With Anthony Mann’s ‘Winchester ’73’ Coming to Blu-Ray, Check Out the Cowpoke Who Nearly Steals the Film From Jimmy Stewart

From all accounts, Dan Duryea (1907-68) was an upstanding citizen and a kind man. A proud son of White Plains, New York, Duryea studied at Cornell University, majoring in English and serving as the president of the school’s drama society. When he went to work in advertising — Duryea the elder frowned upon his son’s interest in acting — the young Ivy Leaguer promptly fell in love with a co-worker, Helen Bryan. The couple had two sons and were married until death did them part 35 years later. Otherwise, Duryea pottered around in the garden, attended PTA meetings, and volunteered in community organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America.Duryea’s career in advertising didn’t last long. After six years on the job, he suffered a heart attack and spent a year in bed recovering. Stress, the doctors told him, will kill you; time to look for a job more conducive to your health. Was acting “a comparatively easy way to make a living,” as was noted in Duryea’s obituary in the New York Times? A turn on the Broadway stage in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” caught the eye of producer Samuel Goldwyn and landed Duryea a Hollywood contract. He never looked back.The ladies took a liking to Duryea — or, rather, to the wise-cracking and often abusive tough guy that would become his stock-in-trade: “My fan mail goes up every time I tee off on a girl.” Duryea never lacked for work, appearing in more than 60 movies and just as many television roles. Noir fans know the gangly, rubbery-faced actor for his work with, among others, Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak. He went on to play a host of cowpokes on television Westerns.Duryea is among the memorable cowpokes sidling their way through Anthony Mann’s “Winchester ’73” (1950), all but stealing the film from under its star, Jimmy Stewart. Playing Waco Johnny Dean, Duryea can’t be on the screen for more than 15 minutes, but his tightly wound smarm energizes a wandering narrative. He ain’t right in the head, old Johnny Dean, but Duryea makes him so slick and sure-on-his feet that we can’t altogether blame Lola Manners (Shelley Winters) for cottoning up to him, just a bit. Here, indeed, is “the heel with sex appeal.”“Winchester ’73” is being issued as a Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection and comes with bonuses that include a mini-feature on Mann’s tenure at Universal Studios, an old audio commentary by Stewart, and a new commentary by filmmaker and programmer Adam Piron, who is also director of the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program. It should be interesting to hear what Mr. Piron has to say about a film whose introductory title speaks of the title firearm “and how an indian would sell his soul to own one. …”Via Criterion CollectionWhatever one may think of the vexing dynamic that can accrue between a work-of-art and shifting mores, can we all agree that Rock Hudson was better suited as Doris Day’s foil than he is here as a Native American, Young Bull? As it is, the conflict that occurs between Young Bull’s warriors and Lin McAdam (Stewart), his compadre High-Spade Frankie Wilson (Millard Mitchell), and the troops serving under Sergeant Wilkes (Jay C. Flippen) is one of several episodes built around the Winchester 73: a “one in a thousand” gun that is intensely coveted by all those who encounter it. The narrative strand winding through the film — McAdam chasing after the villainous Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally) — only comes into focus toward the movie’s final shootout.And what a shootout it is, with bullets ricocheting off the craggy landscape of the American southwest and McAdam proving to be the wiliest of good guys. Yet how good is he, really?“Winchester ’73” was the first of eight films on which Stewart and Mann collaborated. If you didn’t know that the aw-shucks paragon of American cinema was looking to gruff up his image, it is nonetheless clear from the first scene in which we encounter McAdam: he’s lean, grimy, and unshaven. In short order, we learn that McAdam has a short fuse, an unforgiving sense of morality, and no compunction about killing.The scene in which McAdam wrestles with Waco Johnny Dean is particularly notable, as Stewart conveys a rage that is as convincing in its intractability as was the erotomania he brought to John “Scottie” Ferguson in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1954). “Winchester ’73” isn’t the best of the Stewart-Mann films — my vote goes to “The Naked Spur” (1954) — but it is a rip-snorter all the same and a film of understated and unmistakable ambition.

With Anthony Mann’s ‘Winchester ’73’ Coming to Blu-Ray, Check Out the Cowpoke Who Nearly Steals the Film From Jimmy Stewart

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