Ramrod

Plot synopsis:
Connie Dickason (Veronica Lake) is the strong-willed daughter of a ranch owner (Charles Ruggles), who is under the control of powerful local cattleman Frank Ivey (Preston Foster), a man her father once wanted Connie to marry. Connie instead takes up with a sheep rancher who is run out of town by Ivey. She inherits the man's land.
The conniving and manipulative Connie persuades ranch hand Dave Nash (Joel McCrea) to be her "ramrod," or ranch foreman. He recruits an old pal, Bill Schell (Don DeFore), who bends the law to his own purposes now and then but is fiercely loyal to Dave, to come help him run the ranch and fend off the ruthless Ivey.
Rose Leland (Arleen Whelan) is in love with Dave and he feels great affection toward her. Connie seduces both Dave and Bill to do her bidding, however. She even persuades Bill to stampede her own cattle, without Dave's knowledge, just so Ivey will appear guilty to the law. Sheriff Jim Crew (Donald Crisp) goes to arrest Ivey and is shot down in cold blood. Dave is ambushed by a couple of Ivey's men. He kills one of them, Red Cates (Lloyd Bridges), but is badly wounded. Bill hides him, but Connie carelessly exposes their hideout. Bill volunteers to distract Ivey and his men while Dave turns to Rose for shelter. Ivey hunts down Bill in the mountains and shoots him in the back.
Dave has had enough. He confronts Ivey in the street, armed with only a shotgun, but beats him to the draw. Connie is delighted. At last, she has her land and her man. Dave, though, wants nothing more to do with her, returning to Rose's arms.

Tags: revenge, murder

Review:
Veronica Lake in her memoirs said that Joel McCrea was one of the kindest, most decent men she ever knew or worked with.
Foster's taken a shine to Ruggles daughter Veronica Lake, but she can't stand the sight of him.
When Foster bullies her fiancé out of town, Lake wants vengeance.She's got her own piece of land now and hires Joel McCrea to run it for her.
The range war starts, but Lake thinks McCrea is too soft in his approach.
A windfall for the coroner.As always Joel McCrea is the moral centerpiece of the film, he's once again the gallant western hero.
DeFore who was usually the hero's best friend and a jovial kind of guy, is a violence prone sort of fellow, who Lake manipulates among others.
And it is hard to believe that Charlie Ruggles ever played anyone as serious on film before or since.
Our image of him is usually the henpecked husband opposite Mary Boland from the Thirties.This film is significant for Lake because she married Director Andre DeToth.
DeToth claims to have been married seven times, but only three are listed on his page at IMDb. It was not a happy union, but DeToth did get a good performance out of his bride.Ramrod may be one of the earliest examples of an adult western.
It's that quality that this complex Western turns on, and fortunately Veronica Lake delivers in spades.
There's the reliable Joel McCrea as the good guy, the commanding Donald Crisp as the sheriff, and Don De Fore in a sly role as McCrea's buddy, showing both an easy grin and a tricky set of values.Usually it's two patriarchal land barons who feud over territory.
It's the tiny Lake and bad guy Preston Foster who are duking it out, both fair and foul.
What makes this Western more interesting than most is that Lake and DeFore fit somewhere between the poles of good-guy bad-guy.
It's clear he's bumping against Production Code strictures on what can be shown and what can't.Ramrod is an underrated Western with an adult story-line.
I do want to mention some things that caught me off guard, in a very good way, from the moment the film began.
In reality, we've come in in the middle, not of the film, but of the characters' lives, and the filmmakers allow us to figure out what's going on much as a stranger arriving in town would have to figure out what this drama is that's occurring around him.
For de Toth, Harlan's camera moves almost constantly, innumerable dolly shots (far more than in a typical film of this day) both reveal and obfuscate the settings in such a way as to keep the viewer always a little off-balance as to where the action is moving next.
Joel McCrea is a familiar figure in Western leading roles, but here he's both a reformed drunk and so soft-spoken and comparatively passive as to be almost the antithesis of what we expect.
Veronica Lake gets one soft scene with her hair down and almost peekabooing, but for the rest of the film it's up tight on her head, and she's up tight in the role.
And the best piece of off-beat casting in the film is light comedian Don DeFore as the rascally, promiscuous, and deadly Bill, a gunman with a seductive smile and the grim good humor that one both fears and wants to protect.
There have been bad good-guys like Bill in scores of Westerns before and since, but few with the charisma and style that Don DeFore brings to this one.
All in all, I was amazed by the complexity and shades of gray in this film, which I completely expected to be just another good old shoot-em-up.
Contrary to previous reviews of Ramrod, de Toth's film is much more interesting than a "simple cattle vs.
This is a typical femme fatale archetype taken straight from film noir (realistically, the character  derives from hard-boiled pulp literature which Luke Short fused with his western story).
Connie's strength of character is atypical of the western genre at this stage, and her strength seems to come from the relative weakness of the film's hero, played by Joel McCrea; who seems to lack the strong sense of moral certainty that the typical westerner was founded upon.
Along with Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947), and Robert Wise's Blood on the Moon (1948), Ramrod stands as one of the few hybrids between film noir and the western.
Crucially though, the western genre before this stage was a particularly optimistic one; look at Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939), Dodge City (Michael Curtiz, 1939), or even My Darling Clementine (Ford again, 1946); the three films I mentioned beforehand, including Ramrod, all offer instances of pessimistic worldviews, and morally ambiguous characters and situations, even though they all end with the hero getting the girl and riding into a westward sunset..
This was a surprisingly brutal western, more like a film noir from the late 1940s, with rough characters who shot first and thought later.Among those with the rough attitudes was the female lead, Veronica Lake, who was nearing the end of her short career.
The good guys were played by Joel McCrea and Donald Crisp.Almost everyone in this film gets shot or killed.
Despite her good looks, I can see why she never made it to stardom.I like black-and-white but this was film that would have looked better in some nice Technicolor with the great mountain scenery that was featured..
Veronica Lake is Connie, a woman who has seen all her life her weak father being dominated by Frank Ivey (Preston Foster).
It is a shame that the character of Connie could be not more elaborated, but that would have meant a much longer film.
Lake is great as Connie, she is the star of the film.
A very good western, a bit hard to follow at the beginning..
This 1947 western in black and white could have been just another mediocre Joel McCrea piece of sagebrush like the dozens of Randolph Scott movies I've watched.
For me this was Joel McCrea's best film that I've seen yet, or certainly as good as Guns in the Afternoon (aka Ride the High Country) in which he teamed with Randolph Scott which always gets outstanding reviews.
What was surprising was the performance of the diminutive Veronica Lake of the iconic hair style, although you only get a glimpse near the beginning of it.
Here (married to director Andre De Toth during the making of the movie) she gives a steely performance of some skill, using her sexual allure to persuade men around her to do things according to her will, and very convincing she can be.
Don DeFore an actor I've not seen before, impresses as a friend to help McCrea when he's in trouble and I'm surprised with all the movies I've seen that he somehow escaped me.
The great Donald Crisp, Charlie Ruggles, Ray Teal and Lloyd Bridges all appear in convincing roles.
Being something of a cowboy-junkie and a die-hard fan of Westerns from the 1940s and 50s, I can usually tolerate and excuse a lot of repetitiveness, inconsistencies and flaws in the story lines of these movies, providing, of course, that the direction is strong and that the principle characters appeal to my sense of masculinity and what I believe to be the true "Code of the West".But, with that said, I found Ramrod (which was an unfitting/dumb title) played too much like a "Harlequin Romance" Chick Flick and, due to that, it nearly put me off to sleep with its dull-edged drama and drag-along action.Not only was there some very serious miscasting in this picture (especially that of Veronica Lake, who was more suited for glamor roles in fluffy comedies), but, it also appeared to me that most of the actors were sleepwalking their way through their parts, clearly showing no sign of life or conviction in what they were doing.Mind you, Ramrod certainly did contain some very impressive camera-work in a number of scenes, especially when the action (or lack of it) was taking place out in the beautiful, wide-open country of Utah.Ramrod's far too predictable story was basically the umpteenth re-telling of the same, old tale regarding an intense conflict that's escalating out of control between the powerful cattlemen and the struggling sheep ranchers.
In order to generate some much-needed excitement into Ramrod's snail-paced story, a token barn-burning was even thrown into the mundane mix, for good measure.All-in-all - You can be sure that if actress Veronica Lake hadn't been married to Ramrod's director Andre De Toth at the time, then, she, most likely, would've never, ever been considered for the part of Connie Dickason in a million years.Also - When it came to the likes of Veronica Lake and her co-star Joel McCrae, not only was the chemistry going absolutely nowhere between these 2, but, her tiny, petite stature of only 4' 11" was greatly contrasted by his hefty, towering height of 6' 3".When these two incompatible actors were photographed standing together, Lake looked like a literal midget next to McCrae - And, this, in turn, rendered Lake's already unsubstantial character as being even more insignificant than it already was to begin with..
Charlie Ruggles and Don De Fore do well with their mainly dramatic characters and Veronica Lake (under direction from her husband) is surprisingly ruthless (don't think I was ready for any of this first time round) Interesting Director, Andre' De Toth and his remarkable Director of Photography: Russel Harlan (who's worked on such a vast range of varied topics) create several mesmerizing 'story without words' type situations throughout.
Joel McCrea is marvellous to watch, as one of the most believable righteous men to grace the screen (no doubt about it, the world needs more).Luke Short (real name Frederick Glidden) creates realistic characters and gives them situations to match.
Joel McCrea (the ramrod) 1s the honest cowpoke who comes out of his drunken stupor after losing his family to find his own way.
But his costar, Veronica Lake as Connie Dickason, steals the film as a strong-willed butch-type, who goes against the wishes of her rancher father Ben Dickason (Charles Ruggles) and refuses to marry his choice--the evil Frank Ivey (Preston Foster) and goes for a sheep man.
Evidently, she wants someone she can whip.Well, somehow sheep boy skedaddles out of town and leaves his sheep ranch to his fiancée, who proceeds to fight daddy and Ivey.This is NOT a misogynist Bond movie!
It is a western done by a Hungarian director, which had an interesting script with a lot more than you usually see in a cowboy movie..
Feuding landowners have always been a popular subject matter for the old-school B-movie westerns, and on face value Andre De Toth's Ramrod appears to be cut from very familiar material.
The presence of co-stars Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake no doubt attracted punters charmed six years earlier by their performances in Preston Sturges' masterpiece Sullivan's Travels, and they would be forgiven if they thought they were in for some light-hearted white hat vs.
Based on a story by legendary Western author Luke Short, this is a tough, twisty horse opera that pushes its characters into morally murky territory, sharing more in common with the film noir genre than the tropes of a western.As the film opens, we are already at the boiling point of a conflict between powerful ranch owner Frank Ivey (Preston Foster) and sheepherder Walt Shipley (Ian MacDonald).
Caught in the middle of the feud is Connie Dickason (Lake), the beautiful and headstrong daughter of rancher Ben (Charles Ruggles).
Her father wants Connie to marry Ivey, but she detests his bullying, violent manner and prefers to marry Walt instead.
As it turns out, Walt doesn't have the stomach for a fight and flees town, leaving his Circle 66 ranch to Connie.
Rather than caving to Ivey's demands for the land, Connie hires the stoic Dave Nash (McCrea) as her 'ramrod', or foreman, who feels indebted to Walt for taking him in when he was at his lowest.
He hires the free-spirited Bill Schell (Don DeFore) as back-up, but as Ivey and his gang employ increasingly brutal methods and Connie loses patience with Dave's restraint, alliances are forged and broken as the conflict spirals out of control.Despite the magic they made together working with Sturges, I've never been particularly fond of either McCrea or Lake as actors.
The story is complicated enough to hold your interest for the duration, with supporting characters emerging to play a more important role that you were expecting, and revealing hidden layers that provide plenty of twists and turns.
Indeed, Ramrod would be pretty pedestrian if Dave's methods proved to be the only way, and as his grip on the situation loosens when the back-stabbing and dirty dealings start to play out, the film heads into pure film noir territory.
McCrea is good as the 'old cowhand' that eventually does the right thing.
Joel McRea (Dave) is asked by Veronica Lake (Connie) to protect her sheep-grazing land from town bully Preston Foster (Ivey) who wants it for his cattle.
The Ramrod referred to is McRea as Lake Veronica's central tough guy.
Uh-oh, complications.looks like Lake is moving in on McRea as well.The cast are all good but unfortunately the film is chronically dull.
Having recently been blown away by director de Toth's 1959 film 'Day of the Outlaw', encouraged even to try and read his (vaguely) autobiographical, 'Fragments', I was stunned at how uninteresting or involving this is.
Terrible start, where there would appear to be a missing scene or that we have come in halfway through and find ourselves playing catch-up just to discover what is going on.
The story, as eventually revealed, is really not much at all and to make matters worse, Joel McCrea seems even less interested that us and gives a particularly stiff and flat performance.
As for the much anticipated Veronica Lake - oh dear, was husband de Both intentionally trying to make her look drab and unattractive?
Having only seen her in three films opposite Alan Ladd, whose comparatively small stature made him an ideal screen partner, it was surprising to see the 6' 3" Joel McCrea positively tower above her.
Nevertheless, Lake doesn't let her petite size get in the way of a solid performance, and, indeed, her character is surprisingly malevolent.
Borrowing a leaf from the femme fatales of the film noir style, which was in full swing by the late 1940s, Lake's Connie Dickason is a feisty customer, a pugnacious ranch-woman whose determination to upset the balance of power in her small western town turns her as nasty as the male oppressors whom she so despises.
Yet Connie remains a moderately sympathetic character.If one considers 'Ramrod' as one of the first film noir/westerns, then Connie is the ill-fated hero who knowingly chooses a path of dishonesty, and is condemned by it.
McCrea's Dave Nash, on the other hand, represents the Western side of the story, a washed-up cowboy who, against all odds, chooses the path of nobility, pursuing justice strictly through honourable (and legal) channels.
This blending of genres yields the film an interesting thematic tone, I think, though the story itself is so familiar that there are few surprises to be had along the way.
While it starred Joel McCrea (who made quite a few nice westerns), the rest of the cast was just bizarre--so bizarre you almost think that the studio deliberately picked the worst possible actors for the film!
First, the petulant and very strong-willed woman of the west is played by Miss Peek-a-boo herself, Veronica Lake.
Not only is she too small for such a role, but she still sports a variation on her fashion-setting 1940s hair--which looked totally out of place in the old West Second, her father was played by, of all people, Charlie Ruggles!
And, finally, Don Defore (Mr. B from "Hazel") was cast as a bad-man--a guy who liked to shoot first and ask questions....well, never!
As for the plot, it is quite different--and considering they made a billion or more westerns, this is a very good thing!
The film begins with Ruggles magnanimously having his daughter's fiancé beaten up and chased out of town.
Too bad that the virtuous Joel McCrea is working for her and is pulled right into the middle of this mess.
I wasn't sure fond of this film, however, because of its odd-ball plot--the odd-ball casting that made the characters tough to believe.
Not really a feminist flick, more of a film noir western.
Veronica Lake, as Connie, is the head-strong daughter of rancher Ben Dickason(Charles Ruggles), who refuses to do her father's bidding, in marrying their prosperous neighboring rancher, Frank Ivey((Preston Foster), as Ivey would like.
Thus, her short-term solvency looks bleak at film's end.
In this vendetta-riddled story, Ivey was a bad guy in that he ordered the burning of Connie's ranch house, to spite her rejection of him, thus beginning the vendetta.
In turn, McCrea shot Ives in a street standoff, because he had killed Bill, and the sheriff, and because McCrea had shot the man falsely accused of shooting the sheriff.Looked at from a feminist perspective, we can compare Veronica's role with that of Betty Hutton and Doris Day, in the early '50s musical comedies "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Calamity Jane", respectively, as well as Doris in "The Ballad of Josie", from the late '60s.
In the present film, Veronica wanted to show that she could wrangle a ranch out of someone other than Ives, and make it work, although she relied on males to do the dirty work.
Hence, she is a different type of feminist example compared to the other ladies.Of course, McCrea and Veronica had worked together previously in the acclaimed "Sullivan's Travels".See it in B&W at YouTube.