The Return of Draw Egan - 1916

Country: United States

Language: English

Director: William S. Hart

Writers: C. Gardner Sullivan (screenplay), C. Gardner Sullivan (story)

Stars: William S. Hart, Margery Wilson and Robert McKim

Release Date: 15 October 1916 (USA)

Production Co: Kay-Bee Pictures, New York Motion Picture

Runtime: USA: 50 min

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Genres: Action | Adventure | Romance | Western

Outlaw leader "Draw" Egan, believed dead, turns up in the town of Yellow Dog. The townsfolk believe him to be William Blake, a strong and law-abiding man. They appoint him sheriff to rid the town of the hoodlums who have nearly taken over. He does so with dispatch, becoming a genuinely lawful and respected member of the town's society. But then Arizona Joe, one of Egan's old gang, shows up in Yellow Dog, threatening to expose Egan if he doesn't help his old comrade take over the town......

Outlaw becomes sheriff in the feature THE RETURN OF DRAW EGAN (1916), suggesting the two are not so distinct after all. As I outline in my biography of Thomas Ince, he permitted William S. Hart to develop the western in his own manner, diverging from the formulas Ince felt had been exhausted.

In New Mexico, a $1000 reward is offered for Egan, and when he and his gang is trapped in a cabin, Egan lets them out one by one through a trap door, and a tunnel, out to waiting horses. Only Arizona Joe (Robert McKim), whose bravado conceals a yellow streak, allows himself to be captured. Months later, Egan is in Broken Hope, a town where no one asks about a man's past. He is spotted by Mat Buckton, sent to hire a sheriff to clean up Yellow Dog. Known there as William Blake, Egan is about to forget his vow when he meets Buckton's daughter, Myrtle (Marguery Wilson), the kind of girl he had only heard about but never met.

Egan wins reluctant admiration and healthy fear when he announces new ways in town and the closing of the saloon on Sunday. He has no interest in the dancer, Poppy (Louise Glaum). Still, Egan is not about to go to church until he sees Myrtle going. Meanwhile, Joe escapes jail, creating viewer uncertainty over how the cover will survive that has allowed Egan's reformation. With Myrtle, Egan realizes he is "One of the many men to discover he is in love and unworthy." Poppy is frustrated since the law prevents her admirers from shooting each other for her amusement, and she teams up with Joe. He threatens to tell Myrtle of Egan's past, inciting the saloon men to lawlessness, placing them against the reformers, ordering the latter to leave town. The camera tracks dramatically before Egan as he exits the sheriff=s office toward the mob. Joe exposes Egan's past, and he announces his resignation before then he will face off with Joe. This time, Egan advances into the camera itself. It is precisely the code of "honor among thieves" that Egan knew, and Joe lacked, that separate the two, and make one a possible lawman and doom the other.

The lawbreakers eliminated, Egan surrenders to the townspeople. Instead, they decide they want to retain Egan as sheriff. Only Myrtle's pleading convinces him to stay then nothing can make him leave.

Connections

Hollywood (1980) (TV Mini-Series); Hollywood: Out West (1980) (TV Episode)

Clip with Hart 

Rip Van Winkle - 1914

Country: United States

Language: English

Writers: Washington Irving (story), Dion Boucicault (play), Joseph Jefferson (play), Frederick Story (scenario)

Stars: Thomas Jefferson, Clarette Clare and Harry Blakemore

Release Date: 9 November 1914 (USA)

Production Co: Rolfe Photoplays

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Plot Keywords: Based On Play | Character Name In Title

Genres: Drama | Fantasy

Rip Van Winkle, a lazy American man, wanders off one day with his dog Wolf into the Kaatskill mountains where he runs into an odd group of men drinking and playing bowls. He drinks some of their mysterious brew and passes out. When he wakes up under a tree he is astonished to find that 20 years have passed and things are a lot different. This is a charming story about how America changed due to the cival war, only in a different and more subtle way than ever told before.

The actor Thomas Jefferson (presumably named for the U.S. President, who was allegedly this actor's ancestor) was a son of Joseph Jefferson the Third, an extremely popular 19th-century American stage actor whose lifespan just barely overlapped with the earliest days of movies. Consequently, Joseph Jefferson's entire film career consists of only a few crude silent tableaux, tantalising us with a glimpse of Victorian-era dramatics. This film is Thomas Jefferson's attempt to preserve (through re-enactment) his father's most famous role. As my own cultural viewpoint is British, I was astonished to learn that the American actor Joseph Jefferson was the grandfather of the English author Eleanor Farjeon. Like the movie actor Tyrone Power, Joseph Jefferson the Third had a namesake father and paternal grandfather who were also stage actors. Shortly before Jefferson died in New York City in 1905, he expressed a desire to have his funeral at the nearby Church of the Transfiguration, which he referred to as 'the Little Church Around the Corner'. This house of worship has been known by that affectionate nickname ever since.

In the days before electrical recording, when all performances had to be live, it was possible for a barnstorming actor to earn an excellent living essaying the same role for decades at a stretch, and Joseph Jefferson did so in the title role of 'Rip Van Winkle'. Washington Irving's famous tale is a retelling of a Grimm Brothers folktale, transplanted to the Dutch Catskills in the mid-18th century but not otherwise changed. I shouldn't be surprised to learn that the Grimms adapted it from an earlier source.

This low-budget silent film takes place outdoors but is plainly filmed indoors against painted backdrops. The main setting is outside the tavern of Nicklaus Vedder in the village of Falling Waters. A tavern sign, bearing the likeness of King George III, indicates that this is pre-Revolutionary New York.

Jefferson makes his entrance with a small boy riding on his back, several other tots scurrying to keep up with him, and a mongrel following at his heels. Jefferson relies primarily on broad pantomime rather than inter-titles to establish Rip Van Winkle as a lazy ne'er-do-well with a fondness for Vedder's beer and an eye for the tavern wenches. He pauses in front of the tavern sign to pantomime his fealty to King George. The actress portraying Rip's wife Gretchen likewise uses broad pantomime to establish her shrewish nature. Rip bids a fond farewell to his little daughter Meenie and to Nick Vedder's little son Hendrik, and then -- more to get away from his wife than to put meat on the table -- Rip takes his musket and sets off into the forest.

The bizarre keglers in Washington Irving's story, playing at ninepins, are often described as dwarfs or goblins. Here, they're portrayed by physically normal men (probably down to the scarcity of dwarf actors) but wearing crepe-hair beards that are downright laughable. An inter-title identifies them as Henry Hudson and his lost crewmen of the ship 'Half Moon'.

The long transition of Rip's sleep is conveyed by a crude cut, returning to the same scene from a slightly different angle, with some cobwebs added to Rip, and a new backdrop representing the same forest decades later. Jefferson now wears a beard only marginally more plausible than those worn by the mysterious keglers. When he picks up his musket, it falls apart.

When Rip shambles homeward, his clothes in surprisingly good nick, the village of Falling Waters looks much as it did before ... save that Vedder's tavern now displays an American flag (with 13 stars) and a portrait of George Washington. When Jefferson goutily repeats his gesture of fealty to King George -- whom he assumes is still ruler of America -- the townspeople are outraged. The landlord of the tavern is now Hendrik Vedder, grown to young manhood and married to a demure young woman who is the former Meenie Van Winkle.