Movie of the Week: The Tall Men (1955) and Soldier of Fortune (1955)

This week is a double dose of 1955 Clark Gable, chasing Jane Russell in the Western The Tall Men and Susan Hayward in the foreign drama Soldier of Fortune.

Clark Gable is Ben Allison, who along with his brother (Cameron Mitchell), join a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in 1866, headed by Nathan (Robert Ryan). En route, they save Nella (Jane Russell) from an Indian attack and she joins them on the journey. Ben and Nella share a cabin to ride out a blizzard and fall in love. Soon they realize that they have different futures in mind–Ben wants a ranch and a small family life, while Nella wants excitement–and they part ways, not amicably. Nella cozies up to Nathan and tension arises for the rest of the journey.

Admittedly, Westerns are not my thing; I find the whole cowboys and Indians thing rather tedious and pretty repetitive. 1950’s audiences ate it up however. This film kind of feels like they had a checklist of what is supposed to be in a Western and just checked things off and left it at that. Busty dame? Check. Shoot-outs with Indians? Check. Cattle drives? Check.

Clark is looking handsome here, albeit with a lot of black hair dye covering his graying locks.

Jane Russell is most definitely not my favorite Gable leading lady. She is just very crass here–you’re not really sure why you’re supposed to be rooting for her and Clark to end up together. He’s entirely too old for her–twenty years older to be exact–and it shows. This was the case of all his leading ladies from this point on, however!

Jane is pure eye candy here; the film it is short on romance and high on showing Jane in skimpy outfits that show off her breasts, or showing her barely covered up in a lake or bathtub.

Clark and Jane got along well on set and soon afterward Clark joined up with her and her husband, Bob Waterfield, to form a production company called Russ-Field-Gabco Productions. The lone film they produced–The King and Four Queens–was a flop.

Nutshell review is here

Full review is here

In Soldier of Fortune, Clark is Hank Lee, an American living in Hong Kong who earns big money smuggling in goods from Communist China. Jane Hoyt (Susan Hayward) arrives in Hong Kong hoping to find her photographer husband Louis (Barry) who has been missing for months. Hank agrees to help her even though he fell in love with her at first sight. They learn that Louis was taken prisoner by the Chinese government, allegedly for taking some taboo pictures. There’s much adventure on the seas as Hank and crew set out to rescue him. Finally reunited with her husband, Jane finds herself not as happy as she thought she would be.

This is one of those 1950’s films that was exciting to audiences because it took place in a foreign land and seemed so exotic.

Clark’s character here is kind of a jerk. He is very arrogant, bullies people, and makes a move on Susan less than an hour after meeting her, despite her telling him about her lost husband.

Hey he did adopt three orphaned children though, so there’s that I guess.

Every time I watch this film, I can’t help thinking that Susan’s dress in this first scene with Clark looks like a negligee. How dare you come on to me when I arrive at your house in a nightgown!

Soldier of Fortune was Clark’s first freelance project after leaving MGM, where he’d been under contract since 1931. I’ve always said Clark floundered in the 1950’s; he wasn’t very good at picking scripts on his own, it seems. This one is just fine in my opinion. An enjoyable little film and I do like him with Susan better than Jane, I’ll say!