THE DOOLIN-DALTON GANG, Part I

They were duelin', Doolin-Dalton

High or low, it was the same

Easy money and faithless women

Red-eye whiskey for the pain

Go down, Bill Dalton, it must be God's will

Two brothers lyin' dead in Coffeyville

Two voices call to you from where they stood

Lay down your law books now, they're no damn good

Better keep on movin' Doolin-Dalton

'Til your shadow sets you free

And if you're fast and if you're lucky

You will never see that hangin' tree

Well, the towns lay out across the dusty plains

Like graveyards filled with tombstones waitin' for the names

And a man could use his back or use his brains

But some just went stir crazy, Lord, 'cause nothin' ever changed

-- THE EAGLES

Songwriters
BROWNE, JACKSON / SOUTHER, J.D. / HENLEY, DON / FREY, GLENN

COFFEYVILLE.
On October 5, 1892 five men rode into Coffeyville, Kansas, a town located in the southeastern corner of the state.  Three of the men were brothers: Bob, Grat, and Emmett Dalton.  Coffeyville was their hometown.  Riding with them were Bill Powers and Dick Broadwell. They had come to do something that not even the James-Younger Gang had ever attempted to do.  They planned to rob two banks simultaneously.

When the smoke cleared and the dust settled that day four townsmen and four outlaws were dead.  Among the outlaws only Emmett, wounded more than twenty times, was still alive, but just barely.

Rumors persisted that there had been a sixth rider and that he had escaped. The rumors were based on testimony by a farm couple who said they saw six men riding into town just before the hold-up and statements by another person claiming that he saw a rider making a successful getaway during the shoot-out between the outlaws and the townspeople.

Emmett, who did survive, and who was tried and convicted and sent to prison, always maintained that there was no sixth rider.  But the rumor wouldn't go away.  Although nobody came forward to identify who that legendary rider might have been, subsequent events led many to believe that it was Bill Doolin. One theory was that he had been charged with the responsibility of holding the horses and that when all hell broke loose he didn't hang around but made tracks out of town.  Another had it that his horse came up lame before the men reached town and that he went off in search of another horse and missed the whole shebang.

Neither of those scenarios hold up under close scrutiny and it is more than likely that the mythical sixth rider is just that -- a myth.  But Bill Doolin was real.  He may not have been at Coffeyville, but he had been a member of the Dalton Gang.  And after the citizens of that community decimated that gang, Doolin didn't waste any time in organizing a new gang. He was assisted in this effort by Bill Dalton, another of the infamous brothers, and the result is what came to be known as the Doolin-Dalton Gang.

Bill Doolin

Bill Dalton

BILL DALTON (1866-1894).
Bill Dalton was not living in Kansas when his three brothers were riding the outlaw trail in that state and in the Oklahoma Territory to the south.  He had moved to California where he was married and was living a respectable life as a farmer, one who was also studying law.  He had even been elected to the California state legislature on the Populist Party ticket. Of course being a member of the legislature did not in and of itself make one respectable.

The Populist Party was an agrarian movement that blamed big business for the hard times that farmers, ranchers, and small businesses were experiencing in the years before the turn of the century.  And it was the railroads that were identified as being the primary culprits. Bill Dalton hated them with a passion.

But did he hate them enough to rob one?  Well, perhaps.  He had been joined in California by brother Grat who had left his stomping grounds to the east in order to put some distance between him and the U.S. marshals who were keeping a close watch on him.  He may have been accompanied by brothers Bob and Emmett, or they may have joined him later, but it isn't clear that that was the case.

A fireman was killed during a train hold-up in February, 1891, and Bill and Grat were arrested.  There is suspicion that Bob and Emmett were involved as well, but it was never proved for they were never caught.  Bill was tried and acquitted, but Grat was convicted. However, on the way to prison Grat escaped and eventually made his way back home to rejoin Bob and Emmett and other members of the gang in holding up banks and railroads, primarily in the Oklahoma and Indian territories. 

After the death of his two brothers and the capture of another in the Coffeyville fiasco in October, 1892, Bill Dalton came home and met Bill Doolin. 

In 1890, Congress passed the Oklahoma Organic Act which partitioned the Indian Territory by creating a separate territory to be called Oklahoma.  The new territory essentially encompassed everything in the former Indian Territory except the lands belonging to the so-called Five Civilized Tribes: the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole.  The intent was to eventually combine the two territories into a single state.  In 1907, the state of Oklahoma was admitted into the Union and the Indian Territory ceased to exist.

BILL DOOLIN (1858-1896).
Bill Doolin was born in Johnson County in western Arkansas.  In 1881, he became a cowboy in the Indian Territory where he worked with other men, who, like him, eventually found themselves riding the outlaw trail.  They included the likes of George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb, Charley Pierce, Bill Powers, Dick Broadwell, Bill "Tulsa Jack" Blake, Dan "Dynamite Dick" Clifton, and Emmett Dalton.

Doolin's first reported run in with the law occurred in Coffeyville, Kansas when an attempt was made by the local authorities to arrest him and his friends for public drunkenness.  Elsewhere such behavior might have been overlooked, but Coffeyville just happened to be located in a dry county.

In the melee that followed two lawmen were wounded while trying to confiscate Doolin and his friends' liquor.

Soon thereafter Doolin joined up with the Daltons.  He was probably too smart to participate in their hare brained scheme to rob the two banks in Coffeyville, despite the rumors that in fact he had been a sixth rider but had successfully vamoosed to fight and rob another day.


THE DOOLIN-DALTON GANG.
After the failed Coffeyville raid and the death of four of the outlaws and the capture of the seriously wounded Emmett Dalton, Bill Doolin began recruiting his own gang, and because one of its members was Bill Dalton, it is commonly known as the Doolin-Dalton Gang, but also as The Wild Bunch (not to be confused with the Butch Cassidy-Sundance Kid Wild Bunch) or the Oklahombres. Comprising the nucleus of the gang were men who, like Doolin, had been members of the Dalton Gang and had not participated in the Coffeyville raid.

In a three year spree, the gang robbed banks and trains in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Indian Territory.  After holding up the bank in Spearville, Kansas on November 1, 1892, the gang took refuge near Orlando in Oklahoma Territory at the home of the sister of gang member Ol Yantis.  Later that month a sheriff's posse tracked Yantis to that location and in a shoot-out they killed Yantis, making him the first gang member to be killed.  There would be other gang members -- many others -- that would suffer the same fate.  Of the eleven outlaws who rode with the gang at various times, only two lived into the 20th century, but only because they had been captured and were in prison when the new century began.

In March 1893, despite the fact that several bank and train robberies followed Spearville, Bill Doolin married Edith Ellsworth in Kingfisher, OT.  They would have one son. Not long after his marriage, Doolin was seriously wounded in the foot during a train robbery near Cimarron, Kansas.


THE BATTLE OF INGALLS.
What came to be called the Battle of Ingalls occurred on September 1, 1893. Today practically a ghost town, Ingalls in the 1890's was a wide-open town and a safe haven for fugitives on the run.  It was one of the places that the Doolin-Dalton gang felt secure.

But the territory's newly appointed U.S. marshal, 32-year old E.D. Nix, had different plans for the gang holed up in Ingalls.  Nix sent fourteen deputy marshals to Ingalls in an attempt to clean out the Doolin-Dalton gang.  

U.S. marshal E.D. Nix

In the ensuing gun battle three deputies were killed along with two citizens.  Three outlaws -- Bitter Creek Newcomb, Charlie Pierce, and Dynamite Dick Clifton -- were wounded, but managed to escape.  

Arkansas Tom Jones was captured after being stunned by dynamite that was thrown into the hotel where he had taken cover.  As it turned out, Jones (real name Roy Daugherty) outlived all the other members of the gang.  He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to fifty years in prison. However, he was pardoned in 1910 after serving fewer than twenty years.

Arkansas Tom

In 1917, he was tried and convicted for robbing a bank in Neosho, Missouri.  After being released in 1921, he robbed a bank in Asbury, Missouri that same year.  Tracked to Joplin, Missouri he was killed in 1924 in a gunfight with lawmen.  He outlived all the other gang members, but his life still ended much like the rest of them.


THE THREE GUARDSMEN.
In the wake of the Ingalls shoot-out, Marshal Nix organized an elite group of one hundred deputies whose primary job was to, one way or the other, wipe out the Doolin-Dalton Gang.  The most famous of the deputies were Heck Thomas, Chris Madsen, and Bill Tilghman, who were so successful in the pursuit of the gang that they came to be called "The Three Guardsmen."  

Nix gave the following directions to his deputies: "I have selected you to do this work, placing explicit confidence in your abilities to cope with those desperadoes and bring them in -- live if possible -- dead if necessary."

Heck Thomas (1900)

Bill Tilghman (1912)

Chris Madsen (date unknown)

It was the beginning of the end for the gang.

• In June 1894, Bill Dalton was killed by a posse at his home near Ardmore, OT.

• In April 1895, Tulsa Jack Blake was killed by U.S. marshals near Ames, OT.

• In May 1895, Bitter Creek Newcomb and Charley Pierce were killed near Pawnee, OT by bounty hunters.  

• In September 1895, Little Bill Raidler was captured by Bill Tilghman.  He was sentenced to prison and was paroled in 1903 because of ill health due to severity of the wounds he had received at the time of his capture.  He died the following year.  Like Arkansas Tom before him, he had lived into the new century -- and for the same reason.

• In March 1896, Red Buck Waightman was killed near Arapaho, OT by a posse led by Chris Madsen.

But what of Bill Doolin -- the gang's leader?  What was he doing while his men were being picked off one by one?  Well, as one would imagine, he was hunkering down.

He and Little Dick West hid out in the New Mexico territory during the summer of 1895.  Later that year, he and his wife traveled to Eureka Springs, Arkansas so that he could use the baths to ease the rheumatism in his foot caused by the bullet wound that he had sustained two years earlier.  Early the following year, he was captured in one of the bathhouses by deputy U.S. marshal Bill Tilghman.

Doolin was arraigned in Stillwater, OT on murder charges stemming from the gunfight at Ingalls in 1893.  He pleaded not guilty.  He was locked up in the Guthrie jail to await trial.  He and Dynamite Dick Clifton and twelve other prisoners were able to break out of the jail.

After his escape, Doolin was hiding out near Lawson, OT., where his wife and small son were staying with her mother.  On August 24, 1896 he was waylaid outside the home by a posse led by deputy U.S. marshal Heck Thomas.  When he refused to obey a command to surrender and began firing at the lawmen he was killed by a shotgun blast fired by Thomas.

As per usual, Doolin's body was placed on display in Guthrie and photographs were taken.  He was buried in the Boot Hill section of Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie.  His widow filed an unlawful death damage suit against the marshals, but it was dismissed.

Bill Doolin

• In November 1897, Dynamite Dick Clifton was tracked down near Checotah, IT and killed by a posse led by deputy marshal Chris Madsen.

• In April 1898, Little Dick West, the gang's last remaining fugitive at large, was tracked down in Logan County, OT by a posse led by deputy U.S. marshal Chris Madsen and was killed in a shoot-out.  He is buried in Guthrie near Bill Doolin.

      

WHEN THE DALTONS RODE (Universal, 1940)

DIRECTOR: George Marshall; WRITERS: screenplay by Harold Shumate based on book, When the Daltons Rode by Emmett Dalton; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Hal Mohr

STUNTS: Yakima Canutt (archival footage), Cliff Lyons (archival footage), Eddie Parker, Bob Reeves, Duke York

CAST: Randolph Scott, Kay Francis, Brian Donlevy, George Bancroft, Broderick Crawford, Stuart Erwin, Andy Devine, Frank Albertson, Mary Gordon, Harvey Stephens, Edgar Dearing, Sally Payne, Edgar Buchanan, Al Bridge, Bob Kortman, Ethan Laidlaw, Tom London, Eddie Parker

The Dalton Clan: (back row L-R: Bob (Broderick Crawford; Emmett (Frank Albertson); Ben (Stuart Erwin); Grat (Brian Donlevy).  Seated in the front is Ma Dalton (Mary Gordon)

HISTORY?

The above is part of the prologue that appears on the screen right after the credits.  It serves as a warning: You are not going to learn the truth about the Dalton brothers by viewing this film.  You are not going to because "to a large extent" the story is based on"the tales that the old settlers still tell of them -- woven together with strands of fiction."  The implication is that the tales told by the old settlers are fact, but in reality those tales are just as likely to be as fictitious as those "strands of fiction" that were woven together with them.  And were the Daltons really "so incredible ... that no man can say where fact ends and fancy begins"?

Well, of course, movies are under no obligation to render exact history and no one should go to a movie for a history lesson, and that goes double for WHEN THE DALTONS RODE.  But it was, and is, possible to "say where fact ends and fancy begins."  Fact ended right after the credits rolled and fancy began with the prologue and did not end until about here:

But there's more.  In the climatic shootout, all three Daltons -- Bob, Grat, and Emmett -- die in a blizzard of bullets fired by the local citizenry. 

Then how to explain this?

If Emmett perished in the failed holdup, how did he write the book that the film is based on?  Well, he didn't die.  He could have, because his body was riddled with bullets, but he did survive, and he did write the book.  That doesn't mean that we can totally trust his version of the events, but they would seem to be more reliable than screenwriter Shumate's version.

THE CAST.
There are a number of things about the casting that don't add up.  To begin with, I don't know why Randolph Scott is even in this film, but he is.  He doesn't have much to do and despite the fact that his name is at the top of the credits he is not the star.

In the previous year in JESSE JAMES, he is a lawman who befriends Jesse and his brother Frank, portrayed by Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda, respectively.  In that film, however, Scott is listed fourth in the credits, as he should be.  In the Daltons film, he is an old family friend and a lawyer who defends the brothers and falls in love with the leading lady, but pretty much stays out of the way.

Even though he is miscast, the real star of the film is Broderick Crawford.  I could never completely accept him in a Western, but in his role as Bob Dalton, the leader of the gang, he does have the most important part in the film.  So, where does his name appear in the credits?  How about fifth. 



Bob Dalton (Broderick Crawford) slugs the town marshal.  Lawyer Tod Jackson (Randolph Scott) is a bystander, as he is for much of the film. 

Listed fourth in the opening cast credits is George Bancroft.  He was a well-known name who had given a memorable performance the previous year in John Ford's classic Western, STAGECOACH, in which he portrayed Curley Wilcox, a lawman whose tough exterior hides a tender heart.

In the Daltons film, he is on the other side of the law.  He is a banker who is in cahoots with a land corporation that is stealing the land of the Daltons and other settlers in order to sell it to the railroad for its rightaway.  However, despite being the boss villain and being billed fourth, he is hardly onscreen at all. 

Listed third in the credits is Brian Donlevy, who portrays brother Grat.  Donlevy is another of those actors who were often cast in Westerns, but shouldn't have been.  Like Crawford, he was never quite believable as a westerner.  But he was better known than Crawford and therefore was billed ahead of him.

He was in two 1939 classic Westerns.  In JESSE JAMES, he portrays a railroad tough who is responsible for the death of the James brothers' mother (not really; she outlived Jesse by three decades and died only four years before Frank).  As a result, Jesse dispatches Donlevy early in the film.

His other Western role that year was in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, directed by George Marshall.  In that one, he is a saloon owner and, therefore it goes without saying, is the chief villain.

Then there is Edgar Buchanan. Supposedly, Andy Devine, who portrays a fictitious character named Ozark, a friend of the Daltons who becomes a member of their gang, supplied the comedy in this film.    

It never mattered if Andy was in an important film like STAGECOACH, which he was, or if he was portraying Roy Rogers' sidekick, Cookie Bullfincher, or Wild Bill's deputy, Jingles P. Jones, he always played the same character.  Thus, it is that character that we see in WHEN THE DALTONS RODE.  I'm afraid that I find his character to be more irritating than humorous.

 

It has been written that Andy Devine's role as the stage driver in STAGECOACH was partly due to his ability to handle a 6-horse hitch.  Maybe that explain why he was cast in the role of Ozark.

Now back to Edgar Buchanan.  Even though he was only in his late thirties at the time, he portrays an old-timer who adds a light touch to the film.  And even though his scenes bookend the film in a pleasant fashion, he isn't even listed in the credits.  Surely, that was an oversight.  A year later, however, Buchanan was given his first major role.  The film was TEXAS (1941), also directed by George Marshall.  In fact, he would become one of Marshall's favorite actors and, as we shall later see, he was cast in several of the director's Westerns. 

Kay Francis was a native of Oklahoma, which is the setting for part of the film.  She appeared in her first film in 1929.  By the mid-30's, while under contract to Warner Brothers, she became the highest paid actress in the business.  But before the decade ended, and after being divorced from her fifth husband, the studio did not extend her contract.  And that is how she ended up in this film, her only Western.

WHEN THE DALTONS RODE did nothing to advance her career and by the mid-40's, she found herself working on Poverty Row at Monogram.  She made three films there, in which she was both star and producer.  The last was released in 1946 and it was her last film. 

ACTION.
Now we get to the good stuff. It is probably hard to tell up to this point, but I like this film. To enjoy it, one just needs to forget about history and think of the Daltons as being fictitious characters and set back and enjoy the action. The real stars are the stuntmen who make this little production one of those films that put motion in motion pictures.

The list of stuntmen is a who's who of stunting: Yakima Canutt, Cliff Lyons, Eddie Parker, Bob Reeves, and Duke York.  According to the IMDb website, Canutt and Lyons are in the film by way of archival footage, but they are in it, and that's good enough.

Most of the stunts are performed by Broderick Crawford's doubles, which reinforces the fact that he was the real star of the film -- along with the stuntmen.

We see the famous Yakima Canutt stagecoach stunt (could be stock footage from another feature), which is supposed to be Bob Dalton (Crawford). 


 




























Bob leaps from rocks onto a stage: 

All five gang members attempt to use a stagecoach to outrun a posse.  Since the coach is too slow, four jump onto the coach horses, cutting them loose and using them as mounts.  Bob then rides back and picks up Ozark (Devine) who is driving the coach.

Even after they are cut loose from the stage, the horses are incapable of outrunning the well-mounted posse.  Luckily, the outlaws hear an approaching train.  All five jump from overhanging rocks onto the top of the train.

The most famous stunt in the film is this one:

After the gang leaps from the rocks onto the top of the train, they move inside and rob the passengers and the express car, even though there is a boxcar full of lawmen guarding the train.  The outlaws make their getaway by jumping the lawmen's horses off the moving train.

Due to the danger to the horses, this is apparently the only time this stunt was ever staged.

Naturally, Bob is the last to jump from the train.  And because of that, he is forced to jump over a cliff into a lake.  (This very much appears to be archival footage. The year before, Cliff Lyons jumped a horse off a cliff into a lake during the filming of JESSE JAMES. Lyons survived but the horse was killed. This scene is not from that film and it doesn't appear to be the portly Mr. Lyons either. But I'm not sure who it was or from what movie it first appeared in. Nevertheless, it is spectacular.)

THE FINAL SHOOT-OUT.

The Daltons met their Waterloo when they attempted to rob two banks -- simultaneously -- in broad daylight -- in their hometown.  In the film, it is Grat's idea, but in reality Bob was the mastermind.  It has been written that he wanted to outdo the James boys.

The name of the town is never mentioned in the movie, but it was Coffeyville, located in southeastern Kansas a few miles from the Oklahoma border.

The three brothers, along with two other gang members, rode into the town on a day when there were many people on the street.  In an effort to disguise themselves they wore fake beards -- that fooled nobody.  In a town in which they were well-known, they were easily identified by people on the streets.

This is a depiction by local artist Paul Sprague of the Daltons raid on Coffeyville in 1892

Bob and Emmett entered the First National Bank while Grat and the other two gang members entered the C. W. Condon and Co. Bank across the plaza.

Everything went awry for the gang.  As they left the two banks, they were fired at from all directions by the town marshal and other townsmen who had been able to acquire weapons, many of them from a local hardware store located next door to the First National Bank.  

As the outlaws attempted to reach their horses in an alley where they had left them, four of them, including Bob and Grat, were killed.  Twenty-one year old Emmett, despite what occurs on the screen, and despite being wounded many, many times, was the only survivor.

Four townsmen, including the marshal, were also killed.

Emmett was later tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.  He was pardoned in 1907.  He wrote two books: Beyond the Law (1918) and When the Daltons Rode (1931).  He died in 1937, three years before the film based on the book was released.

Well, at least all is well that ends well for some folks in Coffeyville:

Edgar Buchanan, Kay Francis, and Randolph Scott in the closing scenes of WHEN THE DALTONS RODE

 THE DIRECTOR.

Director George Marshall, star Marlene Dietrich, and producer Joe Pasternak on the set of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939)

George Marshall entered films in 1912 as an actor.  In 1917, he made his directing debut.  In the silent era, he often directed Westerns including films starring the likes of Tom Mix, Harry Carey, and Jack Hoxie.

In the sound era, he specialized in Westerns that often poked gentle fun at the genre.  He is best known for DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939) starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart, with Brian Donlevy in a supporting role. 

After WHEN THE DALTONS RODE (1940), he directed TEXAS (1941), starring William Holden, Glen Ford, and Claire Trevor, with George Bancroft and Edgar Buchanan in support.  In 1954, he made DESTRY, starring Audie Murphy, a remake of the Dietrich-Stewart film.  Edgar Buchanan appears as the mayor. One of his most enjoyable Westerns is THE SHEEPMAN, starring Glen Ford and Shirley MacLaine.  Good old Edgar Buchanan is in that one, too.

FINAL NOTES.

Bosley Crowther in a review of WHEN THE DALTONS RODE in the New York Times wrote that "of one thing you may be sure: Universal will never make a sequel to 'When the Daltons Rode.' No, sir, friends, you'll never see a 'Return of Bob Dalton,' for instance, or 'The Daltons Ride Again' .... For the climax of this titanic Western ...  results in such wholesale tribal slaughter, such a complete patrilineal blackout of the clan, that 'When the Daltons Rode' is decisively the last of the Daltons. The Dalton gang is no more."

Five years later, Universal released THE DALTONS RIDE AGAIN.  You can look it up. It seems that old outlaws never die, they are just recycled.