Of Foy and “Frontier Marshal”

Balk if you must; scoff if you will; but all roads lead to vaudeville.

Case in point, I had an entirely different agenda in catching Frontier Marshal (1939) on Criterion’s streaming platform a few days ago. It had to do with my long-simmering “westerns project”. My book (actually two now) about the genre has been in the works for about 15 years now. It was originally intended to be the follow-up for No Applause, but several others ended up walking through the door ahead of it. It’s still very much in play however. Frontier Marshal had long been on my list to see, but for whatever reason eluded my grasp for quite some time. It yielded an unsuspected bonanza. ‘

The movie is pretty perfect, and would most certainly be widely regarded as a classic if it hadn’t been eclipsed by several others. In fact, that was one of my reasons for wanting to see the movie: John Ford re-made it as My Darling Clementine in 1946. So that has eclipsed it. And so have several other films that came out the same year as Frontier Marshal: Ford’s Stagecoach,George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again, Michael Curtis’ Dodge City,Henry King’s Jesse James, and De Mille’s Union Pacific. Yet if you like those movies I swear you’ll like this one just as well. As has often been asserted, 1939 was the very best year for the studio system (except for comedy). There’s nary a hair out of place in Frontier Marshal, it never flags, it’s entertaining from beginning to end. It was directed by the old silent hand Allan Dwan, best known for his association with Douglas Fairbanks. He was one of the few of his vintage who proved better than a hack in the sound era, and he was versatile. At the time of this film, he had recently made several Shirley Temple movies, and she was Fox’s biggest star. The very same year in which he made Frontier Marshal he also directed two Ritz Brothers vehicles, The Three Musketeers and The Gorilla.

Frontier Marshal was itself a remake. It’s trail of origin leads to a largely fiction 1932 biography called Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, published just a couple of years after Earp’s passing. Since several of the people associated with Earp, or their relatives, were still alive, names and stories were changed throughout the book, practically transforming it into a novel. The first movie version, in 1934, starred George O’Brien. The remake was an attempt to elevate the story beyond the usual B movie treatment westerns ordinarily received, an aim which it more than achieves. Among the joys is the all star cast: Randolph Scott and Nancy Kelly (who both also appeared in Jesse James that same year) as the leads; Cesar Romero as Doc Holliday (and not surprisingly a much more charming one than Victor Mature); Binnie Barnes as the inevitable jealous dance hall girl; Ward Bond as the cowardly previous marshal; John Carradine,Lon Chaney Jr and Joe Sawyer as bad guys; with Dell Henderson,Dick Elliott, Tom Tyler and others rounding out the cast.

If Randolph Scott as Earp gives you pause, I hasten to point out that this film is prior to his long swath of formulaic, repetitive, snooze-inducing pictures of the ’40s and ’50s. It has sparkle and magic and wit, and the actor is at his best. When he promises to drag a drunken shooter from out of the saloon by his heels and dump his corpse in the street, his doing so is visual poetry. You want the world to always be like that.

But we promised vaudeville! And now we come to the best part. It has always been part of Eddie Foy’s legend that he played the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona and was made to dance by a bunch of lawless cowboys shooting their guns off around his feet. It’s depicted in this film, and the old man is portrayed by his own son Eddie Foy, Jr, who made something of a career playing his famous father.

Foy is fairly spectacular, and his part is pretty big, requiring him to hit several different notes as an actor beyond the expected singing, dancing, and clowning. But even that proves really dazzling. The money shot of the movie, worth the price of admission surely, is a moment where Foy is made to dance by a bully, and he responds with truly impressive footwork, culminating with a high kick to the cowpoke’s head that drops him to the floor. Vaudeville versus villainy, with vaudeville the victor! (Want to see the clip? Join my Patreon –– I’m sharing it with my subscribers today).

For more on vaudeville, including the famous Foy family, pleaseconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.