THE LAST HUNT

 

THE MOVIE (MGM, 1956)

DIRECTOR: Richard Brooks;  PRODUCER: Dore Schary;  WRITERS: screenplay by Richard Brooks based on novel by Milton Lott;  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Russell Harlan

CAST: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget, Russ Tamblyn, Constance Ford, Joe Desantis, Ainslie Pryor, Ralph Moody, Fred Graham, Roy Barcroft, Steve Darell, Dale Van Sickel, Dan White, Henry Willis, Terry Wilson 

THE PLOT.

The year is 1882, somewhere in South Dakota.  An experienced buffalo hunter named Sandy McKenzie (Stewart Granger), who has tired of killing buffalo, is approached by Charlie Gilson (Robert Taylor), an inexperienced hunter, who nevertheless relishes killing buffalo, and, as it turns out, Indians.

A deal is worked out to go partners and they hire a one-legged skinner known as Woodfoot (Lloyd Nolan) and the half Irish, half Indian Jimmy O'Brien (Russ Tamblyn) to help him.

When Indians steal their horses, Charlie trails them and ambushes them in their camp.  He spares only two lives; a young Indian woman (Debra Paget) and her baby son.  He brings them to the hunters' camp.  Charlie hates Indians, but he intends to make the Indian "his woman."

Unfortunately, for Charlie, she and Sandy are attracted to each other, but they are afraid to let the ruthless Charlie know.  But the mutual attraction cannot be hidden.  Sandy had already been in the process of seeking a way to sever his ties with the sadistic Charlie, and his relationship with the Indian woman (who is never given a name) drives the two hunters even farther apart.

At the late date in which the film is set the buffalo had vanished in the southwest and much of the Great Plains, decimated by the hunters who killed them for their hides, leaving the carcasses to rot and be consumed by scavengers.

It was an ugly business that not only wiped out the herds but also transformed the lives of the native tribes that were heavily dependent on them for their livelihoods, forcing them against their will to live out their days on government reservations.

The film manages to show the viewer just how brutal the act of shooting buffalo must have been.  It does that by filming the annual "thinning out" of the protected herd in Custer State Park in South Dakota, giving viewers the most graphic scenes of a buffalo hunt to ever be filmed.

Sometime in the 70's I first read the novel the film's screenplay is based on, and shortly thereafter I viewed the movie on TV.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but I never forgot the chilling climax to the film and it is still a vivid memory all these years later.  Recently, I reread the novel, and the story's conclusion was just as shocking to me as it was a half-century ago.  

However, I am not going to spoil the ending for future readers of the novel or viewers of the film.

THE STARS.

Robert Taylor, born Spangler Arlington Brugh in 1911 in Nebraska, died in 1969, at age fifty-eight.

He appeared in only one Western before 1950, and that was when he was miscast as the title character in BILLY THE KID (MGM, 1941).

Taylor was not believable in the role for several reasions, but especially since he was thirty-years old and was portraying an historical figure who died at twenty-one.

Furthermore, it doesn't help things that Billy is a good guy cleaning out the territory of bad guys and that Brian Donlevy, near the top of my list of actors who should never have been cast in a Western, is Taylor's co-star.

In the 50's, Taylor starred in six Westerns.  Fortunately, he and the films were great improvements over his debut Western.  THE LAST HUNT is one of the best -- and perhaps the best -- of the six. Taylor was cast against type in the film and the result is that he gave one of his best perfomances.

He starred in a couple more Westerns during the 60's, the last produced three years before his death.

Robert Taylor and Ricard Widmark in THE LAW AND JAKE WADE (MGM, 1958)

Stewart Granger, born James Lablache Stewart in London in 1913, died in 1993.  Since he needed to adopt a new screen name in order to avert confusion with James Stewart -- and he couldn't have very well chosen his middle name, he became Stewart Granger.

Granger was much more a swashbucker than a westerner, but he was quite good in the Westerns in which he appeared.

His only two Westerns made in the United States were THE LAST HUNT and GUN GLORY (MGM, 1957).  He did star in three Westerns made in Europe in which he portrayed Karl May's "Old Surehand."

In the 1970-71 TV season Granger, as Col. Alan MacKenzie (ironically), became the last owner of the Shiloh Ranch in The Virginian series.  However, the title was changed to Men of Shiloh.  James Drury and Doug McClure continued in their roles as The Virginian and Trampas, respectively, while Lee Majors was added to the cast.

As good as THE LAST HUNT is, it could have been even better if Taylor and Granger had been backed with better supporting actors.

Debra Paget, who had portrayed an Apache woman in BROKEN ARROW (Fox, 1950), portrayed a Sioux in THE LAST HUNT.

It wasn't that she was a bad actress, but that she just didn't look the part.  Anne Bancroft had been originally cast in the role in THE LAST HUNT, but was injured early in the filming when she fell off a horse.  As good an actress as Bancroft was, it would be just about as difficult to accept her in the role as it is Paget.

Lloyd Nolan, who was a good actor, is also on my list of actors who should never have been cast in Westerns.  He was much more at home on the streets in large cities than in the Dakota Badlands or the Black Hills.

Russ Tamblyn, in the role of Jimmy O'Brien, was even more miscast than Nolan or Paget.

THE DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER.

Richard Brooks was one of Hollywood's most respected and acclaimed directors and screenwriters, though many people, because of his bad boy reputation, didn't exactly relish the idea of working with him.

However, he was nominated for eight Academy Awards as either a director or screenwriter, but won only one, that being his screenplay for ELMER GANTRY (UA, 1960).

He directed only two Westerns after THE LAST HUNT: THE PROFESSIONALS (Columbia, 1966) and BITE THE BULLET (Columbia, 1975).

THE CINEMATOGRAPHER.

Russell Harlan began his career behind the camera when he served as Harry "Pop" Sherman's cinematographer on the Hopalong Cassidy B-Western series from 1937-1944.  He is one of the reasons that the series was the all-time best looking B-Western series ever filmed.

His first two A-Westerns were also for Harry Sherman, both starring Joel McCrea: RAMROD (UA, 1947) and FOUR FACES WEST (UA, 1948).  They are two highly entertaining middle-budget films, that are beautifully filmed by Harlan.

Then there was RED RIVER (UA, 1948), followed by THE LAST HUNT, and three years later, both RIO BRAVO (WB) and DAY OF THE OUTLAW (UA).

Of course, Harlan was busy during those years filming important and critically - acclaimed non-Westerns.  In a thirty year career, though he never won, he was nominated for six Academy Awards, including two in the same year in 1962: HATARI (Paramount) and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (Universal).

 The Director/Screenwriter

                The Cinematographer

                    

******

Reviews

"The film has a worthy message, teaching us the evils of bloodlust, indiscriminate hunting, Indian-hating, and lack of respect for the environment." -- Jeff Arnold, Jeff Arnold's West

"This one is admittedly clumsy -- the screenplay reduces Lott's complex novel to a slender simple yarn; the acting, except for the two leads, is poor; the movie is too slow.  But it is strong stuff and the ending is one you are not likely to forget. -- Brian Garfield, Western Films: A Complete Guide

"Harlan's low-key photgraphy captures beautifully the bleak tone of Brooks' script and direction." -- Phil Hardy, The Western

"The equating of Indian-hating with a lust for slaughter is morally good.  But it does seem to take Mr. Granger an awfully long time to get around to freezing out Mr. Taylor." -- Bosley Crowther, New York Times

******

The Book.

"I hope that no one makes the mistake of classing this book as a 'Western.'  It is about as far removed from the run-of-the-mill book of that variety as it is possible to get." -- W.R. Burnett, New York Times

The Last Hunt (1954) was Milton Lott's (1916-1996) debut novel.  Although he may have written more, only two other novels were published: Dance Back the Buffalo (1959) and Backtrack (1960).

Needless to say, Lott is remembered, if remembered at all, for THE LAST HUNT, a book that was nominated for both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award.

While the movie is set in South Dakota in order to take advantage of the buffalo herd in Custer State Park, the book is set in northwestern Montana.  Lott chose that location because by 1882, as earlier noted,  the buffalo in the southwest and much of the plains had been decimated. 

The Last Hunt is a landmark novel about that slaughter and the near extinction of the great herds.

It is a slow burn that may not satisfy readers who require a lot of action in their Westerns.  To be sure, there is action, but at first Lott uses flashbacks to flesh out his four main characters and even after that the story if very much character driven.

I don't know if Lott ever wrote poetry or painted landscapes, but if not, he nevertheless possessed the soul of a poet and the eye of a painter.

Since he grew up in the Snake Valley in Idaho, he was intimately acquainted with the setting of his novel and his lyrical descriptions allow one to picture the valleys, badlands, and mountains of Montana, even if one has never been there.

I have read only one other novel about buffalo huntng that can compete with The Last Hunt.  It is Butcher's Crossing, the only Western written by John Wiliams.  In its plot, characterizations, and psychological impact, it reminds me of The Last Hunt.  

What W.R. Burnett wrote about The Last Hunt is also true of Butcher's Crossing.  Both are examples of historical fiction that happens to be set in the West.  And I have to admit that it is a toss-up for me as to which is the better book.

******

Reviews

"A resolution of destinies against an enduring setting of mountains, plains, and valleys, and an encyclopedic sense of buffalo hunting, and its bloody, hoggish destruction ... with a bitter knowledge of the waste." -- Kirkus

"In one sense, THE LAST HUNT is a frontier morality play, a struggle between good (Sandy) and evil (Charley), two men engaged in the same deadly pursuit but with strikingly different attitudes about their professions." -- Edward Joseph Brawley, Chasing the Sun: A Reader's Guide to Novels Set in the American West

"[Lott] creates a sense of chronicle, channeling a series of events through geographical area, and he is solidly artistic in his depiction of landscape, atmosphere, and emotion." -- Christina Bold, Twentieth-Century Western Writers

THE END