Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Saving the Ranch

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Ranch near Laramie, WY, 1941 (photo by Marion Post Wolcott)

Anyone who is well acquainted with the Western genre is probably familiar with the plot device of the ranch in peril. Many Western films and stories feature a pretty girl and her father, or a widow, or perhaps a family, trying to keep their mortgaged ranch from being foreclosed upon by the villain of the piece. It’s up to the hero to raise the money, or, alternatively, expose the crookedness of the man holding the mortgage. It’s a plot seen often enough to have become a cliché of the genre. Looking a little closer, though, the time period at which this type of plot became prominent is interesting. From what I’ve seen, it’s not so prevalent in earlier Western fiction (e.g. 1900 through 1920s). Land was sometimes endangered, yes, by range disputes, the elements, and so on, but the mortgage theme in particular had not yet become a cliché. But as I noted in a book review last summer, some collections of Western short stories from the 1930s through the ’50s featured the ranch-in-peril plot in a significant number of the stories.

Several years ago I read a very interesting article (regrettably no longer available to read online) titled “Through the Great Depression on Horseback: Lawyers in Western Films of the 1930s” by Francis M. Nevins Jr. One particular paragraph struck me as illuminating, since I’d watched plenty of the B-Westerns Nevins is referring to, and his comments on the ranch-in-peril theme made perfect sense:

Dozens of Western films of the thirties dealt with the evil banker foreclosing or about to foreclose the mortgage on the ranch that the young lady and her father own. Today we laugh at this as a cliché, but I believe we must keep in mind that this story line wasn’t at all entertaining for the people who were watching these films in little towns in the western and southern and middle states of America during the 1930s. Losing their homes to a bank was the threat that dominated their lives; for many of them, it was reality. These little Western films, remember, were made by people who didn’t have much money, who weren’t making much money, and for people who didn’t have much money and weren’t making much money.

The point about the evil financier is very true. If you’ve watched any amount of this type of Western you’ve probably seen it lots of times, but it takes on new significance if you consider it in its Depression-era historical context. Many of the chief villains were bankers, lawyers, and slick businessmen of one sort or another, often masquerading as honest citizens for most of the film. (My siblings and I inadvertently coined our own term for this type years ago: suit-villain. The kind that always wears a suit and spends most of his time behind a desk scolding his henchmen for their inefficiency. Sometimes wears a thin moustache and often has a derringer hidden in his inside coat pocket.) A sterling example of the crooked banker in the B-Western is 1940’s Texas Stagecoach. Here a banker convinces the owners of a stagecoach line to borrow heavily from him to finance an ambitious road construction project, then has his accomplices maneuver them into a feud with a rival company and sabotage their work so he can eventually foreclose.

The ranch-in-peril was already considered a cliché by the late ’40s, if you go by the criteria that it was ripe for satire. Songwriter Jack Elliott took a poke at it in the tongue-in-cheek number “I Love the West,” sung by Dale Evans in the movie Bells of San Angelo:

…Where the hero, strong and styling
Keeps the little gal from harm.
Fightin’ twenty thousand Indians
Or paying off the mortgage on a farm…

I find it interesting that this plot device persisted even after the Depression ended. Did this plot device became an accepted and integral part of the Western genre because it had been particularly relevant at the time when the genre was developing and rising to great popularity? I‘ve always held that a film (and to some degree, a book or other work of art) bears the mark of the time it was created in some way, whether it’s costumes and hairstyles that reflect the popular fashions of the day instead of the historical period they’re supposed to be from, or, more subtly, the attitudes and opinions of the characters anachronistically reflecting the filmmakers’ modern sensibilities. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy reading old books—they have a flavor of their own time that even the best historical fiction is hard pressed to beat. While 1930s may not have been the only factor in the popularity of the ranch-in-peril plot, it’s fascinating to consider how they may have helped to inform and influence Western film to the degree that they shaped the standards of the genre even afterwards.

Some material in this post is drawn from one published a few years ago on a now-defunct prior blog of mine.

Mrs. Meade’s Colorado

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While working on The Silver Shawl, I did a little browsing online to try and find some pictures of Colorado around the turn of the century, where the story is set. I usually imagine the visuals of a story beforehand, sometimes basing them on things I’ve read rather than something I’ve seen, so I seldom find pictures that match up with the ideas in my mind’s eye. But this time it was different!


This is Manitou Springs, Colorado, around 1902. It looks very much as I picture my fictional town of Sour Springs—only Sour Springs is probably a little smaller.

Click to enlarge

A panorama of Denver circa 1898. All of these pictures are photochrom prints—an early colorization process that produced color images from black-and-white negatives—by the Detroit Photographic Company.

Boulder, Colorado around 1901.
 


Most of these pictures are from photographs taken by William Henry Jackson, the Detroit Photographic Company’s best-known photographer. Here’s the original black-and-white photograph from which this print of Ouray, Colorado circa 1901 was produced.


I was particularly delighted to find this picture of a sunset, which, though taken from Cripple Creek around 1899, very much resembles the sunset over Denver I described in The Silver Shawl.

To see these pictures and eventually more related to the stories, visit the Pinterest board I’ve created for the Mrs. Meade Mysteries. Did I mention that there are going to be more? Yes, another adventure for Mrs. Meade is my current project.

Top Ten Tuesday: Classic Adventure Novels

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I was feeling in the mood for a blog meme of some sort, so I dropped by The Broke and the Bookish to see what was on the menu for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. Turns out that this week is a “freebie,” where everyone picks their own theme. So I decided to shine the spotlight on an old favorite genre of mine—classic novels of adventure! The big, thick, swashbuckling sort, with colorful historical settings, a large cast of characters and plenty of battles and excitement. So without further ado, here’s my top ten in the order of favorites:

Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley
If I had to pick just one favorite novel, it would probably be this one. A tale of English explorers in the Elizabethan era, its multifaceted storyline, memorable characters and sparkling dialogue are just as good every time I re-read it.
The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
I don’t know how close this book is to to the actual exploits of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, but it sure is a good story. Capturing of castles, a treacherous countess, a heroine with an unrequited love, and lots more.
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
And more of the same. The best thing about a big thick novel is the way the various storylines intertwine and supporting characters turn up again in unexpected places. I loved the appearance by Robin Hood, and the comic relief provided by Athelstane, Wamba and Friar Tuck.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The very definition of the classic adventure story! This was a family read-aloud of ours years ago, and everyone’s attention was riveted from start to finish.

Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne
Verne is mainly known for his science fiction, but this is my favorite of his books. Michael Strogoff, the courier of the Czar, must make a perilous trek across Russia during a Tartar rebellion with an important message. Again, there’s some great comic relief from a pair of rival newspaper correspondents who turn up every now and then along the way.
The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This one follows a young English squire and his companions as they travel to France and Spain with a company of archers to fight in the Hundred Years’ War—with battles at sea, jousting, the siege of a castle, and other adventures along the way. The author of Sherlock Holmes knew how to write a good historical adventure too.

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Set during the Wars of the Roses, a tale involving a villainous guardian, a mysterious outlaw band bent on avenging wrongs, and changing of sides between York and Lancaster.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I’ve never viewed this one as typical Dickens. It’s a lot more exciting, and has a somewhat more focused plot than his other sprawling novels. I think perhaps it’s the story’s centering around a particular historical event in the French Revolution that makes the difference.
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

A small group of characters traveling through forests thick with hostile Indians during the French and Indian War, the search for the colonel’s kidnapped daughters…and incidentally, I guess the presence of David Gamut proves that comic relief is an essential ingredient in an adventure story.

Robin Hood by Paul Creswick
This version of Robin Hood is interesting because it takes a different track than the most familiar legends—an original twist on the story of how he became an outlaw, with some newly invented characters and different interpretations of others.
Have you read any of these? What are your favorite classic adventure novels?