While watching the little known Rocky Mountain (1950) recently, I was reminded of a flippant remark made by Bette Davis about Errol Flynn in an interview a long time after his untimely death at age fifty in 1959. Booked, no doubt, on a television talk show where the notoriously blunt movie star was intended to entertain with her sharp insights into the “golden age of Hollywood”, Davis held forth on numerous topics about her years on top of the heap. When asked about her reluctance to appear opposite Errol Flynn,  she opined with practiced casualness that “He was just beautiful”, and “he himself openly said that ‘I don’t know anything about acting’ and I admire his honesty, because he was absolutely right.”

Naturally, that studio audience did what was expected and laughed at her superficial, salty comment, apparently agreeing with her dismissal of his talent. This kind of self-deprecating remark seems to have been made fairly regularly by Flynn during his life and repeated for years after his death to amuse others. Few people seemed to have wondered if Errol Flynn, who may have been far more sensitive than he let on in public,  may actually have been a conscientious actor as well as a movie star. Davis is said to have amended her comment later, perhaps recognizing Flynn‘s unique contributions to movies and defending her former co-star publicly from some of the more scurrilous rumors spread about him. Perhaps her amended remarks reflected a deeper understanding  of her  co-star in The Sisters (1938) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), (Davis had wanted Laurence Olivier as her co-star in the latter movie). If evidence were needed to confirm that Errol Flynn, the ultimate romantic swashbuckler on screen for many years was also a thoughtful actor, capable of holding your attention in quieter moments as well as dashing ones, Rocky Mountain may be one of the best arguments for this overlooked quality in his work.

While enjoying the swashbuckling aspects of Errol Flynn‘s movies,  I’d noticed over time that there were reflective moments in several of his characterizations that hint at a working actor capable of being much more than an action figure. These moments are often found in some of his better scenes in Dawn Patrol (1938) as the WWI pilot commander trying to live with his decisions, in his wistful characterization of a wastrel in the soapy, but interesting The Sisters (1938), in Gentleman Jim (1942) as the boxer Jim Corbett, musing on the vagaries of fame, and in the gritty desperation of his character in two wartime films, Edge of Darkness (1943) and Uncertain Glory (1944), reluctantly faced with a life that is a series of hard choices. Not surprisingly, Flynn was working with some of the best directors he would meet in his career in these movies, among them, Edmund Goulding, Anatole Litvak, Raoul Walsh, and Lewis Milestone. Though Errol Flynn would give a few moving performances in deeply flawed movies during the last years of his life, especially in his homage to his friend John Barrymore in Too Much, Too Soon (1958), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and The Sun Also Rises (1957), these opportunities exploited Flynn‘s own tragic descent as much as they showed the still brilliant charisma he possessed just before his death. In the quietly memorable portrayal that Flynn gives in the small scale movie, Rocky Mountain, I was reminded of those earlier moments in other films in which a good actor as well as a movie star was present on the screen.

Rocky Mountain (1950) is part of the newly issued dvd set from Warner Brothers, called The Errol Flynn Westerns Collection (which also includes Virginia City (1940), San Antonio (1945) and  Montana (1950).  Flynn, who reportedly found his casting in westerns highly unlikely and, at best, amusing, was certainly a colorful presence in the fictionalized old West and this small scale entry is not a great movie, despite the fact that his subdued performance is haunting. He rode exceptionally well and threw himself into the spirit of things for several years, at least until the retreaded plots began to wear thin for him as well. Most of those earlier western films in this set, which were often written by Robert Buckner,  seem to be almost the same movie, but are enjoyable as noisy, rambunctious, roaring “boy’s life” excursions into the genre, sometimes filmed in lurid technicolor in marvelous settings; and there are the added pluses of members of the Warner Brothers stock company repeatedly popping up; including spotting Humphrey Bogart as a wholly spurious character in Virginia City. The attempts to make Flynn a cowboy star also required repeated explanations about his unlikely accent, his polished appearance, and manner. That posh, vaguely English speech of the star was usually explained away in these Westerns as an indication of his “Irishness”, “globetrotting” or, in Montana, at least, in which he was cast as a sheep baron, he is allowed to actually be an Australian for once, (Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania off the coast of Southern Australia in 1909, a fact that most studio publicists rarely explained, probably believing, with their usual contempt for the public, that they couldn’t grasp this “unfamiliar” place of origin. While never exactly a “sheep baron”, he had, as he enjoyed explaining, been a sheep castrator at one time). Errol Flynn‘s horsemanship, his remarkable ability to make what were even then the most cliched of lines fresh and real, and his largely unappreciated yet uncanny ability to take his audience along with him on any imaginary adventure stood him in good stead in most of his movies, including the sometimes formulaic Westerns in this new set. In them Flynn is most often heroic, confident and a moral figure whose actions bring order to the chaotic wilderness–all while entertaining young and old and filling the coffers of Warner Brothers very nicely. Rocky Mountain was a story first found by then B level Warner Brothers star Ronald Reagan, who had been promised the leading role after assisting in acquiring and developing the project for his studio.  With the legal, financial and political pressures increased on the failing studio system after the end of World War Two, the film was budgeted modestly and contract player Lauren Bacall had been assigned the feminine lead. Rejecting the part, Ms. Bacall went on suspension for the sixth time at Warner Brothers rather than accept the role. The struggling Reagan, who believed that Jack Warner had promised him the part of the leader of the small band in Rocky Mountain, was deeply disappointed to learn that Errol Flynn, Reagan’s co-star in the lively western story incorporating John Brown (played with marvelous brio by Raymond Massey) and “Bloody Kansas” into the frontier mix in Santa Fe Trail (1940), had instead been assigned the lead in “his” movie.

Rocky Mountain (1950) is one of the few Errol Flynn movies that has almost gone unseen in the 58 years since it was filmed. This is unfortunate since it is notable for several reasons, not least of which is the world-weary dignity–yes, you read that correctly, dignity, that Flynn brings to his role of “Lafe Barstow”, a leader of a small band of Confederate soldiers on an impossible mission in the last year of the American Civil War.  Like most of the millions who have been royally entertained by Errol Flynn throughout a movie-watching lifetime, relishing everything from Captain Blood (1935) on, the man was just such a joy to watch move. I can’t honestly say that I truly thought of him as a romantic object–he was much more visceral than that. As a movie goer, he was the spirit of adventure in human form. As an observer, I–and I suspect most viewers, wanted to be that lithe, youthfully spritelike creature Errol Flynn was on screen. This idealized image may be one of several reasons why many of his later films are sometimes discouraging to watch as his all-too-human flaws inevitably became clearer. After recently seeing the overblown spectacle a self-parodying Flynn in the Vincent Sherman-directed The Adventures of Don Juan (1948), I was not expecting anything particularly enjoyable in Rocky Mountain, which came two years later. Apparently, Flynn, who appears to be much fitter and more alert during this movie, had yet to lose the physical resiliency that sustained him for years, despite his abuse of his health.

With realistic guidance of the story from stalwart studio journeyman William Keighley, (who also co-directed Flynn in the sublime The Adventures of Robin Hood), the director, who was often associated with Broadway adaptations and comedies at Warners, explores a darker path in this movie, perhaps influenced in part by film noir in American movies of the period, a style he had tried with notable effect in The Street With No Name in 1948. The film is complemented by a moving and exciting score by Max Steiner that assists the action on screen and cinematographer Ted McCord‘s glorious black and white photography, with his stark exteriors, excellent use of “day for night” effects and an uncanny ability to evoke a sense of claustrophobia for the viewer, despite the wide open location where this movie was filmed. Working with such familiar master craftsmen from the studio system that he would soon leave behind, this film marked the end of Flynn‘s career in westerns. It features one of a handful of  ruefully graceful performances by an under-rated actor whose skill has rarely been given due respect, thanks to his own self-destructive tendencies, a remarkable, infectious gift for making it all look easy on screen, and the near criminal lack of care he took with his career and his very life. But, as he himself would have said when asked where he thought he was going in this life: To hell or to glory. It depends on your point of view.”  

With a story by Alan LeMay (who also wrote the novels that were the basis of “The Searchers” and “The Unforgiven”), and a script by Winston Miller (who wrote the screenplay for the classic “My Darling Clementine”), the spare plot centers around the arrival on a sun-bleached California rock called Ghost Mountain of Flynn and his small group of fellow Confederates, sent to foment a rebellion among the Southern sympathizers throughout the state†.  Yet Rocky Mountain, coming near the end of his contract with Warner Brothers and the best part of his career, sounds a distinctly different note from Errol Flynn‘s other Westerns. Filmed in somber black and white on a bleakly beautiful location in Gallup, New Mexico, (standing in for the Ghost Mountain area in Northern California), the movie begins in the present day, with an elegiac feel, as we hear Flynn‘s weary yet expressive voice introducing the story of a lost cause. The initial framing device, showing a car as it glides up to a plaque on a rock at the edge of a highway in the middle of an anonymous desert, seems to hint at a workaday world whose existence is haunted by an unknown, ignored past. Playing the leader of a small band of Confederates in 1865 sent to California by General Robert E. Lee  to foment rebellion among the citizens of the state, Flynn narrates the film at the beginning of the story, describing:

“Six rattle-headed kids and an old man…Kip Waterson, (Robert Henry), the baby-faced heir to a plantation…Pierre Duchesne, (Peter Coe) from French Louisiana…Pat Dennison, (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, in what would be his fourth and last teaming with Flynn) an old man, really, but a hard, reckless fighter who never gave ground while he lived…Kay Rawlins (Sheb Wooley, making his film debut) from the Mississippi steamboats, a rough and friendly man as the Indians now found out…Jimmy Wheat, (Dickie Jones) a little red neck cropper who could fight like a wildcat with hydrophobia, who carried a useless little dog for 2,000 miles…Jonas Weatherby, (Jonas Williams) the Texan, a seasoned plainsman at 18…Plank, (Slim Pickens) another real plainsman, hard and bitter, with chain gang scars on his legs at 22…”

Without going into elaborate detail in the script, each of these disparate characters, like those recent war films peopled by a diverse yet unified group of GIs becomes a familiar figure by the end of the movie, making their allegiance to a cause that they all know is lost doubly poignant. While I usually find it hard to feel much pity in movies of this period that extol the “noble Southern cause” (which was, at the end of the day, about slavery and, of course, the movie shows none of the desperation or humanity of the Indians),  the scenes in which the war-weary Flynn wistfully remembers his long gone home near the river and all the battles he’s seen had enough poetry to pull me into the story. The undercover confederates rendezvous with Howard Petrie, a shifty representative of an alleged outlaw army in the huge state, who is an unlikely ally for anyone, especially men like who might, like Barstow, (Flynn), do more than observe a distant stagecoach under attack by Shoshone Indians, a decision that leads to the rescue of the wonderful character actor, Chubby Johnson, (who’s amusing and believable as the stage driver in only his second film), and Patrice Wymore, (as an Eastern lady who is the lone surviving passenger and the fiancée of a Union soldier played stiffly by Scott Forbes).  While holed up on the mountain top from the nearby Indians, Flynn and his men find themselves increasingly unable to shake the feeling that Petrie is not a reliable person, especially after he leaves, vaguely promising to return with his vaunted “army of outlaws” to relieve the besieged group. When Scott Forbes and a troop of men from the nearby fort search for Wymore and the stagecoach, they are trapped by the band of Southerners into becoming the hostages of a reluctant Flynn.

*Possible Mild Spoilers Below * Possible Mild Spoilers Below*

Unlike his customary seamless swashbuckling image, Flynn‘s man of action plays a thoughtful man carrying on despite the fact that he is well aware that the South–and he–are up against the wall, headed for the end.  The restrained tone of the story is reinforced by the fact that, despite a few quiet conversations about the nature of their respective positions in life, and their hopes and memories of their separate pasts, all that passes between Patrice Wymore and Flynn, (who in reality would marry shortly before this film was released), are a few long, lingering gazes. While the men and the lone woman wait with increasing certainty that no relief will come for them, a growing doubt about their mission and their personal loyalites gnaws at some of the Confederate band. Capt. Barstow’s understanding command and terse affection for them keeps the group a whole, despite their desperate situation.

The underlying theme of the film, which showed an ultimate, if reluctant reconciliation and respect between antagonists of the North and the South following a long, devastating war, seems secondary to that of the camaraderie of the beleaguered group,  who have come over 2,000 miles to fulfill a mission given them by Robert E. Lee, a chivalric figure who is often invoked by the men, and particularly by Flynn, as they contemplate their basic dilemma, and, perhaps, think about the absurdity of their commitment to a cause. Flynn, looking weathered and sad as he remembers his antebellum life, and all the death soaked years of the war, is a long way from the dashing embodiment of youthful energy in Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk or even the confident, morally certain heroes of several of his previous Westerns. Struggling with his own demons in real life, the relatively adult tone of this film seems a step in a possible direction toward creating a more mature, complex and deeper film persona that Flynn might have taken, if he had more self-restraint or had not been overwhelmed by events in his personal life.

If there is one earlier Errol Flynn film that Rocky Mountain most resembles dramatically, it may be They Died With Their Boots On (1940). As in that movie, there is a realization that happy endings are not always possible. Rocky Mountain, with a flintier script and sketchier characterizations in its 80 minutes,  eschews the romantic sentimentality and warmth of Raoul Walsh‘s evocation of the Custer myth, but the film’s conclusion,  (which may have benefitted from stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt‘s staging), features an incredibly exciting chase as Flynn and his doomed men draw the Indians away from the escaping Union troopers and the woman. Leading the Indians into a blind canyon with the Confederate flag held aloft by Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, Errol Flynn and his not so merry men unfurl a last moment of glory, as they turn to face their death after their captain cries, “We’ve shown them our backs, now let’s show them our faces!” The ending, in which the U.S. Calvary is just a shade late, comes swiftly and with a much stronger than expected emotional impact.

Just prior to this inescapable end, Wymore‘s character says to the Confederate captain, “I never thought it would end this way,” to which Flynn‘s soldier says calmly, “There never was any other way. We just put it off awhile.”

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† While the formal “mission” of Flynn and his band does not appear to have historically traceable roots, there were many in California who were in tacit sympathy with the South throughout the Civil War, and there was a real plot to seize a shipment of gold off the California coast by Southerners, which you can read about here .
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Sources:

Engelhardt, Tom, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation, Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
Meyers, Jeffrey, Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam, Simon & Schuster, 2002.
Reagan, Ronald, ed. by Skinner, Kiron, K., Anderson, Annelise, & Andersons, Martin, Reagan: A Life in Letters, Simon and Schuster, 2004.