The Hollywood western has mostly been dominated by male actors. John Wayne, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood all became major stars in part from their leading roles in western films. Actresses in westerns, on the other hand, were relegated to dutiful wives, daughters of the richest man in town, or prostitutes and dance hall girls. But a couple of independent minded directors in the 1950s saw the potential for a tough, independent female protagonist as the lead in the western genre. Samuel Fuller's FORTY GUNS (1957) starred Barbara Stanwyck as a female rancher butting heads with an ambitious U.S. Marshal and his brothers. But Fuller's female centric western owes a debt to Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) starring Joan Crawford as a strong willed business woman fighting off rivals and a bloodthirsty posse trying to take what she's earned.
Directed by Nicholas Ray (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) with a screenplay by Philip Yordan based on a novel by Roy Chanslor, JOHNNY GUITAR flips the western genre on its head. Instead of a male good guy and bad guy, Joan Crawford plays the lead female good protagonist clashing with a female bad protagonist Mercedes McCambridge (both women have short, boyish haircuts). And instead of a female saloon hall entertainer ala Marlene Dietrich teaming up with good guy male lead James Stewart in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939), Crawford teams up with male guitar strumming ex-gunslinger, ex-lover Sterling Hayden (THE KILLING). The main hero is a woman. The good guys wear black. What's going on with JOHNNY GUITAR?
Director Ray reveals more exposition in the first twenty minutes of JOHNNY GUITAR than most films do in their entirety. The film opens with Johnny "Guitar" Logan (Sterling Hayden) riding alone on a ridge, a guitar strapped to his back. In the first few minutes, Johnny will see two events vital to the film's plot: 1) a stagecoach robbery from a distance where one of the drivers is shot and killed and 2) a hill side blown up by dynamite. Johnny rides to a saloon seemingly in the middle of nowhere called Vienna's. The saloon is empty except for a few idle casino workers waiting for customers and Old Tom (John Carradine), a handyman. Johnny's here to meet with the proprietor of Vienna's, Vienna herself (Joan Crawford). She's hired Johnny to play music at her gambling hall. But Vienna is busy meeting with Mr. Andrews (Rhys Williams). Andrews is the foreman for the railroad who's blasting the nearby hills to make way for the railroad which will come right by Vienna's establishment. A windstorm kicks up just as posse of men and one woman show up with a dead body in their wagon. The woman is rancher Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge). It's her brother who lays dead, killed by the stagecoach gunmen earlier.
Emma wants justice and believes she knows who the killers are. Right on cue, the Dancing Kid (Scott Brady) and his gang consisting of Bart Lonergan (Ernest Borgnine), the sickly Corey (Royal Dano), and the young emotionally fragile Turkey Ralston (Ben Cooper) show up. It was four men who robbed the stagecoach. Emma demands Marshal Williams (Frank Ferguson) arrest them. But the Marshal has no proof. Emma's business partner in town is John McIvers (Ward Bond). Emma and McIvers want to shut down Vienna's saloon. Emma hates Vienna and they both have a past with the Dancing Kid. It's a tense situation that Johnny Guitar defuses with a little music. McIvers gives the Dancing Kid, his gang, and Vienna twenty four hours to get out of town.
We learn that Johnny and Vienna had a relationship five years ago but their love fell apart. Johnny used to be a gunslinger but he doesn't carry a gun anymore. Just his guitar. After Johnny and Bart take care of some aggression outside (with Johnny licking Bart), the Dancing Kid and his gang ride back thru a waterfall which obscures the trail on the other side to their hideout called "the Lair." The Dancing Kid decides maybe it's time for them to relocate to California. But he wants to stick it to McIvers and Emma before they depart. Unable to sleep, Vienna and Johnny patch up their differences. The next day, Vienna goes into town to withdraw money to pay her employees including Johnny before closing down. The Dancing Kid takes advantage of most of the town attending Emma's brother's funeral to rob the bank. Vienna begs them to stop but they don't. The Kid and his gang try to flee with the stolen money through the pass but the railroad's dynamiting prevents them. The Kid and his gang return to the Lair except Turkey who tumbles off his horse into the brush, injured from the blast.
Vienna returns to her saloon and pays her employees. Johnny bids Vienna farewell and rides off. After Johnny leaves, the injured Turkey shows up. Vienna hides Turkey just as Emma, McIvers, and their 30 hired guns show up that night. Emma accuses Vienna of staging the bank robbery with the Kid. The posse discover Turkey hiding under a table. Emma shoots down Vienna's candle lit chandelier, igniting the saloon on fire. They take Vienna and Turkey to a nearby bridge for a lynching. Turkey is hanged but Johnny shows up and rescues Vienna. Johnny and Vienna return to the burning saloon and escape through a mine shaft underneath the saloon. They find their way to the Lair where Corey lets them thru. The Dancing Kid is jealous that Johnny and Vienna are together. Emma and McIvers stumble upon the secret waterfall. Bart, on guard duty, makes a deal with them. As Emma, McIvers, and their posse move on the hideout, each character will have a final showdown with their nemesis.
JOHNNY GUITAR was not a hit when it was first released but modern audiences (and French film critics) rediscovered it. JOHNNY GUITAR has a little bit of everything in it. It's one part opera with Vienna's brightly colored outfits and the ornate interior of Vienna's saloon, lots of deep browns and oranges. Another part is sexual. Many of the characters (Emma, McIvers, Turkey) seem sexually repressed while Vienna uses her sex to acquire secrets and allies. The exploding hillsides seem to symbolize the angst and sexual frustration that almost every character carries. Although a western, JOHNNY GUITAR touches on the paranoia and witch hunt mentality of McCarthyism which was rearing its ugly head in the 1950s when the film came out. Emma accusing the Dancing Kid of killing her brother or Vienna assisting with the bank robbery with no evidence and eyewitnesses telling her it's not true yet Emma believes what she wants to believe. JOHNNY GUITAR is also an amazing adventure with a secret hideout behind a waterfall, windstorms, and mine shafts that lay hidden underneath the saloon. Oh, and did I mention the exploding hillsides?
The best part of JOHNNY GUITAR is how it subverts what we normally expect in a western. The supposed good guys made up of the town's leaders (McIvers, Emma, the Marshal) and their hired guns wear that symbol of evil -- black (although to be fair they were coming from a funeral. But they still act like bad guys). The outcasts who we root for (Vienna, Johnny, the Dancing Kid) do not wear white (for good and purity) but are dressed in bright, colorful outfits (check out Vienna's lavender night gown or the Dancing Kid's green cowboy shirt). We expect every male cowboy to carry a gun. Johnny only carries his guitar. We're accustomed to a duel between two men in most westerns often over a woman. In JOHNNY GUITAR, the key duel will be between Emma and Vienna. Emma loathes Vienna, her jealousy of the saloon owner oozing from every pore of her body. Emma may have had a crush on the Dancing Kid. Emma must have been young, immature, and head over heels in love. Vienna seduced the Kid and stole him from Emma (or so she thinks), igniting a hatred for Vienna that fuels her bloodlust to exterminate Vienna and her saloon. We know Vienna and Emma will have to face each other with guns before JOHNNY GUITAR is over.
Movies are often remembered because of one scene or sequence. Cary Grant chased by a crop dusting plane in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) or Al Pacino disposing of his enemies at the end of Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER (1972). JOHNNY GUITAR has a 10 minute sequence early in the film that sets in motion both the plot and every character's motivation. It's an extraordinary sequence with riveting dialogue, edited with great precision. Emma, McIvers, and their posse drag Emma's dead brother into Vienna's saloon. Emma seeks vengeance, accusing the Dancing Kid and indirectly Vienna for her brother's demise. Vienna addresses the posse from the second floor. Emma and Vienna lock eyes and throw verbal daggers at each other. Vienna gets Emma to reveal her hate/love relationship with the Kid. McIvers and Emma reveal their opposition with Vienna's power move to build a train depot on her land and not in their town. On cue, the windstorm blows in the Dancing Kid and his gang into this maelstrom of venom. A gun battle inside the saloon seems inevitable until Johnny Guitar reveals himself, a stranger to both sides except Vienna. Johnny plays a little traditional guitar lick to soften the tension and the Dancing Kid grabs Emma for a quick dance, Emma both repulsed and excited by the Kid's audacity ("he makes her feel like a woman and that frightens her"). McIvers gives Vienna and the Kid twenty four hours to get out of town. Those ten minutes sets in motion the rest of JOHNNY GUITAR and makes us excited to see how this story will play out.
There's a reason they call them actors. Even though Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden look like a couple that has rekindled their love during these turbulent events, in reality Crawford and Hayden didn't really like each other during the filming of JOHNNY GUITAR. But they convince us they're in love. Crawford's Vienna is tougher mentally than most of the men. She's used her charm and guile and sexuality to build her saloon and future empire. She's not going to go quietly. Her power and sex make men like McIvers and the Marshal uncomfortable. As one of Vienna's employees Sam (Robert Osterloh) tells his fellow co-workers, "Never seen a woman who was more of a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not." But Vienna's a mother figure as well to her employees like Tom, Sam, and later Turkey who appears to have a crush on her (but surprise, Vienna shoots down Turkey's enthusiastic advances). Joan Crawford is best known for her role in Michael Curtiz's MILDRED PIERCE (1945) and other melodramas but JOHNNY GUITAR seems to be the only western she made. Rumor has it Crawford was having an affair with director Nicholas Ray as they made JOHNNY GUITAR.
I'll say it again. There's a reason they call them actors. Sterling Hayden who plays Johnny "Guitar" Logan is quoted that he couldn't play the guitar or ride a horse. Yet his character has to do both in JOHNNY GUITAR and Hayden pulls it off convincingly. Hayden was more familiar to movie fans in film noir films like Andre De Toth's CRIME WAVE (1953) and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING (1956) but he seems perfectly cast as the ex-gunslinger and ex-love interest of Vienna. Hayden's Johnny Guitar is the middle ground between the boyish Dancing Kid and the seething, weary Bart Lonergan. Hayden plays Johnny as laconic, world weary, and thoughtful. Hayden would have some memorable supporting roles later in his career in Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE (1963) as General Jack D. Ripper, in Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER as a corrupt police chief and in Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE (1974) as a reclusive millionaire.
As good as Crawford and Hayden are as the leads, JOHNNY GUITAR is stolen by two supporting actors who play the rivals of Vienna and Johnny Guitar. Mercedes McCambridge who plays Vienna's nemesis Emma Small is the most complex character in the film and steals every scene she's in with either her curt voice or sexually repressed demeanor (her green attire in her first scene even suggests the Wicked Witch of the East). Emma is both ambitious and suffers from an inferiority complex. Although never implicitly explained (but conveyed convincingly on McCambridge's face), Emma either had a crush on the Dancing Kid or imagined that the Kid was sweet for her. Maybe the Kid played on her vulnerability. Whether the Kid really liked Emma or not, we'll never know. He broke her heart whether he meant to or not. But Emma is positive that Vienna stole the Dancing Kid from her. Emma despises Vienna, calling her, "nothing but a railroad tramp!" Emma (along with McIvers) symbolize McCarthyism. They want Vienna and the Kid hung just by association, without any proof. She preys on the posse's fears of change and progress. McCambridge started her film career out with a bang, winning the Best Support Actress Academy Award in 1949 for ALL THE KING'S MEN. Other credits include George Stevens GIANT (1956) and she would provide the voice over for the devil's voice possessing Linda Blair in William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973).
In the role of his lifetime, Scott Brady as the Dancing Kid is incredible and brilliant, reminding me of a young Kevin Costner in one of his first roles in Lawrence Kasdan's SILVERADO (1984). Brady's the Dancing Kid is a ball of energy, testosterone, and boyish charm. He shows hints of menace but the Kid is a good person deep down, loyal to his gang (even the irascible Bart). Although a leader, the Kid will make some bad decisions. As the Kid laments, "I never do what I should." If Scott Brady looks like another actor from the 1940s named Lawrence Tierney, that's because they were brothers. Brady changes his last name (perhaps because Lawrence was often a handful for directors and producers). I remember Brady from television appearances in the 70s. His later movie credits include THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) and Joe Dante's GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990). But Brady's deliciously likeable the Dancing Kid is a performance for the ages.
JOHNNY GUITAR has an amazing supporting cast. Director Ray provides each of them with at least one good dramatic moment. Ward Bond appeared in almost every great western (THE SEARCHERS, RIO BRAVO). In JOHNNY GUITAR, Bond's McIvers is an ambiguous character. He starts out the film hell bent on kicking Vienna and the Kid out of their territory but by the end, the lies and killing have worn him down. Ernest Borgnine as the untrusting Bart Lonergan began his career playing heavies in films like FROM HERE ETERNITY (1953) and JOHNNY GUITAR but would later play more likable characters in Robert Aldrich's THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) and try comedy on the television show MCHALE'S NAVY (1962 - 1966). Ben Cooper (THE ROSE TATOO) who plays Turkey Ralston was a new face for me. Cooper's Turkey is an emasculated young man with an Oedipus complex, taken under the Dancing Kid's wing. He wants to be a man, wants to sleep with the older Vienna to show her he's a man but it's all false bravado. Turkey is one of many tragic characters in JOHNNY GUITAR. Cooper would work mostly in television after an early stint in films.
Rounding out the stellar supporting cast of JOHNNY GUITAR are screen veterans Royal Dano as Corey, the conscience of the Dancing Kid's gang and John Carradine, veteran of over 200 screen credits, as Vienna's handyman Old Tom. Dano just had one of those weathered, craggy faces meant to appear in westerns both on screen and television. In GUITAR, Dano's Corey is one of the few sympathetic characters in the film, partly because he appears to be dying from lung cancer or some awful illness. The other sympathetic character is Old Tom played by John Carradine. It's not a showy role but Old Tom brings some humor to the film at key junctures. Carradine would work with many great film directors besides JOHNY GUITAR'S Nicholas Ray in his lengthy career from John Ford (THE GRAPES OF WRATH) to Rouben Mamoulian (BLOOD AND SAND) to Fritz Lang (MAN HUNT). And a shout out to Frank Ferguson as Marshal Williams, another emasculated man who's caught between the fury of Emma and Vienna. He's the law but he's pushed around by both sides.
Director Nicholas Ray would not have a prolific film career (cut short by bad health although he lived to be 67) but he was an auteur who's best work was in the late 40s and 1950s. Besides JOHNNY GUITAR, his best know films include THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948), IN A LONELY PLACE (1950), and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955). In JOHNNY GUITAR, Ray uses space extremely well with Cinemascope whether juxtaposing his characters within the frame in psychologically interesting ways or taking advantage of the barren landscapes to place his characters in. The use of space should not be surprising as Ray studied under famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright before starting his film career. Ray's use of color plays a big part in the film especially the colorful outfits that many of the characters wear. Most westerns were in black and white so why not take advantage of color.
Some final tidbits on JOHNNY GUITAR. The beautiful locations for the film are courtesy of Sedona, Arizona with its orange and red hues highlighted by veteran director of photography Harry Stradling (GUYS AND DOLLS). The musical score is by Victor Young who also co-wrote the film's title song Johnny Guitar which is sung briefly at the end of the film by Peggy Lee.
Moviegoers had not seen many or any stylized westerns up to when JOHNNY GUITAR came out which may explain it's initial lackluster performance both commercially and critically. More modern directors like Sergio Leone (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY) or Sam Raimi (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD) would take stylized westerns to a different level with extreme close ups and iconographic performances. JOHNNY GUITAR led the way. It's a western but also a psychological/sexual drama, an allegory on McCarthyism, and a good old rousing adventure.
