Part 2 – No one would call this justice. To hang a man for accidentally shooting a cow when he was defending himself against the cowboys who shot at his group first is clearly an injustice. But in any legal system there are judges whose job it is to interpret and administer the law. This judge clearly uses the law purely for his own benefit and the benefit of his own friends and business associates, the cattle ranchers. Although this event is fictional the real judge Bean was no less outrageous.

Part 3 – My purpose in showing these excerpts is not to explore the entire movie, but simply to demonstrate what kind of lawman Judge Bean was. The film uses a kind of dark comedy to lighten the mood somewhat, but some of the jokes are pretty grim. When the young woman asks where Shad Wilkins is, Bean answers “he was hanging around a while back, but he ain’t here now”. This is wordplay on the double meaning of “hanging”. To “hang around” means to “spend time aimlessly; wait around or loaf”, but “to hang” someone is, of course, to execute them at the end of a rope they hang from until dead. After his execution Wilkins is left to “hang around” until his body is cold so the undertaker can take him away for burial! We also see that once Bean hangs someone, he confiscates whatever money they had as “court fees”.

Having the horse testify in court is another outrageous humorous moment. But this is what we call “gallows humor” (grim and ironic humor in a desperate or hopeless situation). The character Cole Harden faces execution just as surely as Shad Wilkins did. It truly seems that Harden, (played by screen legend, Gary Cooper), has no chance. However, by the end of the film Harden has not only outsmarted Judge Bean, he also outguns him, killing him. This is all pure fiction. The real Judge Bean died peacefully in bed at the age of seventy-seven after a night of getting extremely drunk.

The next film I will use as an example of the lawless lawman is the 1961 One-Eyed Jacks starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. Two outlaws who have just robbed a bank in Mexico and are fleeing from Mexican Army troops.

Part 4 – You noticed that the Rio Kid cheated when it came time to choose who rode and who stayed. Rio did not cheat to help himself, he cheated to help his partner! Why would he do that? Perhaps the two outlaws’ names explain it. The older man is nicknamed “Dad” Longworth while the younger is “The Rio Kid”. This suggests that they have a relationship like father and son. I don’t think there is any suggestion in the film that the two men were lovers, as Thomas Dunson and Matthew Garth almost certainly were, but even a platonic (i.e., non-sexual) friendship between older and younger men of this sort can be extremely intense. “Dad” is Rio’s mentor, but Rio is the better gunfighter…by far. Rio wants to protect his older friend and feels he is better equipped to hold the ridge while Dad gets the fresh horses. He never imagined that his mentor would betray him.

Of course, you now know what the film turns into; a quest for vengeance. Rio spends five long, miserable years in a Mexican prison until he manages to escape.

His one goal is to find the man who betrayed him. Meanwhile, Dad Longworth has transformed himself.

Part 5 – Dad Longworth has become the Sheriff of Monterey! He is now a respectable lawman with his own home and family. He is very far from the dirty, drunken old sadist Judge Bean was. He clearly cares about his appearance and his standing in his community. He doesn’t want anyone to know about his past. But his past (the Rio Kid) has just caught up to him.

The French diplomat Talleyrand-Périgord has been credited with the saying, “Revenge is a dish that must be served cold”. This means that vengeance is often more satisfying if it is not exacted immediately. So, is Rio just toying with Dad Longworth before killing him?

Actually, I think something quite different is happening here. When Dad tells Rio he has something he has been wanting to tell him for a long time Rio seems eager to hear what he has to say. As the scene plays out we have a sense that if only Dad would tell Rio the truth, apologize and offer to make it up to him, Rio might forgive him. He seems to be giving Dad a chance to do exactly that. Instead, Dad makes the situation much worse by lying about what really happened. It proves that for all his new look and new position in society, he is still the same man who betrayed his partner five years ago. It is only after the lie is told that Rio becomes determined to take revenge.

Of course, this is the same situation we saw in the first part of The Left Handed Gun in which Sheriff Brady is actually the black hat and Billy The Kid is the white hat. In One-Eyed Jacks, the outlaw Rio is the white hat while the lawman Dad Longworth is the black hat.

Part 6 – This film reminds me of Stagecoach. In Stagecoach, Dallas was a prostitute forced out of her town by the local lawmen at the behest of the Lady’s of the Law and Order League. She asks, “Haven’t I any right to live?”, but no one is interested in protecting her rights, certainly not the lawmen in the town. She is “just a whore”. In Unforgiven, we see that the social status of prostitutes is so low that the “lawman” of the town simply regards the mutilated girl as “damaged property”, which has to be paid for. But Strawberry Alice, the senior prostitute, organizes the other prostitutes into taking up a collection. They put all their money together and offer a reward to anyone who will kill the two cowboys.

The first potential assassin to arrive in town is a very arrogant man called “English Bob”. To put the next excerpt into context in the timeline of the film, the President of the United States, James A. Garfield, has just been assassinated as the nation is about to celebrate the 4th of July, the day America declared independence from Great Britain. It is Bob’s great misfortune that he and Little Bill know each other.

Part 7 – Little Bill Dagget enforces the law in his town through terrible violence. Remember that towns in the old West often hired the toughest man they could find to be their town Marshall or County Sheriff so that he would prevent outlaws from taking over the town or committing crimes. But the question we might ask at this point is whether the cure was worse than the disease. I mean, was it actually worse to have a town controlled by a corrupt lawman like Little Bill, Judge Bean or Dad Longworth or to just have no law at all? Next week we will be screening a film which tries to answer that question, John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.