Springfield Rifle

The Gary Cooper historical actioner Springfield Rifle (1952) has recently made its DVD debut bundled in Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection from Warner Home Video. The firearm of the title is much more a final-act device than the film's focus, which deals with the birth of military espionage. It's not top-shelf Cooper, but it's a serviceable enough vehicle from the latter phase of the laconic lead's career, and his fan base should be pleased by its arrival. The scenario by Frank Davis and Charles Marquis Warren concerns the struggles of the Union command to protect its drives of much-needed Cavalry horses through the Colorado wilds from the predations of bands of jayhawkers seeking to provide the stock to the Confederacy. The rebels can't have their intimate knowledge of the herd movements without inside information, but Washington finds it unseemly to descend to the level of developing counter-intelligence. Certain officers in the field, however, act on the gravity of the situation by staging a covert ruse. Major Lex Kearney (Cooper) a Virginian whose Southern sentiments are open to question, is transferred to the outpost in the hopes that he can lead a drive past the looters, but turns rather than fight once confronted by them on the trail. He's summarily court-martialed for cowardice, and the combination of his experience and his apparent bitterness gets the attention of Archie McCool (David Brian), a local rancher who reveals himself as the ringleader of the rustlers. Kearney's disgrace, as it develops, was staged solely to gain access to the cabal. The downside is that fact is shared with only a select few, and those on the outside include Kearney's frustrated wife (Phyllis Thaxter), who can't understand why he won't come home and deal with the crisis presented by their young son's having run away in humiliation. It's her presence that ultimately tips McCool's mole to the subterfuge, and places Kearney in jeopardy of execution as a traitor. With the help of the loyalists among the troops, and a convenient cache of the then-new chamber-loading rifle that would "turn one man into five, and fifty into an army," Kearney is able to confront the rustlers, and the real betrayer, in a well-staged final confrontation. Director Andre de Toth bears a certain amount of cult cache for efforts like House of Wax (1953) and The Gunfighter (1950), but the workmanlike job that he put forth here was not particularly remarkable. Notables in the supporting cast include Lon Chaney, Jr. providing dimwitted bluster as McCool's head lackey; as well as Paul Kelly and Phillip Carey for keeping the audience guessing in their respective roles as Kearney's immediate superior and chief accuser. Warner's mastering job on the DVD does no disservice to the rich palette of Edwin Dupar's cinematography, but the disc is bare-bones in terms of extras. In addition to Springfield Rifle, Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection also contains Sergeant York (1941), The Fountainhead (1949), Dallas (1950) and The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). For more information about Springfield Rifle, visit Warner Video. To order Springfield Rifle (which is only available as part of Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection), go to TCM Shopping. by Jay S. Steinberg

Andre De Toth, the director and writer behind such memorable genre films as Pitfall (1948), a film noir, The Indian Fighter (1955), a Western, Play Dirty (1968), a war thriller, and arguably the best 3-D movie ever made, House of Wax (1953), died on October 27 of an aneurysm in his Burbank home. He was believed to be 89, although biographical references to his birth year vary from 1910 to 1913. Born in Mako, Hungary to the son of a civil engineer, De Toth showed an early artistic bent, having his first exhibit of paintings and sculpture at age 14 and seeing his first play produced at age 18. After obtaining his law degree from the University of Budapest, he began acting, writing and working as a cameraman for cinematographer Istvan Eiben. In 1939, he went to England, where he worked as a second unit director for Alexander Korda on The Thief of Bagdad and other films. De Toth immigrated to Hollywood in the early '40s, and worked with Korda on The Jungle Book (1942) and several other films. He made his Hollywood directing debut with the 1943 feature, Passport to Suez, a propaganda thriller about the Nazis wanting to bomb the Suez Canal. Impressed with his ability, Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, put the director under contract for one film and the result, None Shall Escape (1944), launched his Hollywood career. This tense, sensitive drama about a Nazi officer made to examine his actions was fascinating in its structure: Set after the war's end, the film centers around the trial of a Nazi butcher, Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox), in Poland and makes excellent use of flashbacks illustrating the prosecution's testimony to form the bulk of the film. In a way, the film predicted the Nuremberg Trials after the war. de Toth earned considerable critical acclaim with the taut, intense noir thriller Pitfall (1948) which he co-wrote. Starring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott and Raymond Burr, this story of a bored insurance salesman who embarks on an affair because he feels stifled in his picture-perfect home (a devoted wife, son, nice house, successful career, etc.) was striking as one of the first films to examine the American dream gone sour. De Toth followed that with a shared Oscar nomination with William Bowers for Best Original Motion Picture Story for The Gunfighter (1950), a haunting character study of a killer (Gregory Peck) trying to live down his past. His biggest commercial hit came with House of Wax (1953), the movie that launched Vincent Price's horror film career and is still regarded as the best of all three-dimensional films to be released during that period. Unlike other directors who seemed to be dabbling with a new technique, De Toth emphasized character and plot over the special effects: Price was a sculptor rebuilding his wax figure collection (destroyed by fire) by making statues out of his murder victims. The one-eyed de Toth was an odd choice to helm a 3-D film as he could not experience the stereoscopic process, having lost an eye in his youth, but he persevered and it was the most successful 3-D film of its day. De Toth followed that hit with some fine films: Crime Wave (1954), a hostage thriller that boasts some fine performances by Sterling Hayden and Gene Nelson and excellent location shooting on the streets of Los Angeles; The Indian Fighter (1955) an exciting Kirk Douglas vehicle about a wagon master leading his train through rough territory that won accolades for depicting the Native Americans with more depth than contemporary directors; and Day of the Outlaw (1959), the stark, stylish, low budget western about an outlaw (Burl Ives) and his gang taking over taking a small town and matching wits with one of its citizens (Robert Ryan). For many, this film best articulated many of the recurring themes in De Toth's work that would be evaluated only decades later by film scholars: survival, betrayal, the capacity for evil and complexities of human relationships. In the early sixties film work became increasingly scarce for De Toth and he found himself relegated to directing for television: Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip and The Westerner. Tired of the limitations he was finding in Hollywood, De Toth headed to Europe in the '60s, where he found work as an uncredited consultant and location scout on David Lean's extravagant Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He directed a few films abroad, the best of which was the World War II action film Play Dirty (1968), starring Michael Caine, and then he more or less retired from active filmmaking. It was not until recently that De Toth began to receive critical recognition for his entertaining body of work. The last few years have seen several retrospectives and he enjoyed a renewed popularity at film festivals from Scotland to San Francisco. His contributions to film were recognized with the 1995 life achievement prize by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the publication of his autobiography, Fragments: Portraits From the Inside, as well as an interview book, De Toth on De Toth, by Anthony Slide. De Toth was married for a time to Veronica Lake (1944-1952) with whom he had two children. He is survived by his wife, Ann Green. by Michael T. Toole