A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK
US, 1950, 90 minutes, Colour.
Anne Baxter, Dan Dailey, Rory Calhoun, Walter Brennan, Connie Gilchrist, Arthur Hunnicut, Marilyn Monroe.
Directed by Richard Sale.
A pleasant low-key satirical western. This kind of film was made with much more vigour in the sixties and seventies. However, it teams Anne Baxter with Dan Dailey. They had appeared in the musical You're My Everything in the previous year. At this time Dan Dailey was a very popular partner with Betty Grable and received an Oscar nomination for My Blue Heaven. Anne Baxter was in many films at Twentieth Century Fox. She received an Oscar for The Razor's Edge in 1946 and was soon to make All About Eve for which she received an Oscar nomination.
Of interest, Marilyn Monroe is one of the chorus girls and can plainly be seen in the yellow dress especially in a song and dance routine with Dan Dailey. The film shows the opening up of the railways and the double dealings of the stage coach companies with their hired gunmen. There are some comic pieces, a song and dance routine, Anne Baxter doing an Annie Oakley type role and all in all a pleasant piece of American heritage.
1. The entertainment value of the film? 20th Century Fox westerns, musicals and comedies of the fifties? The significance of the title? the railroad opening up, Johnnie as the passenger? The train must get through - and does!
2. How well did the film use the western and the comedy conventions? The satirical touch? The role of men and women, Anne Baxter as the Annie Oakley type? Dan Dailey as the salesman becoming hero? Rory Calhoun doing the villainous role? Walter Brennan as the comic driver? Connie Gilchrist and her gifts? A pleasant blend? The Indians added in?
3. Colour photography, Colorado locations? The western atmosphere? The frontier towns, the mountains, the railroads, the bridges? The steam trains?
4. The plausibility of the plot - a slice of Americana adapted for satirical western? Characters, situations, atmosphere?
5. Kit as heroine? Her grandfather teaching her to shoot? His role as marshall? Her being the deputy? Her tough attitude especially towards Johnnie? her getting the job done? Fascination with the show and with Johnnie? The attraction of Dakota and believing him? The humour about her being a woman and the talk about sex with Grandpa? her falling in love, getting the job done? The humorous ending with Johnnie on the go but with wife and family and home to return to? A vigorous American heroine?
6. Johnnie as hero? the only passenger on the train, his encounter with the gang, his being run out of town, his being the necessary passenger? his attraction towards Kit? Rivalry with Dakota? Getting the train through? Getting the boundaries of the town changed? A pleasant hero - even to song and dance?
7. Dakota as villain? rough and tumble, fights especially on the train roof? The stage coach company and the villains?
8. Johnnie's link with the Indians and the humorous backing of the Indians?
9. The train driver and his devotion to his train, getting it through? Walter Brennan and his humorous touches?
10. The glamour of the dancing girls and the concert in the middle of the wilds?
11. The way of life of the frontier towns? Law and order, violence for greed, heroes and heroines, the opening up of the west by trains? A pleasant look at American history through a comedy western?
