Do Business With the Devil, and You Get It Every Time: The Naked Spur (1953)

Howard Kemp (James Stewart) has been on the trail of a killer and general ne’er-do-well Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan), only to lose the trail in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. There, a down on his luck prospector might have some answers, and Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) is willing to help out for $20 … and the two men make their way after their quarry. As it turns out, Vandergroat has the high ground and a surplus of avalanche rocks to rain down on his pursuer’s head. However, a passing former cavalryman shows up, smells an opportunity, and helps out the hunters. Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker) might’ve been dishonorably discharged, but he’s a hell of a climber and gets the drop on Vandergroat, only to learn the desperado hasn’t been traveling alone. Lina Patch (Janet Leigh), daughter of Vandergroat’s former friend is riding with him, not as a love interest but as a weird kind of ward. She’s loyal … at least until she learns what kind of a troublemaker he is.

When the men finally corral their quarry, Vandergroat is the one to drop the largest bomb: there’s a $5,000 bounty on his head, providing his carcass is brought back to Kansas. Soon enough, Howard’s allies have dealt themselves in for a share and the long ride to Kansas begins. Aside from being beset by rain and rough trails, a war party of Blackfeet looking to avenge the honor of the squaw Anderson forcibly wooed, Vandergroat is playing all the angles he can, trying to turn his captors against one another. It’s not a difficult thing to do, talking them into having ideas. But getting them to act is the challenge.

Each of the men has a button to press, and they are only allies for delivering this parcel and collecting their share of money. Although they start out begrudgingly agreeing on three equal shares, dividing the money two ways starts looking good. And if two ways is inviting, why divide it at all? Anthony Mann helms a western that’s equal parts crime yarn and rugged frontier adventure with The Naked Spur (1953).

For their third western collaboration, director Anthony Mann and James Stewart bring humanity and some dark psychological angles to the concept of bounty hunters, sketchy partners, and villainous outlaws. The men here are not driven by ideals—arguably, Janet Leigh’s Lina Patch is, but they don’t come to light until later on. Instead, we get a Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) kind of approach to humanity, a notion of greed and personal interest outweighing more civilized traits.

The film weaves together a quartet of men who think they know what they want, don’t really have a clue about what they need, and struggle with aligning these often different victory conditions. The picture might declare itself a western, but in truth it’s yet another exploration of the toxic effect greed has on folks. The script from Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom toys with darker angles on classic western character archetypes, and gives the actors plenty of internal and external conflicts to indulge in. Stewart once more plays a driven man who has stepped outside of civility, and who nevertheless feels the draw back. Sadly, folks looking for representation will not find it here: the indigenous characters are played by indigenous actors, but they don’t get to speak a word and wind up slaughtered like sheep in one of the film’s more affecting scenes.

The acting is top notch all around.

It’s no surprise Robert Ryan plays the grinning, giggling psychotic outlaw. Whatever the character’s crimes, the actor pretty effectively steals this movie. There’s something utterly charming about the way he revels in the character’s awfulness. Ben Vandergroat is a back shooter, an old west Iago, a guy who knows no real loyalty outside of his own self interests. The always watchable Robert Ryan plays him with zeal and gusto. He walks the right way, grins the right way, swaggers with his words and his gait, and handles weapons with the easy lethality necessary to sell the part. One hell of a terrific performer.

James Stewart’s character is kind of a quandary when we first meet him. His character talks about taking his man in to hang for his crimes like he’s talking himself into believing he could be the bad guy necessary to do the work. Alas, Howard Kemp is essentially a good man who feels he has to do this to recover the ranch his former girl sold out from under him. He can’t shoot an unarmed man, and he gets downright wistful when he talks about his brass ring of recovering that life, ranching. The character is a flipside to the one Stewart played in Bend of the River (1952)—there, he was an authentic bad guy who was seeking redemption; here, he’s a good man trying to be bad—and Stewart’s charm shines through with ease.

Janet Leigh is a delight with her short hair and impeccable makeup (despite riding in the wilderness). Of course, that’s Hollywood for you. Still, she is just as enigmatic as any of the men she rides with, though she’s the heart and soul of this group. Women in westerns from this era were often either the villainous bent or the gentle tamer one. Here, she starts in one camp and winds up firmly in the other. The Far Country would give us an early example of the Bond girl duality; here we get a single character going from one to the other.

Ralph Meeker is great as the smirking sonofabitch in cavalry pants. The character is pretty awful—he’s never called a rapist, but he is one, all right, and he’s also responsible for kicking off a rather brutal slaughter of indigenous folks who are only riding after him to do the right thing. His character is a kind of Ben Vandergroat in training, an eyeful of the kind of man that character might have been in his youth. Though Meeker is not as good at inhabiting vile characters as Ryan is, he’s pretty great as a cad.

And Millard Mitchell sells the role of the embittered prospector, a man who’s followed every rush imaginable and never found his piece of the pie. The performance is the most subdued of the lot, but much more sympathetic than just about anyone else. Mitchell has the eyes for this kind of sad sack who’s made bad decisions his entire life, and who stands to make a few more, including the deal that leads to the title of this article.

Cinematographer William C. Mellor lends the photography a classicist’s framing as well as some surprising motion. The opening of the picture features a shot of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains (or possibly the San Juan Mountains) in Colorado, holding there for a good ten or twenty seconds before it swings suddenly around to find a boot in the stirrups, spur angled for use. There are a few surprisingly camera motions like this (not enough to become cute), but every motion and stillness of that camera is beautiful. Mellor would go on to serve as DP or cinematographer for a host of terrific looking shoots, including Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and Giant (1956). By the time The Naked Spur came along, he’d already been working for twenty years in The Business, and his way with a camera had been built on a vast number of projects and genres.

The music from Bronislau Kaper blends the kind of western adventure stuff with some crime film elements. The result is a mostly rousing but sometimes dark as hell score (bordering on the sort of thing we might expect for a horror or Hitchcockian suspense picture) that works well with the images it accompanies.

The Naked Spur is one hell of a watch. Potent cinema, colorful and evocative images as well as grounded and compelling performances from the fertile middle period of Anthony Mann and James Stewart’s collaborative process. Although it lacks the large cast or scope of some of the pair’s other collaborations (it’s downright intimate with only five speaking characters and no towns or society of any kind but for those in campfire stories), that focus on a handful of characters and the vast wilderness they encounter makes for some terrific drama.

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The Naked Spur is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions.

Next, we will take a look at Stewart and Mann’s Yukon Territory adventure, The Far Country. It is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions.

Writing for “Do Business With the Devil, and You Get It Every Time: The Naked Spur (1953)” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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