Hang 'Em High
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Hang 'Em High is a 1968 American DeLuxe Color revisionist Western film directed by Ted Post and written by Leonard Freeman and Mel Goldberg. It stars Clint Eastwood as Jed Cooper, an innocent man who survives a lynching; Inger Stevens as a widow who helps him; Ed Begley as the leader of the gang that lynched Cooper; and Pat Hingle as the federal judge who hires him as a Deputy U.S. Marshal.
Hang 'Em High was the first production of The Malpaso Company, Eastwood's production company.
Hingle portrays a fictional judge who mirrors Judge Isaac Parker, labeled the "Hanging Judge" due to the large number of men he sentenced to be executed during his service, during the late 1800s, as District Judge of the United States District Court of the Western District of Arkansas.
The film also depicts the dangers of serving as a Deputy U.S. Marshal during that period, as many federal marshals were killed while serving under Parker. The fictional Fort Grant, base for operations for that district judge seat, is also a mirror of the factual Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Judge Parker's court was located.
Plot
In Oklahoma Territory in 1889, retired lawman Jed Cooper drives a small herd of cattle across a stream. A posse of nine men - Captain Wilson, Reno, Miller, Jenkins, Stone, Maddow, Tommy, Loomis, and Charlie Blackfoot - surround him and demand that he show them a receipt for the cattle. After learning the man from whom he bought them was a robber who had impersonated and killed the owner, Cooper explains that he knew nothing about the murder; but only Jenkins expresses doubts about his guilt. After Reno takes Cooper's horse and saddle and Miller takes his wallet, the men hang him from a tree and ride away.
Shortly afterward, Deputy U.S. Marshal Dave Bliss rescues the half-dead Cooper and takes him to Fort Grant, where the territorial judge, Adam Fenton, determines that Cooper is innocent, sets him free, and warns him not to take his own revenge. As an alternative, Fenton offers Cooper a job as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Cooper accepts, and Fenton warns him not to kill the lynchers, but to bring them in for trial.
While picking up a prisoner, Cooper sees his own horse and saddle in front of a local saloon. He finds Reno inside and tries to arrest him, but Reno draws his gun, forcing Cooper to shoot him dead. Jenkins, learning of Reno's death at the hands of a marshal with a hanging scar, turns himself in and provides the names of the rest of the posse. Cooper finds Stone in the town of Red Creek, arrests him, and has the local sheriff, Ray Calhoun, put him in jail. (Stone is subsequently shot and killed by Calhoun while attempting to escape.) Most of the men Cooper seeks are respected citizens of Red Creek, but Calhoun honors Cooper's warrants for their arrest.
While en route to arrest the other men, Cooper and Calhoun come across the murder of two men and the rustling of their herd. Cooper forms a posse of his own to pursue the stolen herd, and discovers that the rustlers are Miller and two teenage brothers, Ben and Billy Joe. He prevents the rustlers from being lynched themselves, then takes them to Fort Grant single-handedly when the posse deserts him. He frees Ben and Billy Joe from their bonds after they insist that only Miller committed the murders. Miller attacks Cooper after slipping his own bonds, but Cooper subdues him while the brothers watch.
Fenton sentences all three rustlers to be hanged, despite Cooper's defense of the teenagers. Fenton insists that the public will resort to lynching if they see rustlers going unpunished, threatening Oklahoma's bid for statehood. Some time later, Calhoun arrives at Fort Grant and offers to pay Cooper for his lost cattle with money from Captain Wilson and the other vigilantes. Cooper makes it clear that while they are alive he still intends to arrest them. With the bribe rejected, Blackfoot and Maddow flee, while Tommy and Loomis remain loyal to Wilson and agree to help him kill Cooper.
During the public hanging of Miller, Ben, Billy Joe, and three other men, the men who lynched him ambush Cooper in a brothel, seriously wounding him. Cooper survives and is slowly nursed back to health by a widow, Rachel Warren. Rachel reveals she is hunting for the outlaws who killed her husband and raped her. She and Cooper begin an affair when he points out that she might never find her rapists. Cooper tries to resign, but Judge Fenton goads him into continuing by giving him the location of Wilson's ranch, where Wilson, Tommy, and Loomis are hiding.
Cooper survives an ambush by a guard dog, stabs Loomis to death, shoots Tommy, and nearly apprehends Wilson before Wilson, knowing Cooper is closing in, hangs himself. After returning to Fort Grant, Cooper hands in his marshal's star and demands that Fenton sign a pardon for Jenkins, who is both contrite and seriously ill. The two men debate the merits of territorial justice; Fenton insists that he is doing as well as he can, cursing the fact that his is the only court in the territory with little recourse for defendants —
Well, maybe that's inevitable when there's only one man, one court, with the power of final justice over a territory that's five times the size of most states! Mistakes? Oh, I've made 'em, Cooper. Don't you doubt about that. Don't you doubt, either, there are times sitting up there in that judgement seat I have wished, I have prayed, that there was someone standing between me and God Almighty – someone with the power to say, "You're wrong, Fenton! You've made an error in law – that this man deserves another trial, this man here a reprieve, and this man is innocent!" But until this territory becomes a state, with a governor, and a state court of appeals, I am the law here – all the law. If you don't like that, you can cuss me till hell freezes over ... or you can join me, Cooper; even fight me. Help me turn this godforsaken territory into a state where no one man calls himself the law!
— and that if Cooper disagrees with him, then the best thing he can do is continue to serve as a marshal. Cooper takes back his star in exchange for Jenkins' release, which Fenton agrees to. Fenton then gives Cooper fresh warrants for Blackfoot and Maddow, telling him, "The law still wants 'em."
Cast
- Clint Eastwood as Marshal Jed Cooper
- Inger Stevens as Rachel Warren
- Ed Begley as Captain Wilson
- Pat Hingle as Judge Adam Fenton
- Ben Johnson as Marshal Dave Bliss
- Charles McGraw as Sheriff Ray Calhoun
- Ruth White as Madame "Peaches" Sophie
- Bruce Dern as Miller
- Alan Hale Jr. as Matt Stone
- Arlene Golonka as Jennifer
- James Westerfield as Prisoner
- Dennis Hopper as The Prophet
- L. Q. Jones as Loomis
- Michael O'Sullivan as Francis Elroy Duffy
- Joseph Sirola as Reno
- James MacArthur as The Preacher
- Bob Steele as Jenkins
- Bert Freed as Schmidt, the Hangman
- Russell Thorson as Maddow
- Ned Romero as Charlie Blackfoot
- Jonathan Goldsmith as Tommy (credited as Jonathan Lippe)
