The Fifties were replete with Westerns valuing suspense over action, most famously High Noon and 3:10 to Yuma. Henry Hathaway's Rawhide (1951) is practically a "bottle episode," set almost entirely in a cramped stagecoach station. Hardly a conventional Western, it's nonetheless highly entertaining.Tom Owens (Tyrone Power) arrives at an Overland Mail station to serve under old boot Sam Todd (Edgar Buchanan). No sooner has Tom arrived than four outlaws led by Rafe Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe) escape from jail and head for the station. Planning to ambush a stagecoach carrying gold, the outlaws take Tom and Sam hostage, along with headstrong Vinnie Holt (Susan Hayward) and her young niece Callie. Tom and Vinnie clash while trying to outwit their cunning captors.
Clocking in at just 85 minutes, Rawhide's a great exercise in suspense. Writer Dudley Nichols wrote Stagecoach, and Rawhide seems a darker variant with its mismatched protagonists. The protagonists don't much like each other, with Sam complaining about Callie and Tom and Vinnie's personalities sparking in non-romantic ways. The story turns on Tom and Vinnie outsmarting the villains: Zimmerman's a crafty psychopath who's more concerned with his henchmen. Unlike the Ford film there's no redemptive ending, just bloodshed and survival.
Hathaway was a robust action director, yet does great work with more subdued material. Milton Krasner's photography heightens the interior setting, mixing stark black-and-white with deep focus. Notably, Rawhide virtually lacks music, allowing set pieces like Tom digging an escape tunnel, or a nighttime visit by assorted travelers, to play with unbearable tension. After long build-up, the movie climaxes in a violent shootout where poor Katie winds up in the crossfire and the villains finally turn on each other.
Tyrone Power's Tom is a standard issue, straight-laced hero. Susan Hayward's tough frontier gal is much more compelling. Unsurprisingly, Rawhide's quartet of villains steals the show. Hugh Marlowe (All About Eve) is unnervingly cunning, while Dean Jagger and George Tobias give their characters shades of sympathy. But Jack Elam, unceremoniously killed in most Westerns, really shines as the goggle-eyed, lecherous psychopath. Edgar Buchanan (Ride the High Country) plays another querulous coot.
In some ways, Rawhide prefigures Budd Boetticher's Ranown Westerns, especially The Tall T. Like those films it's an Old West chamber drama, its artistry and rich characterization transcending its simple story and limited setting.
