The Plainsman

Buy This Item The Plainsman by Universal Studios  Available from Amazon  $14.98  on 11-28-2008     Just maybe the most shamelessly enjoyable of Cecil B. DeMille's pseudo-historical epics, this rumbustious frontier saga offers a three-for-one Western legends combo--Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Calamity Jane, all cutting up in the 1870s, with George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln thrown in for good measure. (Wait a minute, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865--oh, never mind.) Truth to tell, Buffalo Bill doesn't really pull his weight, since (1) he is hopelessly distracted by virtue of having recently married and (2) he's played by James Ellison, an eternal juvenile normally relegated to second-banana duty in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy series. However, Gary Cooper's Wild Bill and Jean Arthur's Calamity supply enough star power to light up the Dakotas and parts of Missouri.<p> Every once in a while, DeMille and his small army of writers stumble upon an actual historical fact. Bill Cody did fight to the death with an Indian chief named Yellow Hand. George Custer and James Butler Hickok did both buy the farm in the summer of 1876. (Custer's Last Stand is handled imaginatively, if cheaply, as a vision narrated by a wandering Cheyenne warrior--none other than C.B.'s son-in-law Anthony Quinn in one of his earliest screen appearances.) Jack McCall (veteran weasel Porter Hall) did find himself in Deadwood, South Dakota, at the same time Wild Bill was drawing aces and eights in a poker game though McCall was not necessarily affiliated with DeMille's favorite villain, Charles Bickford, in the business of running guns to the Indians. <I>--Richard T. Jameson</I> Reader Reviews This film is NOT a DeMille great - It becomes quite tedious in fact, after the first 40 min's. - due in no small part to Jean Arthur's atrocious miscasting and annoyingly whiney voice (what on earth was her appeal?). James Ellison (of the very great & crazy THE GANG'S ALL HERE) is totally absurd as Buffalo Bill. And poor Cooper seems ill at ease with the silly script. One can usually count on DeMille to "deliver the goods", here he delivers the not so goods. And there is'nt even a "bath scene"!

The Plainsman Available from Amazon Price: $14.98 Updated on 11-28-2008.

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