BY JOHN
M. WHALEN
Quentin Tarantino has said he thinks the worst American
movies were made in the 50s and the 80s. He dislikes 50s movies because of
their blatant censorship and 80s movies because the central character always
had to be likeable. On the Joe Rogan Experience he pointed out the difference
between a Bill Murray movie and a Chevy Chase movie made in the 80s. Bill
Murray’s characters always started out as assholes but became likeable by the
end of the film. “Chevy Chase movies don't play that shit,” Tarantino said. “Chevy
Chase is the same supercilious asshole at the end of the movie that he is at
the beginning.” He also decried
the way movies in the 50s hardly ever cast Native Americans in Westerns.
All this is to say I’d bet Tarantino most likely would
hate Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release of
Universal International’s “Foxfire” (1955), starring Jeff Chandler and Jane
Russell. Chandler was a hunky heart throb who rose to fame and fortune playing
Cochise opposite Jimmy Stewart in “Broken Arrow” (1950), and again with Rock
Hudson in “Taza, Son of Cochise.” Chandler was Jewish, but the public bought
him as a Native American and even as half-Native American, which he plays in
“Foxfire.” His character, Jonathan Dartland, is a mining engineering working in
a copper mine in Lodestone, Ariz., who is ashamed of the fact that while his
father was white his mother is an Apache. He hasn’t spoken to her in years even
though she lives in a nearby Apache Reservation, where she conducts guided
tours.
One day a tall brunette bombshell named Amanda Lawrence
arrives in Lodestone from New York and gets picked up by Dartland and his alcoholic
doctor friend Dr. Hugh Slater (Dan Duryea) when her car has a flat out in the
desert. Despite the fact that Russell was 34 years of age when the movie was
made, and you’d think would have more sense than a 17-year old, Amanda falls
head-over-heels gaga in love at first site with Dartland. Which is hard to
understand, since he’s such surly, morose guy who doesn’t interact well with
others, especially if they get nosey about his Apache background. But Amanda
will have her way and the day after a night of dancing and who knows what else,
SHE proposes to HIM!. At first he tells her it couldn’t possibly work but next
thing you know they’ve gotten hitched. Everybody’s there at the wedding, except
of course his Apache Mama.
I guess they had to go through with it, even though is
seems unbelievable that these two crazy kids would tie the knot so suddenly,
but Universal International had been promoting the movie with the tag line: “JANE’S
GOT JEFF!”. Which I suppose was a 50s version of the tag line that was used
when Clark Gable came back to the movies after serving in WW II to star in
“Adventure” (1945): “Gable’s back, and Garson’s Got Him!” With that line, “JANE’S
GOT JEFF!”, there had to be a wedding, and of course all the plot that would
come after it
One of the most bizarre twists in the plot comes when
Amanda decides to take the bus tour out to the Apache village to meet
Jonathan’s mother. She finds her with a group of tourists, giving them the
historical lowdown on Apache customs. She speaks in a beautiful voice that has
a nice Viennese accent! Saba, the Apache Princess, is played by Celia Lovsky,
the Austrian actress whom you may best remember as T’Pau, the Vulcan matriarch
in the famous Star Trek episode “Amok Time.”
“Foxfire” was directed by Joseph Pevney, who directed 14
episodes of “Star Trek,’ including the “Amok Time” episode. I guess Lovsky’s
performance as Saba years earlier in 1955 made a lasting impression on the
director, or maybe they were just good friends.
Also in “Foxfire” are Mara Corday, as Dr. Slater’s
jealous nurse, who has a crush on Dartland; Robert Simon as Ernest Tyson, the
man who owns the copper mine Dartland works in; Barton MacClane as Dartland’s
foreman, and Frieda Inescort as Amanda’s mother. Dan Duryea give his standard
booze-gobbling performance as the alcoholic doctor, who vies for Amanda’s
attention.
Other than the love story, “Foxfire’s” secondary
storyline concerns Dartland’s belief that the copper mine they’re working on
has a shaft that could lead to a hidden Apache gold mine. Amanda helps Dartland
convince Tyson to come up with the money for the exploratory work, which leads
the film to one of those predictable mine cave-in disasters.
“Foxfire” has a couple of interesting factoids associated
with it. First, it was the last film to be shot on three-strip Technicolor
film, and the photography out in the Arizona desert by William H. Daniels is
well transferred to Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray disc. Second, although Frank Skinner
composed the score for “Foxfire” the main theme played during the title credits
was written by Henry Mancini, with lyrics written and sung by Chandler. And in
case you want to know, “Foxfire” is what they call the phosphorescent glow that
rise up at night from the rotting timbers in the mine shaft.
The disc comes with a theatrical trailer, and an audio
commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger. It’s not a bad film. It has its
flaws, but if you’re not as finicky as Tarantino, it’s always interesting to
see these artifacts from a different era. “JANE’S GOT JEFF!”
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John M. Whalen is the author of "Tragon and the Scorpion Woman...and Other Tales". Click here to order from Amazon