The Alamo (1960)

Directed by John Wayne. Starring John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Linda Cristal, Joseph Calleia, Joan O’Brien, Patrick Wayne, Frankie Avalon, Chill Wills, Ken Curtis, Wesley Lau, Richard Boone, Carlos Arruza, Jester Hairston.

Large, lumbering chronicle of the Battle of the Alamo, showing how its disparate historical “stars”—Davy Crockett (Wayne), William Travis (Harvey), Jim Bowie (Widmark), etc.—came together under agitated conditions to take an outmatched stand against Santa Anna’s armies. Key defects come from James Edward Grant’s wordy and obvious scripting, with a speech coming just about every five minutes, as well as the bloated runtime with faulty pacing under the discipline of director Wayne (his first time as a primary behind the camera after assisting a few times in earlier pictures). As Widmark’s Bowie says at one point, “I hate to say anything good about that long-winded jackanapes, but he does know the short way to start a war”…pity that only the first part of that statement applies. Granted, the battle scenes are fairly well-staged and executed (as spectacle, not artistry), but it’s not enough to make up for the sagging weight of its didactic politics and a supporting cast of characters too often forgotten and discarded after hogging a scene or two beforehand. Wayne doesn’t bother playing Davy Crockett (he plays John Wayne with a coonskin cap); Harvey plays Travis as an aristocratic mule in a soldier’s uniform; Avalon can’t even clear the low bar set the previous year by fellow pop-heartthrob-turned-Western-“actor” Ricky Nelson; Wills scored a Supporting Actor Oscar nod for playing a soused buffoon, but it’s nothing that Andy Devine couldn’t play better. That nomination for Wills did lead to a priceless quip, however—after the actor’s tasteless campaign claiming (among other things) that the Academy voters were all his “Alamo cousins,” Groucho Marx responded with an ad that stated: “Dear Mr. Wills, I am delighted to be your cousin, but I voted for Sal Mineo [from Exodus].” Don’t “remember” this one.

42/100