The Tall T

Actor, writer, and all-around great guy Jim Beaver turned me on to THE TALL T. After seeing the film, I found that I couldn't add much to his comments, so I asked if I could reprint his review. Being the all-around great guy that he is, Jim gave me the go ahead. So, here's Jim Beaver on THE TALL T:

My third favorite Western is, like SEVEN MEN FROM NOW, a Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott collaboration: THE TALL T. It's from an Elmore Leonard story and while it's an apparently simple good guys/bad guys movie, it resonates with me wonderfully.

Scott is the protagonist, of course, minding his own business as a rancher. He has a delightful bantering relationship with a stage driver played by Arthur Hunnicutt (Oscar-nominated a few years earlier for THE BIG SKY). It seems sort of leisurely until Richard Boone and his two dim-but-dangerous cohorts show up and commit what must have been (and even now still is) a shocking act of violence. Also caught in the whirlpool thus created are Maureen O'Sullivan, playing her age (or greater) as the plain(!) daughter of the local rich guy, and John Hubbard as the cad who married her for her money.

Burt Kennedy's script is tight, with wonderful dialog lifted straight from Leonard's story. (About O'Sullivan, Hunnicutt says, "She was scheduled to be an old maid, till Willard come along." A bad guy talks about about a pretty girl he once knew: "She was wild as mountain scenery." Another heavy is asked his age. His answer: "I don't know. Young, mostly.") The complexity (surprising in a 78-minute movie) comes mostly from the relationship between good guy Scott and bad guy Boone. Boone is drawn to Scott, almost yearning to have someone of Scott's intelligence and breeding in his life, instead of the scum he travels with. It's a fascinating angle on the white hat/black hat tradition.

THE TALL T has only been available infrequently on TV till lately, or in lousy 16mm prints. But Sony is releasing all the Columbia Boetticher/Scott films (of the seven films of the collaboration, only WESTBOUND and SEVEN MEN FROM NOW were for other studios) sometime soon. It's about time. THE TALL T is a small film, with nothing resoundingly profound about it, but I think it's one of the best Westerns ever made.