MAN
ON A WIRE By Howard Hughes
One of seemingly dozens of Universal westerns
released in the 1960s and early ‘70s, ‘A Man Called Gannon’ is a remake of the
tough Kirk Douglas western ‘Man Without a Star’ (1955). Rather than using Dee
Linford’s novel of the same name as its source, the film uses the screenplay by
D.D. Beauchamp and Borden Chase from the 1955 version, with additional writing from
Gene R. Kearney. Tony Franciosa stars as Gannon, a drifting cowboy without a
horse. While riding the rails west by locomotive cattle car, he meets young
Easterner Jess Washburn (Michael Sarrazin). The pair end up working as cowhands
on the Cross Triangle ranch, where the tough old hand teaches the tenderfoot
from Philadelphia how to ride and shoot like a pro. They both become romantically involved with
the ranch’s owner, Beth Cross (Judi West), which causes friction, while Jess
also clashes with the ranch’s bullying ‘top hand’ Capper (John Anderson). The
open range is being fenced in by the cattlemen and with the arrival of a
massive consignment of barbed wire, Gannon and Jess end up facing each other on
opposite sides of the fence.
It’s unfair to compare the film to ‘Man
Without a Star’, which benefits from Frankie Laine’s snappy title song and a
cast filled with memorable, seasoned performers like Jeanne Crain (as rancher
Reed Bowman), William Campbell (as greenhorn Jeff Jimson), Richard Boone, Jay C.
Flippen, Mara Corday, Sheb Wooley, Paul Birch, Roy Barcroft and the great Jack
Elam. In ‘A Man Called Gannon’, Tony
Franciosa is good in the title role, as a drifter ‘ex of Texas’, aimlessly
wandering the range. Like Kirk Douglas’ Dempsey Rae, Gannon is tormented by his
bad experiences of barbed wire – his little brother Jim was killed when he was
caught on a fence in a cattle stampede – which allows Franciosa a grandstanding
‘drunken trauma’ scene. I like Franciosa. He was an agreeable screen presence
in everything from the Raquel Welch spy vehicle ‘Fathom’ (1967), to Dario
Argento’s bloody giallo ‘Tenebrae’ (1982). My favourite of his roles is the
wily cutthroat Rodriguez in the gunrunning western ‘Rio Conchos’ (1964) and you
can see why he was reputedly up for the role of Manolito in ‘The High
Chaparral’ TV show (he lost out to Henry Darrow).
There are some familiar faces in the ‘Gannon’
cast – such as Sarrazin, Anderson, James Westerfield and Gavin MacLeod – but otherwise
it’s not the best-known cast. Emmy-award-winning TV director James Goldstone
uses trippy overlaid double exposures for some scenes (in the manner of Peter
Fonda’s acid western ‘The Hired Hand’) and also rapid cross-cutting in moments
of tension, like a spaghetti western. According to Judi West, who played rancher
Beth Cross, Goldstone had her voice dubbed, even though she was an accomplished
actress who had numerous film, TV and theatre credits and had taught acting
classes. The jaunty cowboy title song ‘A Smile, a Mem’ry and an Extra Shirt’
was sung by Dave Grusin. The narrative ballad ‘commenting’ on Gannon’s
adventures is very 1950s in method, if folksy 1960s in style. Grusin also
worked on ‘The Graduate’ (1967) and wrote the narrative ballad ‘Code of the
West’ for the James Coburn comedy western ‘Waterhole #3’ (1967).
Overall ‘A Man Called Gannon’ is fairly pacey, there’s some lively sequences of cowboying and the range war aspect of the story is well done. It was handsomely filmed in widescreen and on location in California, at the Broom Ranch near Camarillo, California, in Sonora, Northern California, and on the railroad line on the Sierra Railroad, using the locomotive No.3, in late 1967. The train and seven-car train ran on the prairie line near Warnerville, Stanislaus County (the line can also be seen in ‘High Noon’). The water tank was a studio set with plywood sides and plastic hose for the bands. The locomotive No. 3 was repainted flat black and became ‘Kansas & Pacific No. 8’ for the film. The locomotive was also used near Standard, Tuolumne County, for filming with Franciosa and Sarrazin. Jamestown, a real old town with period buildings and a period railway station, was used for some town scenes.
The DVD from Simply Media is presented in excellent 2.35:1 Techniscope, with a sharp picture and clear sound. It’s Region 2 coded. No extras apart from chapter stops, but this is a welcome release of a hard-to-find western. Originally rated an X-certificate in the UK in October 1968 (there’s a flash of mild nudity and bursts of fairly bloody violence) it’s now rated 12. It’s one of several Universal westerns released by Simply Media that I’ll be reviewing, including ‘Calamity Jane and Sam Bass’, ‘Cattle Drive’ and ‘Black Horse Canyon’.
According to the film’s entry on the Internet Movie Database, ‘During filming the cameras recorded two unidentified flying objects: one at Sonora, CA on 11.1.1967; another at Broom Ranch near Camarillo, CA on 12.27.1967. The footage was provided to an investigator from the University of Colorado UFO Project (1966-1968), who determined that the objects were probably some wind-blown debris.’
Read more here: http://www.project1947.com/shg/condon/case58.html but this is the official report on the two pieces of UFO footage:
“The first case, shot at Sonora, Calif., 1 November 1967, showed a small bright source drifting slowly toward the top of the screen (Plate 63) at the very beginning of a sequence, while the camera slate is still being shown. The slate is removed and the scene shows only deep blue sky and the drifting object, which leaves the upper margin near the left corner after roughly ten seconds, before any subsequent action starts. The object is below or near the resolution of the film and resembles a wide-angle shot of the moon, except that the camera was stationary and the object is drifting. The second case involves film shot on the Broom Ranch near Camarillo 27 December 1967. During a dialogue sequence the camera was focused on the head and shoulders of an actor who was astride a horse. The horizon is out of the picture. At this time a pale, circular extended object, which appears to be an out-of-focus image of a point source or a small bright source, drifts across the screen from the right edge to the left edge in roughly 15 sec. (The image does not reproduce well in black-and-white.) The object definitely appears to pass behind the actor as it is not visible against several dark portions of his clothing. Again, the camera was fixed, although there is a sudden offset to compensate for a movement of the horse. The shooting of this scene will not be cut from the final motion picture.â€
The same strange occurrence happened during the making of Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western ‘The Mercenary’ (aka ‘A Professional Gun’) in 1968 near Madrid in Spain. Maybe there really was ‘something in the air’ in the late-1960s.
All text © Howard Hughes 2016
Howard Hughes is the author of a range of cinema books, including ‘Stagecoach to Tombstone: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Westerns’ (published by I.B. Tauris) which is currently out-of-print in paperback, but is available in hardback and as an e-book.