Blood on the Moon
Having broken through to success with his key supporting role in
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), which earned him an Oscar nomination (astoundingly, his only one), Robert Mitchum was a hot commodity by 1948. RKO, which had him under contract at $3,000 a week, was so impressed with him that the studio was willing to pay David O. Selznick $12,500 per week (for a ten week shoot) to secure the actor's services. Mitchum also had a deal with Selznick's Vanguard productions, and it was Selznick's turn to use him in a picture. But RKO, who had done well with such previous Mitchum films as the Western
Rachel and the Stranger (1948) and the film noirs,
Out of the Past (1947) and
Crossfire(1947), was more than willing to shell out big bucks for the rising star.
For
Blood on the Moon (1948), Mitchum proved to be the right choice for a story that played on his morally ambiguous image. As Jim Garry, he first appears as an old friend to the scheming Tate Billing (Robert Preston), agreeing to serve as a hired gun for Billing's plot to get rich off another cattleman's herd. But as the story progresses, Garry learns of his friend's treachery and falls for the victimized cattleman's daughter, revealing a forthright side to his character. He confronts Billing in a lengthy knockdown fistfight that's reminiscent of the final brawl between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in another popular Western of the year,
Red River (1948). "In keeping with the realistic style of this film," according to director Robert Wise (in the biography
Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care by Lee Server), "I wanted to avoid one of those extremely staged-looking fistfights used in all the movies, where the stuntmen did this elaborate, acrobatic fighting and you saw the real actors only in close-ups. I wanted this to look like a real fight, with that awkward, brutal look of a real fight, and when it was done for the winner to look as exhausted as the loser. And Mitch was excited about this. He knew exactly what I was going for. I think he probably knew more than I did about barroom fights like this one."
Reviewers at the time remarked on how
Blood on the Moon avoided the generic Western formula. In the dark, shadowy nature of the look, characters, and themes of this movie, it resembled more the film noir work at which Mitchum and director Wise excelled at this time. Although known more today for his blockbuster musicals
West Side Story (1961) and
The Sound of Music (1965), Wise started out at RKO as an expert editor - counting Orson Welles'
Citizen Kane (1941) and
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) among his early work - and as one of the key directors in Val Lewton's legendary "horror" unit at the studio. Wise directed the darkly suggestive
The Curse of the Cat People (1944), which was more psychological fantasy than horror film, and the Boris Karloff melodrama
The Body Snatcher (1945) for Lewton. He also made
Born to Kill (1947), a quintessential noir thriller, although rarely seen today. Wise always referred to
Blood on the Moon as his "first big feature," but he was on record as saying he disliked the Western genre (he made only three).
Mitchum, as mentioned above, already had impressive film noir credentials and brought to this picture many of the laconic, ambiguous qualities he displayed in his crime dramas. But he also looked completely at home in the Western genre. In the aforementioned Lee Server biography, Wise recalled, "the first scene we shot after Mitch got outfitted was in the barroom. Walter Brennan was sitting at a table with a couple of pals and Brennan was very interested in the Old West, it was a hobby of his. And I'll never forget when Bob came on the set, just standing there, with the costume and the whole attitude that he gave to it, and Brennan got a look at him and was terribly impressed. He pointed to Mitchum and said, "That is the
goddamndest realest cowboy I've ever seen."
Considering the combined backgrounds of director, star and production team, it's no surprise
Blood on the Moon came off as more of a tense psychological study than an epic of the open-air West. Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca was a veteran of such dark thrillers as
Out of the Past,
The Locket (1946) - both starring Mitchum - and
The Spiral Staircase (1946), as well as several of the Lewton productions (including
The Curse of the Cat People with Wise). Working with art directors Albert D'Agostino and Walter Keller (also key players in RKO's noir and horror cycles), he created a sense of claustrophobic tension by shooting much of the film indoors, on low-ceilinged sets (echoes of Welles), with a contrasting play of light and dark - none of them hallmarks of the typical Western. Roy Webb, who composed the score, was also no stranger to creating music for moody, mysterious tales, having written for all the above-mentioned Mitchum noir films, many of the Lewton productions, and Hitchcock's
Notorious (1946).
Although not a near-instant classic like the other big Westerns released the same year,
Red River and
Fort Apache,
Blood on the Moon did well critically and commercially. And Mitchum's stock continued to rise so swiftly that even his 1948 arrest and brief imprisonment for possession of marijuana (an expected career-killer at the time) did not hinder his success.
Director: Robert Wise
Producer: Theron Warth
Screenplay: Lillie Hayward, from the novel by Luke Short
Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca
Editing: Samuel E. Beetley
Art Direction: Albert S. D+Agostino, Walter E. Keller
Original Music: Roy Webb
Cast: Robert Mitchum (Jim Garry), Barbara Bel Geddes (Amy Lufton), Robert Preston (Tate Billing), Walter Brennan (Kris Barden), Phyllis Thaxter (Carol Lufton).
BW-88m. Closed captioning.
by Rob Nixon
Robert Wise (1914-2005)
Robert Wise, who died at age 91 on September 14, was the noted film editor of
Citizen Kane (1941) and other movies before he became a producer and director, and all his works are marked by striking visual rhythms. He is best remembered for two enormously popular musicals,
West Side Story (1959) and
The Sound of Music (1965), which brought him a total of four Oscars® -- each winning for Best Picture and Best Director. (Wise's directorial award for
West Side Story was shared with Jerome Robbins.)
Born on September 10, 1914 in Winchester, Ind., Wise was a child of the Depression who quit college to earn a living in the movie industry. He began as an assistant cutter at RKO, where he worked his way up to the position of film editor and earned an Oscar® nomination for his bravura work with Orson Welles on
Citizen Kane. He also edited
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) for Welles, along with several other RKO films.
Wise became a director by default when RKO and producer Val Lewton assigned him to
The Curse of the Cat People (1944) after Gunther von Fritsch failed to meet the film's production schedule. Wise turned the film into a first-rate psychological thriller, and enjoyed equal success with another Lewton horror film,
The Body Snatcher (1945).
Critical praise also was showered upon Wise's
Born to Kill (1947), a crime melodrama; and
Blood on the Moon (1948), an unusual psychological Western starring Robert Mitchum. Even more highly regarded was
The Set-Up (1949), a no-punches-pulled boxing drama that won the Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Wise moved on from RKO in the early 1950s, directing one of the movies' classic alien invasion films, The Day the Earth Stood Still, for 20th Century Fox.
At MGM he directed Executive Suite (1954), a compelling all-star boardroom drama; Somebody Up There Likes Me, a film bio of boxer Rocky Graziano that established Paul Newman as a major star; and The Haunting (1963), a chilling haunted-hause melodrama. His films for United Artists include Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a submarine drama with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster; I Want to Live! (1958), a harrowing account of a convicted murderess on Death Row, with Susan Hayward in her Oscar-winning performance; and the crime caper Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).
Wise served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. He was awarded the Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1966, and the Directors Guild's highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award, in 1988. He remained active as a director through the 1970s. His final film, Rooftops (1989) was a musical with an urban setting that recalled West Side Story.
The films in TCM's salute to Robert Wise are Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Curse of the Cat People (1944), The Body Snatcher (1945), Born to Kill (1947), Blood on the Moon (1948), The Set-Up (1949), Executive Suite (1954), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), B>West Side Story (1959), Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) and The Haunting (1963).
by Roger Fristoe