The Hangman - 1959

Robert Taylor plays an embittered and jaded Deputy United States Marshal has been hunting down escaped criminals for twenty years, a job he took originally because he wanted the men who killed his brother in a holdup to come to justice. He has long since accomplished that task, but it has left him half-angry and half-disgusted with humanity, and he has grown a reputation as "The Hangman" because he always brings in the bad men he goes after. Now on his last job before retirement, he plans "to find out what I've missed in life," and is eager to get the job done.

The Hangman begins like a conventional western with a rampaging stage coach speeding across the plains, and when it arrives into town the Marshal drags and roughly hurls a captured criminal (who is due for execution) into a jail and then... the movie starts talking, and doesn't let up. There is a lot of dialogue in this tale and it mostly centers around the back-and-forth fight inside of "The Hangman" who is going to hunt down the last member of a murderous gang that held up a Wells Fargo stage coach, only he's up against a queer situation: no one he meets can believe the guy he is after (Johnny Butterfield, played by Jack Lord) could actually have done the things he's wanted for by the authorities. In contrast, Taylor's Marshall can easily believe it and could probably believe it of anyone. The problem for the Marshal is that there's no one to identify Butterfield and he's been instructed by his boss (Lorne Greene) to be absolutely certain he arrests the right person. The Mashal's first task is to find someone he can take along who can make a perfect I.D.

Tina Louise plays a widowed laundry-woman who knew Butterfield in the past. She is living in a situation just barely above destitution near a calvary fort, something that may imply something far worse is impending in regards to her future, and when she is called upon by the Marshal to travel with him and help him identify the desperado Butterfield, who may have been a past boyfriend who chose a different woman, she refuses. 'The Hangman' uses every manipulation he can think of to get her assistance, though most of it features him insulting her with his accumulated wisdom from his years enforcing the law, which is that everyone will do anything for the right amount of money. He asks her how old she is (she's 24) and then he tells her she looks almost thirty ("thanks!" she replies) and that soon she'll look forty if she doesn't get out of this filthy situation. She finally throws 'The Hangman' out, but he is convinced she'll eventually meet up with him in the distant town of North Creek where Johnny Butterfield is supposed to be. 'The Hangman' is certain the reward money of $500 will be an irresistible draw (this story is set in a time period when $500 would have easily bought a house and land with it).

The twenty-four year old Tina Louise as Selah Jennison does eventually make the trip, and for a brief period of time before she arrives, 'The Hangman' starts doubting his perception of her, and starts second-guessing his own attitude about people in general. These are things he voices to the North Creek Sheriff (played by Fess Parker) who, like everyone else we meet, is reluctant to the point of outright refusal to help locate the wanted outlaw Johnny Butterfield, protesting that the accusations can't possibly be true. When the laundress finally appears in town, though, 'The Hangman,' disappointed to having been proven right about the lure of the $500, slips back into his bitter commentary on untrustworthy humans.

The rest of the film is how all the goodwill towards Butterfield will or won't be maintained by the town and by 'The Hangman' himself as his knowledge of the man develops into a fuller picture, something that goes against his credo of "I just catch them. I let the Law decide what happens next.'

The Hangman tries to be a more philosophical Western than it can really accomplish, and though the infrequent action sequences are fine and so is all of the art direction and the cast, the tone of the film is really more occupied with Robert Taylor and Tina Louise dueling over morality and, in a way, reality itself, something that gives the movie brief moments of meaty depth in between Taylor's grousing and Tina Louise being shown off in all of her youthful Hollywood glory.

Unfortunately, all of this polishing gets in the way of performing all of the functions of a regular Western movie, and the repetition of some of the dialogue and situations, instead of building toward the climax, instead steers the film sideways into some unintended, melodramatic laughs.

The Audie Murphy No Name on the Bullet, which was released just a few months before The Hangman came out, handles the existentialism better and with brevity, and is an inversion of The Hangman story itself (it features a rotten town full of would-be betrayers).

Betrayal is the theme of The Hangman, though, with that conflict going on constantly within Taylor's United States Marshal. He has loudly indicted all of humanity, and to his chagrin, himself, too. But director Michael Curtiz and writers W.R. Burnett and Dudley Nichols, from a Luke Short story, give the Marshal a way out, though he is still obligated to draw his revolver and fire it off at the wanted man Butterfield.

The 49 year old Robert Taylor and the 24 year old Tina Louise will exit North Creek together, planning to move to California, and the good-hearted Johnny Butterfield (who has taken up using the revealing alternative name of John Bishop) is left free to take care of his pregnant wife. We learn he is a man so well-loved in this town that even his enemy, the town bully 'Big Murph' (played by Gene Evans in a nicely done small role) won't betray him. So, ultimately, why should The Hangman?

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Original Page November 2024