SYNOPSICS
Good Day for a Hanging (1959) is a English movie. Nathan Juran has directed this movie. Fred MacMurray,Margaret Hayes,Robert Vaughn,Joan Blackman are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1959. Good Day for a Hanging (1959) is considered one of the best Western movie in India and around the world.
It's been more than twenty years since Ben Cutler (Fred MacMurray) wore a badge, but when the town's bank gets robbed, he joins the posse. After the chase, where he saw Marshal Cain (Emile Meyer) get killed, he can't say "no" when the town asks him to take over the Marshal's duties. However, that same town starts to turn against him when he takes his new duties seriously by arresting and testifying against the killer... a boy, Eddie 'The Kid' Campbell (Robert Vaughn), who grew up in this town and comes from a broken home, garnering the sympathy of the townsfolk, who'd rather believe one of the other escaped bank robbers shot the sheriff. This is compounded by his daughter, who still has a crush on Eddie, even though after his mother died two years ago, he left town with not a word to her since. She, too, is convinced that Eddie is still that good little boy everyone remembers, and can't believe he's been changed, by his new life of riding with outlaws.
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Good Day for a Hanging (1959) Reviews
Contemporary Dialogue
I agree with the previous comment that the dialogue was too contemporary. My late father, Daniel B. Ullman, was the screenwriter and I recognize his personal style very clearly when MacMurray says to Ruth Granger, "Don't talk like an idiot." Much too modern a turn-of-phrase and exactly what my dad would say to any of us during a heated argument! It's nice for me, personally, to hear such lines. They keep Dad alive for me. He wrote nine of "The Fugitive" TV series and borrowed heavily from our family life for names and places. In this picture, MacMurray's character is Ben Cutler. That was my maternal grandfather's name. Other movies of Dad's included "Badlands of Montana", whose main character is Steve Brewster. My brother's name is Steve. In "Kansas-Pacific," there is a Mr. Bruce featured. The parallels to "High Noon" are quite flattering. I confess I didn't pick up on that. I agree that the characters and sentiments are broadly drawn, but that is a comforting respite from much of today's fare. Give me stories about people over machines anytime. So nice to know that folks are still watching Dad's movies 25yrs after his passing.
Above average western.
I feel that "A Good Day for a Hanging," (1959) is an above average western. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by this movie, overall. For about the first 2/3s of this movie, I thought it was leaning in the direction of the liberal left. Towards the end, however, I was thinking, "Maybe not." As it turned out, it showed how law abiding citizens can be easily duped by the wrong type of people. The killer, (Robert VAUGHN) who went to trial for murdering the marshal (Emile MEYER), wasn't very interested in his girlfriend (the new marshal's (Fred MacMURRAY) daughter) while he was holding the getaway horses while the bank was being robbed. But, when he was in jail awaiting execution, he acted very blubbery towards her, obviously, because he wanted her to smuggle in a gun to him to aid in his escape. When he hit her at the jailbreak, this may have knocked some sense into her. This killer's girlfriend then turned herself around by warning the marshal (MacMURRAY), thereby saving his life. The doctor, (James DRURY) seemed a little hard nosed for a doctor, but more in my line of thinking. One point that wasn't stressed that , perhaps, should have been, even if Robert VAUGHN didn't actually kill the marshal, he could have been held as an accessory to murder, which would have made him equally guilty. I'm not sure how the law read back in those days.
Taut as a Hangman's Noose
Most of us remember Fred MacMurray from the sitcom "My Three Sons." However, Macmurray gave some great performances in some great movies,"Double Indemnity," "Pushover" and this terrific little sleeper. MacMurray plays Ben Cutler, first a reluctant posse member, then a reluctant Marshall, finally the unflinching witness against and executioner of his daughter's childhood sweetheart. What is brilliant about this movie is the gradually changing loyalties of his loved ones and townspeople. First they are out for the blood of the kid (Robert Vaughn's brilliant as a dangerous, manipulative coward). Then, as Vaughn wins greater and greater sympathy, MacMurray is treated as the heavy. As Cutler, MacMurray finds real courage, standing virtually alone by the film's climax. This is a powerful movie and a real treat. See it.
There are a lot of things worse than fear.
Good Day for a Hanging is directed by Nathan Juran and adapted to screenplay by Daniel B. Ullman and Maurice Zimm from the story The Reluctant Hangman written by John H. Reese. It stars Fred MacMurray, Robert Vaughn, Joan Blackman, Margaret Hayes, James Dury and Wendell Holmes. It is filmed in Columbia Color with cinematography by Henry Freulich. After claiming his daughter's childhood sweetheart killed the marshal of Springdale during the aftermath of a bank raid, the new marshal, Ben Cutler (MacMurray), finds himself in conflict with his family and the townsfolk who question the motives of his testimony. Good Day for a Hanging is one of those films that you feel that with a few tweaks it could have been a bona fide great 50s Western. As it is, in spite of some viable complaints from those who have bothered to review it, it's still a hugely enjoyable broody Oater. Film hinges on MacMurray's moody and stoic performance. Ben Cutler finds himself fighting a lone battle in getting outlaw Eddie "Kid" Campbell (Vaughn excellent) on to the gallows. Campbell's standing in the town is high, he's fondly remembered and after laying on a truly heartfelt plea of innocence during the trial, practically everyone is convinced that he is innocent, even the members of the Cutler posse who were there when Campbell gunned down the old marshal! And with those closest to Ben also firmly against him hanging Campbell, he is being pulled apart emotionally. It's a nicely etched turn from MacMurray, full of inner torment and believable bravado. Juran constructs some very good passages in the story, the opening robbery is very tense, the court case deftly handled with its observations of how manipulation of the law can happen, and the building of the gallows outside Campbell's cell - and the subsequent morbid interest of the townsfolk - really puts an edge on proceedings. Unfortunately the final outcome to the excellent mood building is undone by an unconvincing turn of events, and it feels very rushed. It's a shame because it just needed someone to step forward and suggest changing the ending from that of the source material. You have to think that the likes of Boetticher and Mann would have put a different spin on it. Still, and I note and agree that some of the dialogue is out of time for the era, this is way above being an average B Western. At the time Variety wrote in their notices that the colour wasn't right for the tone of the picture. To some degree I agree that shadowy black and white would have worked a treat, but in this High Def age you can really see the benefits of Freulich's photography, it's beautiful, but I viewed it from UK TCM HD Channel, which invariably means I'm seeing it different to those in 1959! I fully endorse this to Western fans who haven't seen it, and especially to MacMurray and Vaughn fans. It has problems, and yes it's kinda like a poor man's version of High Noon - Ruth (Ben's love interest played by Hayes), even suggests that Ben throw his marshal badge in the dirt - yet it's a mature throwback well worthy of viewing investment. 7/10
Curiously routine
Seeing this today -- an inexpensive 1958 undistinguished Western with talent in the declining years of their careers -- is a curious experience. The studios ground out hundreds of these in the 1940s and 1950s until inundated by the flood of TV westerns that were even cheaper. Towards the end of their life trajectory there was some attempt to distinguish them from TV fare by calling them "adult Westerns," meaning that the plot was more than twenty-one years old. But it's instructive to watch something like this from a distance of almost half a century. A few points leap out at the viewer unbidden. One, for instance, is that this particular piece owes an awful lot to "High Noon," a highly successful inexpensively made Western with an aging star, released eight years earlier. The marshall begins his career with the support of the entire town, loses it, and winds up standing alone, even against the wishes of his family. The ticking off of Gary Cooper's sources of support -- relentlessly, inexorably, one by one -- in "High Noon" was sometimes a bit hard to swallow, but the arguments against supporting Marshall Kane (there's a "Marshall Kane" in this one too, the writers not having stretched too much) at least involved sometimes rather complex motives. They wanted Cooper out of town for various reasons, but all of them more or less plausible. Here, a couple of drinks from the defense counsel and all the aldermen and town councilmen ("the town's most respected citizens") are against hanging the kid. Nobody seems to think very hard. Oh -- and the defense counsel is a sight to behold, personally insulting MacMurray and having a fist fight with him, wearing a perpetual sneer, and using oily and insinuating locutions. (No penalties for overacting.) The second things that leaps out at the viewer is the script. We've grown so accustomed to hearing period speech in recent Westerns that it comes as a shock to find not even a perfunctory nod to periodicity in this movie. Every character speaks as if it were 1958 instead of 1888. And as if they were all middle-class screenwriters living in Hollywood. The grammar is eighth-grade perfect and there is not a regionalism in sight. You get the impression that if someone had said anything like, "I don't know nuthin' about that -- I laid down the snaffles under the ramada by the remuda," everyone around him would be frozen into tonic immobility. The acting is, for the most part, okay. MacMurray is a competent professional, Robert Vaughan does an excellent psychopath while breaking into tears during the trail in order to gain the jury's sympathy. Emil Meyers is always good, although his part here is too small. His widow is overplayed by the actress. And, as I say, the defense counsel belongs in a Cecil B. DeMille movie. I'm glad I watched it. It's a genuine period piece. They no longer turn out Westerns like this. They turn out cheaply made slasher flicks in their stead. I think I prefer Westerns like this.