| Seven Men from Now | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Budd Boetticher |
| Produced by | John Wayne Andrew V. McLaglen |
| Written by | Burt Kennedy |
| Starring | Randolph Scott Gail Russell Lee Marvin |
| Music by | Henry Vars |
| Cinematography | William H. Clothier |
| Editing by | Everett Sutherland |
| Studio | Batjac Productions |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | August 4, 1956 |
| Running time | 78 min |
| Language | English |
Seven Men from Now is a 1956 Western film directed by Budd Boetticher and produced by John Wayne's Batjac Productions.
Contents |
Ben Stride (Randolph Scott) walks into an encampment in the desert at night during a rainstorm. He encounters two men taking shelter next to a fire and asks to join them. Stride tells the men he's from the town of Silver Springs, which provokes a mysterious reaction from the two men and they discuss a robbery and murder that recently occurred there. The men become suspicious of Stride, and when they begin to realize that his intentions may be nefarious, he guns them down.
The following day Stride is tracking someone through the Arizona wilderness, and comes upon a wagon driven by John Greer (Walter Reed) and his wife Annie (Gail Russell) that is stuck in the mud. Stride uses the two horses he confiscated from the men at the encampment to help pull the wagon clear, and Greer and Annie are grateful. They are from Kansas City and admit they are inexperienced at frontier life, and ask Stride to ride with them as they head south to the border town of Flora Vista, then head west to California. Greer says he hopes to find a sales job there and up to now has had to get by taking odd jobs in the area. The mention of Flora Vista gets Stride curious, and he agrees to take them to the border. Along the way, Greer displays his bumbling inexperience with the frontier and Annie shows her growing attraction to Stride with her kindness and stolen looks. They are stopped at the road at one point by a US Army detail, whose commanding officer (Stuart Whitman) tells them to go back, as Chiricahua Apache have been spotted in the area and he cannot guarantee their safety.
Stride and the Greers soldier on, finding a mining way station and encountering Bill Masters (Lee Marvin) and Clete (Don Barry), two former nemeses of Stride's. As they all spend the night at the station, Masters tells the Greers that Stride was once the sheriff of Silver Springs, and his wife was killed during the robbery of the Wells Fargo bank. Stride has been tracking and killing the seven men who performed the robbery, and Masters intends to take the $20,000 dollars in gold they stole once Stride has accomplished the task. Annie feels sympathy for Stride, who confesses that he feels guilty about his wife's death because at the time he was no longer sheriff and didn't have another job, so she took one at the bank and was working the day of the incident. Before the wagon heads out of the station, with Masters and Clete tagging along opportunistically, they are nearly attacked by Chiricahua who are driven away by Stride sacrificing one of the horses to the starving Indians.
As they travel, they have a chance meeting with one of the Wells Fargo robbers being chased by Indians. After defending the man from them, Stride, not realizing his identity, is nearly killed by him before Masters shoots him in the back. As the party continues to Flora Vista, Masters makes it clear that he intends to steal Annie from who he sees as the weak-willed Greer, and one night attempts to seduce her in front of Greer and Stride by telling a fictional story about a woman not as attractive as she stolen away from her husband by a tall stranger, ratcheting up the tension between the three. Furious at his impropriety, Stride tells Masters to saddle up and go out into the night, taking Clete with him.
Masters and Clete reach Flora Vista ahead of the wagon, and meet with the Wells Fargo bandits waiting for delivery of their gold. Masters tells their leader, Payte Bodeen (John Larch), that Stride is heading in their direction to kill all of them and avenge his wife's death. Bodeen dispatches two of the bandits to meet him before he reaches Flora Vista. Meanwhile, Stride leaves Greer and Annie and tells them to continue on without him. Stride rides ahead into a canyon alone and is ambushed by the two bank robbers, but kills them both while getting wounded in the leg and is later knocked unconscious while trying to escape with one of the bandits' horses. Bodeen tells Masters that he paid Greer to deliver the gold from Silver Springs to Flora Vista, and Masters becomes angry at himself for letting this escape him. Greer and Annie come upon the unconscious Stride and help him nurse his wounds. Greer admits to his wife and Stride that he was paid $500 to deliver the Wells Fargo box containing the gold hidden in the wagon, one of the odd jobs he always took. Stride takes the gold away from Greer to draw the rest of the bandits out, and Greer and Annie head into Flora Vista to notify the town sheriff.
Greer arrives in town without the gold, telling Bodeen that Stride has it, and as he walks down the street bravely toward the sheriff's office, Bodeen guns him down. The last two bandits, Bodeen and Clint, head to confront Stride, but are killed by Masters and Clete instead. Masters kills Clete and walks out to the center of the canyon towards the box of gold to face Stride, who kills him before Masters is able to pull his guns.
Stride returns the gold to Wells Fargo and tells Annie that he is going to take a job as a deputy sheriff in Silver Springs. He sends her off on a stagecoach to California before riding off, but Annie tells the driver that she is going to stay.
John Wayne and Robert Fellows' production company Batjac purchased the Burt Kennedy screenplay with the intention of having Wayne star as Stride. However, Wayne was locked into doing The Searchers for John Ford, so Wayne suggested casting Randolph Scott instead. Scott insisted on Budd Boetticher as the director. Seven Men from Now started a seven film collaboration between Scott and Boetticher along with Scott's friend and producer Harry Joe Brown, with five of the films written by Kennedy, including The Tall T and Ride Lonesome. Brown, Boetticher and Scott took their collaboration from Batjac and Warner Bros. to Columbia, who produced all of the movies except Westbound, which was produced back at Warner's.
The movie was shot in the Alabama Hills and other locations near Lone Pine, California in the last months of 1955. Gail Russell was cast as the female lead due to her previous work with Wayne in Angel and the Badman. She had not worked on a movie for nearly five years prior to Seven Men from Now. She struggled with alcoholism throughout most of her life and Boetticher worked very hard to keep her from drinking during the shoot.
Andrew Sarris, in The American Cinema, praises director Boetticher's work: "Constructed partly as allegorical odysseys and partly as floating poker games in which every character took turns at bluffing about his hand or his draw until the final showdown, Boetticher's Westerns expressed a weary serenity and moral certitude that was contrary to the more neurotic approaches of other directors in this neglected genre of the cinema" [1]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Randolph Scott | Ben Stride |
| Gail Russell | Annie Greer |
| Lee Marvin | Bill Masters |
| Walter Reed | John Greer |
| John Larch | Bodeen |
| Don 'Red' Barry (as Donald Barry) | Clete |