It’s very easy for bookworms to get into animated discussions over frankly and frustratingly inaccurate movie adaptations. Today, I’m doing something a little different: I’m going to examine the case of the adaptation that looks accurate on the surface, but in less obvious ways, shifts the theme or message of the story to something quite different than what the author seemed to intend. I’m sure this happens in every genre, but for the purpose of this series, I’m taking a look at two Western movies where this shift really jumped out at me when I’d both read the original stories and watched the adaptations.
Fair warning: I’ll be discussing the plots of the original stories and the movies in detail, so if you want to avoid spoilers, you’d best scuttle off and read or watch them first!
Paso Por Aqui and Four Faces West (1948)
Paso Por Aqui (which is Spanish for “passed by here” or “passed this way,” from a reference to Inscription Rock in the story) is Eugene Rhodes’ best-known work, a novella originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1926. Twenty-two years later it was adapted into a movie titled Four Faces West (the meaning of that title as applied to the story still isn’t exactly clear to me). In both book and film, a man named Ross McEwen robs a bank and flees from the law across the New Mexican desert. In the course of his flight he comes across a Mexican family suffering with diphtheria, and stays to nurse them and save their lives, ultimately meaning that pursuit will catch up with him.
The Two McEwens
In the novella, McEwen is a young man, red-headed, sanguine, on the daring or reckless side; with no apparent motive for robbing the bank except, of course, the usual one of coming away with money. Early in the story, nearly cornered by the initial posse pursuing him, he cuts his losses and dumps the stolen money, giving himself a chance to get away while the posse peels off to collect the fluttering bills. For a while McEwen plays cat-and-mouse with subsequent pursuers, keeping up a running commentary on the game and the landscape to his horse; and then finally, exhausted after a rough desert crossing, arrives at the door of the diphtheria-stricken family.
In Four Faces West we meet McEwen (Joel McCrea), who comes across as a little older and more sedate personality, robbing a bank for money to pay off his father’s mortgage. The money is sent off to fulfill its purpose rather than dumped to divert a posse.
The most flat-out deviation from the original plot is the introduction of a love interest, Miss Hollister (Frances Dee), an Eastern nurse whom McEwen meets while on the lam (a more sedate flight, by train and wagon). Miss Hollister is in fact a character in the original story, but one who has been made over to serve a totally different purpose. In Paso Por Aqui she is a side character, still a nurse (with a separate love interest of her own) whose function is to show New Mexico through Eastern eyes, who hears the story of McEwen’s robbery and initial flight told by a pleasant-mannered Mexican gambler named Monte. In the film Monte (Joseph Calleia) becomes a rather enigmatic, entertaining character who travels alongside McEwen and Miss Hollister for part of their journey, and seems to have a shrewd idea just who McEwen is but covers for him in order to preserve a source of amusement.
When McEwen eventually confesses his identity and guilt to Miss Hollister, she first pleads with him to repay the money and turn himself in, then impulsively joins him in a horseback flight across the desert, in a rather confusing montage that tracks their progress miles across a map, but all seems to take place on the same afternoon. After they are separated, McEwen’s journey mostly parallels the novella again up through his encounter with the stricken family.
(Ironically, the one scene that most viewers would probably dismiss as unrealistic—the part where McEwen rides a bull to avoid leaving horse tracks—is straight out of the novella; though of course it’s a much more involved and difficult business in the book than in the movie.)
Continuation or Change
In the movie, there is never any question in our minds but that McEwen will stop to save the Mexican family. He has been presented as an essentially “good,” decent man who committed a crime for a noble reason and plans to atone for it one day. Stopping to save the dying family is just one more noble sacrifice. Yet when the devil-may-care, risk-taking McEwen of the novella arrives at their door, he makes the same choice with a striking lack of authorial comment or sentimentality, almost as if he had no choice.
“I am here to help you,” said McEwen.
The film-McEwen only does what we always expected him to do. But the book-McEwen is humbled and changed by the experience. He is shamed by overhearing the sick woman offer a prayer for him naming him as the “enviado” (envoy) of God; and when the old man refers to “the mercy of God which sent you here”—
McEwen seemed much struck by this last remark…“So that was it!” he said. “I see! Always heard tell that God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. I’d tell a man he does!”
Both book and film end with McEwen riding off beside sheriff Pat Garrett (Charles Bickford), who has at last inevitably caught up with him. But with a difference. In the film McEwen rides off with Garrett to serve his time for the robbery, promising to return to his lady-love afterwards. In the book, he rides off unaware of Garrett’s true identity, not realizing that Garrett is conniving at his safe escape from the territory and journey home. As Monte explains it to Miss Hollister [book’s written dialect softened for this quotation]:
“Because, this young fellow is take shame for this bad life, an’ he say to himself, ‘I will arise and go to my papa.'”
One ends with a man who has committed a crime for a “noble” reason on his way to expiate it. The other ends with a formerly thoughtless outlaw who has been altered by his experiences being given a second chance. Neither outcome, of course, is perfect in a moral sense. There’s still just a whiff of the idea in the original story that McEwen’s act of saving the stricken family helps to atone for his earlier deeds, and that’s partly why Garrett helps him escape. But ironically, it’s the ending that satisfies the Production Code which seems to imply that a “good” man can commit a crime and remain essentially good, with no real revolution in his character, so long as he squares accounts neatly in the end.
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
I should preface this by saying that 3:10 to Yuma is one of the most gorgeously filmed black-and-white Western movies I’ve ever seen—yes, right up there with or even above My Darling Clementine. If I was writing a post on how a good Western movie should look, I’d doubtless fill it with screencaps from this one. And the last half-minute or so of the movie is positively goosebump-inducing. But aside from that, I’m afraid anyone who really loves this movie is going to want to jump on me with both feet at the end of this post!
“Three-Ten to Yuma” by Elmore Leonard was published in Dime Western Magazine in 1953. Leonard was another 20th-century author who, like Louis L’Amour, was interested in his subject and did his research well. He’s not precisely of the Old West himself; you can catch an occasional whiff of a mid-20th-century phrase or attitude; but he writes mainly of crisp, practical, hard-nosed characters who are well able to take care of themselves without positively being superheroes.
Again, both the story and its film adaptation turn on the same basic plot point: a single armed man tasked with escorting a handcuffed outlaw to Yuma Territorial Prison. They wait in a hotel room for the arrival of the 3:10 train to Yuma, well aware that the prisoner’s gang may try to rescue him before the hour comes—which the prisoner uses as leverage to try and bribe his guard into letting him escape.
In the original story the guard, Paul Scallen, is a deputy marshal. Hence the sole moral conflict lies between a man’s resolve to go through with the job he’s been entrusted with and paid to do, versus a chance at self-preservation in the face of danger—a better chance of returning safely to his wife and children at home. The crux of the story is pretty much found in this passage, which comes after all outlaw Jim Kidd’s attempts at bribery have failed, and after Scallen has protected him from unofficial vengeance in the form of a man who believes Kidd killed his brother:
Most of the time he stared at Scallen. His face bore a puzzled expression, making his eyes frown, and sometimes he would cock his head as if studying the deputy from a different angle…
…“I don’t understand you. You risk your neck to save my life, now you’ll risk it again to send me to prison.”
A short story is often a good medium to adapt into film. There’s enough room in a movie’s running time to fit all the events of the story, plus room to “open it up” and develop characters and themes a little more. You more often find things added in a movie adapted from a short story than things left out. The movie version of 3:10 to Yuma basically follows that pattern—adds things, shows things only mentioned in the story, tries to make the lead characters more complex. The biggest change is that deputy marshal Scallen is transformed into rancher Dan Evans (Van Heflin), who undertakes the job of guarding the outlaw (renamed Ben Wade) for a $200 bounty that may save his ranch from bankruptcy. Ostensibly, this raises the stakes, and strengthens the temptation of the bigger bribe Wade (Glenn Ford) offers him. But it subtly skews the whole conflict of the story, as we’ll see in a minute…
The Cowardly Townsman Again
Oh, boy. This movie has High Noon syndrome and then some. From the very beginning, average citizens get chills and fever when Ben Wade’s name is so much as mentioned. We’re treated to not one, but two sets of townsfolk who occasionally make the citizenry in High Noon look like models of self-possession by contrast. Credit the first set at least with crafting the scheme to smuggle Ben Wade out of town and carrying it through. But the second set cravenly makes tracks after just one look at the outlaw gang—even though by their own count they’re only outnumbered by two men, and are well armed with rifles! Even the brother of the stage driver whom Kidd/Wade is supposed to have killed, just moments after being prevented from attacking the outlaw prisoner, turns right around and begins to stammer and invent excuses when asked if he’ll help foil the gang’s rescue plans.
All this is pure embellishment not even hinted at in the original story. Scallen neither expects help nor asks for it. The only person in the story to exhibit this sort of self-centered nervous reluctance is an employee of the stagecoach company (not the owner, as in the film) whose sole job was to book the hotel room. The movie even has to shoehorn in a reason for Wade being kept at the hotel: because a man living closer to the railway depot was afraid to let them wait in his house.
This attitude is also brought out in a way in the portrayal of protagonist Dan Evans. From the opening scene, Evans is subtly cast as less-than: because he’s just an ordinary rancher and family man, he’s not in the same league of skill or courage as the outlaws. Because he couldn’t stop a robbery by a dozen armed men, while unarmed himself? The conversation with his wife (Leora Dana) which follows, in which she talks a little vaguely about how awful it is that people “have to stand by and watch,” seems both a little too obvious and a little ridiculous. All through the film, there’s that undercurrent of implication that delivering Wade to Yuma has become a matter of pride for Evans—a matter of proving his own worth, of making his family proud of him; not merely a question of maintaining his honesty in the face of bribes, or of resolve to finish the job he’s agreed to.
The Anti-Villain
But I think what amazed me and put me off the most about the movie version of 3:10 to Yuma is that where its primary villain is concerned, the film’s moral compass is pretty much spinning crazily.
In the short story, Jim Kidd is a fairly standard outlaw. He’s shrewd, not without humor, and can show appreciation for what he sees as admirable qualities in another man, but he shows no hint of remorse or compunction for his outlaw activities, nor any other signs of a hidden heart of gold. The movie’s Ben Wade, on the other hand, seems to be cast as a somehow attractive character from the first—not because of anything he does, but from the levels of awe, sympathy or affection with which various other characters behave toward him. There’s actually a startling difference between story and film in Kidd/Wade’s actual culpability, which highlights just how much the moral outlook in film had changed since Four Faces West not even a decade before. In the story, Kidd was acquitted by a jury of being the man who pulled the trigger in the robbery where the stage driver was killed. In the movie, we actually see Wade shoot the driver and one of his own gang in cold blood.
And yet, the script, the camera, everything, seems to bathe him in sympathy. He’s able to momentarily charm even Evans’ wife—who presumably knows he’s a murderer—with pretty speeches. The soft-spoken barmaid (Felicia Farr) with whom he has a romantic dalliance along the way doesn’t show any change in her feelings toward him after finding out that he’s an outlaw who has just killed a man. In fact, we aren’t even allowed see her reaction when he’s arrested in her presence; but her manner toward him is still exactly the same afterwards. The film never gives us any warning signal that anyone is flirting with danger by allowing themselves to be charmed into forgetfulness of what Wade really is.
Part of the problem may be owing to the casting and performance of Glenn Ford. His Wade is smooth, smiling and almost cheerful from the first, and he plays the scenes of tantalizing and pressuring Evans with bribes in a teasing, joking, bantering way. What the part needs for Wade to be a really effective villain is a gleam of genuine menace lurking behind the continual grin (the way a Humphrey Bogart type, say, could play a villain as unquestionably vicious but darkly entertaining at the same time).
Like Four Faces West, story and movie end in essentially the same way—with Scallen/Evans getting his man safely on the train—but with a difference. In the story Jim Kidd doesn’t give up on escape till the very last second, and it’s Scallen’s decisive action that actually gets him on the train. In the movie, however, it’s not-so-subtly implied that Ben Wade helps Evans maneuver safely through the streets to the depot, and at the last second he chooses to ignore his gang’s shouts to duck away from his captor. To me, this doesn’t make sense, because we aren’t shown that Wade has undergone any notable change of heart. The closest thing to a difference we get is one shot of him listening with a rather weary expression to Evans’s wife begging her husband to give up the dangerous job, possibly feeling a touch of pity for her. But I don’t think it’s quite enough. As with Joel McCrea’s version of Ross McEwen, we’re not given any indication that Ben Wade has essentially changed from the man he was at the beginning of the movie.
Conclusion
In the end, the question I’m looking at here is not so much whether the movies or the original stories are better. Though I do have my own opinions on that, I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d be ready to debate me on the ideological points I’ve touched upon. What I’ve primarily been attempting to demonstrate is how much a movie adaptation can differ in theme from its source material, even if it dramatizes the same main incidents and even uses a lot of the same dialogue. And the question to ponder, as it applies to this series on the Western, is this: was this quasi-rewriting of its source materials yet another way that the genre moved imperceptibly further away from its roots in reality?
Next time: Yellow Sky (1948) and the Western as film noir.
Suzannah says
This is a really fascinating series, Elisabeth! Thank you for taking the time to write it!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Oh, you’re welcome! It’s been quite an interesting learning experience for me too, following out all these trains of thought.
Annie says
Great post, and some wonderful observations! Enjoyed it immensely!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Thanks so much!
J. R. Lindermuth says
Enjoying your insights, Elisabeth. One thing that bothers me about both the original and the re-make of 3:10 is why it was even necessary to change Scallen’s profession. Wouldn’t the bribe offer test the morality of a lawman as much as it might that of a rancher?
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Thank you very much! Yes, I’ve always thought that too—it almost gives a simple but compelling situation more complexity than it needs.
Hamlette says
I suspect we’re never going to agree about 3:10 to Yuma. Maybe it’s because I view it more as a western film noir than a typical western film?
I love the fact that, by casting the more attractive and charismatic actor as the bad guy, the filmmakers force us to consider what draws us to a character. Conventional casting would put Glenn Ford in the good guy’s boots and make Van Heflin the heavy, and certainly the movie would have worked that way as well — but it wouldn’t have been nearly so interesting. By twisting expectations, the filmmakers force audiences to really examine what good and evil are. Like Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “one may smile and smile, and be a villain.” Glenn Ford’s Ben Wade is one of the best examples of such, so charming and courteous, and yet so bad.
By making Dan Evans a struggling farmer, they give us a character the average person can relate to. He’s not a soldier or a lawman, just a regular joe like me and you. He has no higher calling, like Will Kane in High Noon, to serve out law and order, he’s just a guy trying to earn the money to save his home. Does he want to do the right thing? Yes, but he’s not bound to it by an oath and a calling the way a regular lawman would be. I think if he were actually deputy marshal like in the story, audiences would turn against him if he seriously considered Wade’s bribery offers. He would still be human, but that would make him seem less honorable, and the temptation for audiences then would be to actually begin rooting for Wade instead.
I need to watch High Noon again to see if the “cowardly townspeople” thing still bothers me the way it did when I was in my twenties. I loved it as a teen, disliked it in my twenties, and haven’t watched it since. I really should. Because the “cowardly townspeople” in 3:10 to Yuma don’t turn me against the film, not at all. I don’t like them, but I also don’t dislike the film because of them. And I’d like to study what it is that makes the difference.
In the end, I think both of them were reflecting the world in which they were made, not the world in which they were set. It’s hard for us today to realize just how fearful people were in 1950s America. Communism was a very real, present, scary danger, as was the threat of nuclear annihilation. Movies like 3:10 to Yuma tell me a lot about what people feared most — a strong and ruthless bad guy, but one who behaved so nicely you didn’t necessarily know he was bad. And people around you who did not stand up and help you in your time of need, but worried about themselves instead of all working together against a common enemy the way they had in the 1940s. Because they’re fiction and not history, that doesn’t bother me a bit as being “misrepresentational” of actual westerners. I don’t think actual Danish princes spoke and behaved the way Hamlet does just because Shakespeare wrote them that way, and I don’t think people in the west behaved the way they do in movies and books written in the 20th and 21st centuries, and I’m okay with that difference. (I’m also okay with you not being okay with it.)
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
I was kinda thinking of you when I wrote that introductory paragraph. 🙂
Oh, I completely agree about the possibilities of a villain who appears attractive on the surface! Where I think the movie version of 3:10 to Yuma fails is in not giving a clear enough indication of the badness behind Wade’s smile, or at least giving a moment where the characters in the film realize clearly that it’s there. For instance, in (the book) Treasure Island, Long John Silver is seen as a smiling, cheerful, mild-mannered and likable man, up to the point where Jim Hawkins overhears him talking in his true character and realizes what he really is. I think with a film which makes the villain too charismatic and the hero a plain main (in both senses), the average moviegoer who’s not going into it already prepared to seriously evaluate moral questions, but just to be entertained, will instinctively end up feeling more sympathy for the villain.
Regarding Evans, I guess my thoughts in a nutshell are: why can’t a lawman be as much of an everyman character as a rancher (as indeed I think Scallen is in the original story)? And why is it necessary to portray the everyman character as outclassed whenever he makes a (physical or moral) stand for right?
On the Shakespeare analogy, don’t quote me on this because I am by no means a Shakespeare expert, but I was never under the impression that his plays (except maybe some featuring real historical characters) were intended to convey any degree of accuracy. That is to say, plays like Hamlet and The Tempest don’t seem to be laid in any recognizable century or place. But with American westerns, we’re usually given dates and locations; we’re dealing with a recognizable piece of history; so unless it’s made very clear that a book/film is meant to be some sort of stylized fantasy or allegory, I think the writer has a responsibility to try and be true to the era he’s depicting.
I can see where you’re coming from with the idea of the cowardly-townsman issue reflecting the spirit of the times…but I’ve got just one question there. What happened to the Greatest Generation? What happened to the supposedly strong generation who grew up through the Depression and fought a world war…who were still around in the 1950s?
My own theory is that the popular arts of the times took pains to convince the average citizen, by portraying them that way as a class in fiction/film, that they ought to be terrified of everything and couldn’t be trusted to take care of themselves. If you look at it that way and trace the progress of American society to today, it seems to have succeeded.