Broken Lance's "Half Breed"
Friday, August 28, 2015 at 10:12AM Robert Wagner keeps invading our Smackdown celebrations. In our 1952 revisit he appeared briefly as a shell shocked soldier for Susan Hayward to comfort with her crooning in With a Song in My Heart. He was almost impossible to look at from the pretty. And here he is again, distracting another Smackdown with his smolder in the western Broken Lance.
Perhaps we'd better go inside."
[Translation]: Jean Peters, you're about to tear your clothes off under the moonlight and devour me but I will chivalrously save your reputation... now that I've already won you with my lips.
The rising 24 year-old actor was rumored to be carrying on behind the scenes with the then 47 year-old Barbara Stanwyck (who happens to co-star in Executive Suite, another of this month's Smackdown movies) but his most enduring romance was yet to begin. How many times do you think a then 16 year-old Natalie Wood, just one year away from her key transition film from child star to teen icon (Rebel Without a Cause) demanded to watch Broken Lance? Do you think her friends & handlers were all "enough with the Broken Lance, Nat!" According to Natalie herself, by 1954 her love would have already been six years strong though the actors had yet to meet.
"I was 10 and he was 18 when I first saw him walking down a hall at 20th Century Fox," she recalls. "I turned to my mother and said, 'I'm going to marry him.' "
She did.
Natalie married RJ (for the first time) in December 1957. She was just 19.
In Broken Lance, the then 24 year old actor (of German and Norwegian descent) plays our protagonist, the "half breed" son of Native American princess "Señora Devereaux" (played by Mexican actress Katy Jurado) and an Irish cattle rancher (played by Spencer Tracy of Irish descent) who is at odds with his half-brothers. R.J. is heavily bronzed for the role. For all the typical Old Hollywood clumsiness with racial identity and casting -- something that hasn't changed much in the subsequent 61 years (note: Rooney Mara as "Tiger Lily" in the forthcoming Pan) -- Broken Lance actually really sells the racial identity angst with something like humane progressive verve. Jean Peters, playing RJ's love interest Barbara, jokes that her man is more upset about being half Irish than half Indian in a clumsy date scene which results in both of them doing those cheery Old Holllywood fake chuckles as we dissolve out. Elsewhere, though, there's rich drama. Tracy's three sons from an earlier marriage, who serve as the plot's antagonists aren't always comfortable with their bi-racial home but neither are they painted as explicitly racist. Their "evil," if you will, arrives from a more complex mix of agendas and grudges against their father and you can see that the eldest actually respects his stepmom and youngest brother, even as he speaks out against them. In the films most sympathetically acted moment of strife, Tracy squares off with the Governor (E.G. Marshall), over their children's unexpected romance (pictured up top). The governor's discomfort with his daughter falling for his closest friend's bi-racial son-- a young man he otherwise likes quite a lot and has seen grow up, mind you -- clearly scars both men, tearing their decades long friendship apart. Prejudices hurt everyone, not just the target of the prejudice.
All in all Broken Lance is an engaging western with more ambitions than gunfights for a change of pace. And this is why we should always love the Oscars, people. Let others reflexively gripe about it and miss out. Awards history directs us to movies we might otherwise never see from before our time. And Oscar history, for all its imperfections and blindspots, can illuminate pop culture throughlines, introduce you to rich now underappreciated talents, and provide wonderful anecdotal bits and bobs from mainstream history, cinematic and otherwise.
I love doing the Smackdowns and I hope you do, too. If you wanted to vote on this round, I need your votes by this evening at the absolute latest. The 1954 Supporting Actress Smackdown arrives Sunday morning at 10:00 AM.
Reader Comments (10)
Two decades later, Robert would go on to play his most iconic role--Dan in The Towering Inferno.
Nathaniel, this movie did indeed surprise me for the reasons you so astutely delineated. And as always, thank you for pointing out why the Oscars are so important--they serve to revitalize and fuel love for our precious film history.
Was really confused by "RJ" at first!
Ryan -- oh sorry. that was his nickname. I put in a full Robert Wagner so it was less confusing.
brookesboy, I never think of RJ when I think of Towering Inferno. (Then again, I don't think of the film that much either). I've always thought his two most iconic roles were on TV: in It Takes a Thief (swoon) and Hart to Hart. On the big screen, A Kiss Before Dying and the Austin Powers series.
I really enjoy this film, more actually than the film that it's an adaptation of the 1949 Edward G. Robinson/Susan Hayward starrer House of Strangers. Robinson is good in the first but I think that in the adaptation they fleshed out the character more or perhaps it was the fact that Tracy wasn't encumbered by an accent as Eddie G. was.
Also the supporting cast, save Hayward, was better in Lance. Richard Widmark was always a more vivid onscreen presence then Richard Conte who played his role in the original. And even if Katy Jurado's Senora was a secondary role it's a positive spotlight compared to the nothing role assigned to Esther Minciotti in the first.
That's an excellent point that the older brothers, especially Widmark, weren't painted as straight out villains, the other two were idiots, and a good deal of the trouble was caused by Tracy's blind pigheadedness.
The movie is beautiful to look at as well, the Technicolor wide open spaces are breathtaking, speaking of which that RJ Wagner certainly was a beauty in his youth.
joel, i love Richard Widmark! Such an underrated actor. He could do more with a glance than most actors with an entire monologue. One of the best at playing complex villains.
Paul, I think of TTI every day LOL. RJ has a spectacular death scene that has gone down in history.
I always thought Wagner was bi, especially when he recently revealed his "romance" with Stanwyck, who never had much to do with men after her possibly arranged marriage to Robert Taylor.
Wagner is/was bi ... a girlfriend I had in the 50's worked at Fox... gossip mill
In one of the Wood biographies, it is also said that Wood walked in and foundRJ with a man...
Who really cares!!! I dislike him more for whatever the involvement he and Walken had in Wood's death...
Yay, I love Broken Lance! It's one of my favorite 50s westerns largely due to the factors explored here. Hope more people will check it out. It's unexpectedly rich thematically (taking some of its cues from King Lear) and gorgeously shot, among other things.