The Plainsman

The master of movie spectacle Cecil B. De Mille goes West. Using three legends of the old west as its protagonists (they probably never met),Gary Cooper is portraying Wild Bill Hickock,James Ellison as Buffalo Bill and Jean Arthur does make a nice Calamity Jane. The story serves only for De Mille to hang some marvelous action sequences on, like the big Indian attack.Scenes like that are extremely well done.If you don't mind the somewhat over-the-top performances of the cast this is an very entertaining western.Look out for a very young Anthony Quinn essaying the role of an Indian brave who participated at the battle of Little Big Horn.This part got him at least noticed in Hollywood.

Surely the only Western featuring Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill Cody, George Custer, and Abraham Lincoln! After a slow start, it hits its stride for a while but eventually runs out of ideas and seems to go on forever. Cooper tries hard to make Hickok come alive and Arthur brings her usual spunk to Calamity Jane but Ellison is over matched as Buffalo Bill. DeMille's direction is uninspired; it seems he was more interested in creating an epic than telling a good story. There is enough decent material here that a good director and editor could have turned it into an exciting movie of about 90 minutes. Sadly, Burgess, who plays Mrs. Cody in her film debut, died a year later at age 20.

Leonard Maltin calls this one "Cecil B. DeMille hokum." It's true! Totally historically inaccurate and implausible, but great fun to watch. I doubt very much if Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, George Custer and President Lincoln ever met or even had lunch together, but it sure makes for a good yarn! A Saturday-afternoon "Western" in every respect. Lots of Indians and a very contrived battle scene with plenty of action. "Gabby" Hayes is there to complete the all-star cast. Look for a young Anthony Quinn playing an Indian. Garry Cooper and Jean Arthur play Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, the star-crossed lovers. The Indians speak in typical bad English. The plot is totally ridiculous and involves capture by Indians, betrayal, and "The Code of the West." Which, in this case, means it's o.k. to shoot soulless Indians but not horse soldiers; as Wild Bill finds out. Great fun until the sad ending when our hero "bites the dust." But he appears in the very last scene, a-shootin' and a-fightin', his way into the sunset. A great transfer by Deluxe Video (Fox). Sharp and crisp with very few scratches or dust.(Look at how awful the trailer looks by comparison.) A typical early Western. Barely a drop of blood is shown on the screen except for a busted skull! Don't be fooled by the color cover--It's in glorious black and white. Once again, thank you TCM for running black and white movies.

At the close of the US Civil War, girl-shy Gary Cooper (as "Wild" Bill Hickok), fellow frontiersman James Ellison (as "Buffalo" Bill Cody), and feisty blonde Jean Arthur (as "Calamity" Jane Canary) battle Native American Indians and greedy gunrunner Charles Bickford (as John Lattimer). Mr. Ellison handles himself exceptionally well alongside Mr. Cooper, already a huge box office star, and young Helen Burgess (as Louisa) does well in the debut of her unfortunately brief film career. Speaking with forked-tongues, young Anthony Quinn and George "Gabby" Hayes have small but notable roles as an Injun and victim. The film starts by helpfully disclaiming, "The story that follows compresses many years, many lives, and widely separated events into one narrative - in an attempt to do justice to the courage of The Plainsman of our west." This film is far from historically accurate. While mannered and obvious, the handsome production benefits from beautiful visual framing by director Cecil B. DeMille and the Paramount studios crew. ****** The Plainsman (11/16/36) Cecil B. DeMille ~ Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Ellison, Charles Bickford

Cecil B. deMille really knew how to create a classic, and after 7 decades his western comes across as the Real McCoy, engrossing, entertaining, spectacular; in no way outdated. As a real fan of TV's DEADWOOD, I'll tell you the performances of Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickock and Jean Arthor as Calamity Jane are far more on-target. We don't have any giants in Hollywood anymore. PLAINSMAN is just one of dozens of classics from the 1936-1945 decade that have seen enduring commercial life decade after decade: released, re-issued, re-issued all over again. Filmmakers like today's Spielberg, Jackson, Bruckheimer are like kids playing in a sandbox. None of today's movies will be sought out in 7 months let alone 70 years.

With the end of the North American Civil War, the manufacturers of repeating rifles find a profitable means of making money selling the weapons to the North American Indians, using the front man John Lattimer (Charles Bickford) to sell the rifles to the Cheyenne. While traveling in a stagecoach with Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur) and William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (James Ellison) and his young wife Louisa Cody (Helen Burgess) that want to settle down in Hays City managing a hotel, Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper) finds the guide Breezy (George Hayes) wounded by arrows and telling that the Indians are attacking a fort using repeating rifles. Hickok meets Gen. George A. Custer (John Miljan) that assigns Buffalo Bill to guide a troop with ammunition to help the fort. Meanwhile the Cheyenne kidnap Calamity Jane, forcing Hickok to expose himself to rescue her. The dated "The Plainsman" is a great deception, with a pretentious and shallow story without historical accuracy, "politically incorrect" in the present days and a terrible screenplay that wastes Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. Their performances are below average with awful characters. The best part is the beginning, with the inception of the lobby of the greedy manufacturers of weapons using the repeating rifles to provide Indian (and also "white man") annihilation in the name of the pockets full of money. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Jornadas Heróicas" ("Heroic Journeys")

After the failure of "The Crusades" at the box office, Cecil B. DeMille stopped doing films about non-American history. His films for the next thirteen years were about our history from Jean Lafitte to World War II (Dr. Wassell). The first in order of production was this film, starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok, with Jean Arthur as Calamity Jane. James Ellison was Buffalo Bill, John Miljan (not a villain as usual) was General George A. Custer, and Anthony Quinn was one of the Indians who fought at Little Big Horn. The villains were led by Charles Bickford (selling arms to the Indians) and Porter Hall as Jack McCall (who killed Wild Bill Hickok). Basically the film takes up the history of the U.S. after the Civil War. Lincoln is shown at the start talking about what is the next step now that Lee has surrendered. Lincoln talks about the need to secure the west (more about this point later). Then he announces he has to go to the theater. That April 14th must have been very busy for Abe - in "Virginia City" he grants a pardon to Errol Flynn at the request of Miriam Hopkins on the same date. Actually, while Lincoln was concerned about the West, his immediate thoughts on the last day of his Presidency were about reunifying the former Confederate states and it's citizens into the Union as soon as possible. It was Reconstruction that occupied his attention, not the west (except for the problems of Maximillian and his French controlled forces in Mexico against Juarez). But he had been involved in actual problems with the West. In 1862 he sent disgraced General John Pope, the loser at Second Manassas, to Minnesota to put down a serious Indian war by the Sioux (the subject of McKinley Kantor's novel, "Sprit Lake". Pope, incompetent against Lee and Jackson, turned out to be quite effective here, and the revolt was smashed. However, with all Lincoln's actual attention to western problems, it is doubtful that he says (as Cooper repeats at least once), "The frontier should be secure." There is nothing to say he could not have said it, but it is hardly a profound pronouncement by a leading statesman. Like saying, Teddy Roosevelt said, "Eat a good breakfast every morning for your health." It is not a profound statement of policy. It is, at best, a statement of recognizable fact. Cooper turning it into a minor mantra, like Lincoln's version of the Monroe Doctrine, is ridiculous...typical of the way DeMille's scripts have really bad errors of common sense in them. However, this is not a ruinous mistake. "The Plainsman" is an adventure film, and as such it has the full benefit of DeMille the film creator of spectacle. As such it is well worth watching. But not as a textbook on Lincoln's political ideas or his quotable legacy.

I really wanted to like this western, being a fan of the genre and a fan of "Buffalo Bill," "Wild Bill Hickok," and "Calamity Jane," all of whom are in this story! Add to the mix Gary Cooper as the lead actor, and it sounded great. The trouble was.....it wasn't. I found myself looking at my watch just 40 minutes into this, being bored to death. Jean Arthur's character was somewhat annoying and James Ellison just did not look like nor act like "Buffalo Bill." Cooper wasn't at his best, either, sounding too wooden. This was several years before he hit his prime as an actor. In a nutshell, his western shot blanks. Head up the pass and watch another oater because most of 'em were far better than this one.

Trailer—The Plainsman

Cecil B. deMille really knew how to create a classic, and after 7 decades his western comes across as the Real McCoy, engrossing, entertaining, spectacular; in no way outdated. As a real fan of TV's DEADWOOD, I'll tell you the performances of Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickock and Jean Arthor as Calamity Jane are far more on-target. We don't have any giants in Hollywood anymore. PLAINSMAN is just one of dozens of classics from the 1936-1945 decade that have seen enduring commercial life decade after decade: released, re-issued, re-issued all over again. Filmmakers like today's Spielberg, Jackson, Bruckheimer are like kids playing in a sandbox. None of today's movies will be sought out in 7 months let alone 70 years.