Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat "the bare necessities" Ballou.
Rod Steiger was gonna plotz. He believed his performance in The Pawnbroker more than earned him the Best Actor Oscar, and yet there he was at the ceremony, watching Lee Marvin accept the trophy. Lee Marvin? Lee Marvin?? And for a glorified supporting role in the trifle Cat Ballou?!
That trifle begins with Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) returning to her father’s ranch from finishing school. There she discovers drama: the town has hired noseless hitman Tim Strawn (Lee Marvin) to kill her father and gain his valuable water rights.
Catherine puts together a ragtag group of good-looking boys to protect her father, including a sex-crazed cattle rustler, that rustler’s uncle, and an Indian ranch hand. She also solicits legendary gunfighter Kid Shelleen (Lee Marvin again) to come help, but when he shows up, she discovers he’s aged and drunken.
Despite all the help, Strawn easily kills Catherine’s father, driving the gang to seek revenge on the whole villainous city. They rob a train carrying the city’s payroll; Kid Shelleen cleans himself up and kills Strawn; and Catherine (now called Cat) kills the head of the city’s development corporation. They’ve successfully ruined the town, but Cat’s sentenced to hang.
But don’t worry, this movie’s a trifle, so it has a happy ending (cribbed straight from Tom Jones): right as Cat Ballou is dropped through the gallows trapdoor, she’s rescued by her friends and they ride triumphantly out of the city and to their next adventure.
Rating: 7/10. Rod Steiger only played one character in his movie while Lee Marvin played two. 2 > 1, QED Lee Marvin deserved it.
Cast and Crew
We’ve already seen Lee Marvin twice in this column: he had a bit part in The Caine Mutiny and played one of the heavies in Bad Day at Black Rock. After BD@BR, Marvin led the hardboiled TV series “M Squad” and continued getting villainous movie roles, like in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). But it was his turn in Cat Ballou—and the Oscar hardware it netted him—that established him as a star.
It’s Lee Marvin’s name that’s at the top of The Dirty Dozen (1967), a film that’s Suicide Squad for your parents. He’s also top-billed in 1969’s Paint Your Wagon and the 1980 WWII epic The Big Red One. Beyond film, Marvin is remembered for the “palimony” case: after he broke up with his long-time girlfriend, she sued him for financial compensation similar to that available to spouses after divorce.
Also, apropos of nothing, Lee Marvin was named after Robert E. Lee, so I’m petitioning we change his name to, I don’t know, “John Lewis Marvin” or something.
Cat Ballou was also a breakout film for Jane Fonda. There’s a lot of stuff to know about Fonda (as well as her father, brother, and niece), but we’ll cover it over many upcoming columns. Today, we’ll just mention one name to know in conjunction with Jane: French director Roger Vadim, her first husband.1
Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye provide Cat Ballou’s narration in song.
Stubby Kaye is known for heat-check performances in Guys and Dolls (1955), where he sang “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” and in Li’l Abner (1959), where he sang “Jubilation T. Cornpone.” Both bangers.
Nat King Cole was a major pop star, but his hits all sound the same to me. Here’s 39 minutes of NKC songs worth knowing, but his most important titles are probably “Nature Boy,” “Ramblin’ Rose,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Unforgettable.”2 And even if you’re not constantly bumping ‘50s snoozers, you’ve probably heard Cole’s version of “The Christmas Song”3 on the radio around the holidays.
The Trivia
Cat Ballou, which takes place in 1894, is a film that’s wistful about the end of the Old West. Kid Shelleen describes that feeling thusly:
But it’s over for [Indians], like it is for the gunfighter. Except we didn’t get no reservation or get taught how to weave rugs. […] It’s all over in Dodge. Tombstone too. Cheyenne, Deadwood, all gone. All dead and gone. Last time I come through Tombstone, the big excitement there was the roller rink they laid out over the O.K. Corral. […] Where’d it go?
So today’s Trivia is about the legends of the Wild West. Emphasis on “legend”: no room for truth, counter-narratives, or understanding here today.
We’ll start with Butch Cassidy. He and his gang, the Wild Bunch, were train and bank robbers. That gang and many others hid out in the Wyoming mountains at a place called Hole-in-the-Wall. Cassidy and the Sundance Kid4 were pursued by the Pinkertons and eventually fled to Argentina, where they continued their lives of crime. They were likely killed in a shootout in Bolivia.5
An Old West showdown to know is the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which occurred in Tombstone, Arizona, during 30 seconds in 1881. Lawman Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and dentist “Doc” Holliday faced off against the Clanton gang.6 This one’s frequently depicted in film; some notable examples are My Darling Clementine (1946), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), and Tombstone (1993), though the historical accuracy of these films is loose.
A bit more on Wyatt Earp: he’s the namesake of the Wyatt Earp effect, which beautifully describes selection bias, and he’s also remembered for fixing a boxing match between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey. Before Tombstone, he was a lawman in Dodge City, Kansas, the “wickedest town in the West.” Dodge City’s remembered for its lawmen: besides Wyatt Earp, it had the well-dressed Bat Masterson7 and the fictional Matt Dillon of the TV show “Gunsmoke” (1955–1975).
Another lawless frontier town was Deadwood, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Seth Bullock was a Deadwood lawman, and he was played by Timothy Olyphant on the HBO show “Deadwood.” The town is best known for being where Wild Bill Hickok8 was assassinated by Jack McCall while holding the “dead man’s hand” (two pair, black aces and black eights). Calamity Jane, with whom Hickok had a romance, is buried next to Hickok in Mount Moriah cemetery.
Try not to mix up Wild Bill Hickok with Buffalo Bill Cody. Buffalo Bill founded Cody, Wyoming, and claimed to have ridden for the Pony Express. He started Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which employed Annie Oakley9 and Sitting Bull. Many stories about Buffalo Bill were told in dime novels written by Ned Buntline.
One more outlaw: Jesse James was a bandit from Missouri who robbed banks with his brother Frank James. The James’ got their start as Confederate bushwhackers in the Civil War riding with William Quantrill’s Raiders.10 They transitioned to being outlaws post-war, eventually hooking up with the Younger Gang and gaining national notoriety. They had many casualties during a failed bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, and JJ later met his end when he was shot in the back by fellow gang member Robert Ford.
Quick hits:
Judge Roy Bean: known as “The Only Law West of the Pecos.”
Sam Bass: a Texas outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
John Wesley Hardin: another Texas outlaw, this one way more violent.
Bass Reeves: a Black deputy U.S. Marshal who made over 4,000 arrests.
Black Bart: a “gentleman bandit” who robbed Wells Fargo stagecoaches and left poems at his crime scenes.
Belle Starr: known as the “Bandit Queen,” ran with the James-Younger gang.
We’ve discussed Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and Lew Wallace in a previous column.
Odds and Ends
Like Dr. Strangelove, Cat Ballou was based on a serious novel but was turned into a comedy…an enduring image from this film is Kid Shelleen sitting on his cross-legged horse.
Though he wasn’t her last. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but she also married Tom Hayden and Ted Turner. Vadim was also known for his high-profile romances: besides Fonda, he was married to Brigitte Bardot and had a child with Catherine Deneuve.
Others songs on the playlist are “L-O-V-E,” “Too Young,” “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “When I Fall in Love,” “Route 66,” “You’ll Never Know,” and “Smile.” After Cole died, his daughter Natalie Cole used the power of technology to turn “Unforgettable” into a duet; I’ve included that one on the playlist as well.
That song, often called “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” was co-written by “The Velvet Fog,” Mel Torme.
Sundance got his nickname from the Wyoming town in which he was once imprisoned. The Sundance Film Festival took its name from the Sundance Kid and not the town; as such, it doesn’t take place in Sundance, Wyoming, but instead in Park City, Utah.
The most famous version of their story was told in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), where Butch Cassidy was played by Paul Newman and Sundance by Robert Redford.
Brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, Billy Claiborne, and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury.
Once the Wild West was tamed, Masterson moved to New York and became a sportswriter.
His real first name was James. Other parts of his bio: he scouted for Gen. Custer; he was briefly a sharpshooter in one of Buffalo Bill’s shows; and he was Marshal of Abilene, Kansas.
The story of Annie Oakley is told in the musical Annie Get Your Gun (1950). A couple of memorable songs: “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Anything You Can Do” (I can do better), and “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly.”
Guerilla warfare occurred between secessionist bushwhackers and Union jayhawkers. Some of Jesse James’ fame is tied to simple Wild West myth-making, but some of it has a gross strain of Lost Cause-ism to it.