Find out what Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone was able to steal from this 1950s western that ARTE is broadcasting this evening.
ARTE is broadcasting the western The Man with the Golden Colts by Edward Dmytryk this evening at 9 p.m., released on April 1, 1959 in France. We discover that the inhabitants of the town of Warlock are grappling with the cowboys from the neighboring ranch who have chased away the local sheriff. Several notables unite to call for help Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda) and his sidekick Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn).
But if we look closely at this western, which we consider part of the “psychological” wave of the genre, like A Train Will Whistle Three Times, we can find several elements reminiscent of the cinema of Sergio Leone, and in particular his westerns. And for good reason: the filmmaker had seen the film and retained several elements for his own filmography.
Henry Fonda
Twentieth Century Fox/MGM
Henry Fonda is the main actor in The Man with the Golden Colts, in which he plays a mercenary hired to replace a sheriff chased from his town by bandits. His stoicism, his sideburns and his blue eyes: the Italian director will keep it all when he turns him into Once Upon a Time in the West!
Leone will seek to hire him in the role of The Stranger from For a Fistful of Dollars, a role against employment. The actor’s agent won’t even send him the script, responding that Fonda “won’t be able to do it”. As time passed, the two men would work together four years later for Once Upon a Time in the West and My Name is Nobody, produced by Leone.
The drama
Twentieth Century Fox
Quoted in Christopher Frayling’s book Sergio Leone, screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni (who worked with the filmmaker three times) states: “[Le western que préférait Leone à l’époque [de Pour une poignée de dollars] was The Man with the Golden Colts; it was imprinted in his head. The interaction between the characters impressed him a lot.” We indeed find in Warlock a number of oppositions, whether between Clay and the cowboys of the McQuown ranch, between Lily (Dorothy Malone) and Tom (Anthony Quinn), between Tom and Clay, etc.
Humiliation
MGM
The Man with the Golden Colts is based on a novel by Oakley Hall in which Clay (Fonda’s character) is not as relatable as in the film. At the end of the film, he watches a handicapped judge crawl by removing his crutch. A scene that we will find almost identically in Once Upon a Time in the West, with Frank (Fonda) looking at the tycoon Morton (also disabled) with his nose in the mud, unable to get up.
The barber
Jacques Leitienne Films / Twentieth Century Fox
In The Man with the Golden Colts, one of the bandits goes to get shaved, and the barber, stressed, accidentally cuts him with his razor. An accident that will cost him his life. In My Name is Nobody, produced by Leone and of which he directed a few scenes, Henry Fonda and Terence Hill find themselves at the barber’s, and both take the risk of having their throats slit. In one case, the barber ends up robbed by a gun, in the other, with a fake gun in his butt! A different era than Dmytryk’s film!