elmore leonard

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As it is March the 15th and I haven’t written about a single western I’ve clearly been remiss at tackling my Westerns in March theme. My apologies for that. It has been quite a month, but I’m gonna try and make the back half of March full of cowboys.

Westerns have always struggled with their depictions of Native Americans. For decades they were generally depicted as nameless savages out to rape the womenfolk and massacre the men. Even when Hollywood started to be more sympathetic they often chose white actors to portray the Native American characters with more than a few lines.

I had all that in mind when Paul Newman shows up in Hombre with tanned skin, long hair, and dressed like an Apache. My immediate thought was, “Oh no. Not this again.” But Hombre has something different in mind. Newman plays John Russell a white man who was stolen and raised by Apaches. But he was treated well enough that when his real father found him as a teenager and took him home he ran away to join back with his tribe.

As the film begins he is living on a reservation. A Mexican man comes to tell him that his father has died and left him his boarding house. The man suggests that Russell should clean himself up and live a nice life as a white man. He does clean himself up, gets a haircut, and puts on white man clothes (makes himself look like Paul Newman) but he has no intention of living at the boarding house. The lady who runs it, tries to make him a deal, says she’ll still run the house that he won’t have to do anything and he’ll make a nice living. But he decides to sell it. He takes the money and joins a stagecoach out of town.

There are a couple of fancy-pants riders on the coach, one of who used to be the US Indian Agent for the reservation (Fredric March). Since Russell now looks like Paul Newman the Agent (and especially his wife, played by Barbara Rush) takes a shine to him, but once they learn he used to live on the reservation as a native they immediately force him into riding up top with the driver.

There is a lot of that in this film. Paul Newman was one of the most handsome men on the planet, and with his blondish hair and blue eyes, one of the whitest. But the moment anyone finds out his character lived with the Apache they hate him, and they treat him like garbage.

For his part, Russell doesn’t play the Indian with a heart of gold. He’s full of righteous anger. The story inevitably leads them to a situation in which Russell has to save the racist white people but it plays out in unexpected ways. It isn’t a perfect film and I can’t say that all of its racial moralizing works, but it sure is interesting. It is also a fine bit of genre filmmaking as well. I’ve made it sound like more of a morality play than it really is.

That situation I alluded to finds one of the coach riders with a box full of (stolen) cash and some outlaws trying to steal it. The film takes all of that stuff and makes it quite thrilling to watch beyond the fascinating takes on Native Americans and how the white man treated them.

Highly recommended.

maximum bob

Reading an Elmore Leonard novel is a lot like watching a good, not great movie. There is a lot of style, dialogue that demands to be spoken out loud, and interesting and twisting plots, with great ease in being read. Maybe that’s why so many of his books are made into movies. They read like screenplays.

Maximum Bob was actually made into a television show starring Beau Bridges, but it didn’t last past a season.

What we get here is a breezy, fun novel about Bob Gibbs, a conservative, hard-nosed judge nick-named “Maximum Bob” for his tendency to deal out the full force of the law. Bob begins to fancy a no-nonsense probation officer, Nancy Baker, who is busy tangling with a couple of low-life losers. Things get complicated when a giant alligator shows up on Bob’s front porch scaring his former mermaid-turned-new-age-psychic wife into leaving him for good. Add into the mix Dale Crowe Junior, one of the aforementioned losers, who is plotting to flee from an oncoming prison sentence, and Owen, Dale’s uncle, and recently released ex-convict. The outcome is a wild ride, which is enjoyable to read, but without a lot of depth or staying power.

Leonard is a good craftsman. He has a real knack for creating interesting plots. He is often praised for his dialogue, but I can’t say that I was too impressed with it here. It has that screenplay feel to it, and would probably sound a lot better coming out of an actor’s mouth, than lying flat on the written page. Actually, that’s a good idea. Next time I read a Leonard novel I’ll act out all the parts.

I read the novel in a couple of days while basking in the sun at the local park. It was a good novel for that purpose. It was easy to pick back up after being distracted by the Frisbee players, and the ball-chasing dog, without having to think about what I had just read. It was entertaining enough to get me occupied while loafing for several hours as well. It is also forgettable enough that once I’ve written this review I’ll pretty much never think about it again. Well, at least until I browse the L-N shelf at the library.