Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail

Somebody’s lying. The Criterion Collection includes four conflicting versions of Blazing Guns on The Chisholm Trail or Red River. As the source for one of the greatest Western movies, ‘Blazing Guns’ explains some but not all of the backstories provided by Borden Chase, Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby.

Knee deep in the blood of a dozen charros trying to protect their Spanish land grant, a veteran of the British Navy—Thomas Dunson—needs to drive five thousand steer to Missouri to sell and bring credibility to post-civil war Texas.

The title of the novel seems to come from the line “the two guns blazed as one" (51). While Dunson and Matthew might find common cause in getting the cattle to market, they diverge on details such as which market. Like a psychological thriller, Chase constantly shows the similarities between the two so when the showdown finally comes, the "hero" makes his stand on fine distinctions, perhaps as fine as the head of a needle. When it comes time for the respective guns to turn on each other the psychological problem becomes mostly physical (Howard Hawks brought in screenwriter Charles Schnee to rewrite that scene for the movie, and Hawks still wasn't happy with it).

Why read Chase's novel if Hawk's movie is considered to be the greater achievement, format for format? Because the novel helps understand what Red River meant to the iconography of John Wayne. While both Dunson and Matthew's have stares like bullets (27), Dunson learned obedience in the British Navy (39) and Matthew's world view came from fighting for The Confederacy (155). Dunson's West is a new "empire" (57); Matthew's is a coalition. For Uncle Ethan in The Searchers, John Ford will appropriate Dunson's homicidal drive to achieve. (1956). The Ringo Kid from Stagecoach seems innocent beside the later characters Wayne played. A key moment in 'Blazing Guns' comes after Dunson admits he's rounded up his neighbors' cattle and is too busy to cut them out; Dunson doesn't mention that he hasn't been to busy to rebrand the cattle. Dunson steals land and would steal cattle if he could get away with it.

I hope it isn't a spoiler to say that the tropes of Indian attacks, stampedes and river crossings from the novel were cut back for the movie adaptations. Chase's attention to detail of how to drive cattle gets a kind of attention in the novel that's difficult to achieve in wide-release movies. While the novel seems to lack the poetics of something like Moby Dick, there is a respect for how cowboys did the job.

Perhaps feminists will find the character of Tess Millay of some interest. Chase goes to great lengths to establish that she is NOT a prostitute but a singer (for the movie they went to some lengths to establish her as a card dealer). Not as fast-talking as a Hawks femme from a screwball comedy or film noir, Tess puts up with Matthew's brooding silence and Dunson's archaic views of femininity. In the book's climax and denouement emphasizing what land means to Dunson, Tess becomes little more than vessel to carry Dunson's vision for the west. In that post-modern regard, the book is more horrific than the movie with its characterization of women (the more realistic McCabe & Mrs. Miller is still decades away).

Borden Chase and Howard Hawks agreed that the ending of the movie adaptation was not to their liking. Without going into too much detail as to the plot, some biographical context is probably worth noting. Hawks' infidelities had finally split up him and his wife Slim, who is not only credited as being the archetype for the heroine of his screwball comedies but also being the one who persuaded Montgomery Clift to take the role of Matthew. Red River was the only film Hawks' production company was to make, so Slim had a stake in its success, still being married to Hawks; nevertheless, she was at the time in a well-known relationship with agent and producer Leland Hayward. Meanwhile, Chase was told at a lunch with Wayne and Hawks the John Ireland's part of Cherry Valance was being cut back because "Ireland was fooling around with Hawks' girl." Chase disliked the editorial wounding of Cherry, so a second screenwriter was brought onto the movie. Whether or not "Hawks' girl" was Joanne Dru, who played Tess, has never been established; however, in 1949, the year after Red River was released, Ireland and Dru married. Film historian Peter Bogdanovich was careful to point out with his interview of Howard Hawks--included on The Criterion Collection, Disc 1--that "there's always a story behind the story."

Bogdanovich seems to make the point that while the auteur theory notes that choices made by the director imbue a movie with his or her or their voice, those choices can be amoral or even downright petty in their motivation.