Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Michael_Elliott Frontier Marshall (1939) *** (out of 4)Another telling of the infamous Tombstone battle where Wyatt Earp (Randolph Scott) and Doc Halliday (Cesar Romero) try to run the outlaws out of town. This film shares a lot of the same scenes and dialogue as John Ford's remake but overall this film can't come close to what Ford did with the story. There's a lot to enjoy here but there are also a few major flaws, which really hurt the movie. The best parts of the performances from Scott who once again delivers a strong performance as the hero. It's Romero who steals the show however with a very dark turn as Halliday. The director makes his character very dark and moody, which is a better take than some of the other versions where he comes off more charming than anything else. The dark and moody Halliday also leaks over into the rest of the film, which is one of the problems. The film is shot with some incredibly dark scenes where it's hard to tell what's going on. This makes for a couple good shots but overall this style really hurts the film as sometimes it's hard to make out what's going on. The supporting cast is also very impressive and includes John Carradine, Joe Sawyer, Lon Chaney, Jr., Nancy Kelly and Ward Bond. Charles Stevens plays a drunk Indian here and repeated the role in the Ford version.

weezeralfalfa One of umpteen Hollywood films that exploited the well recognized names of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to attract an audience to a show that had little to do with their historic realities. We had to wait until the 1990s("Wyatt Earp", "Tombstone") to get a reasonably authentic telling of Wyatt and his association with Doc. Wyatt's widow reportedly bullied Fox into deleting Wyatt's name from the title. The planned title was the same as the fanciful biography it was based upon.This film was released in that magical year for Hollywood films: 1939. It's the year Fox released their big budget Technicolor western 'Jesse James", in addition to this low budget B&W, which nonetheless included a number of reasonably high profile actors. Young Nancy Kelly was the leading lady in both films. John Carradine played the chief villain in both. Randolph Scott played a major character in both films: the lead in this one. Cesar Romero was employed as a handsome Latino version of the historically blondish-headed Holliday, whose name was altered to Halliday, perhaps to diffuse any objections to the fictionalization of his period in Tombstone. Romero's speech gave no hint of Holliday's Georgia upbringing. However, he did occasionally exhibit his semi-namesake's frequent coughing fits from his TB. Holliday had guessed correctly that moving to an arid climate might extend his life, after his doctor predicted he would die within a year. Unlike portrayed in this film and the subsequent "My Darling Clementine", Holliday was trained as a dentist, not medical doctor. This fictionalization provided an opportunity for more dramatic heroics for the character: in this case, saving the life of a Mexican boy accidentally shot in an assassination attempt on Wyatt.Cast as the good-time saloon girlfriend of Doc's, Binnie Barnes(Jerry) livens up this otherwise rather somber tale, with her streetwise flamboyant personality. Her character has a historic basis in 'Big Nose' Kate: Holliday's longtime girlfriend in the West, and frequent prostitute and madam. Although she didn't look it, Binnie was twice the age of her 18 y.o 'good girl' competition: Nancy Kelly, who seems remarkably mature for her age. Nancy had long been a child actress in films and was now experiencing her peak in adult roles. She plays Doc's former girlfriend in the East: a nurse, who's been hunting all over the West for Doc, after he decided it was best for both if he left for unknown parts without saying goodbye. Doc wants her to leave, saying he's a completely different person(gambler and gunslinger) than the man she knew. But, Wyatt convinces her that Doc will change his mind and find her the only reason to keep on living. Well, Wyatt doesn't change Doc's mind. Instead, Doc unexpectedly gets on the stage for Tucson, which happens to include Wyatt, as shotgun, and is scheduled for a holdup by Ben Carter's gang(Ben owns the saloon where Binnie works). Doc is wounded, but Carter is killed in the ensuing gun battle. Back in town, Binnie and Nancy vie with each other to attend to Doc's wound(reminds me of the competition between 2 women to restore Jimmy Stewart, after shot up, in "Far Country".) Poor Binnie: all her plans to get rid of Wyatt, because he dumped her in that horse trough for being obnoxious, and because her boss wants him gone, have gone awry. First, she convinced her old flame, Doc, to come to Tombstone to do in Wyatt. Instead, they became buddies. Then, she talked up the stage holdup, with Wyatt aboard, hoping Wyatt would get shot. Instead, Doc got shot. The last insult is that Doc is shot dead in the street by 'Curley' Bill and the remainder of Carter's gang. She gets a small measure of revenge in shooting 'Curley' Bill during the subsequent gunplay between Wyatt and Carter's gang, before deciding Tombstone is getting too tame for her, hence warranting a relocation. Nancy unexpectedly decides to stay in Tombstone, with the very slim suggestion that Wyatt may be Doc's replacement in her life(grossly overplayed on the DVD jacket!)Eddie Foy Jr. is present in parts of the middle portion, recreating the type of stage entertainment his father was famous for, back in the days of the actual Wyatt and Doc. He gets shoved around in the competition between 2 saloons for his entertainment services, and decides Tombstone is too dangerous for him.When playing the hero, Scott didn't quite always follow the formula of ending up with the 'good' girl. For example, in "Abilene Town", clearly his tempestuous relationship with the flamboyant saloon entertainer(Anne Dvorak) was more important to him than his flirtation with the 'good' girl(Rhonda Fleming}. Among the most glaring departures from history are: the absence of Wyatt's 2 brothers or the Claytons, the nonexistent Ben Carter as the chief villain, the death of Doc from assassination, and the ridiculous version of the shootout near the OK Corral. 'Curley' Bill was a historic person, whom Wyatt eventually killed, blaming him for his brother's assassination. All in all, not a bad horse opera, centered more around Doc and his problems than Wyatt. In one scene, Doc is drunk in the saloon, sees himself in the big mirror, says "I hate you", and shoots at his image, shattering the mirror.

MartinHafer Hollywood made a bunch of bad historical films about the old west which just goes to prove that the public seemed to want to see this ridiculously romanticized version of cowboys and frontier justice. In particular, the studios made a ton of films about Jesse James and other bigger than life characters and villains from the west and almost none of these films were in any way accurate. The biggest problem is that the films took very minor characters and events and made them seem much more important than they really were. And, to spice things up, they used a lot of license with facts to make the films interesting. For example, Billy the Kid and Calamity Jane, to be quite blunt, were exceptionally ugly people--nothing like the pretty folks who portrayed then in films. But, ugly folks don't sell tickets--nor would a typical gunfight from this era--most of which involved one idiot shooting another in the back--not the heroic 'shootout in the town square' usually portrayed! Here in "Frontier Marshall", the film is about Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral--probably THE most bastardized event on the frontier--and an event that was portrayed at least 173418 times in movies! There are the famous versions like "My Darling Clementine" and "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and lesser-known ones like "Frontier Marshall"--and quite a few in between. While my 173418 is a total exaggeration, IMDb lists at least 50 times he was portrayed--about 49 times too many if you ask me. If you care, "Frontier Marshall" was apparently the first to portray him--so it can be blamed for this proliferation!! And to think...all this for a shootout that only lasted about 30 seconds (seriously)! And, the truth be told, Earp and Doc Holliday was NOT seen as heroes at that time but as villains. Although the jury acquitted them, the judge commented that Earp used poor judgment and excessive force during the altercation in which two of the three killed by him and his deputies were unarmed!!! Now THAT'S the sort of film I want to see! In this film, Earp is played by handsome Randolph Scott and Holliday (billed as 'Halliday' in this movie) is played by equally handsome Cesar Romero. As for Scott, he seemed to play Randolph Scott (which he was very adept at doing)--not Earp. In the film, Holliday is at least playing a doctor--a surgeon (he was actually a dentist but they needed him to be a surgeon in order to save the cute kid!) and drank because of a woman he lost (he actually most likely drank to cope with the symptoms of tuberculosis). But no matter--despite being about 80% wrong, the characters are quite entertaining and I am pretty sure the real life Earp AND Holliday would have loved this sort of heroic characterization.The film is competently made but occasionally a bit heavy-handed such as poor little Pablo being shot...and then saved by the Doc as well as the lady on main street shooting it out! Yep, you didn't know that the famed gunfight involved a gun-slinging woman--at least in this film. And, Holliday dies in the fight--at least in this film. And, there really is not gunfight at any corral in this movie either! If you can completely ignore the fact that it's all poo, it's watchable and not much more. The bad and anticlimactic ending sure didn't help with either.

rsyung What's most interesting about Frontier Marshal is the fact that it is clearly the genesis of My Darling Clementine, directed by John Ford seven years later. It is hard to view this movie without automatically thinking of the parallel scenes in MDC, and Ford's film draws heavily on the inter-relationships of Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Sarah(Clementine in Ford's film) and the saloon girl, Jerry(Chihuahua). Other scenes are reworked into Ford's film as well…the disarming of the drunken Indian, dunking of the saloon girl into the trough, Doc Holliday attempting to redeem himself by performing surgery on a gunshot victim(in this case, the son of the Mexican bartender(in Ford's film, it was Chihuahua, Doc's `girl'), and a wandering theatric (a comic here, a Shakespearian thespian in MDC). This film is much slighter, with fewer themes and subtexts than Ford's and concentrates mostly on the relationship between Earp and Holliday and Holliday's redemption at the end. It plays out like a programmer, running a mere 71 minutes, so granted there isn't much time to devote to anything else. The themes of chaos versus order, civilization versus wilderness are only hinted at, and Randolph Scott is adequate as Wyatt Earp but without the underlying vulnerability(and humor) of Fonda's performance. The same might be said of Cesar Romero as Doc Holliday (for some reason changed to Halliday). He doesn't have the depth of Victor Mature's tortured Doc, in what was perhaps his best performance in any film, but the same self-destructive streak is evident as he attempts to drink himself to death, only to be stopped by Earp. Clearly, MDC was the more thought provoking of the two, but it cannot be denied that without Frontier Marshal, there would have been no MDC, or at least the one I consider a true western classic. What a quirk of fate that Ward Bond is in both films--the ineffective town marshal here, and later promoted to the role of Morgan Earp in Ford's version.