Word: ballou
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Charles Portis, 34, is an Arkansas newspaperman who has fashioned a pop anti-western in the best tradition of Cat Ballou and the Ballad of Dingus Magee. For openers, his hero is a heroine: Mattie Ross, a sassy, 14-year-old Arkansan whose chief protective girdle is a dry Bible-belt faith, and who is out to avenge the murder of her daddy back in the 1870s...
...names were there. Smoky, the drunken horse from Cat Ballou, Old Fooler, star of The Rounders, and currently seen under Burt Lancaster in The Scalphunters. Mr. Ed and Fury, once title horses in TV series bearing their names. Syn Cat, the cat who was That Darn Cat. Cousin Bessie, the chimp from The Beverly Hillbillies. Bruce, who was the ocelot in Honey West. Rhubarb, who gave that never-to-be-forgotten performance as the cat in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And all the young stars of tomorrow: Willie the bear, soon to make his debut...
With luck, The Happening might have happened to be a passable picture. But Director Elliot Silverstein, forgetting everything he learned on Cat Ballou, makes his players move with galvanic gestures and broad grimaces that would be too gross for a marionette show. Moreover, the script's idea of wit consists of having George Maharis, as one of the bums, end most of his sentences in the same way: "Bam! Et cetera." "We're all in this together. Et cetera...
Oscar-winning Cat Ballou, she was outclassed by everything onscreen, including Lee Marvin's horse. In any case, there were others who helped along the way. An old family friend, Joshua Logan, directed her in starring roles in both her first film (Tall Story) and first play (There Was a Little Girl), and Daddy, "nonverbal" as she thinks he is, could not have been a total liability...
...Near the end of the play, each of the "heroes" reveals himself--Doc is a con man, Billy is a J.D., Wyatt felt it was his calling to murder, and Wild Bill, good ole Wild Bill, is queer. This skeleton rattling brought to mind the recent screen satire, Cat Ballou, but Mr. Oppenheimer's heroes are far more perverted, far too bitter. He doesn't laugh at the foibles of the Old West, he indicates that they were part of the rotten-to-the-core morality that has existed and does exist in America...