BY JOHN M. WHALEN
Today on Coronavirus Playhouse, as we remained locked
down in our houses watching DVDs and Blu-Rays, we have an interesting, if a bit
unsettling, feature from Universal Studios, called “Canyon Passage†(1946). Dana
Andrews, Brian Donlevy, and Susan Hayward star in a movie about mid-nineteenth-century
life in a small community on the western frontier. Director Jacques Tourneur
(Cat People, I Walk with a Zombie, Out of the Past) does the opposite of what
John Ford did with this kind of film. Ford’s westerns showed a community that
clung together and fought against the dangers of the wilderness and the hostile
elements it contained. Tourneur, always a subversive filmmaker, shows us that a
community can not only be warped by the environment in which it exists, it can
collapse just as easily from within as without.
The film has a complicated plot for a western. The
central dilemma involves two men in love with the same woman. One of the men,
Logan Stuart (Dana Andrews), is a straight up sort of guy trying to run a
freight company between the gold-mining town of Jacksonville and Portland,
Oregon. He’s partners with George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), a likable guy who’s
in charge of keeping the miner’s gold pokes locked in a safe, but who
unfortunately, has a gambling addiction problem. He’s been stealing the miners’
gold dust to gamble. George is engaged to be married to Lucy Overmire (Susan
Hayward), but it’s apparent early on that she may think Logan is the better
catch. Both men are aware of the problem, but both know Logan is too honorable
a guy to make a play for Lucy.
The romantic triangle plays out against the background of
a community that’s also a bit out of kilter. Screenwriter Ernest Pascal, who
adapted the screenplay from an Ernest Haycock novel, sets the scene early on,
when Logan visits Portland’s assayer’s office and trades some gold dust for
specie. The assayer comments on the danger of carrying around that much gold.
“Gold is only yellow gravel, Cornelius,†Logan tells him. To which Cornelius
replies: “But the yellow color makes all the difference.†Logan observes that
“a man can choose his own gods. What are your gods?â€
Logan’s next stop is the hotel where he finds Lucy
Overmire, George’s fiancé. George was supposed to take her back to
Jacksonville, but had to go somewhere else on business and asked Logan to bring
her. Logan tells her to be ready early for their long ride to Jacksonville.
Logan goes to his room and is awakened in the middle of the night by an
intruder who tries to steal his saddlebag full of gold coin. Logan manages to fight
him off with the intruder crashing through the hotel window and escaping into
the rainy night. Logan suspects the robber was a man named Honey Bragg (Ward
Bond), a hulking bully, whom Logan believes earlier killed two miners for their
gold. When he reveals his suspicions to Lucy, she asks why he doesn’t press
murder charges, and he replies that he didn’t see him do it, and wouldn’t want
to make a mistake like that. “Things have to be dead even with you.†she says.
“Is that it, Logan?â€