George Sherman | Subjects | Structure and Story Telling | Visual Style | Rankings

Feature Films: The Tulsa Kid | A Scream in the Dark | Mystery Broadcast | The Crime Doctor's Courage | The Secret of the Whistler | Black Bart | Johnny Dark | Dawn at Socorro | Count Three and Pray | Comanche | Reprisal!

Rawhide: Incident of the Dog Days

Naked City: Dust Devil on a Quiet Street

Classic Film and Television Home Page (with many articles on directors) | Television Western Articles

George Sherman

George Sherman is mainly a director of B movies, and largely forgotten today, like most directors of such films. There is an interesting discussion of some of his work in Don Miller's book B Movies (1973). Sherman has contemporary admirers, especially auteurist crtics. See: Dave Kehr: "In the world of race car movies, here's a plug for George Sherman's Johnny Dark (1954), with Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie and plenty of Sherman's superb landscape work (in Technicolor, yet)." (davekehr.com, May 24, 2011). "I agree with Yoel Meranda that "the abstract space and the emotions it creates are very hard to talk about." I feel that way about many of the B westerns of George Sherman, which I find almost unbearably beautiful for the way they cover the western landscape, though I have never found a satisfying way of expressing what I feel Sherman is doing. There is something in the way he uses wide angle lenses slightly tipped up toward the sky that gives his landscapes the feeling of grand, cathedral-like interiors, quite the opposite of the "horizon line of history" that Andrew Sarris famously found in Ford's work." (a_film_by, October 4, 2006).

George Sherman: Subjects

The Arts:

Communication: Women: Minorities, sympathetically treated: Characters and Deception: Characters: Imagery: Settings: Sinister Regimes: Nonviolence: Economics and Business:

George Sherman: Structure and Story Telling

Story Telling: Semi-Documentary (Please see my chart Semi-documentary crime films for a list of Semi-documentary films and their key characteristics.):

George Sherman: Visual Style

Geometry and Architecture: Architecture: Lights: Camera Angles: Color: Costumes and Appearance:

Rankings

Here are ratings for various films directed by George Sherman. Everything at least **1/2 is recommended.

Feature films:

Screen Directors Playhouse: Rawhide: Naked City: Route 66:

The Tulsa Kid

The Tulsa Kid (1940) is a Western starring Don "Red" Barry. It has a theme of non-violence, with the hero being an ex-gunslinger, who tries to persuade others also to give up their guns.

The ranch the Tulsa Kid aids, is multi-racial, while everyone else in the film seems to be all-white. A sympathetic Hispanic is one of the ranch hands: George Sherman's films are full of non-stereotyped Hispanic characters.

Camera Movement

There is a nice musical performance of O Dem Golden Slippers.

After the song, Sherman includes some camera movements, following characters into and out of the room.

Rectilinear Environments: The Sidewalks

The final shoot-out is unusual, in being staged on the town sidewalks, rather than in the street. There seems to be a California law that says all such suspenseful duels have to be mid-street. Sherman opts for more photogenic sidewalks, instead. The sidewalks are perhaps one of Sherman's rectilinear areas. They include over-hanging porticos, curbs, and other features that make them rich in visual design.

A Scream in the Dark

A Scream in the Dark (1943) is a non-series B-movie whodunit. Our hero is a newspaper man who has just quite his job to open a private detective agency.

The film shows George Sherman's liveliness. There is his mixture of suspense, comedy and beautiful sets and costumes. However, this movie is more cornball than George Sherman's more polished works. The dialogue creaks, and the characters seem less three dimensional than in other Sherman films. The film is cheery and good natured throughout, and will probably be enjoyed by lovers of old film mysteries who can ignore its technical imperfections.

The world of this tale is less artistic than some of Sherman's films: there are no characters in the arts, except the journalist hero and his sidekick, a newspaper photographer. There are also no Hispanic characters. In fact, the sheer workaday ordinariness of some of the suspects in the film is stressed, an ordinariness that humorously contrasts with the zany surrealism of the situations they are in.

Detection

The film is an odd mix of the private eye and amateur detective traditions. Our hero, who is completely fresh to the investigator business, often seems a lot more like one of the amateur detectives in a traditional movie whodunit than a tough private eye. He is completely non-hard-boiled. Instead, he is a leading man type, always dressed in sharp 1940's suits, or his tuxedo. In one sequence, he is interrupted while dancing at a night club by a would-be client, and he returns to his office in his tux. For the next ten minutes, he is sleuthing around in his tuxedo. This is pleasant wish fulfillment fantasy for an audience. It has little to do with the hard-boiled world of most 1940's private eyes.

The heroine is secretary to the local Chief of Police, as well as assisting the hero getting his new business started. She seems at least as intelligent and professional as the hero. This is typical of Sherman's respect for women and their capabilities, and recalls the female writer-sleuth of Mystery Broadcast (1943).

The movie is based on Jerome Odlum's mystery novel The Morgue Is Always Open (1944).

Links to Craig Rice

The film recalls the zany world of 1940's mystery writer Craig Rice. As in Rice:

Costumes

The costumes are by Republic's long time designer, Adele Palmer. She has the heroine, the hero's girl friend, in a series of spectacular 1940's suits.

One scene in the film sets the tone. The hero is shown in his office, dressed to the nines, and setting in a black leather armchair. He looks like the last word in sophistication.

Mystery Broadcast

Mystery Broadcast (1943) is a non-series whodunit, about a radio broadcast that stirs up an old murder case. It is one of 8 B-movies Sherman made at Republic. The film shows George Sherman's gift for atmosphere. It is simultaneously fun and spooky. There is plenty of comedy. But the story is eerie, as well, and it is too suspenseful to called light hearted, or a pure comedy.

Settings

The settings of Mystery Broadcast show some of Sherman's favorite locales. The radio broadcast studio is a high tech performance venue, dedicated to the performing arts, like the night club that houses the ballet in The Crime Doctor's Courage. Both locations are very elaborate, with many technological facilities to enhance the performances. Both emphasize the importance of sound in the performance, with the music of the ballet, and the sound effects of the radio drama.

Both films contain behind the scenes, working areas as well: the newspaper morgue here, the catwalks in Courage. Both of these areas are non-glamorous, in the sense of containing anything elegant. But they are filled with visually fascinating rectangular furniture or objects, which make for complex rectilinear paths through the room.

A spooky cellar briefly shows up in Mystery Broadcast. This locale will be developed more fully in Courage.

Characters

There are also some character types in common. Both films are full of intelligent, creative types. Both movies have show biz columnists, sophisticated, affable men who write newspaper articles, and who are perhaps hiding something under their smooth facades.

Both have Hispanic artists in the musical arts, perhaps an artifact of the Good Neighbor policy that led to so many Latin American musicals during World War II. Here, however, they are in a mystery tale, not a Hollywood musical. Neither type is at all caricatured. The columnists are not treated with the satire Roy Del Ruth displayed in such thirties spoofs of Walter Winchell as Blessed Event (1932). And the Hispanic artists are dignified and intellectual acting. Most of Sherman's characters tend to be highly intelligent. Occasionally they can be eerie, but they are rarely silly or ill-natured.

The Heroine: A Woman Detective

The heroine of Mystery Broadcast is a genuine sleuth. She gets a boyfriend, and he winds up tagging along on her case, but he is there mainly to provide comedy relief and romance. It is interesting to see a film with a woman detective. Hollywood made quite a few series about woman sleuths in the 1930's and 1940's. The heroine is also the writer in charge of the radio broadcasts, and an authority figure in the world of radio. Her leadership role is underscored by the costume designer, who puts her into dark suits while everyone else is wearing light ones. Ruth Terry acts aggressively, and sticks up for her ideas and her sleuthing throughout the movie. It is certainly an interesting portrayal. The detective is mildly scared of the dead bodies she encounters, and always screams a little and winds up in her boyfriend's arms in these scenes. However, this is mainly treated as a romantic interruption, and soon the heroine is right back on track sleuthing. The heroine is quite similar in many ways to the determined feminist heroines of modern film. The film also emphasizes her intelligence, and her use of her mind, in a way that is perhaps more typical of 1940's Great Detectives, of both genders.

Visual Style: Staging against vertical lines and regions

Sherman follows a technique widely used by Hollywood directors. He frames each actor along a different part of the background. One actor will be in front of a door, another will be in the vertical "well" between two windows. This approach tends to highlight both the actors, and the different background regions behind them. The actors and the set underline each other, and make each more noticeable and distinct. There is nothing unusual about this approach. But Sherman pursues it vigorously, and quite effectively.

Sherman likes his actors to be in corner areas. The place where the side wall and the back wall meet forms a vertical line; Sherman often has his chief actor directly along that line. A striking shot of this sort occurs right in the beginning, when the heroine is standing up on stage at the radio broadcast. To her left we see the back wall. with radio actors seated on chairs on raised platforms, and on the right is the side wall, with the sound effects woman's desk. The two regions are utterly dissimilar in their visual appearance. The heroine seems to be the boundary between the two regions, someone who links the two up, and who is at the center of the radio broadcast. There is a similar approach at Stanley's home, where he is seated at his desk. The vertical line of his body is right along the corner of the set.

Both Sherman's direction and Russell Kimball's sets emphasize vigorous, long horizontal and vertical lines. The first long shot of the radio studio is a classic piece of composition. We see both the broad horizontal lines of the platforms on the stage, and the repeated vertical lines above them of the curtains, and what look like some sort of acoustic panels.

It is hard to evaluate Sherman's artistic responsibilities for these films. Both this film and Courage have well done sets, photography and atmosphere. Is Sherman personally responsible for this? Did he merely have the good taste to hire talented people to work on the films? Or is the truth a combination of both?

Lighting

Cinematographer William Bradford often does interesting things with lighting patterns on walls. These sometimes recall film noir, including one night scene at the heroine's apartment, where the light patterns fall on a barricaded door. Most striking is daylight coming through a window in Stanley's study, and shining on a glass brick wall on the other side. The bright, criss cross grid effect is unique, something I've never seen in another movie. Film noir rarely included this sort of effect involving bright daylight.

The Crime Doctor's Courage

The Crime Doctor's Courage (1945) is one of a series of B detective stories made at Columbia. Warner Baxter stars as the Crime Doctor, a psychiatrist sleuth, although there is little psychoanalytic material in the film. The titles of the films tend to have the words "Crime Doctor" in them, but are otherwise fairly meaningless: the Crime Doctor does not do anything especially courageous in this one! There are ten movies in the series, but this is the only one directed by Sherman.

Design and Photography

This film has some key virtues. Mainly, the production design (John Dala) and the photography (L. William O'Connell) are staggeringly beautiful. An early scene shows a society dinner party. The glassware and dishes on the table glow and gleam. The whole elaborate effect shows exquisite good taste. It is a very complex still life.

Later scenes show a nightclub. First, we see a dance floor, filled with beautiful murals and ceiling decorations. Later, we see the rafters above the stage. Catwalks stretch on all sides, in rectilinear patterns. It is an irresistibly photogenic area.

The dance number is continuously interrupted by blinding flashes of light. O'Connell does a good job with these, making a striking visual effect. The dance number is related to ballet. It has apparently original music by the classical composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. This is an index of the care that was taken on this obscure B-movie.

O'Connell worked on many of Howard Hawks' silent films, and Scarface (1932). He then drifted into B movies, including the 1940 Boston Blackie films, such as Budd Boetticher's debut film, One Mysterious Night (1944).

This is the only film I can find credited to art director John Dala. He probably did other Hollywood films, but credits at this B-movie level are often obscure.

This film was made at the height of the film noir era, yet it shows only a little influence of noir. Like many B detective stories of the period, it faithfully follows a separate tradition of filmmaking. It does show the enthusiastic visual polish of many noir films, however. The beautiful clothes also recall the noir fashions of the 1940's. However, the evening clothes worn by all the characters are a bit more upper crust than the suits typically worn by urban noir players. The men are in double-breasted black tuxedos, the women in spectacular evening gowns.

Detection: Impossible Crimes

The scriptwriter, Eric Taylor, worked on most of the Ellery Queen movies (the Ralph Bellamy series) and many of the Crime Doctor films, as well as some Dick Tracy epics. He is clearly in sync with Intuitionist school writers, such as Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr. This film shows Carr-like features. There is a locked room mystery, and an attempt to suggest that two of the characters might really be vampires. This recalls Carr's mystery novel The Three Coffins (1935), and its uncanny suggestions of vampirism. As in Carr, everything at the end is explained naturally.

Taylor's mystery plot ideas are crude compared to the best print authors. His solution to the locked room involves simple mechanical devices. Still, he conveys something of the feel of a nice impossible crime story. It makes for a pleasant movie watching experience.

The Secret of the Whistler

Sherman also worked on Columbia's other 1940's thriller series, the Whistler. The Whistler films tend to be more suspense films than whodunits. George Sherman's entry, The Secret of the Whistler (1946), falls into this category. I found this inoffensive little film disappointing. The plot is thin and uninteresting.

Art

There is some good witty dialogue about how bad the artist protagonist is. He and his work are viewed in contempt by the real, professional artists in his studio building. The protagonist is a dilettante supported by a rich wife.

The Secret of the Whistler takes the other artists fairly seriously. The Secret of the Whistler does not attack Art: merely this one well-to-do poseur.

The Art Studios

George Sherman does show some of his good taste in the fine sets of the opening scenes. A party at an artist's studio shows some pizzazz.

The studio has a series of vertically paned windows. This at first sounds like one of Sherman's rectilinear work areas. But the rest of the studio is full of spectacularly curved objects: a curved short staircase, circular furniture, round decorations. The whole effect is vividly geometric.

The hallway outside the studio apartment is indeed rectilinear (fairly typical for Hollywood corridors).

A Woman Artist

A woman artist makes an very non-sexist appearance. She is good at her work, and reasonably successful: she is working on a magazine cover illustration, a prestige assignment for illustrators and commercial artists in the 1940's. She is also a nice person, as well as sophisticated, but not malicious in her dialogue. I would have enjoyed seeing a whole movie about her.

The Secret of the Whistler is full of woman characters, who are mainly gainfully employed:

Only the hero's very ill wife has no career.

Camera Angle

A brief picnic scene uses a tilted camera angle. The picnic is more-or-less part of a montage sequence - and montages sometimes used tilted cameras to mark themselves off from conventional dramatic scenes.

Costumes

Like other Hollywood films of its era, the characters are dressed to the nines: George Sherman frequently stressed extremely dressed-up looks for men.

Black Bart

A Western Comedy

Black Bart (1948) is a Western, about the notorious stage coach robber, and his (fictional) encounter with real-life exotic dancer Lola Montez. There is a good article about the film at Jaime Christley's website.

The cheerful film is loaded with humorous dialogue. Much of the dialogue is exceptionally funny.

Making a movie about a crook is full of pitfalls. It's bad to glamorize crime, but its also dull to preach for two hours. Black Bart avoids these extremes, in part by casting everyone's favorite Bad Boy, Dan Duryea. He is always fascinating as a sly, sneaky and refreshingly comic villain, one whose brashness and insidious schemes are interesting to watch, but never suggested as any sort of role model.

Black Bart bears some similarity in approach with A Scream in the Dark:

Hispanics

Lola Montez is treated mainly as a Spanish Dancer in Black Bart, whirling around to lively Mexican-style music, and dressed in Spanish-looking clothes. Her dance numbers are terrific. They show George Sherman's enthusiasm for all things Hispanic. They recall a bit the lively dancers in The Crime Doctor's Courage.

New Roles

The three outlaws (one hesitates to call these sympathetic characters "villains") each take on new roles, a favorite Sherman subject. The protagonist has established a new life as a rancher; the other two outlaws get new jobs as Wells Fargo men and new social roles as (apparent) champions of justice.

In addition, the protagonist has a new secret identity as robber Black Bart.

Capitalism

Black Bart emphasizes that Wells Fargo is bringing the infrastructure necessary for business and capitalism to this part of California. And that Black Bart is threatening this.

Rectilinear Environments: The Theatre

The boxes at the theater are another of Sherman's complex rectilinear environments.

The Ride to Hangman's Tree: a remake

Black Bart (1948) was remade as The Ride to Hangman's Tree (Alan Rafkin, 1967). The story is pretty close to the original, but the feel of the characters and their environment has been changed. The new material and approaches are usually entertaining. Not better than the original, but not a routine rehash, either. After all, there is little point in a close remake of a film - why not do something original instead? SPOILER. Best feature: a new ending that replaces the dismal, likely censor-imposed finale of the original.

The Ride to Hangman's Tree was made at Universal. Its production design recalls the gorgeous color TV Westerns made at Universal in the 1960's, such as The Virginian and Laredo. This is highly pleasing. Such works have the bright cheerful color of 1950's Westerns made for theaters.

There is no sign at all that we are getting near New Hollywood, and revisionist Westerns like McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971). Everything in The Ride to Hangman's Tree is a pleasantly old-fashioned product of Old Hollywood.

Johnny Dark

Johnny Dark (1954) is a racecar movie.

Links to The Roaring Road

Johnny Dark echoes the plot of a silent racing film The Roaring Road (James Cruze, 1919). Both films have:
  1. A handsome young hero of great charm.
  2. A succesful automotive company where the hero works.
  3. A fierce, "difficult" older-man head of the company, who is hard to cope with, but also one of the Good Guys.
  4. A female descendant of the head, who has a romance with the hero.
  5. A new, freshly designed racecar the hero has designed and is building.
  6. Corporate intrigue surrounding the racecar.
  7. The racecar is #11 in both films. Please see my lists in Sports Numbers and Their Symbolism, about phallic numbers like #11.
  8. A race at a race track, midway through the film.
  9. A long distance race on real roads, for the film's big finale. The roads are in the Western United States.
  10. High tech involved in the big race: Western Union in The Roaring Road, radio in Johnny Dark.
Despite these broad, high-level similarities, the plot and character details in Johnny Dark are all different, and freshly thought through. Johnny Dark succeeds on its own terms, as a pleasant mix of storytelling and spectacle.

Diverse Characters

Johnny Dark is far more diverse than The Roaring Road: Johnny Dark also has a scene in Canada, with festive crowds and a couple of handsome men in scarlet Mountie uniforms wandering around.

Links to False Faces

Johnny Dark shares character types with George Sherman's earlier False Faces (1943):

Dawn at Socorro

Dawn at Socorro (1954) is a Western. Socorro is a town, pronounced "suh-CORE-oh".

In mood and atmosphere Dawn at Socorro reminds one of Incident of the Dog Days. Both films feature a group of people who keep annoying each other, having a series of small scale conflicts and symbolic battles that threaten to erupt into genuine violence. Both films are sensitive to their characters' feelings, and delicately atmospheric.

A Legend Transformed

The first half of Dawn at Socorro is a transformed version of the Shoot-Out at the OK Corral. The hero is like Doc Holliday, a gunfighter who coughs a lot with lung trouble, and a man who has fallen from a higher, educated way of life. He aids his friends, a Sheriff who resembles Wyatt Earp, and who is also aided by his brother, just as Earp was. They get in a fight near a stable yard, like the OK Corral. They fight a rotten family, also like the OK Corral story. Both fights become famous Western legends.

There are differences: Doc Holliday was consumptive, while the hero of Dawn at Socorro has a bullet wound in his lung. The hero of Dawn at Socorro is a classical pianist, not a medical expert like Doc Holliday.

Non-violence

Midway through the film, the hero tries to give up his violent ways, and retire as a gunfighter. He does this for health reasons. But there is also a renunciation of a violent lifestyle.

This lacks an explicit political dimension. Still, the hero's attempt to leave a violent past behind him is heartfelt, and a core subject of the movie. It is suggestive of an advocacy of political non-violence, even if such politics are not made explicit in the film.

New Identity

George Sherman films often have heroes with hidden pasts and new identities. The hero in Dawn at Socorro doesn't hide his past, and he doesn't actually take on a completely new identity. But he does make attempts to change who he is, in more subdued ways:

Better Things

The hero plays Beethoven in his cheap Western saloon. It is quite a contrast. It recalls the trained dancers putting on a full scale ballet with classical music in a Hollywood night club in The Crime Doctor's Courage. Both offer a dramatic contrast, of people whose talent and training is way beyond their low-brow environment.

The discussion in the stage coach gets at the root of the conflict between the hero and villain Rapp (Alex Nichol). Both men were destined for "better things", but have fallen into low-brow lifestyles. The hero is trying to change and do better; the villain deeply resents this.

Hispanics

A brief scene in a stage coach stop shows George Sherman's interest in Hispanic characters. As usual, they are treated with respect.

We also see that the hero is fluent in Spanish. This is treated as a Good Thing.

Parallels in the Two Halves of the Film

Dawn at Socorro opens in Lordsburg, then spends its second half in Socorro. There are a series of parallels between the two sections. Everything in Socorro is bigger and more spectacular than in Lordsburg:

Rectilinear Environments: The Shoot-Out in Lordsburg

The shoot-out takes place in an almost rectilinear environment. A two-story building is in the background of much of the shoot-out. Its facade is full of doors and windows.

A stable yard full of fences is also prominent.The fences are mainly rectilinear, but some of them meet at angled corners that are not 90 degrees. The network of fences remind one of the catwalks in The Crime Doctor's Courage.

Wagon Wheels: The Shoot-Out with Lee Van Cleef

Wagon wheels are everywhere during the shoot-out with Lee Van Cleef. At one point the camera shoots through a wagon wheel.

This fills the sequence with circular forms, giving it a distinctive look.

Overhead Shots

Sherman cuts to an overhead angle, in a number of shots:

Camera Movement

In Lordsburg, the camera moves down the bar during the big "funeral" celebration. Soon, it also follows the hero and his woman friend across the bar to the piano.

In Socorro. there is a similar shot moving down the bar, a pan accompanying the hero and heroine. This is soon followed by a 'reverse path" shot, a track moving back along the bar in the reverse direction from the first shot.

The two sets of shots are perhaps part of the film's parallelism, where events in Socorro echo those in Lordsburg.

Color

Dawn at Socorro has an unusual construction: it falls into two halves, each set in a different town. The colors in Lordsburg are remarkably subdued. They are mainly earth tones, such as browns, grays and blacks. They make the first half of Dawn at Socorro look almost like the desaturated color that has been predominant in post-1970 Revisionist Westerns. This is not quite entirely true: There are subtle color harmonies in the first half, such as light brown walls echoing brown clothes. This gives a bit of Old Hollywood color design to this half. It is less austere and design-dead than the simple, brute force desaturation of so many post-1970 Westerns.

Some richer colors emerge with the poker game. The table is green and there are colored chips and cards: all common in Western films. Even here, care has been made to have things dark. The green poker table is a dark green, a good deal darker than in many Western films. The chips are a very deep blue. This is color, but it is a dark, smoldering intense color. Later, after the shoot out, a recovering good guy has crutches whose top is the same shade of dark green as the poker table.

The heroine is introduced in an outfit with purple elements. The purple is a Complementary Color to the yellow of her blond hair. Yellow/purple is actually fairly rare in movies. It is associated with men in the films of Vincente Minnelli, often athletic or virile men. It is a bit odd to see it linked to a woman in Dawn at Socorro. The purple is in keeping with the subdued, dark colors that run through the film's first half.

There is a transition between the film's two parts, in the stagecoach ride. Much of the stagecoach exterior is a bright pink: an unusual choice. It sets up a vibrating contrast with the hero's blue suit.

The film's second half largely takes place in a casino in Socorro. Here the colors erupt into a full scale 1950's palette. Clothes and sets become a riot of color, in the traditional manner of 1950's Westerns.

Costumes

George Sherman liked highly dressed-up men. The opening poker game in Dawn at Socorro is full of men in suits. They seem very grown-up, almost middle-aged, extremely well-dressed. They make a contrast with the cheap saloon, the other men in the saloon, and the seedy town as a whole. The men include the hero and the villain. The two will be slicked up in dressy suits throughout the rest of the movie.

The hero wears shiny Western vests with his suits. Even when he takes off his coat for a gunfight, he looks slicked up to the max. Such vests are a sign of Western display and machismo. They are often associated with gamblers. Such suits and vests can also be the signs of a gunfighter. The hero's vest is further made dressier by being double-breasted. This gives it extra swagger.

Count Three and Pray

Count Three and Pray (1955) is about a man who wants to be a minister, set in the aftermath of the US Civil War.

Not Quite a Western

Count Three and Pray is sometimes considered a Western. It takes place in the same post-Civil War period of many Westerns. And the townspeople remind one of characters in Westerns. However, it actually takes place in the South (South Carolina), not the West.

All of this resembles Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur, 1950), another film about a minister in the post-Civil War South that has a Western feel.

The Church

The minister's dream is to rebuild the town's destroyed church. This makes him one of Sherman's heroes obsessed with a goal.

The church is one of George Sherman's rectilinear work areas. Its rectangular walls, and regularly arranged rectilinear pews, make it almost purely rectilinear in style. Only an occasional diagonal board modifies the effect. Sherman sometimes shoots it from above, so that we see much of the church at once. It can remind one of the catwalks above the stage in The Crime Doctor's Courage.

The church is made of reddish wood. This gives the whole church interior a red appearance. The uniform nature of the wood used in the walls and pews, emphasizes the geometric nature of the church. It is one geometric pattern, executed in the single medium of reddish wood.

Non-violence

The townspeople have to be brave to enter the church, walking past a massive display of condemnation and money power by the wealthy town boss. Their entrance into the church resembles the non-violent protests of the Civil Rights era, where people had to defy police power to sit at a lunch counter or stage a protest. The goals of the people in Count Three and Pray are different, and have nothing to do with race or Civil Rights. Still, their actions very much evoke the world of non-violent protest.

Count Three and Pray shows people defying the town's richest businessman (Raymond Burr). It recalls mainstream literature like Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1915). whose villain is the town banker. Both the banker and Burr's store keeper have their townspeople under their economic thumb.

Economics

The villainous town boss has each person' debt announced as they enter the church. It is an oddly terrifying event. In some ways, it anticipates a much different scene in Dust Devil on a Quiet Street. That film has an unusual encounter at a lunch counter, where a man is given a false statement on what he owns for lunch. This too leads to a public dispute, although of a very different substance and approach.

Comanche

Comanche (1956) is another of George Sherman's sympathetic looks at Native Americans.

Cast

Dana Andrews is a leading man typically associated with contemporary films, often in professional, upper middle class and intellectual roles. He is only occasionally a Western performer. His Western roles eschewed cowboys: he was a businessman in Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946), a doctor in Strange Lady in Town (Mervyn LeRoy, 1955). In Comanche he is cast as a scout. Sherman used a similar role for Van Heflin in Tomahawk, another distinguished actor - although Van Heflin went on to make quite a few Westerns.

A Whole Village

Some shots of the village near the start show the whole village at once, in long shot. This helps the audience see and understand the entire raid.

Not Understanding

Some George Sherman films have scenes in which the audience is deceived about what is going on. One thing is happening, but the audience is led to interpret it in another way.

Nothing quite this radical is happening in Comanche. Still, the opening has meanings that are not brought out at first. The opening looks like a series of conventional "Indian raids", of the kind often seen in Westerns, where the Native Americans battle whites. It is only later that dialogue brings out the historical background and motivation for these battles, involving scalps. The raids look more sympathetic, and more linked to historical causes, than a viewer might originally have assumed.

Camera Movement

The opening in the Mexican village contains two long camera movements, that progress from right to left. They display many of the activities in the village. They seem "exploratory": designed to show a location, it people and activities.

Color

The opening scene in the Mexican village is full of the complementary colors of blue and orange. They are accents, embedded in a lot of white and other neutrals. There are also accents of yellow, including yellow flowers mixed in with the orange flowers. One suspects that the value-orange color scheme adds to the note of tension.

This is NOT like a modern film made in "orange and teal", in which an entire scene might be made entirely of such colors. The colors in the opening of Comanche are strictly accents, embedded in a sea of whites and neutrals.

Some of the face paint of the Comanches are "red and blue". This is a color scheme often associated with glamor and dramatic excitement in Hollywood films. The T-shape of the hero's face paint markings is perhaps a phallic symbol.

The final shots of the Native American good guy are built around his costume in the three primary colors red, blue and yellow. Even the spectacular horns he wears on his head have a blue-ish tinge. This color scheme is soothing, reassuring and harmonious.

Reprisal!

Race

Reprisal! (1956) is one the most trenchant looks at race relations in the American Cinema. The film resembles both Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) and Devil's Doorway (Anthony Mann, 1950). Like both of these previous works, it gives a thorough look at the sinister system of racial discrimination. And it puts its fragile protagonist at a key pressure point, where the system causes the hero to be torn between racial categories and polarization.

Links to The Tulsa Kid

Reprisal! shares imagery with George Sherman's earlier Western The Tulsa Kid. Both have heroes who have changed their lives, and who are keeping their pasts hidden.

Both have multi-racial ranch households, in areas that are otherwise all-white.

Both have trial scenes, in courts where justice is being subverted by pressure from evil societies outside the courtroom.

Both have scenes where men get lassoed. In Reprisal!, this is done by the bad guys to the Sheriff. In The Tulsa Kid, the hero does this to villains.

Both have scenes in which two cowboys dance to festive music at a party. They dance individually, with rhythmic body movements, not in unison - but at the same time. No women are dancing. In both films, O Dem Golden Slippers is being played. In The Tulsa Kid, these are good guys, at a wholesome celebration; in Reprisal!, these are bad guys at a drunken celebration of sinister values.

Rectilinear Environments: The Jail, The Town Square

None of the environments in Reprisal! are as complex as in some Sherman films. Still, the jail is a fairly elaborate rectilinear set.

Much of the action is in the town square, near the General Store. This store has a complex angled porch. This looks like a standard part of Columbia Studio's Western town, which shows up in numerous movies.

Camera Movement

The hero is followed by the camera as he walks rapidly down the town sidewalk. This is a striking shot.

Color

The big confrontation in the town square over the barbed wire, is designed in shades of blue and orange. The "orange" includes wood tones, as well as some brownish clothes. The Complementary Colors of "blue and orange" is a fairly common color scheme in movies.

Other scenes use different schemes. The Native Americans sometimes have bright colors, such as the old man's purple shirt.

Costumes

Leading man Guy Madison was known for his good looks, and his previous works often put him in spectacular clothes: the buckskins he wore as Wild Bill Hickok on his TV series (1951-1958), the Marine Corps uniform in Till the End of Time (1946). There are suggestions in Reprisal! that he and the filmmakers are trying to tone down his image, and put him in simple, practical "everyday" clothes. His clothes in Reprisal! subtly suggest toughness and realism. Perhaps too, the filmmakers are trying to get audiences to take Guy Madison seriously as an actor, by putting him in a "realistic" outfit.

Rawhide: Incident of the Dog Days

Incident of the Dog Days (1959) was the first of two episodes George Sherman directed of the TV series, Rawhide. It was written by the well-known Western author Samuel Peebles.

Incident of the Dog Days shows tension engulfing the drovers, during a difficult cattle drive. Personal conflicts erupt, often over seemingly trivial disputes. It is a fascinating study in inter-personal relations.

Incident of the Dog Days contains George Sherman subjects:

Nonviolence

Incident of the Dog Days shows George Sherman's concern about violence:

Naked City: Dust Devil on a Quiet Street

Dust Devil on a Quiet Street (1962) was the third of six episodes George Sherman directed of the TV series, Naked City.

The Opening

The opening involves a confrontation in a New York sidewalk cafe. This recalls the sidewalk shoot-out that ends The Tulsa Kid.

The cafe is mainly one of George Sherman's rectilinear environments. The region is rectangular, and tables are arranged rectilinearly within it. Only some curving scrollwork breaks the rectilinear design.

We first see the cafe from a street around the corner. This street is perpendicular to the street along which the sidewalk cafe stretches. This corner layout adds to the rectilinear effect of the scene.

The first shot is a pan, following the hero walking down a sidewalk. Some static set-ups follow.

Later, the camera pulls back down the sidewalk, towards the viewer, revealing more police.