Actor Joel McCrea’s son, Peter, will return to Easton on Wednesday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. for a screening of his father’s last great film, “Ride the High Country” (1962). Please note updated location: The screening will take place at the Easton Senior Center due to Early Voting in the community room at the library.
While the film was well received in Europe, winning the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association, MGM couldn’t decide what to do with it domestically. Legend has it that newly installed MGM studio head, Joseph Vogel, fell sound asleep during a screening of it, and later proclaimed, “‘Ride the High Country'” was “the worst picture I ever saw.”
Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman wrote of a conversation he had at the time with an MGM higher up. The executive told him that the movie had tested strongly, but the studio felt it “didn’t cost enough to be that good.” Could the real reason be that by 1962, it was hard for studio executives to take a western seriously? Later that year, the film was finally released in the United States, at the bottom of a double bill with a foreign action film.
Time and film scholarship, however, have treated the film well. In 1993, “Ride the High Country” was earmarked by the National Film Registry for preservation in the Library of Congress. It is an honor which been bestowed upon fewer than 900 of the greatest American films deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
“Ride the High Country” was also an early film from noted director Sam Peckinpah and was the last movie he would make without his trademark action and violence. A rather gentle, uplifting, poetic movie, it was one of the last of its kind as westerns evolved to new, bloody “R” works such as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966) and Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969), which became more common.
“Ride the High Country” tells the story of two old lawmen on their last adventure. Their 19th Century friendship is under pressure from a very different 20th Century sensibility. Joel McCrea’s fellow lead was another great Western star, Randolph Scott. When Scott saw “Ride the High Country” at a preview, he decided to retire, saying he wanted to quit while he was ahead, and that he would never be able to better his work here. Peter McCrea says his father regretted not joining his friend in retirement, for the same reason.
No spoilers here. One of the joys of “Ride the High Country” is its surprises. Peter McCrea will share behind-the-scenes stories about his movie-star father, director Sam Peckinpah, and Joel McCrea’s friend and fellow actor Randolph Scott.
How did an unremarkable script evolve into one of the great western films at the close of the Golden Age of Hollywood? Let’s discuss that with Peter McCrea, along with other aspects of this most unusual film, after the screening. See you there.
