California Conquest

In California Conquest (1952), a western set in the 1830s, when California was still part of Mexico, the emphasis is on "conquest." As the opening narration informs us with remarkable efficiency, there's a popular movement to become an American territory but the French and the Russians are both vying for a piece of the new land and the Czar has established a foothold in Northern California. It is against this backdrop that Don Arturo Bordega, a son of Spanish nobility played with cocksure attitude and swashbuckling style by Cornel Wilde, commits himself to the American cause to turn old California into the "land of freedom," with the very capable and courageous American Julie Lawrence (Teresa Wright) at his side. "There's something in the wind," says Julie's father, a gunmaker in "la Reina de Los Angeles" (as the future metropolis is called under Mexican rule) who supports annexation by the U.S. When he's gunned down by bandits, Julie joins the fight. The film was ostensibly based on "The Curse of Capistrano," the same story that Douglas Fairbanks turned into The Mark of Zorro (1920), but by the time the script reached the cameras the inspiration was limited to time and place. The film twisted history into pure fiction to transform the adventure into a fight against a Russian conspiracy to take over the state with the help of greedy landowners (led by John Dehner) and a bandit army led by the notorious outlaw José Martínez (Alfonso Bedoya). In the atmosphere of the Cold War and the looming threat of the blacklist, Hollywood was bending over backwards to prove its patriotism. The Variety reviewer noted the timely connection in his review, observing that the plot "purports to show that Russia had her eye on the rich land [of California] even back in those days...." Columbia Pictures was the most frugal of the major studios and producer Sam Katzman specialized in cranking out inexpensive genre pictures, be they adventures, war pictures, crime movies, serials, or westerns. For California Conquest, Katzman had genuine A-list stars in the lead and a Technicolor palette, and he turned to veteran filmmaker Lew Landers to give the picture its excitement. It was Landers' fourteenth film for Katzman and he delivered swordfights, a runaway stagecoach, horseback chases and gun battles (with Mexican bandits taking the place of rampaging Indians), and even a little bullwhip action. Reliable man of action Cornel Wilde was equally at home in urban crime dramas and muscular action pictures and swashbucklers. He'd already been Robin Hood, the son of D'Artagnan, and an arrogant trapeze superstar in Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), when he took the lead as the gentleman adventurer with a flair for swordsmanship. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio originally considered Patricia Medina for the lead. Teresa Wright, who had earned Oscar nominations for her performances in The Little Foxes (1941) and The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and won for her supporting performance in Mrs. Miniver (1942), spends as much time in jeans and work shirts as she does in glamorous attire. It's only her second western but if there's a constant in her career, it is the strength of her characters and her commitment to her roles, and Julie is one tough customer: a committed businesswoman, a crack shot, and a hardy frontier veteran equally at home on the trail or undercover in a bandit camp. The scene stealer of the film, however, is the Mexican character actor Alfonso Bedoya, who made his first impression on American screens in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) with the legendary line: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges." After a career in Mexican films, he became a busy supporting player in Hollywood, playing everything from bandit villains to loyal sidekicks, and he had a flair for adding unexpected character touches to routine parts. By Sean Axmaker Sources: AFI Catalogue of Feature Films IMDb

Teresa Wright, a talented, Oscar&-winning leading lady of the '40s, and in later life, a versatile character player, died on March 6 at a New Haven, Connecticut hospital of a heart attack. She was 86. She was born Muriel Teresa Wright in New York City on October 27, 1918. She showed a keen interest in acting in grade school, and by the time she was 19, she made her Broadway debut in Thorton Wilder's Our Town (1938); the following year she scored a hit as Mary, the weeping ingénue in Life with Father (1939). The word was out that New York had a superb young acting talent on hand, and Samuel Goldwyn soon brought her to Hollywood for William Wyler's adaptation of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1941). She scored an Oscar® nomination for her film debut as Regina Giddens' (Bette Davis), honorable daughter, Alexandria. She maintained her amazing momentum by scoring two Oscar® nominations the following year for her next two films: as Carol Miniver in Wyler's Mrs. Miniver (Best Supporting Actress Category), and as Lou Gehrig's (Gary Cooper) faithful wife Ellie in Pride of the Yankees (Best Actress Category), and won the Oscar for Miniver. Yet for most fans of Wright's work, her finest hour remains her perfectly modulated performance as young Charlie in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Wright's performance as the self-effacing, impressionable young niece who gradually realizes that her beloved uncle (Joseph Cotton) may have murdered several widows is effective since Wright's air of observation, subtly turns from idol gazing, to a watchful air of caution as the facts slowly being to unravel. 60 years on, fans of Hitchcock still acclaim Wright's performance as an integral part of the film's classic status. She proved her talents in comedy with the delightful Casanova Brown (1944), but then saw her schedule slow down due to domesticity. After she married screenwriter Niven Busch in 1942, she gave birth to son, Niven Jr., in 1944, and took two years off to look after her family. She soon returned to film with another Wyler project, the Oscar®-winning, post war drama, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), playing Fredric March's level-headed daughter, Peggy, she again took some time off after giving birth to her daughter, Mary in 1947. On her second attempt to return to the big screen, Wright found her popularity on the wane. Her wholesome image was in sharp contrast of the tougher, more modern women in post-war Hollywood, and her stubborn refusal to pose for any swimsuit or cheesecake photos to alter her image led to her release from Sam Goldwyn's contract. As a freelance actress, Wright still found some good roles, notably as a young widow in the thriller scripted by her husband, in The Capture; and as a faithful fiancée trying to help Marlin Brandon deal with his amputation in Stanley Kramer's The Men (both 1950). Yet within a few years, she was playing middle-aged mothers in film like The Actress (1953), and The Track of the Cat (1954), even though she was still in her early '30s. By the mid-50s she found work in live television, where she could apply her stage training, in a number of acclaimed shows: Playhouse 90, General Electric Theater, Four Star Playhouse, and The United States Steel Hour. She took a break from acting when she married her second husband, the playwright Robert Anderson in 1959, (she had divorced her first husband, Busch, in 1952) and was out of the public eye for several decades, save for an isolated theater appearance. When she did return, it was intermittent, but she was always worth watching. In James Ivory's Roseland (1977), a portrait of the New York dancehall; she was poignant as a talkative widow obsessed with her late husband; and as an enigmatic old actress in Somewhere in Time, she nearly stole the picture from leads, Christopher Reeve and Jayne Seymour. She was still active in the '90s, appearing a few hit shows: Murder, She Wrote, Picket Fences; and a final film role in John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). She is survived by her son, Niven; daughter, Mary; and two grandchildren. by Michael T. Toole