Joseph
L. Mankiewicz’s “There Was a Crooked Man . . .†debuted in theaters on
Christmas Day 1970, a disruptive year for Hollywood as the moviegoing audience
continued to fracture along the Vietnam War divide.Studios were desperate to retain their core
demographic of older, conservative viewers while courting younger, affluent
ticket-buyers who wanted stronger fare.“There Was a Crooked Man . . .†tried to offer a little something for
everybody.For the older guys at the VFW
Hall, it was a Western starring Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, supported largely
by a cast of other well-established, middle-aged actors.For the “Easy Rider†crowd, there was plenty
of nudity, cussing, and innuendo about weed that you’d never encounter on
“Gunsmoke†or “Bonanza.â€In Mankiewicz’s
cynical, R-rated Western, now available from the Warner Archive Collection,
outlaw Paris Pitman Jr. (Kirk Douglas) and his partners rob a wealthy banker,
Wayne Lomax, of $500,000 at gunpoint in an 1880s version of a home
invasion.Lomax is played by Arthur
O’Connell, the first of several actors cast against type in the script by David
Newman and Robert Benton (their follow-up to “Bonnie & Clydeâ€).Instead of meeting misfortune with the folksy
resignation we expect from an Arthur O’Connell character, Wayne Lomax reacts with
a racist, profane tirade in front of his wife, his young son and daughter, and
his African-American cook and butler: “A man works like a [insert the
“nâ€-invective] all of his life to get ahead, and some bastard takes it from
him.â€
Fleeing
with the loot, Pitman and his gang exchange shots with Lomax and his
family.Even the kids join in from the
porch with their rifles.Pitman’s
partners are killed, including one whom he himself shoots in the back.The last thief standing, he hides the loot in
a rattlesnake den, and celebrates at a brothel.Lomax coincidentally visits the same establishment for some cheer after
being cleaned out.In Mankiewicz’s
second “What the --!†scene for O’Connell, the sympathetic madam offers Lomax a
free look through a peephole into an adjoining room to watch another customer
have sex with two women.Eagerly
agreeing, Lomax is startled to recognize the other customer as Pitman, and the
outlaw is arrested and sentenced to the penitentiary, a remote fortress
surrounded by miles of desert.There,
the warden (Martin Gabel) lives in comfort while his charges are crammed into
filthy cells.He first tries
intimidation, then bribery, to learn where Pitman has hidden the stolen
money.Neither gambit works.After he’s killed in a riot, his idealistic
replacement, Woodward Lopeman (Henry Fonda), arrives.
Lopeman
sets about to clean up the prison literally and figuratively.He abolishes corruption among the guards,
eliminates cruel punishment on the rock pile, institutes regular bathing, hires
a prison doctor, and begins to construct a dining hall where the convicts will
be fed decent food instead of swill.Unimpressed with the newcomer’s progressivism and confident that no man
is above temptation, Pitman offers Lopeman a cut of his stolen money if he’ll
let him escape.The warden refuses, just
as the loquacious robber refuses when Lopeman asks him to give a speech
praising the reforms when political leaders visit for the dedication of the dining
hall.Pitman has emerged as the leader
of his motley collective of inmates, much like Ken Kesey’s Randall P. McMurphy,
whom Douglas portrayed on Broadway in 1963 in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest.â€Douglas had tried for years to
interest Hollywood in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,†before handing the
rights over to his son Michael in 1970 once he decided he was too old to
reprise the part.In a sense, therole of Paris Pitman Jr. was the big-screen
version of Kesey’s character (Jack Nicholson, in the 1975 picture eventually
produced by Michael Douglas) that Kirk Douglas never got to play.
Determined
to break out of the prison, Pitman devises an elaborate escape plan and enlists
his cellmates to help.One of them is
easily convinced, a young man sentenced to hang for murder (Michael Blodgett,
whose other movie in 1970 was “Beyond the Valley of the Dollsâ€). The others are
reluctant, having less to lose by serving out their time.“There ain’t no way out,†claims the elderly
Missouri Kid (Burgess Meredith), who endures confinement by smoking the
cannabis that he grows in his corner of the cell.But Pitman wins him and the others over with
a deal they can’t resist: if they assist, he’ll share his stolen money with
them after they’re all free.Or will he?
The
prospect of a Western that would appeal to Nixon voters and Country Joe
enthusiasts alike may have appeared reasonable in theory, but it was a flop in
actual practice.The movie bombed.If nothing else, Marshall Matt Dillon fans
were probably chased off by the studio’s trippy poster art, depicting Douglas’
and Fonda’s characters with elastic, elongated legs in imitation of R. Crumb’s
then-trendy Underground Comix style.Damn hippies!For the younger
crowd, yet another picture with old-timers like Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda
was easy to pass up.Michael Douglas and
Peter Fonda, maybe.Fifty years later,
viewers may be more receptive to Mankiewicz’s sarcastic humor as a welcome
break from the morose, heavy-handed message dramas of 2021.Whatever their merits, films like
“Stillwater†and “Nomadland†seem designed to drive us even deeper into our
unending Covid depression.Be forewarned
of one scene, though, in which an attractive, primly clad schoolteacher
(Barbara Rhoades) panics as she is incrementally stripped down to her bustier
and garters when a melee breaks out during the dedication of the dining
hall.Played for laughs like similar
scenes in “M.A.S.H.†(1970) and “National Lampoon’s Animal House†(1978), it’s
more offensive than funny by today’s standards.
The
Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray presents “There Was a Crooked Man . . .†in
an exemplary hi-def transfer that looks remarkably sharp and rich for a
neglected, half-century-old movie.Extras include subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired, a theatrical
trailer, and a featurette, “On Location With . . .â€, of the type once used to
fill time in the theater while publicizing new movies in that era before social
media.