THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1970) Warner Archive

A new, more ruthless breed of crude-hewn frontier ruffian was to rear his ugly head in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s penultimate stab at immortality, There Was A Crooked Man (1970) a rather silly and sophomoric amalgam of outdated Hollywood stars inserted into a decidedly contempo-infused tale, set in the distant past. There Was A Crooked Man is steadfastly in its revisionist theory of an old west, not steeped in its own mythology, but dusty and dire, where the most wicked and perverse entrails of mankind revel in their base and animalistic survival skills. Written by David Newman and Robert Benton (of Bonnie and Clyde – 1967 – fame) There Was A Crooked Man unfurls, and even celebrates, the rank perversity of brute deception and acid wit, pitted against a more altruistic and sophisticated integrity, sure to be corrupted by its influence. Owing to the precepts of the ‘then’ new Hollywood, There Was A Crooked Man has no qualms flashing a little shameless skin – amply endowed breasts from any number of bimbettes and Kirk Douglas’ butt crack with cinematographer, Harry Stradling Jr., rather skillfully to conceal his twig and berries besides. The tart, if mostly benign humor, perhaps in part, is owed a certain awareness by the writers, they are dealing with proponents not of their burgeoning ilk in crass commercialism, rather alumni from Tinsel Town’s more cultured past. Some blue language too, peppered throughout, most uttered by Douglas’ evil and enterprising, Paris Pitman Jr., just a prisoner momentarily brought to heel, though never to justice under the law.   

Mankiewicz was, arguably, the wrong director for There Was A Crooked Man, plying his formidable craft to its picaresque story, yet without conviction, either under his creative aegis or from his impressively assembled cast. None are actually believable here, and some, like Kirk Douglas, appear merely to be phoning in their performances, culled from a storehouse of clichés and anecdotal tidbits in their classical actor’s training manual. Henry Fonda’s noble Sheriff come warden, Woodward L. Lopeman is about the most compelling of the lot. Yet, even he exudes a sort of ‘stock’ poise we have come to admire from better work done elsewhere. Inoffensively, Mankiewicz here seems to be going through the motions for the most mainstream pabulum – the kind that sells tickets but never actually pushes the creative envelope, relying exclusively on the cache of his stars’ marquee drawing power. Attempting to straddle the chasm between irreconcilable parody and legit melodrama, There Was A Crooked Man instead drags its dumpy butt of a joke into some questionable territory, and, for interminable stretches, embellishes a few run-of-the-mill character traits built into a select few from this prison class, adding a corrosive punch line or two, but without actually building quality characterizations the audience can invest in or root for.  And so, we meet the men who will make up this motley assemblage. Douglas’ Paris, having double-crossed his cohorts in the robbery of a local businessman, Mr. Lomax (played by Arthur O’Connell), makes off with his handsome half a million he later dumps in a craggy pit, filled with deadly rattlers to guard his stash. Alas, Paris makes a fatal error patronizing a house of ill-repute whose Madam (Claudia McNeil) also caters to Lomax’s voyeurism. Lomax discovers Paris in a menage-a-trois and promptly has him arrested. In another part of town, young buck, Coy Cavendish (Michael Blodgett), desiring to get his rocks off with the shameless tart, Edwina (Pamela Hensley) instead, inadvertently murders her father (Kelly Thordsen) with a cue ball from the billiard table after daddy attempts to put an end to their midnight flagrante delicto with his shotgun.

Meanwhile, a pair of homosexual cons, Cyrus McNutt (John Randolph) and Dudley Whinner (Hume Cronyn) are found out in their fraud during a revival meeting in which Cyrus peddles Dudley as a deaf and dumb mute who ‘hears’ heavenly inspiration and is compelled to paint saintly images of the afterlife on canvas. Finally, robber Floyd Moon (Warren Oates) is intercepted in his drunken revelry by Sherriff Lopeman, whom he promptly wounds in the shin with his pistol during a barroom showdown. Having lost faith in Lopeman’s ability to maintain law and order, the town council elects to remove him from his post. Instead, Lopeman applies for another position – that of the new warden, after corruption is discovered in his predecessor, Warden LeGoff (Martin Gabel). The newly arrived to this desolate outpost, including a non-descript Chinese peasant, Ah-Ping (C.K. Yang) quickly discover a kindred spirit in the moth-eaten and weather-beaten, Missouri Kid (Burgess Meredith) – a legend in his own time, now, reduced to a humiliated, crotchety and occasionally groveling shell of his former self.

Prison life is hardly ideal. The guards, to include Tobaccy (Alan Hale Jr.) and Whiskey (Victor French) are very tough customers, while rock quarry overseer, Skinner (Bert Freed) preys upon the buff young men, suggesting that for a little backroom buggery, his clemency might be granted. At present, Skinner is attracted to Coy, who does not share in his predilection. After several failed attempts, Paris befriends Floyd whom he promises to share his ill-gotten gains with…for a price. Meanwhile, the perpetually frazzled Cyrus’ nervous pleas fall on deaf ears. Even Dudley does not take him seriously. After LeGoff is murdered during an inmate uprising, the men are introduced to their new warden. However, Woodward’s desire is not to brutalize the inmates, but rather, to offer an outstretched hand of tolerance and a reformist’s purpose for the betterment of all. Paris is not so easily fooled by Woodward’s benevolence. Indeed, Coy’s accidental killing has him pegged for the hangman’s noose shortly. Nevertheless, under Woodward’s watch, the men establish a new outlook and sense of community. They build a mess hall decorated with Dudley’s paintings and, superficially at least, begin to live by a more honest code of standards.

Only Paris remains the outcast. As Dudley is the only member of the troop granted unrestricted access to the shed housing dynamite, also, his paint supplies, Paris tries to corrupt his interests for a few explosive sticks, meant for his daring escape to freedom. Dudley, however, is disinterested in remaining an outlaw. Indeed, he and Cyrus have only 3-years to serve. Now, Paris appeals to Cyrus to stage his own fake hanging in front of Dudley and the rest of their cellmates. Fearing his lover’s threat of suicide, Dudley agrees to Paris plan. But Paris has figured things out too cleverly for the rest of the men. Indeed, during the official inauguration of the mess hall he stages a distracting food fight to humiliate Woodward. The detonation of the dynamite, having cut a gaping hole in the mess hall wall, causes the prisoners’ revolt. This, however, was all to Paris’ plan, getting the guards to concentrate on them while he effortlessly walks out the unprotected front gates. Having naively believed in Paris’ plan, Coy throws open the gates only to be shot dead by several guards still protecting it. Dudley and Cyrus are left waiting in a nearby carriage, presumably their planned mode of transportation; Dudley, realizing too late they have been left to face the aftermath.

Meanwhile, Paris, having convinced Floyd to follow him through a torn fence, the real route to freedom, now pulls a gun on, and murders his cohort, riding off to reclaim his ill-gotten gains hidden in the snake-infested pit. Woodward sees Paris depart and trails him. Divine justice intervenes when Paris, too eager to enjoy his money, is unaware a deadly rattler has climbed inside the bag. It strikes with its fatal venom, leaving Paris to die and Woodward to reclaim the cash. Returning to the prison with Paris’ body slumped over his horse, Woodward pauses a moment to reconsider what his honesty has earned him in this life. As he now deems honestly hardly to be its own reward, Woodward sends Paris’ remains on, turning with the bags of money away from that ‘pious’ life he once knew and heading instead for the Mexican border (Paris’ original plan) where, as a title card reveals, “…he lived happily ever after.”  

There Was A Crooked Man is not a great movie.  At times it veers dangerously close to not even being a competently made one. Despite its stellar cast, Mankiewicz’s plotting is fairly leaden. Harry Stradling Jr.’s cinematography includes some sublime and expertly lensed compositions, shot in expansive Panavision. Alas, the movie never takes off as it should, partly because it never takes itself seriously. Kirk Douglas’ performance as the unscrupulous and coldblooded Paris is all-ego and virtually no substance. Clearly, with the intent to make the sleepy-eyed, blonde-haired and well-built, Michael Blodgett a shining new star in the cinema firmament, the screenplay affords Coy Cavendish some choice moments, alas, mostly squandered on beefcake brawn that, far from getting Blodgett noticed, otherwise relegated his future career prospects to a forgettable slate of work on television. Blodgett left the movies in the late 1970’s, becoming a pseudo-successful novelist and screenwriter. Tragically, he died from a heart attack in 2007, age 68. And then, there is the bizarre inclusion of C.K. Yang, as the mute Oriental giant – a part so one-dimensionally conceived, it would have been better not to have him in the movie at all. His cameo really is pointless. Likewise, Burgess Meredith, Arthur O’Connell and Hume Cronyn are utterly wasted here – stellar performers from Hollywood’s old home guard, exploited as mere filler in this screenplay. Warren Oates manages to distinguish himself as the sacrificial lamb, but the real/reel heavy lifting is left to Douglas’ soulless slick and Henry Fonda’s morally-invested martinet. To be sure, Douglas and Fonda have some excellent scenes together; actually, the best in the movie, particularly the moment when Woodward pleads with Paris to give a speech on the inaugural of the mess hall, and Paris clearly outlines the reasons why he will not be exploited as a shameless shill to plug and puff out Woodward’s reputation as a reformist lawman.

If anything, There Was a Crooked Man is an affirmation of Mankiewicz’s inability to be clairvoyant and astute about the human condition when he is only its observer/director, rather than the Oscar-winning screenwriter of A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). Mankiewicz’s strength remains the spoken word and the loaded barb. When he writes, his characters emerge from beyond the proscenium as fully formed flesh and blood creatures of habit from life, destined for greatness, but doomed by their own inhibited hypocrisies.  Alas, the Newman/Benton screenplay is denied Mankiewicz’s enriched dialogue, otherwise to have made these characters live on in us. And Mankiewicz, not known for his action set pieces, makes the least of the daring dynamiting of the prison and catastrophically unsound breakout. Instead, the whole climax unravels into a sort of perfunctory ‘you expected this to happen, so here it is’ denouement, breeding more ennui than elation. In the final analysis, There Was A Crooked Man reveals itself to be a fairly pedestrian western, awkwardly melding the time-honored edicts of old Hollywood with the burgeoning cynicism and feasible artistic uncertainties of tomorrow’s generation of picture-makers. Generally, a very bad fit for Joe, and Kirk, and yes, Fonda too.  

There Was A Crooked Man arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive in a fairly pristine 1080p transfer culled from a new 4K scan from original elements. The intended drabness in Harry Stradling’s stark compositions is expertly realized, the color palette favoring faded browns/beiges under the stifling hot sun and ruddy, sun-burn flesh tones that are perfectly in check. While much of the picture was shot at California’s Joshua Tree National Park, a few inserts were made on the Warner backlot and the disconnect between this ‘on location’ work and the climate-controlled confines of a studio soundstage are exceedingly transparent in hi-def. Fine detail is expertly realized and a light smattering of film grain appears indigenous to its source. So, excellent work done here. The 2.0 DTS, derived from a one-channel source, sounds uncharacteristically thin. We’ll chalk this up to a not-terribly-prepossessing original mono sound mix, intermittently improved by Charles Strouse’s bombastic score. A 10-min. vintage promo favoring Blodgett and a theatrical trailer are the only extras. Bottom line: given its cache in front of and behind the camera, There Was A Crooked Man is disappointingly disposable fluff. The Blu-ray is first rate. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5

EXTRAS

1