Rio Bravo: John Wayne & Dean Martin

This is a really good 1959 western movie produced and directed by Howard Hawks.

The film begins with a disheveled man named Dude, played by Dean Martin, entering into a saloon through the backdoor. He desperately wants a drink, and one man teasingly shows Dude his drink. The man is Joe Burdette, played by Claude Akins, who we later learn is the brother of a wealthy businessman, Nathan Burdette, played by John Russell. Joe tosses some money into a spittoon and Dude goes for the money, but suddenly the spittoon is kicked away by rifle toting Sheriff John T. Chance, played by John Wayne. The sheriff turns to Joe Burdette, but Dude grabs a piece of wood and clubs the sheriff with it, knocking him out. A couple of guys hold Dude while Joe punches him, and when a bystander tries to stop Joe, Joe pulls his gun and shoots the man, who it turns out, is unarmed. Joe then walks out and goes to a saloon owned by his brother, where the sheriff, still looking a bit dazed, enters and points his rifle at Joe. When the sheriff tells Joe he's under arrest, a man at the bar pulls his gun and intervenes to stop the sheriff. A couple of other men also step forward to protect Joe, but Dude has entered and grabs the gun of one of the men and he shoots the gun out of the hand of the man holding his gun on the sheriff. The sheriff knocks out Joe with his rifle and together with Dude, they drag Joe out of the saloon and take him to the jail.

The scene shifts forward to the funeral procession for the man killed by Joe, while a wagon train, primarily carrying fuel oil and dynamite, is also entering the town. It's led by Pat Wheeler, played by Ward Bond,* and he's hired a young gunslinger named Colorado, played by Ricky Nelson,** as a guard for the wagon train. In a conversation between the sheriff and Wheeler, we learn that Nathan Burdette has blocked off the town with his men to prevent the sheriff from taking his brother elsewhere. Other Burdette men are in town to watch everything the sheriff does. The sheriff has only two men, Dude, his former excellent deputy, but a drunk for the last two years, after a broken relationship, and Stumpy, played by Walter Brennan,*** an older man hobbled by a bad leg and with a distinctive voice and laugh, who carries a double barrel shotgun. The sheriff uses Stumpy to guard Joe and the jailhouse. Throughout the film there are little comedic tidbits, as Stumpy is a cantankerous and outspoken older guy and Sheriff Chance is a pretty hard-boiled lawman who knows that mistakes and miscalculations can cost lives, including his own, because he and his men are facing a lot of hired gunmen; that is, killers. Chance loves to give orders and to appear strong, so no matter what anyone does, he tends to find fault with it, bringing Stumpy to repeatedly declare during the film, "There you go again... NEVER can please you!" Stumpy feels unappreciated, which leads to a scene where Chance finally gives Stumpy his due... a kiss on his balding head. 

The sheriff and Colorado have a bit of a shaky start when they first meet, with the young gunman standing his ground (verbally) against Chance's natural inclination to give orders. When Chance gives Colorado instructions about where to take the wagons, the young man turns to the man who pays his salary, Pat Wheeler, and asks him, "Is that how you want it, Mr. Wheeler?" Wheeler breaks into a big smile and gives his approval, but the sheriff isn't exactly thrilled by Colorado circumventing his authority. Later, Wheeler tells Chance he will ask Colorado if he will help the sheriff fend off Nathan Burdette's men and keep Joe in custody. Wheeler brings Colorado to Chance, then explains to Colorado how the sheriff needs help, but the young gunslinger tells Chance, "I'll tell you what I'm better at... minding my own business." Colorado walks away, which upsets Wheeler, but Chance says the young guy shows good sense.

We now meet a woman who came into town on the stagecoach, played by Angie Dickinson. We learn from Carlos (played by Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez****), the hotel proprietor, that the stage has a bad wheel and can't leave until it's repaired. It turns out the sheriff has a handbill describing a woman, fitting this woman's description, who is wanted for card cheating, along with a man. We see an unidentified man and this woman playing cards with some other customers in the hotel barroom. She leaves the table a winner, and the man then starts winning. Colorado busts the guy as a cheater, as he finds three cards missing from the deck up the man's sleeve. Chance won't apologize to the woman for suspecting her, but we later learn that she was not working with this man, but that she is the woman in the handbill, and the actual wanted man was her husband, who was killed a few months before. As the film progresses, in a turnabout from more "typical" stories where the guy pursues the girl, she pursues the sheriff, who at first is a bit befuddled as to how to handle the situation.

As Pat Wheeler walks toward the hotel that night, two shots ring out from a stable window along the street. Wheeler collapses dead. Colorado wants to help find his boss's killer, but he's rebuffed pretty sharply by the sheriff, "You had a chance to get in this and you didn't wanna. Stay out, we don't need ya!" Dude and Chance go off to find Wheeler's killer. Chance goes into the stable, while Dude waits outside. After gunfire erupts inside the stable, a man dashes out the side door and past Dude, who fires at the man, but does not bring him down. He sees the man run into Burdette's saloon, and Dude and Chance go into the saloon to seek out a man with muddy boots, as the man who came out of the stable stepped in a puddle. Dude thinks he may have wounded the man.

At first, the Burdette men in the saloon laugh at Dude as they have for the last couple of years of his heavy drinking. Then Dude happens to see some blood drip into a glass on the bar from the upper loft of the saloon. He turns and fires and Wheeler's killer falls dead to the main level. Dude is back, well somewhat, but he still struggles to overcome his need for whiskey throughout much of the story, as he goes through withdrawal from alcohol. When Stumpy takes a shot at Dude by mistake as he enters the jailhouse without identifying himself, Dude verbally ties into Stumpy as Chance stands and observes. When Dude walks away, Chance follows and tells him they won't be pampering him anymore. Finally some of Burdette's men strike by capturing Dude, then they approach Chance on horseback and pull their guns on him. The sheriff is helped out of his predicament by Colorado and by the card playing woman. He then goes and releases Dude. Colorado, having helped the sheriff, now becomes a deputy and the merry little band plan to await the U.S. marshal in the jailhouse.

Before retreating to the jailhouse, Dude goes to the hotel to take a bath and Chance goes to see "Feathers," as the card playing woman from the stagecoach is called. Several Burdette men take Chance and Dude prisoner, but promise to release them if the sheriff will release Joe. Dude tells Chance to go to the jailhouse with Burdette's men and tell Stumpy to release Joe, knowing that Stumpy will open fire. That's exactly what happens, as three Burdette men enter the jailhouse with Chance, who tells Stumpy the men have posted bail for Joe. Stumpy unloads both barrels of his shotgun on the men, killing two and Colorado, also in the jailhouse, gets the other. When Chance and Colorado go to the hotel to help Dude, the Burdette men have already left with Dude. Chance sends Carlos to set up a meeting with Nathan Burdette, who sends Carlos back with a message for the sheriff to bring Joe to the Burdette warehouse the next day, where they will exchange Dude for Joe.

Chance tells Stumpy he can't go along, as he fears for Stumpy's safety since he can't move well with his bad leg. So off go Chance and Colorado with Joe to the warehouse. The townspeople are gathered around to see what will happen. Chance calls for Nathan who comes out of his warehouse, where every window and door is manned by Burdette's hired gunmen. Burdette releases Dude, who starts walking slowly toward Chance, who is with Colorado in a barn across from the warehouse. Chance starts Joe walking toward his brother's warehouse. When Dude and Joe meet, Dude tackles Joe and moves him out of the sight of Burdette and his men behind the ruins of an old building. Gunfire starts between the two sides as Dude and Joe fight it out to the side. Dude knocks out Joe. Colorado tosses Dude a pistol, so the sheriff now has another armed man. The shooting continues and 5 Burdette men try to outflank Chance and company, who kill or wound 3 of the men, but the 2 men who succeed to make it through the gunfire begin to try to get behind Chance and Colorado, only to be met by the blasts from the two barrels of a shotgun and the high pitched laugh of Stumpy, who disobeyed Chance and came to the warehouse area, but remained out of sight. It turns out, Stumpy is right by one of the wagons loaded with dynamite that had been brought into town by Pat Wheeler. Chance makes his way to Stumpy to warn him to get away from the wagon and Stumpy takes a crate of dynamite along, as he and Chance move away from the wagon. Chance has Stumpy throw a stick of dynamite that lands in front of the warehouse and Chance shoots it, causing it to explode. Stumpy throws another that lands right in front of the building and Chance shoots it. Stumpy throws another at the front of the warehouse and Dude shoots it. In typical Chance fashion, he's unsatisfied with how Stumpy's been throwing the dynamite, so he now has Stumpy throw the dynamite directly at the building, and when Chance shoots it, a whole front section of the building is blown apart. Burdette and his men surrender.

The town is quiet and Chance goes to the hotel to see Feathers. At first he's still defensive with her, but that all changes.    

* In real life, Ward Bond was a close personal friend of John Wayne. I have to believe Bond's role as the leader of a wagon train in this film was specifically written for him to further promote the same role he played on a popular television show in those times called, believe it or not, "Wagon Train," where he played wagon master Seth Adams. It was a favorite of mine back then, and Bond's call of "Ho," to start the wagons became a well known image of him on the television series, and it was carried over to this movie. Unfortunately, Ward Bond died of a heart attack a year after the release of this film.

** Ricky Nelson was the son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. The Nelsons, along with sons Dave and Ricky, had a popular television series during the 1950s and part of the 1960s. The show became something of a symbol in those days of the ideal American family (not that everyone agreed with that). Having been on the family television series for several years, Ricky was already well known to Americans when he was cast for this film in 1958 (the movie was released to theaters in the spring of 1959). Ricky was also a musician and singer who released a number of hit songs and albums over the years and he and Dean Martin do some singing in Rio Bravo. Nelson was killed when his private plane crashed in the mid 1980s.

*** Long time actor Walter Brennan was then starring in a television series too, playing Amos McCoy on the show, "The Real McCoys." Brennan won three Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor during his career.

**** That's not a typo. The family name of both parents was "Gonzalez," and a common naming custom in Spain and its former colonies is to use both the father's family name AND the mother's family name.

Photo is of the 2010 Warner Brothers DVD

WORD HISTORY:
Slug-English has more than one word of this spelling, but this is the noun/verb for, "punch, hit." This word seems to be derived from "slay," a word from the Germanic roots of English, and that would also make it related to "slaughter," another word from the Germanic roots of English. "Slog" seems to be a variant of "slug," although it may also be mixed with the form of "slug" meaning "a snail-like creature." ^ "Slug" goes back to Indo European "slak," with the idea of "hit, strike, beat." This gave the Old Germanic spinoff "slakhanan," also with the meaning "to hit, to strike, to beat," but also with the extended meaning "to kill," from the notion of "hitting/beating someone until dead." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "slean," ^^ with the same meanings. The 1st and 3rd person past tense form was "slog" (2nd person=sloge, plural form=slogon, participle=slegen^^^) These forms were pronounced with a long "o" which eventually morphed into a short "u" sound.   

^ The meaning of "slog," "to walk heavily, ponderously;" also thus, "slowly," could be from the slow pace of a "slug" (snail-like creature), but it could also be from the idea of "heavy hitting, pounding of the feet when walking." This walking meaning "seems" to have developed in the second half of the 1800s.

^^ "Slean" is the old form of modern "slay."

^^^ I also have seen references to a participle form "geslegen/geslagen," but "perhaps" these were older forms??? As a point of reference, German still has "geschlagen" as the participle form of "schlagen," the close relative of "slay."