Word: badman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...suavely fills his usual sweaty-chested, he-man role as Dan Burke, a Texan cattleman who "only fights for money." However Ava Gardner as the pert, pretty editor of the "Austin Blade" finally reforms him. Broderick Crawford, although too deadpan, gives a better than average portrayal of the traditional "badman." Gable fights for annexation, Crawford against, and Miss Gardner wavers in between...
Ladd plays a tough badman who, when asked if he has any friends, replies through his teeth: "My guns." In a scheme to pose as the long-lost son of a wealthy rancher (Charles Bickford), he takes off his shirt twice: first to let a tattoo artist fake a birthmark on his shoulder, later to dupe Bickford with the false credentials...
Shortly after a Tommy gun cut down Sicilian Badman Salvatore Giuliano last fortnight (TIME, July 17), a British camera crew took off for Sicily to make a film about the bandit's bloody exploits. Producer Nelson Scott revealed that he had ordered the story written months ago, had patiently waited ever since for the real-life ending...
Broderick Crawford deserves an Oscar for his portrayal of Willie Stark. Crawford, an ex-grade B gangster-western badman, emerges from the strict typecasting of his former roles to characterize a man whose moral standards change to meet political requirements. Stark begins as a poor farmer, ambitious to improve living conditions for him and his kind in the state. He winds up a miniature Huey Long-type dictator whose main concern for state improvement is vote-getting. But Crawford's fine characterization never overplays the good or the bad to make the moral painful...
Pressure groups, DeVoto recalled, had scared Hollywood into disqualifying almost all minorities from badman roles, and the drive to salve the feelings of friends of the Red Indian was the last straw. Said he: "I protest this new proposal as a lover of horse operas ... If the committee puts its [plan] over, who is going to wing the stagedriver with an arrow and who is going to burn the wagon-train? ... I want that Apache in a Sioux warbonnet to be a hound from hell ... I want the cussed redskins to crawl toward the waterhole in their proper persons...