THE MAKING OF THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH
by Phillip I. Earl
Page 4
| Local critics had nothing but
praise for Goldwyn's effort, one of them declaring it to be a milestone in
film history, "not alone for its sterling qualities as screen entertainment,
but as anew and virile chapter in the cinema's transcription of western
history--a chapter none the less alluring because it deals with the present
generation. " He praised Goldwyn and King for producing a Western
without the usual stock characters and for focusing upon recent history
"when men turned their backs on the lure of an El Dorado in the hills and
sought the wealth that lies within the soil." The stars in the film were not overshadowed by the magnificence of the natural setting, he observed, and Miss Banky did surprisingly well as "a western girl", although some viewers might not see her as the heroine portrayed in Wright 's novel. The reviewer lauded Colman for the "easy poise" he showed in his role and praised Gary Cooper and Clyde Cook for their stellar supporting performances. But his highest accolades went to Henry King for his decision to film in Nevada and for the genius of the special effects, particularly the final flood scene which he declared to be the finest he had ever witnessed in any production.35 Reviewer Edwin Schallert of the Times,
who had spent a few days at Barbara Worth during the filming, felt that the
picture opened up new vistas and established new standards for the Western.
"It affords a vision of new meanings with which the pictures of western
locales must be endowed in the future," he wrote, "and in that respect
particularly is far reaching." Like other reviewers, he was struck by Miss
Banky's physical attractions and her wholesome appearance. "Her blond beauty
makes her very American in type," he concluded. "No American girl could have
appeared more completely the American girl than she did, a Hungarian."36 |
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Glynn Waiters, one of the bit actresses in Barbara Worth, sits on a wagon with several of the local extras hired for the film. Comedic actor Clyde Cook is standing at right. Edith Wells of Winnemucca can be partially seen behind Miss Waiters' hat. Henry Wells is the lad at top right, and Margaret Wells (with a pig-tail) is just to the right of Cook's hat. Photograph courtesy of Margaret Wells Butts of Winnemucca. | ||
Other critics had mixed reactions. "At times annoying," a New York Herald-Tribune writer ventured, "but at other times it has moments of real beauty." A reviewer for Picture Play commented that the script and theme lacked substance, "too little...to have enlisted the fine skill of Henry King and the talents of Vilma Banky and Ronald Colman. They are out of their element." 37 Eastern critics in general were unimpressed. A New York Times writer expressed the opinion that the visual impact of the storm and flood scenes had been "stripped of excitement" by the many desert pictures coming out of Hollywood recently. He credited King with having "a good eye for special effects," but "his comedy, or that of the scenarist, cannot be accused of being especially keen." He characterized the rivalry between the characters played by Colman and Cooper as "struggling along in a rather tedious fashion," and Miss Banky seemed to him "essentially a hothouse flower and not the type one would expect to see living in a desert shack." Critic Mordaunt Hall of the Times was in agreement. In a December 5 review, she conceded that Miss Banky's "charm" was an asset to her role, but she still found her to be unconvincing ''as a girl who had such tremendous faith in the desert." Goldwyn's hopes of making the film "The Covered Wagon of the desert" had not been realized either, Miss Hall concluded, although the effort was commendable.38 On December 7, Barbara Worth opened a four-day run at the American Theatre in Winnemucca. Before the first showing, manager H. C. Oastler came on stage to read a telegram from Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. "We realize that Nevada and especially Winnemucca assisted in making this picture a national success," the wire read, "and the wonderful cooperation given us is deeply appreciated." Among those in the audience that night were many of the extras who had worked on the film and others who had rented equipment or livestock to the company. They had nothing but praise for the picture, and editor Bailey of the Star felt that it would show viewers elsewhere what could be accomplished by "dreaming and fighting." He also expressed the opinion that it would help Easterners understand the "possibilities" of the West and lessen opposition in Congress to the further appropriation of funds for the reclamation of desert lands.39 Film historians praise the documentary reconstruction of history embodied in the film, rating it with the two Western epics which preceded it. The movie is still preserved in the archives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and is still shown to students of the film art. European film writers have also accorded high praise to the film. In France, where it became Barbara: Fille du Desert, one critic has rated it as more significant than either The Covered Wagon or The Iron Horse.40 Samuel Goldwyn teamed Colman and Banky in three subsequent love stories--Night of Love and The Magic Flame, both released in 1927, and Two Lovers, 1928. Miss Banky also made The Awakening, without Colman, in 1928. The sound era had arrived by that time, and Goldwyn featured Banky in her first speaking role in This is Heaven, which had its premiere in May of 1929. Her foreign accent made her practically unintelligible in front of the sound camera, however, and her performance earned her "laughs rather than heart flutters," as one writer put it. The film was a disaster at the box office, and Goldwyn decided not to use her again, paying her the remaining salary stipulated in her contract--$250,000. Miss Banky married actor Rod LaRouque that year and made one more American film-A Lady to Love in 1930. It got some European circulation in the German version, Die Sehnsught Jeder Frau. In 1932, she starred in a German production, Der Rebell, her last effort on the screen. The marriage to LaRouque lasted until his death in 1969, and she is presently living in a retirement home in Beverly Hills, California.41 [Vilma Banky Died March 18, 1991, in Los Angeles, CA] Ronald Colman made an easy transition from the silent to the sound era, his mellow, richly modulated voice and his suave, dignified English manner making him one of filmdom's leading men. Often cast as the idealistic hero of adventure epics, he was never typecast, performing equally well in such diverse roles as the doctor in John Ford's Arrowsmith and the actor in George Cukor's A Double Life, for which performance he won an Academy Award as best actor in 1947.41 Goldwyn had signed Gary Cooper at $50 a week for Barbara Worth but let him go afterwards. Paramount Pictures put him under contract almost immediately, casting him as the shy lover to actress Clara Bow. Embodying the small-town virtues of honor, simplicity, gallantry and integrity, he came to personify the strong, silent American to millions of movie-goers around the world in dozens of Westerns. 42 With the exception of The Virginian
(1929), with Cooper in his first starring role, and John Ford's
Stagecoach (1935), the box office success of Barbara Worth did
little to elevate the Western in the 1930s and 1940s. Script writers who
might have followed up on the epic sweep and pervasive reality of the film
instead resurrected and embellished the cowboy image of earlier times and
transformed the Western into an assembly-line product of scant substance and
even less depth. |
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The pigs being wetted down were used in a Barbara Worth scene in which children chased them across the desert. Photograph courtesy of Margaret Butts of Winnemucca. | ||
| Roy Rogers ("King of
the Cowboys"), Gene Autry, John Wayne, William Boyd ("Hopalong Cassidy"),
Alfred "Lash" LaRue, Randolph Scott, and even Gary Cooper himself, became
stock figures in Hollywood's "Golden Age of the Cowboy," men who lived up to
the "Ten Commandments of the Cowboy," but seldom worked cattle. Productions on the scale of Barbara Worth did not return to the screen until the advent of such films as The Big Country, Ride the High Country and Shane some three decades later. Barbara Worth was thus relegated to the archives, appreciated today only by historians, critics and film buffs. 43 ABOUT THE AUTHOR [Updated 2002] ###
1. Sessions S. Wheeler, The Black Rock Desert (Caldwell, Idaho:
The Caxton Printers Ltd.,1979), pp. 19-
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