Seven Men from Now: Randolph Scott’s First Western with Budd Boetticher!

By Nicholas Stix

From 1947-1960, an independent Hollywood producer made high-quality pictures. His name was John Wayne (1907-1979), and his production company had a few different names, including John Wayne Productions, Wayne-Fellows Productions, and Batjac Productions. (After The Alamo (1960), Wayne put his son, Michael, in charge of Batjac, and the quality of Batjac’s pictures diminished dramatically.)

During the early 1950s, Wayne hired a talented, highly decorated young horse soldier from The War, Burt Kennedy (1922-2001), to write scripts for a Western TV show, Juan and Diablo, that was never made. In 1955, Kennedy wrote his first movie script with Wayne in mind, but Wayne’s plate was full at the time, and so he hired an aging star nine years older than him named Randy Scott to perform in it, and another youngish man named Budd Boetticher (1916-2001) to direct. And that proved to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship...between Scott (1898-1987) and Boetticher (1916-2001), that is.

Scott had already created his own production company, with Harry Joe Brown as co-producer and added Boetticher as director, and for four or five years, they made a series of taut, popular oaters starring Scott: RaNown pictures. The pictures proved so successful on every level, that by the time Scott co-starred with Joel McCrea in the Christian Sam Peckinpah masterpiece, Ride the High Country (1962), although Scott was 64 and looked it, he was as much in demand as ever. However, recognizing that he could never match his work in High Country, Scott wisely hung up his spurs.

Budd Boetticher was a crazy man. Certifiably. As a young man, he headed off to Mexico, where he studied bullfighting and became an accomplished matador, before returning home. Eventually, he wrote and sold the autobiographical motion picture story to John Wayne that Wayne produced and Boetticher directed as The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951).

However, Wayne handed Boetticher’s picture off to the former’s mentor, John Ford (1994-1973), to edit it, making massive cuts. Boetticher never forgave “the Coach,” aka ”Pappy.” Boetticher spent the 1950s, ‘60s, and part of the 1970s making pictures and doing TV work, , when he wasn’t committed to a rubber room.

Twenty-two years after The Bullfighter, Boetticher still told anyone who’d listen, and even those who wouldn’t, that Ford was the man who’d murdered his picture.

However, at the time, Boetticher was nevertheless participating in the death watch for Jack Ford, who was falling to The Big C, stomach cancer.

And so, Boetticher, like numerous other people still alive, famous and obscure alike, who had known the Old Man, would periodically journey out to Palm Desert to see him.

The funny thing about Boetticher’s relationship to Ford is that when Ford made a series of brilliant pictures for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox in 1939-1941—Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green was My Valley—Ford complained to everyone he knew of Zanuck, “He’s ruining my pictures.”

Darryl F. Zanuck was not only, as the chief of 20th Century Fox Pictures, one of Hollywood’s most powerful moguls, but he was widely considered the “best cutter” (editor) in town, and personally edited every big production for Fox.

And Zanuck was a more skilled editor than Ford. (Many years later, Ford’s cuts would be restored to Bullfighter.) I’m sure it gave Ford great satisfaction to cut up another man’s picture, even if it wasn’t a Fox movie.

Zanuck also was gifted at working over scripts. His collaboration with Philip Dunne, in giving Dunne’s script to Ford’s How Green was My Valley (1941) a final polishing reportedly resulted in one of the most brilliant screenplays ever written. I’ve held off discussing Seven Men from Now, because there isn’t much I can say, without sperlin’ the picture.

Ben Stride (Scott) was town sheriff, but lost re-election. The man who unseated him graciously offered him the job of deputy, but Stride was too proud to take it. Someone had to bring in some loot, or the Strides were going to starve, so Stride’s wife got a job as clerk at the local Wells Fargo office. A gang of seven men robbed the office, murdering Mrs. Stride in the bargain. Ben vowed to hunt down each and every one of his wife’s killers. Thus, Seven Men from Now.

Kennedy’s script is brilliant, and contains no fewer than six plot twists, and the cast is pure gold, especially Lee Marvin, though Scott is solid as ever, as is Gail Russell as the female lead.

And the whole thing runs only 78 minutes, typical for a Boetticher Western.