Fifty Years of Film in 50 Weeks, #28: Yellow Sky, 1948

Yellow Sky, 1948

Director: William A. Wellman
Writers: Screenplay by Lamar Trotti from a story by W.R. Burnett.
Cinematographer: Joe MacDonald
Producer: Lamar Trotti for 20th Century Fox
Starring: Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark; Robert Arthur, John Russell, Harry Morgan, James Barton, Charles Kemper.

Why I chose it
Three reasons: 1) It's a Western (a neglected genre in my blog series so far); 2) a Western directed by the great William Wellman; and 3) a Western directed by William Wellman starring Gregory Peck. Peck is an actor whose filmography has remained largely unseen by me...and I'm not sure why. But he's a giant of the classic era and I need to see more of him.

Where and when Yellow Sky is set

'No-spoiler' plot overview 'Stretch' Dawson (Gregory Peck) leads a gang of Western bank robbers in the post-Civil War Southwest. After a robbery they escape the pursuing cavalry only to run into a stretch of desert that nearly desiccates them. But then they come upon a ghost mining town inhabited by "Mike" (Anne Baxter), a young woman who has a fondness for brandishing a gun, and her grandfather. It turns out that there is gold in them thar hills, and Stretch manages to gain the trust of the local pair and arranges a deal to get a share of the gold if he can find it. Meanwhile, rifts develop among the men as greed gains its hold. 'Dude' (Richard Widmark) hatches a plot to claim all the gold, and a series of confrontations ensue.

Stretch (Peck) taking charge of a Wild West bank robbery.
William Gould is uncredited as the bank teller here.

Walking across Death Valley with no water is pretty rough
on one's features, as seen here in Robert Arthur's character "Bull Run"

Production Background
Director William Wellman was known for his rugged individualism both in front and behind the camera. Affectionately known as "Wild Bill", this WWI veteran didn't hesitate to execute dangerous stunts for himself and his cast and crew in the interests of splashing tales of masculinity-tested on screen. He was known for Wings, a silent classic about WWI fliers, and boundary-pushing pre-codes such as Safe in Hell, The Public Enemy, and Night Nurse, just to name a few. He also directed comedies (Nothing Sacred) and dramas (A Star is Born) before getting into Westerns with The Ox-Bow Incident, which I reviewed here. A couple of years ago on this blog, I had intended to publish a series of posts discussing Wellman's films, but sadly only managed one so far: it's here. 

William Wellman as a young man

Yellow Sky was the only time Wellman worked with Gregory Peck. Peck was not completely new to the Western genre; he had already starred in the Western Duel in the Sun, in which he played an unsavory type. He went on to make several more in the late 1940s and for much of the remainder of his career, off and on. His dark, lean, and rugged good looks served him well here.

Stretch (Peck) looking a bit peaked. "You smell!, Mike tells him.

Here Stretch is shaved and cleaned up.

 
While the cinematography by Joe MacDonald may not reach the iconographic height of a John Ford film (MacDonald had been employed by Ford to shoot My Darling Clementine in 1946), the locations were well used here: the scene in the desert was filmed in the Death Valley salt flats and other scenes in the Lone Pine rock formations of California, adding a grounded realism to a plot that largely develops on an intellectual rather than narrative level. And MacDonald made terrific use of black-and-white.

Preparing to ride into the desert.

The rugged beauty of the Wild West, captured by Joe MacDonald's camera.

Some other notable film-related events in 1948 (from Filmsite.org):

• The Supreme Court ruled that the "Big Five" movie studios had to end their monopolization of the industry. They were forced to divest themselves from theater chains by selling them off. Block booking, the system by which an exhibitor was forced to buy a whole line of films from a studio, was also deemed illegal by a court decision that legislated the separation of the production and exhibition functions of the film industry. This marked the beginning of the end of the studio system, and was partially responsible for a major slump in the movie business by all the studios in the late 1940s.
  
• Maverick film producer, aviator, and eccentric wealthy industrialist Howard Hughes purchased RKO Studios for a reported $8.8 million. Hughes led RKO during a long period of decline until the mid-1950s.
  
• In the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi (as Count Dracula) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (as The Wolf Man) portrayed their iconic horror characters for the last time on-screen in a feature film. It was Lugosi's second and final time as Count Dracula, following the original 1931 film.
  
• Director Alfred Hitchcock's first Technicolored feature film was the experimental thriller Rope (1948), the first of four films with James Stewart. The film was notable for its seamless intercutting of long 10-minute takes, creating the appearance of the film's action occurring all in real-time.

My Random Observations

• This was an entertaining movie all around. That's why it struck me as incredibly odd that for most of the running time there was no musical underscore. Composer Alfred Newman got the credit for the music, but I kept thinking that this must have been an easy assignment for him. There was some music at the beginning and then near the end, but its significant absence was disconcerting to me. As it was a deliberate choice, perhaps the silence was meant to symbolize the lack of life in the desert and then the ghost town? 
• Gregory Peck is a compelling Western hero. He not only convinced as a rough opportunist, but his subtle transformation and internal struggle as he found his moral center was well portrayed. 
• In the early part of the film I was feeling echoes of Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), in which the gang implodes over greed; it became clear after a bit that this narrative was going in a different direction and Peck was going to emerge victorious through the violence that his compatriots initiate.

Real Western men take off their shirts when working, as demonstrated
by 'Lengthy' (John Russell) and Stretch (Peck).

The gang's negotiations with bedridden Grandpa are a bit tense.

• I'm becoming a fan of Anne Baxter. Before my classic film obsession began, I only knew her as the exotic, emotional Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments. In this one her role as "Mike" couldn't have been more different. Extremely young and projecting innocence despite her exterior thick skin, you'd be hard pressed to recognize her as the same actress. (Of course, she had powerhouse performances as Eve in All About Eve and had just come off her Oscar-winning performance in The Razor's Edge). As a bonus, she had great chemistry with Gregory Peck.

Spunky "Mike," as played by a very young and sweet-looking Anne
Baxter, doesn't take prisoners.

Yep, there is a romance developing here.

• Richard Widmark was also very good, although he didn't impress me much as I felt his performance was a close cousin to the various somewhat unhinged villains he'd made his specialty to that point; his wild grins and laughter grated a bit for that reason. (See my post about his villain Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death here; this one was made just a year before Yellow Sky).

Widmark as "Dude" flashes his impish, insidious smile.

• While I had an idea of where this would lead in the end, the script of the last couple of scenes surprised me. And to keep the spoilers at bay, I won't say any more! 

Where to Watch
A DVD is available from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. It can be streamed with a subscription to one of a few streaming services: check here.

Further Reading
Fellow blogger Caftan Woman wrote a terrific review of the film here.