Unfortunately, from the moment Tess appears, the film has problems. Don’t take my word for it. Here are the words of America’s most popular and important film critic of recent times, Roger Ebert: “Red River is one of the greatest of all Westerns when it stays with its central story about an older man and a younger one, and the first cattle drive down the Chisholm Trail. It is only in its few scenes involving women that it goes wrong.”

But how can Howard Hawkes have created a failed woman character when he was famous for creating the “Hawkesian woman” who “gets what she wants personally as well as sexually.” That may be just the problem. Contrast Tess Millay with Stagecoach’s Dallas for a moment. Dallas, as we know, was a prostitute. But at no time in John Ford’s film did Dallas ever act in a sexually aggressive way. Dallas is a prostitute because it was the only way she could survive as a young girl alone in the West of the 1880s after her family were all killed in an Indian massacre. When Dallas and Ringo fall in love it is not because they are sexually attracted to one another, it is because they have both experienced the trauma of losing their families to violence. Both are survivors and they know what it takes to survive. Dallas says “Well, you have to live” and Ringo answers “That’s it”. On the other hand, Tess and Matt’s attraction to each other is purely sexual. There is certainly nothing wrong with sexual attraction, but the result is that we in the audience never develop the same sympathy for Tess and Matt that we have for Dallas and Ringo.

In Dallas, John Ford created one of the greatest woman characters in Western film…one who was literally the model for many others to follow; the “prostitute with the heart of gold”. Tess Millay is nothing like Dallas. She may be a “Hawkesian woman”, but Roger Ebert says of Tess, “The three scenes with Tess are the movie’s low points, in part because of her prattle (listen to how she chats distractingly with Matt during an Indian attack)”. Her talk is supposed to be an example of a Hawkesian woman being clever, but this “cleverness” gets her shot by an arrow. After Matt pulls the arrow out, she slaps him because it was something she had” been wanting to do for a while”, but later she asks Cherry “Why did I do that, Cherry?” Doesn’t she know why she does things? This doesn’t make her an interesting or deep character like Dallas, it makes her seem scatterbrained and willful.

In Stagecoach, Ringo tells Dallas he has a small ranch and that the two of them could live there together. It will be hard work, but Ringo wants Dallas to go with him and share his work. But in Hawkes’ Red River Tom tells his fiancé that he is going to start a ranch but that the work is “too much for a woman”. Instead of answering that she can do the work, she tells Tom that he “will need what a woman can give. The sun only shines half the day…”. In other words, he should take her along not because she can share the work, but because she can give him sex. When Ringo thinks he is going back to prison he asks Curly to take Dallas to his ranch so she can wait for him there. He obviously believes she can survive on the ranch all alone. In other words, he gives her credit for being a strong, independent woman. But when Groot suggests taking Tess on the cattle drive, Matt rejects the idea as impossible. Why? It seems that despite his creation of the “Hawkesian woman”, Howard Hawkes didn’t think women could be as strong and independent as John Ford thought they could be.

Borden Chase’s original ending in the novel, Blazing Guns Along the Chisholm Trail, has Dunson killing Cherry in their gunfight, but being so badly wounded himself that when he finally gets to Matt, he can barely raise his gun and when he fires, he only wounds Matt slightly before collapsing. Then Matt and Tess take the wounded Dunson south to die in his beloved Texas. In other words, Chase’s novel has a sad and tragic ending instead of the comical and happy one Howard Hawkes uses. I think Hawke’s ending is actually a reflection of the shift in the meaning of the story he brought to the film. The novel was a much darker story in which neither Dunson nor Matt are very likable characters. Neither are Cherry or Tess for that matter. The film made all of them more likable, but it also completely changed the relationships between the three male characters. It especially changed the relationship between Tom and Matt.

For your homework in lesson 12 you read that the “obvious interpretation” of the relationship between Tom and Matt is that they are like father and son. But we have to remember that Tom and Matt are not really father and son. Their relationship is like a father and son relationship in many ways, but it is also something else. In Stagecoach, the open secret of the film was that the main female character, Dallas, is a prostitute. In Red River, the less obvious secret is that Tom and Matt are (or were previously) lovers (koibito). However, in the America of 1948, very few straight (heterosexual) people were able (or willing) to see this. But Everyone who was LGBTQ saw it. That is because in 1948 LGBTQ people had to hide themselves because our relationships were still largely illegal. So, America in 1948 was a terrible place to be an LGBTQ person. However, the American West of 1866 was not so bad. At least it was not such a bad place to be a gay man, or more precisely, a man who had sexual and/or romantic relationships with other men. This was especially true of the cowboys. This shouldn’t surprise you. The cowboys and their way of life was very similar to the samurai culture of Japan and same sex relationships between the samurai were very common.

But how can “gay” men also have relationships with women as both Tom and Matt do? Well, that word “gay” and the ideas it represents didn’t exist in those times. Many men were bisexual. Among the samurai, the mentor might already be married and have children of his own while still being the mentor of a younger man who was also his lover.

In Red River, the first time we see Tom he is with the only woman he will ever love. He expressed that love for her by giving her his mother’s bracelet. But it is that same bracelet he gives to his male lover with whom he has had a relationship for more than fourteen years. Look at both scenes again.

By the time Matt has returned from the Civil War, he and Tom have probably not seen each other for three or four years, and they are probably no longer physical lovers. But Matt still wears Toms bracelet. One of the things about male-male relationships is that they often start as friendships, go through a sexual phase and then once again become friendships. In both samurai and cowboy culture, male lovers were often best friends for life even if they were no longer involved sexually. This is why Matt can give the bracelet to Tess. He and Tom are no longer romantically or sexually lovers. Is this strange? Not at all. In samurai culture, for example, an older male lover might be expected to teach his younger male lover lessons about women. The older lover might even help his younger friend’s family choose an appropriate wife for the younger man. That is actually what happens at the end of Red River. Tom tells Matt, “I think you better marry that girl, Matt”.

Hawkes also radically changed the character of Cherry Valance. In the novel, Cherry was Matt’s rival for Tess, but in the film, Cherry is much more romantically and sexually interested in Matt! They are a lot alike; young, handsome, self-confident, fast with a gun. But Cherry’s interest in Matt is not just about their rivalry as gunslingers. Watch the scene between the two of them again.

How did Red River get away with all this when homosexual relationships were against the very strict censorship rules in Hollywood at the time? Howard Hawkes managed this the same way John Ford managed to include a prostitute as one of his main characters in Stagecoach: by showing, but not telling. Hawkes was greatly helped by the fact that most straight people in 1948, including the Hollywood censors, simply did not understand same sex relationships. What was obvious to every LGBTQ person in the audience, was invisible to the non-LGBTQ people.

Some of the hints Hawkes included were downright outrageous.

When Matt jokes, “You’re going to brand every rump in the state of Texas except mine!”,

Tom jokes right back, “Teller, give me that branding iron! You don’t think I would?”

 Matt never seems more like a little boy than when he almost giggles and says, “No, (giggle), I don’t”.

It’s a joke, but it is a joke only two lovers would share.

They say this openly in front of all the other cowboys, but none of the other cowboys find this strange or comment about it. They would all know Tom and Matt had been lovers and nobody would think that was strange. Besides, who is going to make a homophobic remark to Tom or Matt when they are the two most dangerous gunslingers in Texas? And who would say anything to Cherry about flirting with Matt when he is the third most dangerous gunslinger in Texas? Good luck staying alive if you do.

Let me take this even a step further and say that the real love triangle in the film is entirely homosexual. Tom and Cherry both love Matt. Cherry shoots Tom’s hand precisely because he knows that Tom is Matt’s old lover and Matt will never shoot his old lover. Cherry also attempts to protect Matt in the final confrontation, but Dunson is faster (and may have killed Cherry. We never learn what happened to Cherry).

But the one person who really understands what is going on between Tom and Matt is Tess. Tess may be the least successful character in the film, but she is much more likable in the film than she was in the book. In the book, Tess manipulates men into killing each other so she gets what she wants. In the film, Tess may be annoying, but she is definitely a good person. She is also the one who best understands what is going on between Tom and Matt. Even when she is making love to Matt in the rain she says “You love him (Tom), don’t you? He must love you. That wouldn’t be hard.”.

Everyone respects everyone’s right to love whom they please at the end of the film. Maybe it was a good ending, after all.

We are at long last finished with this gigantic movie. This concludes Lesson 13.