The Hanging Tree (1959)

Director: Delmer Daves
Writer: Wendell Mayes and Halsted Welles, based on the novelette by Dorothy M. Johnson
Stars: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden and Ben Piazza

Index: Centennials.

Dorothy M. Johnson may not be a household name today, even among film aficionados, but she wrote three short stories later turned into notable westerns. The two best known are The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and A Man Called Horse, but this third is unjustly underseen.

It’s a Gary Cooper film, not only because he stars in it, but because it was made by Baroda, his production company, the first of two, with the other being 1961’s thriller The Naked Edge.

Doc Frail is an unusual role for him, a good man, as we’d expect, but one with a dark past, which we don’t. As his daughter Maria pointed out, “You don’t expect a Cooper character to pump several bullets in a body and kick it off a cliff!” Well, that certainly happens here.

We’re on the Gold Trail in Montana in 1873, though the gorgeous scenery we see behind it is actually in Washington state, and he’s riding into a small mining camp we may or may not later learn is called Skull Creek. It seems to be growing, because when Frail arrives to set up shop on a hill overlooking the town, the ladies of the evening arrive too on a different wagon.

The Hanging Tree of the title is a prominent fixture immediately, as Frail rides past it to get to town. It almost gets used quickly too, when a prospector shoots at a sluice robber and has the whole town mobilised to find him. That’s a grave sin in a mining camp and apparently the most fun they’ve had in years.

The young thief is Rune and he’s shot in the shoulder by Frenchy Plante, but makes it up a cliff to be caught by Doc Frail. However, Doc’s happy to treat him rather than turn him in, at no cost too, except that he’ll work as a servant for as long as he wants. Hey, he’ll be alive!

Frenchy is Karl Malden; Rune is Ben Piazza, with an introducing credit for his second film, after A Dangerous Age two years earlier; so that just leaves our centenarian, Maria Schell, to be introduced from the principal cast.

She’s on a stagecoach on its way into town when it’s held up by bandits. It ends up rolling off a cliff, killing everybody on board except her and the driver. She’s Elizabeth Mahler, lost and almost dead of exposure before the driver staggers into town three days later to spark a search party. She’s brought to Doc Frail, who’s professional but tough as she recovers.

There are other characters, of course, as the drive of the film is that Doc establishes himself quickly, with good deeds to some and threats to others. He lets a family pay him with a kiss to the cheek and lends them a cow so they can avoid malnutrition, but then he almost shoots an old prospector during a card game after he brings up the past he’s keeping schtum.

What it boils down to is that plenty of men are ready to form a mob whenever the time is right to carry him up to the Hanging Tree and get rid of him for good. That moment arrives, of course, and it’s no pretty scene. Then again, vengeful mobs never are, even when a man is actually guilty. Doc Frail isn’t, but much of the depth in his character is due to him believing that he has been for a long time.

The movie belongs to Gary Cooper, who has a peach of a character to flesh out. Sure, he’s a capable doctor who helps everyone who needs it; even if they can’t pay, he’ll work something out. However, he’s also clearly a gambler and a gunslinger and that makes him dangerous. His past hangs over the film like a shadow and it’s not dispersed even when we learn the truth.

Malden attempts to steal every scene he can and he manages a few, but not often against a man like Doc Frail. He never knows that Rune was the sluice robber he shot, making it ironic that he later goes into business with him and a recovered Elizabeth, the lucky lost Swiss lady.

Before I get to Schell, who’s the reason I’m watching, I should mention George Grubb, the character with the biggest grudge against Doc Frail. He’s there in town, established as a faith healer, preacher and undertaker and he does not want competition from a real doctor.

He’s played with relish by George C. Scott, a new actor earning his first feature film credit. He was uncredited in Somebody Up There Likes Me and credited in a TV movie, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, but this was the real beginning to an impressive career. He followed this promising start with Anatomy of a Murder and The Hustler.

And to Maria Schell. This isn’t a typical part, because it’s greatly restricted. We first glimpse her twenty-one minutes in, don’t properly see her for another seven and don’t hear her talk for another fourteen. She’s brutally sunburned and blinded. She doesn’t lose the bandages on her eyes for a full hour.

However, she still establishes herself with a powerful performance as a victim and invalid, then takes charge as a woman willing to work a stake. She clearly likes Doc but Frenchy likes her and that’s not a good dynamic to simmer. She evolves Elizabeth substantially.

While she’s playing a Swiss lady, Schell was born in the capital of next door Austria, older sister to Maximilian Schell and two far lesser known actors, Carl and Immy, all the children of an actress and a playwright. They moved to Switzerland after the Nazis annexed Austria.

Her first film, in 1942, was Swiss, Steibruch, billed as Gritli Schell, but she spent the next six years on stage. She returned to film in 1948 with the war over and Austria free. She made films there, in West Germany and the UK, with a set of lead roles in The Angel with the Trumpet, The Magic Box and The Heart of the Matter.

The French Gervaise was Oscar nominated as Best Foreign Language Film and, while she was in Hollywood, Yul Brynner met her and asked for her to be cast in The Brothers Karamazov. It led to this, Cimarron and eventually Superman, but she won more awards for foreign language work, including eight BAMBIs in Germany.

Before this, she was recognised for the Rene Clément film Gervaise, which won her a couple of awards at the Venice Film Festival; and the German picture The Last Bridge, which won her awards in Germany and Finland and a special mention at Cannes.

She only appeared in a feature film with her brother once, the 1974 thriller The Odessa File. He was billed second and she third, but they didn’t share any scenes. However, in 2002, he made a full length documentary about her, My Sister Maria, winning them both a BAMBI.

Her last public appearance was at its Vienna première; she died only three years later after being ill for most of her later life. Three more years on and her birth city would honour her with Maria-Schell-Straße in Wassburg am Inn.