For this Western Movie Night session, Robert Nott chose WESTERN UNION (1941), a fast moving and overall enjoyable tale about the construction of the telegraph line across Nebraska to Utah during the early days of the Civil War, that was ordered by President Abraham Lincoln.
It features a triangle of sorts with Vance Shaw (Randolph Scott), the company scout and a former outlaw (or is he?), Sue Creighton (Virginia Gilmore), an expert at Morse Code, and Richard Blake (Robert Young) an Eastern dude, hired as a surveyor by Sue’s brother, Edward (Dean Jagger) tasked by Western Union to get the line completed. It also features Confederate guerillas, Sioux braves, double dealing, cattle rustling, gunplay, and a spectacular fire.
The screenplay by Robert Carson (he wrote the original A STAR IS BORN released in 1937) was based a book by Zane Grey, published three days after Grey died. However, there’s little that made it from the book to the screen.
Fritz Lang, the Austrian-born director revered for his science fiction classic METROPOLIS and crime films like M and FURY, loved Western movies. He made three: THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES, RANCHO NOTORIOUS and this one. He recalled that when offered the script for WESTERN UNION, he rewrote it, but 20th Century-Fox Studio discarded his version. He later said that while researching the construction of the telegraph line across Nebraska, “nothing happened … except that they ran out of wood for the telegraph poles,” and when the buffaloes got itchy, they “rubbed themselves against the poles,” knocking them down
Shot by cinematographers Edward Cronjager and Allen M. Davey on locations in Utah and Arizona, as well as some obvious sound stage work, it is a feast for the eyes.
Running a taut 95 minutes, WESTERN UNION is available on Blu-ray, DVD, Amazon Prime and youtube.
Along with Robert, award-winning journalist and author of several books on Western films, including THE FILMS OF RANDOLPH SCOTT and his most recent THE FILMS OF BUDD BOETTICHER, our group includes Johnny D. Boggs, record nine-time Spur Award-winning author and Owen Wister Award winner whose work includes his latest, LONGHORNS EAST, Kirk Ellis, Emmy winning screenwriter and producer, and also author of the book RIDE LONESOME about the production, themes and historical relevance of the classic Ranown Western films starring Randolph Scott and directed by Budd Boetticher, Kirk’s wife, Sheila, and David Morrell, award-winning author and New York Times best-selling author of FIRST BLOOD, the novel that introduced the character Rambo.
