Mail Order Bride

The winning of the West required drastic measures and unconventional attitudes of those souls hearty or desperate enough to make a stab at settling there. Mixed among the full families willing to pack up their possessions into a covered wagon or a Union Pacific baggage compartment were scores of bachelor sodbusters, rancher-wannabes and prospectors whose need for a fair helpmeet had them resorting to personal ads. Mail order marriages allowed settlers to reach out to prospective brides possessing specific skills that would make them valuable on the range while offering the hope of a second chance to widows, unwed mothers and women lacking the sufficient wherewithal to go it alone. The subject had been an occasional plot point in such Hollywood westerns as George Sidney's The Harvey Girls (1946) and William Wellman's Westward the Women (1951) and was given an intriguing twist in Stanley Donen's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), in which a household of bachelor brothers skips the bargaining stage and kidnaps an equal number of young women to keep them company during the long Oregon winter. MGM's Mail Order Bride (1964) was produced by Richard E. Lyons, who had got his start with the Regal Films shoot-em-up Frontier Gun (1958), starring John Agar, and had just overseen Sam Peckinpah's second feature film, Ride the High Country (1962). The success of the Peckinpah film seems the sole impetus for Mail Order Bride, which borrows a number of elements from it, including an aging ex-lawman protagonist (Buddy Ebsen, on hiatus from the first season of The Beverly Hillbillies), a pretty, unglamorized leading lady (Lois Nettleton), and a callow, disreputable youth (Keir Dullea, in only his third feature film role) who is tamed ultimately by lessons in frontier decency and the love of a good woman. Mail Order Bride also borrows Warren Oates to reprise, more or less, his role from Ride the High Country as a no account prairie rat and recycles a goodly portion of George Bassman's mournfully lyrical score from the earlier film. Ride the High Country's editor, Frank Santillo, was also brought onboard in postproduction to cut the film. Burt Kennedy came to helm Mail Order Bride after the disastrous reception of his feature debut, The Canadians (1961), and a run of TV work that included episodes of Lawman, The Virginian and Combat. Kennedy penned the screenplay for Mail Order Bride, adapting a tale by pulp western scribe Van Cort that had been published in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1951. Budgeted at $700,000, the film gained production value thanks to its northern California locations, captured in panoramic widescreen and Metrocolor by cinematographer Paul Vogel. Fourth-billed Warren Oates had just had his teeth capped, providing the 35 year-old actor with the discomfiting Pepsodent smile that would remain one of his trademarks as a busy character actor and later star of films by Peckinpah and other off-Hollywood directors such as Monte Hellman, Philip Kaufman and John Milius. Oates became a father for the third time early into production of Mail Order Bride, with the birth of his son Timothy Brien Mercer Oates on August 4, 1963. Produced at modest cost with a cast and crew of mostly second stringers, Mail Order Bride turned an appreciable profit for MGM upon its release in June 1964, at which time it filled out the bottom half of a double bill with George Marshall's Civil War farce Advance to the Rear (1964), starring Glenn Ford. New York Times critic Howard Thompson preferred the B-film to the headliner, tagging Mail Order Bride as "a tart, perceptive and amusing character study snugly pegged on reality and real people." To promote the film, MGM had the Van Cort novel reprinted as a Golden Books tie-in while Buddy Ebsen was retained to write lyrics for and record a 45 RPM promotional single of the title song, backed by his rendition of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" aka "The Theme to the Beverly Hillbillies." Forty years after they made Mail Order Bride together, and shortly before her death from lung cancer, Lois Nettleton and Keir Dullea were reunited for the first time in the American premiere of Canadian playwright Timothy Findley's 1993 drama, The Stillborn Lover, at the 2003 Berkshire Theatre Festival. Producer: Richard E. Lyons Director: Burt Kennedy Writers: Burt Kennedy, Van Cort (original story) Cinematographer: Paul Vogel Editor: Frank Santillo Music: George Bassman Cast: Buddy Ebsen (Will Lane), Keir Dullea (Lee Carey), Lois Nettleton (Annie Boley), Warren Oates (Jace), Barbara Luna (Marietta), Paul Fix (Jess Linley), Marie Windsor (Hanna), Denver Pyle (Preacher Pope), William Smith (Lank), Kathleen Freeman (Sister Sue), Jimmy Mathers (Matt), Doodles Weaver (Charlie Mary), Roy Jensen (Barroom Brawler). C-83m. by Richard Harland Smith Sources: Hollywood Trail Boss: Behind the Scenes of the Wild, Wild Western by Burt Kennedy (Boulevard Books, 1997) Warren Oates: A Wild Life by Susan Compo (University of Kentucky Press, 2010) Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography by Franklin Jarlett (McFarland & Company, 1997) The Southeast Missourian, February 12, 1964