the drunken waiter – who nearly steals the film with hardly a word spoken.  Franken was a familiar face in both movies and television, and this film will make you wonder why he was never a bigger star.  His comedic timing is flawless, and one wishes a follow-up movie would be built around his character.  Former screen Tarzan Denny Miller (1934 –2014) is especially fetching as cowboy-western star “Wyoming Bill” Kelso, and J. Edward McKinley (1917 – 2004) as the host deadpans superbly.

Fans of period cinema would find much to savor, as well.  Few films scream a 1960s sensibility more than The Party.  Its Henry Mancini (1924-1994) score will either charm or repel you; in addition, the romantic lead is Claudine Longet (born 1942), who is one of the great mysteries of the 1960s.  Quite popular as a singer and actress, she has evaporated into well-deserved obscurity.  Why was she so popular?

Though not to all tastes, The Party comes highly recommended.

American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller

We started the year dipping into a delightful surprise – American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller.  Arranged alphabetically, Miller enumerates the countless tropes so frequent in American comedy circa 1900-1966, and why they were funny and what they tell us about Americans of old.

Miller creates an artificial cutoff of 1966, citing anecdotally that the upheavals of the 1960s resulted in a seismic change in what America meant and, consequently, what it meant to be an American.  One would think that this is an invitation for Miller – a professor at Bennington College in Vermont and the author of Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects – to take potshots at the Great American Century.  However, such is not the case at all, as Miller rightly sees the downside of our social “progress.”  More often than not, it would seem to Miller that the America of the 1920s, 30s and 40s was a funnier, and perhaps, better place than the country we know today.  (A sentiment with which we here at the Jade Sphinx are in full agreement.)

The book has entries on a wide array of laugh-getters, including falling safes and anvils, pratfalls, milquetoasts, flappers, hash, hobos, outhouses, rolling pins, castor oil, dishwashing husbands, nosey neighbors and noise – and that is just scratching the surface.  Miller also talks about many of the formerly great venues for this humor, including full-page comic strips, radio comedy, silent movies, and of course, joke books. 

Coming in at 544 pages, one would think that American Cornball more than overstays its welcome; however, one wishes the book was longer and some of the entries more detailed.

Miller’s particular genius is not just in enumerating instances of a comedic trope, but wondering why they were (or are) funny in the first place.  Miller has keen insight into the human condition, and finds many of his observations in the arena of the ridiculous.  Though not a philosopher like G. K. Chesterton (quoted, incidentally, in this volume), Miller’s worldview is that of an expansive humanist with a predisposition to the comic rather than the tragic. 

The encyclopedia format keeps the observations loose and light, and this also proves to be one of the few flaws in the book: when Miller really has something to say (which is often), he is hamstrung by his format.  One hopes that he will follow-up American Cornball with a collection of essays of greater depth and fewer topics, as there is much more for him to say.

But what he does say here is terrific and to be savored.  I read through the volume with a goofy smile plastered on my face – and how could anyone resist a book that cites the Three Stooges, W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers a source material?

Here is an example of Miller at his best, rifting on the subject of pain:  There is, as far as I know, not one scene in all of Henry James where a character of either sex sits on a thumbtack.  I haven’t read everything by Henry James, but I’ve read enough to know what the rest must be like, and nowhere do I see a thumbtack penetrating an unsuspecting buttock.  Stubbed toes are also few and far between, if they occur at all.  And unlike all those hapless dads on America’s Funniest Home Videos, the males in James’s arcadia never get it in the balls.

Good stuff, that, but better still, here he is midway on his discussion of morons:  In our culture, “That’s not funny” really means “It’s wrong to laugh at that,” which is why we sometimes say it even while laughing.  “That’s not funny” is only secondarily a report on the speaker’s true reactions, though it can be an effort to train those reactions.  If you strongly disapprove of something and therefore insist it isn’t funny, that isn’t quite as dishonest as insisting that O.J. Simpson was never a great running back because you hate the psychopathic asshole he later became.  No, it’s more like refusing to find an actress beautiful because you hate her personality.  Given the determination, you really can suppress your sense of humor, like your sense of beauty.  But if you say, “There’s nothing funny about mental retardation, and for the life of me I’ve never understood why anything thinks there is,” you must be either a hypocrite or a saint.  Either way, you’ve clearly forgotten the jokes of your childhood…..

Then there is this, on farting:  Before it became permissible to discuss farts openly, our forebears relied on all kinds of substitutes— from ducks to tubas, from foghorns to balloons. It may be that the fully lifelike simulation of farts became possible only with later improvements in sheet rubber, but in the pre-whoopee epoch it wasn’t necessary or even desirable for a noisemaker to sound exactly like the real thing; it just had to sound like something sometimes used to symbolize the real thing. Novelty makers are always boasting about how “realistic” their products are, but in this case, realism wasn’t wanted.  Instead, aspiring practical jokers were offered a range of metonymies and metaphors.  Even in our unembarrassed age, the whoopee cushion itself still claims to imitate a “Bronx cheer” or raspberry—not a fart but the imitation of one made by buzzing the lips in what linguists call a bilabial trill. (The reason that sound is called a “raspberry” is that it is or was cockney rhyming slang for “fart,” via “raspberry tart.”) The sound is the best simulation of a fart we can produce with our normal speech apparatus.  In the early 1930s, when whoopee cushions took the world by storm, raspberries too were in fashion, at least on the funny pages—both Dagwood and Popeye had recourse to them now and then.  A little later, Al Capp gave us Joe Btfsplk, the world’s biggest jinx, easily recognized by the small black cloud—a personal fart cloud? —hanging over him at all times. When asked how to pronounce Joe’s surname, Capp would respond with a raspberry, adding, “How else would you pronounce it?”

I loved American Cornball, and spent much of the past few weeks reading it aloud to all and sundry.  This is a treasure for anyone interested in humor – and a perfect gift for those without a sense of one.  Highly recommended – and Mr. Miller, more, please.

You’d Do It For Randolph Scott…

Today is the birthday actor Randolph Scott (1898-1987) and we here at The Jade Sphinx are delighted to participate in the Randolph Scott Blogathon, sponsored by Toby Roan and his wonderful site, 50 Westerns From the 50s.

In thinking about the many attributes of this fine performer, I came to realize that he was not only a capable Western performer, but someone who personified the most admirable attributes of a Western Hero.

Born George Randolph Scott, this tall, handsome Southerner hailed from Virginia.  From a well-off family, he attended private schools (which, clearly, added a level of polish that was evident in his acting), and was an excellent athlete, concentrating on swimming and football.  When the Great War came around, he enlisted and saw action in France.  He returned home and went to college, dropping out before earning his degree and joining his father at the textile firm.

But … something about acting has also intrigued the handsome Virginian, and he moved West, thinking of a career in the movies.  He worked as a bit player and extra in several films, and then worked on stage to further develop his abilities.  After time he garnered a contract from Paramount, and went on to star in a series of Westerns based on the novels of Zane Grey.  His first important, starring role was in Heritage of the Desert (1932), and he went on to make 10 B Westerns for Paramount in their Zane Grey series.  A Western star was born.

Well … not quite.  In his early career, the Virginian starred in a wide variety of movies, including musicals (including turns with Shirley Temple!), comedies, crime pictures and adventure movies.  He appeared in everything from the science-fantasy She (1935) to the musical Roberta, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

But it was in Westerns that the Virginian made his most significant impact.  He would appear in more than 100 films, but the majority of them would be Westerns.  In his early Westerns, he is capable – and, in bigger-budgeted pictures, often the second banana.  But as he aged, he brought to his Western performances a gravitas, a hardness, and a touch of tragedy.  He wears stoicism like a suit of armor, only emerging from under it to write wrongs and mete out justice.

His face and body only improved with age.  As the Virginian entered his 50s, he lost much of his callow handsomeness, leaving him with an impressive, sculptural beauty.  It is a handsome face, but one carved from stone, with all the strength and impassivity associated with rock.  His muscular frame became leaner and harder as the Virginian aged into indestructability.  It is almost impossible to imagine, in these days of films made almost exclusively for addled children and undemanding adults, such a mature action hero.  But the maturity and the gravity were key ingredients to the Virginian’s later greatness; without them, he was diminished.

This Western persona hit its stride in the 1950s, and was particularly majestic in a series of seven Westerns he made with director Budd Boetticher (1916-2001).  Each and every one is a small masterpiece in its way, with the best being Ride Lonesome (1959).  When introducing people new to Westerns to the genre, this is usually the film I chose … and if you only see one Western, it may as well be this one.

When thinking about Scott and his Western screen persona for this retrospective, I realized that the actor had seemingly walked off of the very pages of the first great Western novel, The Virginian, written in 1902 by Owen Wister (1860-1938).

Like the nameless Virginian, Scott was a tall, handsome native of that state.  Like Wister’s hero, he would come to represent all of the virtues of the Western Hero – justice, chivalry, integrity, mercy and a sense of honor.  He is a straight-shooter, a man of moral substance and of self-respect.  He has seen it all and it has cost him much; but it has not made him bitter or hateful … merely watchful.  He is self-possessed and a gentleman around women, but not a ‘ladies man’ in the traditional sense.

For all of his exterior hardness and privacy, there is warmth and approachability in both Virginians.  There is a flinty hint of laughter around the crinkles of his eyes, and a wry humor.  Both Virginians live simply, speak honestly and are nature’s noblemen.  As the narrator in Wister’s novel says, often in their spirit sat hidden a true nobility, and often beneath its unexpected shining their figures took a heroic stature.

Scott’s final film was the excellent Ride the High Country (1962), which may be only good film by Sam Peckinpah.  In it, Scott and fellow-Western star Joel McCrea (1905-1990) are aging lawmen tasked with transporting gold across the frontier.  Both have lived hard lives, and both have seen the world change too much.  During the trip, one of the pair plans to make off with the gold and fund a comfortable retirement.  Playing against type – Scott plays the potential thief.

The real joy of High Country is the continual interplay between McCrea and Scott.  Originally, the roles were to be reversed, with Scott playing the honest and honorable lawman, and McCrea the more cynical, out-for-what-he-can-get ex-lawman.  However, during the initial reading, both realized that switching parts would be more effective, and they were entirely correct.  McCrea’s flat, Midwestern delivery is perfect for the moral compass of the picture, and Scott, in the role of a lifetime, uses his rich, Virginian accent to great effect as he makes sardonic, pithy remarks throughout the film.  In fact, his running commentary is one of the most satisfying elements of the screenplay, and the timbre of his voice is essential. 

Throughout the 1950s (and much of the 1940s), the Virginian focused primarily on Western films, and he brought to his performances the full weight of his screen image, and he played upon audience expectations of who he was and what he would do.

There have been many Western stars who rode tall in the saddle, but the Virginian, Randolph Scott, was one of the most impressive.  With his calm demeanor, steely reserve and moral compass, he was a reflection of the best part of ourselves.

The Adventures of Zane Grey

There are several authors of our great American Western Myth.  Certainly the fountainhead of it all was William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917), the great frontiersman, scout, Indian fighter, actor, showman and mythologist.  We have written about Bill in these pages previously, and he remains one of the few historical personages whom we would have liked to have known personally.

But the myth of the West quickly evolved – dime novels (often written about western heroes currently alive when they were first written, such as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp), the nascent film industry, and, of course, both literary and visual arts.  We have looked at several Western artists in-depth, but up till now have not given the written word its due.  And there is no better way to write this wrong than by starting with one of the most prolific – and successful – western writers of all time, Zane Grey (1872-1939).

Born Pearl Zane Grey, the young writer had a supportive mother and an abusive father.  (His father was a dentist, so obviously he had a taste for inflicting pain on others.)  This baleful influence would often leave Gray surly and distant.  He would be plagued by intense moodiness or depression for most of his life, and one wonders if the root of his black mood was his oppressive father.

Fortunately, Zane was befriended by an older man named Muddy Miser, who encouraged Zane with his interests in baseball, fishing and the outdoors.  He also was a great reader of Zane’s early writing … how many mentors like Muddy have made all the difference in an artist’s life, one wonders?

Zane and Muddy shared a taste for early Western fiction, and would devour pulp adventure novels about the likes of Buffalo Bill Cody.  Zane’s first story was a Western, Jim of the Cave, written when he was only 15.  His father found the story and tore it up before beating young Zane. 

Like many abused children, Zane followed in his father’s footsteps, going into dentistry like his dad.  He would assist his father on dental work, until the state board of Columbus, Ohio, where they were living at the time, intervened. 

Young Zane went to the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, where he studied dentistry.  He was something of a baseball star, and juggled aspirations of being a writer or sportsman.  Upon graduation, he bunted and became a dentist, setting up shop as Dr. Zane Grey in New York City.  (Oddly enough, another figure who shaped the image of the American West, Doc Holliday, was also a dentist.)

While on a canoeing trip in 1900, Zane met the 17-year-old Lina Roth, known as Dolly.  It was, after his friendship with Muddy, the most important meeting of his life.  Unhappy as a dentist, frustrated as a sportsman, Dolly copy-edited and encouraged his writing.  Dolly was the secret of Zane’s success, and an extremely patient woman.  Dolly found the money for Zane to self-publish his first novel after it was rejected by publishers, was a tireless editor and polisher, managed his extensive business affairs once he became successful, and, most generously, turned a blind eye to his many marital indiscretions.

Zane’s earliest novels include many Westerns, and it is clear from the beginning that he found his muse among the cacti.  He was an avid traveler, hiker, fisherman and hunter, finding the raw material for his Western tales in the great outdoors.

Zane was never a darling with the critics – he was a successful popular novelist, and, to boot, wrote within a genre that had not yet gained critical respect.  However, he was in incredibly successful author and one of his novels, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) has since been evaluated as something of a masterpiece.

If you are to read only one Zane Grey novel (and your correspondent recommends reading many!), then Purple Sage is the one to pick.  It is the story of a woman, Jane Withersteen, who struggles to escape from Mormon influence in Old Western Utah.  Zane is not a fan of religious fanaticism, and he sees polygamy and religious control as smokescreens for greed, lust and oppression. 

It is with his protagonist, Lassiter, that Zane hits a deep and resonant cultural note.  Lassiter – like Owen Wister’s Virginian – is a black-clad loner, soft-spoken, laconic, respectful of women and the weak, and quick on the draw.  It is the template for Western heroes from Randolph Scott to Clint Eastwood.

There are five film version of Purple Sage (one even staring Tom Mix!), and it was in the movies that Zane found his greatest audience.  Many of his Westerns were adapted into films, and was even the baisis for a television series, Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre (which ran from 1956 to 1961).  Nearly every major Western film star has appeared in an adaptation of his work, including the focus of tomorrow’s post, Randolph Scott (1898-1987).

Riders of the Purple Sage is avaialbe for free download nearly anywhere on the Internet, including the invaluable www.ManyBooks.net.  It, along with most of Zane Grey’s Western corpus, comes highly recommended.

Meat’s Not Meat Till It’s In the Pan, by Charles Marion Russell (1915)

Here it is, a New Year, and already we at The Jade Sphinx are thinking about the past.  To be exact, the past that makes up our great American Western Myth.  We spent the holiday season happily listening to Christmas carols, reading some of our favorite seasonal texts, and, of course … thinking about Westerns.

You mean you didn’t?

This Christmas we made our way through more of the Zane Grey (1872-1939), corpus, reading more of the letters of cowboy artist Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), watching a western with both (and I kid you not!) Ronald Colman (1891-1958) and Gary Cooper (1901-1961)… and thinking about Randolph Scott (1898-1987).

We will look at all of these this week, but let’s open with a droll evocation of where winter is heading this year with Russell’s wry and wonderful Meat’s Not Meat Till It’s in the Pan, painted in 1915.  The work is oil on canvas, mounted on Masonite, and it currently resides in the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, OK.

It’s no secret that we here at The Jade Sphinx love the work of Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), the cowboy artist.  The boyish Russell went West in his early youth, and worked as a cowboy, watching the waning days of the American West with an artist’s eye.  He didn't seem to be very effective in the saddle, but it was all Charlie wanted and he was happy.

Charlie spent his artistic life drawing and painting the West that loomed so large in his personal myth.  This delightful picture from 1915 is Charlie at his puckish best.  A man of expansive, genial good humor and a delight in a good joke, Charlie was not immune to including humor in his work.  Indeed, humor is one of the integral human experiences, and any aesthete is bereft if he does not fully embrace the lighter side of life.

Clearly our cowboy has done some winter hunting, but he was just a little too close to the edge of a gorge.  He’s bagged his meat, but how will he get it from the outcropping on which it fell?  Aside from the simple narrative of the painting, there is the sound emotional tenor of the work, which is … yeah, I’ve had days like that.

It was part of Charlie’s genius to set the work in the dead of winter; it would not nearly be as witty as a picture depicting a summer scene.  The cold, the snow and the barren quality of the landscape all conspire to make the hunter’s challenge all the more grueling.

Again, let’s look at Charlie’s simple mastery of the medium.  The dominant color is blue, but … look at what he does with it.  Various shades of blue depict everything from cavernous depths, stony distances, cloudy skies, ice on the precipice, and the snow itself.  There are even hints of blue in the rifle-barrel and upon the lighter-colored horse.  Such versatility of shade, warmth and cold, and gradation of a single color is remarkable.

Charlie is also a master of body language.  The vexation of the hunter is comically rendered without being over-the-top; the horses merely indifferent or simply miserable at being out in the weather.

Look at the circle formed by the horse’s nose pointing at the hunter, the gun butt pointing at the ram, the ram pointing to the scrub, pointing back at the horses.  Charlie’s sense of composition was unerring.

It is astonishing that a painting that so deals with death can also be so light-hearted.  Charlie creates a pyramid shape to draw attention to his hunter by having a dead steer create the left foundation, and a tangled mass of withered scrub form the right.  But it is never gloomy or dour; in fact, it only calls to mind the quote by Mark Twain, who wrote, life is just one damn thing after another.

Tomorrow: Zane Grey!