McLintock!

Review #1414: McLintock!

Cast: 
John Wayne (George Washington McLintock), Maureen O'Hara (Katherine McLintock), Patrick Wayne (Devlin Warren), Stefanie Powers (Becky McLintock), Jack Kruschen (Jake Birnbaum), Chill Wills (Drago), Yvonne De Carlo (Louise Warren), Jerry Van Dyke (Matt Douglas Jr), Edgar Buchanan (Bunny Dull), Perry Lopez (Davey Elk), Strother Martin (Agard), and Gordon Jones (Matt Douglas) Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen.

Review: 
“The only one who could stand up to my father, and stand toe-to-toe with my father, and match him in everything.”

It never hurts to make a film that fit into numerous genres. In this case, why not have both a Western and a comedy? With famed stars in Wayne and O'Hara, who could go wrong? At the helm for the film was Andrew V. McLaglen, a British-born American director that grew up with his father Victor (a prolific character actor in numerous John Ford films, where he won an Academy Award for The Informer in 1935) around films, and he eventually found work for himself such as production assistance and assistant directing, with one notable film credit being The Quiet Man (1952, where he did the latter category). In 1956, he started his career in directing, doing Gun the Man Down while also starting work in television with programs such as Gunsmoke and Have Gun - Will Travel, and he directed over 90 episodes of each show over the course of nine and six years respectively. McLaglen would direct a variety of subjects over the course of 35 years in film and television (ranging from Western to war films) with a variety of stars like Wayne (who he would work with five times), James Stewart (four times), and Roger Moore (three times). Familiarity is the name of the game when it comes to this film, since James Edward Grant (who wrote several films with Wayne in them, such as The Alamo) served as writer for a film that was inspired by William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew; Wayne acts alongside his third son while having his eldest son serve as producer and this was the fourth of five Wayne-O'Hara films, which were noted for their clear chemistry between their stars. One shouldn't forget about O'Hara in all of this, a figure of the Hollywood Golden Age that came from Ireland and theater acting at a young age to stardom in a variety of genres such as Westerns, melodramas, and adventure films. Speaking of actors nicknamed the "Queen of Technicolor", De Carlo (star of film and future star on television) was given a role in the film because of Wayne's sympathy in light of her husband being permanently crippled while doing stunt-work on How the West Was Won (1963, which had Wayne as star).

While the film is certainly a bit different from the usual Wayne fare, he also made this film as a way to express his belief (and disapproval) on certain topics, where his character yearns to tame both his wife and the West at the same time. There are quite a few moments of amusement within a story that moves at its own careful pace of 127 minutes, one with a casual story rather than tension that takes a familiar story to make a controlled film that sticks out from the usual Wayne experience without becoming a parody of itself. This is a film with a climax involving a paddling with a coal scuttle shovel, after all. The mud brawl proves to be a big highlight, one with plenty of fist-fighting and amusement, complete with the usage of bentonite (a type of clay that looks like syrup) for mud. Wayne seems to be having a fine time here, a clear-cut blunt performance that has a sense of honesty and humor without becoming too obvious about it. One can see the chemistry between him and O'Hara even when he's drunkenly falling down the stairs with her, really. O'Hara makes for a fiery presence with her own sense of humor that makes for plenty of smiles with those expressive eyes. The younger Wayne and Powers prove a fair pairing with others and themselves, while Kruschen, Wills and De Carlo provide capable careful chuckles that resonate with the trappings of the plot. There isn't the usual villain to make a showdown, but at least there are adversarial presences to drive things (however obvious things get). In the long run, this is a fair little mixture of Western and comedy, buoyed by Wayne, O'Hara and company to make a useful time worth having, particularly since it is readily available in the public domain (bless those failures to copyright) for anyone to stoke their curiosity in familiar territory for all in the 1960s.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.