The 1953 Technicolor movie "Thunder Bay" is really not very interesting in itself, even though it was the work of the partnership between star James Stewart, director Anthony Mann, and cinematographer William Daniels the yielded many of the best westerns of the 1950s and many of Stewart's signature roles from the 1950s. I am interested in their body of work and in the movie as a phenomenon.

The Predictable and Disingenuous Plot

As entertainment, it's all very, very predictable and none too believable. It involves a visionary technician (Stewart's Steve Martin) who is willing to take on not just a town, but his employer and his crew in pursuit of what everyone else considers a fantasy, in this case, drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. (Ayn Rand is not in the credits, but...) Anyone who has seen more than a few Hollywood movies about monomaniacal visionaries in general — and petroleum wildcatters in particular — knows from the outset that oil is going to be struck at some dramatic juncture, and that the conflict between the male lead and the female lead (Joanne Dru as the daughter of a shrimp boat captain) can only lead to them being together at the end. And that the slippery sidekick (Dan Duryea as Johnny Gambi) is going to be domesticated by the innocent young woman ( (Marcia Henderson's Francesca), thereby proving that his intentions, suspected by everyone including Steve, were honorable. I don't think that it is possible to "spoil" the so-completely-predictable plot.

The battle between the simpler old order (the shrimp fisherman) and high-tech, large-capital-requiring enterprises is not quite as predictable. In westerns, the same basic scenario pits cattle ranchers against sod-busters (homesteading farmers) or sheep herders (with the larger capital being the old, cattle-ranching elite). After the Dust Bowl era, the movies sometimes sided with the cattle-men (including in Mann's (1950) "The Devil's Doorway" (in which matters were further complicated by Robert Taylor playing a Shoshone barred even from homesteading apart of his empire), sometimes with the farmers (prototypically in "Shane").

Harmony between corporate capitalism and the locals whose environment is being despoiled and whose livelihood is being endangered in "Thunder Bay" develops from the extremely dishonest scenario. Steve tells the local yokels that shrimp can withstand dynamite, and then, all too conveniently for him, the prized yellow prawns flock to the oil rig. Seepage from the well is not mentioned, nor are the dangers of oil spills. In this Hollywood hallucination, the oil industry and the fishing industry both benefit from the drilling platform, to which the fishermen eventually accept (after a solo attack during a hurricane and an invasion by a mob, which is interrupted by the first oil gushing into the sky (none is shown hitting the water, only the people on the platform...) The resolution strikes me as very phony.

Performers

Stewart's obsessive hard edge was discerned or crafted by Mann (although adumbrated in Hitchcock's "Rope" and culminated in Hitchcock's "Vertigo"). The "aw-shucks" boy-next-door, naive Mr. Nice Guy (that continued into 1950 in "Harvey," which Daniels shot) did not appear in the Mann-Stewart westerns (or this relocation of western-style economic conflict to Morgan City, Louisiana). Mann's (and, later, Hitchcock's) Stewart was obsessive, hard-driving and hard-driven. a loner who did not seek violence, but if pushed, he would do whatever it took to pursue his plans for riches ("The Far Country," directed by Mann, filmed by Daniels, is the epitome of this). Steve is generally laconic, but makes one big speech about progress and the need to feed America's thirst for oil.

Dan Duryea often played slimy schemers given to taunting—not least in "Winchester '73" against Stewart (directed by Mann, filmed by Daniels). In "Thunder Bay" he seems to be playing another slimy schemer role, but Johnny Gambi eventually makes everybody happy... and an honest woman out of Francesca.

Jay C. Flippen (who was in Mann's "Bend of the River" and "The Far Country," and "Strategic Air Command" also had a rare chance to be a good guy in "Thunder Bay." (OK, he played sheriffs in "Cat Ballou" and "The Wild One," but conventional small-minded ones.) In "Thunder Bay" he played Kermit MacDonald the former wild-catter who believes in Steve's plan and backs him up (against his board of directors, but first against his negative assistant, played by Henry Morgan). He is the only man Steve respects.

Gilbert Roland plays Teche Bossier, a shrewd, heavy-drinking Cajun here, not very different from the Portuguese sponge-diver in Beneath the Twelve-Mile Reef. He's considerably more convivial than Stewart's Steve, and gets on well with Duryea's big-spending (paying-for-drinks) partying. Teche is not an ideologue and more willing to consider new economic opportunities than his fellows, including Francesca's fiancé before the oilmen came to town and started spreading money and discontents around.

Antonio Moreno plays the traditional Italian skipper Dominique Rigaud, father of the two love interests, with all the stereotypes one would have expected from Frank Morgan (who was unavailable, having died in 1949 after appearing with Stewart for the nth time in "The Stratton Story").

Joanne Dru (here playing Stella Rigaud, Francesca's embittered older sister) was in some classic westerns (most notably Howard Hawks's "Red River" and John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"). She did not make much of an impression on me, in part because these movies were primarily about male-male conflict. She got wet watching the fight during the hurricane, but her path from opposition to love was by-the-numbers. And Marcia Henderson barely registered as a person (though possession of Francesca was a prize and a provocation in the shrimper/oiler conflict).

The actresses showed up to complicate the plot and raise the stakes. The actors were good at portraying characters mostly against type (Roland being the typecast one). The plot is entirely unoriginal and in my view deeply dishonest. The special effects of the hurricane are dated.

The Best Part: The Look

The most impressive aspect of "Thunder Bay" is the cinematography. William Daniels was a great master. At MGM, he had been the cinematographer of choice of Greta Garbo (Torrent , Flesh and the Devil, Anna Christie, Susan Lenox, Mata Hari, As You Desire Me, Grand Hotel, The Painted Veil, Queen Christina, Anna Karenina, Camille, Ninotchka, which is all of her triumphs) and Norma Shearer (A Free Soul, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Marie Antoinette, Idiot's Delight). He also lensed the much loved (though not by me) Ernst Lubitch movie with James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan "The Shop Around the Corner." Daniels started out shooting two of Erich von Stroheim's most canonical silent movies, "Foolish Wives" (1922) and "Greed" (1924). Before reconnecting with Stewart in 1950, Daniels shot two memorable noirs for Jules Dassin, "Brute Force (1947) and "The Naked City" (1948), winning an Oscar for the latter.

In addition to "Harvey," Daniels shot "Night Passage" (1957) with Stewart, and under Mann's direction "Winchester '73" (1950), "Thunder Bay" (1953), "The Glenn Miller Story" (1953), The Far Country (1954), and "Strategic Air Command" (1955) with Stewart. After impressive work on two major 1958 hits, "Some Came Running" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (Oscar-nominated in the latter), he worked on lesser movies. I don't know why he did not shoot The Man from Laramie, the last Mann-Stewart western (or The Naked Spur or "Bend of the River:), or why he did not work with Mann or Stewart on any later movies, or why Mann and Stewart did not work together again after that, though both continued to make movies. (I do know that Stewart started making movies for Universal for a large percentage of the profits, as the old studio system broke down with the loss of control over theaters and the competition of television; the big-screen action of "Thunder Bay" was an attempt to succeed in that competition).

Daniels was a master of black and white, and shot memorably gorgeous location backdrops for "The Far Country"and "Thunder Bay." I just wish that "Thunder Bay" had a better story to tell! Fortunately, there are the many excellent real westerns directed by Mann from the 1950s, so there is little reason to track this one down.

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Also see my reviews of the two Anthony Mann westerns made after the ones with Stewart:
Man of the West with Gary Cooper and Lee J. Cobb
The Tin Star with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins



Recommended:
No