During the opening credits a bat is seen flying across the screen. We find ourselves in a dark eerie deserted town filled with slamming doors and strange howls in the night. Joe Ryan and his gang are playing poker in the dark, waiting for the return of Ed, one of their own from the Sally Ann mine. He left hours ago and there has been no sign of him since. Suddenly Ed’s horse returns with a note attached warning the same fate is waiting for anyone else who dares to enter the Sally Ann mine. The men are spooked to say the least.
What starts out as a seemingly old dark house spook fest is in fact a John Wayne western, and after this slick and unique opening, gradually slides back into the standard western of its day. “Haunted Gold” is a remake of a 1928 silent called “The Phantom City” that starred Ken Maynard. This low budget remake is even filled with stock footage from earlier Maynard silent westerns.
Wayne is John Mason, a high voiced rancher who comes to the ghost town to take a look at the abandon mine, half of which was left to him by his father. Along with Mason is his sidekick Clarence (Blue Washington Brown). Mason discovers Ryan is now the other half owner of the mine having cheated the rightful owner, Bill Carter, out of his share. Also on hand is pretty young Janet Carter (Sheila Terry), the daughter of the cheated owner. She like Mason received a mysterious note requesting their presence by someone only known as the phantom, a mysterious figure whose eyes we see peering through peepholes throughout the film.
After this fairly interesting beginning the film turns into a standard western. Ryan and his boys want the gold that is in the mine somewhere. Janet will find herself in danger, tied up deep inside the mineshaft. Good guy John Wayne, err I mean John Mason comes to her rescue only to be caught and tied up by Ryan and his boys. Duke, that’s Mason’s horse, returns rider less to the ranch and rounds up the ranch hands to come and help Mason but of course by the time they arrive, Duke, that is John Wayne not the horse, has everything under control with the help of his stumbling partner Clarence. And of course he wins the girl heart in the end.
The most interesting aspect of this film is that the cinematographer is the great Nick Musuraca and his talent is used to great display in some of the eerie scenes that take place in the dark spooky ghost town during the early scenes in the film. Unfortunately the rest of the film is handicapped by mediocre acting, (Wayne has yet to develop his screen persona), a lame story and a disturbing light hearted racist attitude toward character actor Blue Washington Brown who plays Clarence. Brown who seems like a talented actor is handicapped by the cultural stupidity of the times forced to play foolish characters with little intelligence, act scared and quote stereotypical dialogue for laughs. One has to remember that this was just a reflection of the times in which the film was made and while not acceptable by today’s standards, understandable for the period in which it was made.
Directed by Mack V. Wright who made a few films together with Wayne and Duke, the horse during these early years including “Somewhere in Sonora” and “The Man From Monterey.” Wright’s career was mainly in low budget filmmaking. He also worked with other western stars like Gene Autry (The Singing Cowboy, Comin’ Round The Mountain) and Robert Livingston (Riders of the Whistling Skull, The Vigilantes Are Coming).
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Rance is a young attorney who believes in law and order though he refuses to carry a gun. On his way to the town of Shinbone, he is attacked and beaten during a stagecoach robbery by the outlaw Liberty Valance and his gang. Rance is found by rancher Tom Doniphon and taken to the home of some friends who take care of the tenderfoot and nurse him back to health. Doniphon believes that in these parts “a man needs a gun.” Despite their philosophical differences, the two men become friends and rivals for the young and beautiful Hallie (Vera Miles). Valance continues to terrorize the town and Rance until one day the tenderfoot lawyer is forced into a showdown with the gunfighter. Though wounded during the gunfight, Rance shoots and kills Valance. Hallie’s true feelings come out for Rance driving Doniphon off in a drunken rage. Rance finds himself a hero as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He is selected to be a delegate as the territory applies for statehood. Feeling unworthy and guilty for becoming a hero based on killing a man, Doniphon reveals to him what really happened. Rance, relieved to know he is not riding on the coattails of a dead man, becomes the delegate, goes on to marry Hallie, and become the State’s first Governor and a three time Senator. While the death of Liberty Valance triggered a brilliant career for Rance Stoddard, for Tom Doniphon it led to a life of drinking, loneliness, and alienation.
After the Senator finishes telling his story to the paper’s editor and the truth about how Valance was killed, the editor tears up his notes and throws them into the stove to burn. Stoddard asks him why isn’t he going to use the story. The editor replies, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!”
John Wayne is an actor that I have always had mixed feelings about. When used correctly, mostly by Ford, his persona and the role merge into a “perfect storm” as they do in “The Searchers”, “Rio Bravo” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. Wayne was never much of a real actor though he played ‘John Wayne’ better than anyone could. Moreover, rarely has a Wayne character displayed the vulnerability that he does here. I always enjoyed James Stewart as an actor more than Wayne, however here I find his character, Rance Stoddard, a bit annoying, somewhat stubborn and naïve. While Wayne and Stewart are the stars of the film, it is Lee Marvin’s menacing performance that ‘stirs the drink.’ Marvin has portrayed many violent and evil characters in his wonderful career but Liberty Valance has to be at or near the top. He is brutal, intimidating and just plain evil. Reese (Lee Van Cleef), one of his gang members, twice has to stop him from whipping his victims to death. Vera Miles is the woman in the middle, in love with Doniphon, and as the film goes on, she develops a growing fondness for Stoddard and marries him. At the end of the film as they ride the railroad back to Washington, Ford subtly tells us, though she has been married to Stoddard for many decades her true love is left behind in a wooden box. “Liberty Valance” is not just Wayne, Stewart and Marvin, the film is rich in terrific performances with character actors like Edmond O’Brien as the newspaper editor, Andy Devine as the cowardly sheriff, Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin as Valance’s two thugs in crime. The wonderful Woody Strode as Pompey. Also in the cast are John Carradine and Denver Pyle. All these colorful characters make the film interesting, giving it depth and making up for the less than expected gunplay you would assume to see in a western. The film is also filled with rich black and white photography courtesy of cinematographer William Clothier who had photographed many western, “The Horse Soldiers”, “The Comancheros” and “McLintock.” Other works include “Merrill’s Marauders” and “Donavan’s Reef.”
In viewing both versions, the dramatic changes are significant enough to change the tone,. The pre-released version being darker and certainly more sordid. Barbara Stanwyck is Lily, a young woman who is pimped by her own father to the slimy characters who frequent his Erie, Pa. speakeasy. This is explicitly shown in the uncut version where a coarse local politician pays dear old Dad hard cash to spend some quality time with Lily. When the politician fondles Lily’s leg, she pours hot coffee on him. Next, he crudely grabs her breasts and Lily retaliates by grabbing a beer bottle hitting him squarely on the head. In the officially released version, this scene was cut dramatically. No cash exchanges hands between Dad and the politician; the fondling of Lily’s leg is shorter and there is no groping of her breasts. In other scenes, dialogue was changed or cut to meet the censors’ requirements. When her father tells her she can’t talk to him so rudely Lily goes on a tirade about “What a swell start you gave me….” She goes on about him being a lousy father and about all the rotten lousy men of which he was the lowest. What was cut from the released version of this rant is a line about Dad pimping her out at the age of 14! 
At this point, with all scandals Lily has caused she is sent off to the Paris branch of the Bank. This seems somewhat ludicrous. Why not just fire her? In Paris, she meets Courtland Trenholm (George Brent), who falls in love with Lily. They marry and Courtland showers Lily with jewelry, clothes and money. They eventually come back to New York when the Bank and Trenholm are having financial problems. He ask Lily to return some of the gifts and securities he has given her, so he can pay his debt, she refuses. Despondent Courtland attempts suicide. As Courtland is taken away in an ambulance with Lily as his side, the censors strike one more time. They did not like the idea in the original version that Lily is shown as not “paying” for her sins. Warner’s was forced to tack on an artificial ending instead of the pre-censored version, which is more ambiguous and yet hints at the chance that Lily and Courtland will live happily ever after.
The film was directed by Alfred E. Green, who started in the silent days and continued to work up until the late 1950’s. Baby Face is probably his most famous or more fittingly his most infamous film. Most of Green’s output consisted of fairly routine programmers. The screenplay was written by Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola, based on a story by Darryl F. Zanuck, writing as Mark Canfield. Zanuck’s career with Warner’s Brothers would end shortly thereafter, only partially due to his part in creating tawdry films, “straight from the newspaper headlines”, such as Baby Face and probably more to do with disputes with Jack Warner and his own desires to run a studio. He would soon be a co-founder of Twentieth Century Pictures and a few years later, they would buyout Fox Pictures forming Twentieth Century Fox. 
Twenty Four Frames 
