From Hell to Texas: The Psychological Westerns of the 1950s

About this event

During the Truman-Eisenhower years, there was no telling what might happen when movie cowboys Robert Mitchum, Randolph Scott, James Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, and Robert Ryan rode into an 1880s sagebrush town. These drifters carried emotional baggage weightier than their gun holsters. They were deeply scarred, perhaps from the Civil War, perhaps from brutal acts for which they may or may not have been responsible. They were in effect 19th-century "noir" anti-heroes. Such images are in marked contrast with the customary perceptions of vintage Hollywood Westerns being nothing more than polite good guys in white hats squaring off in spotless western backlot streets with bad guys in black hats. In the Westerns of the 1950s, the demarcation between hero and villain is not quite so clear and uncomplicated. Most men and women are in some way haunted or troubled. The greed, bigotry, and trauma on display go far beyond mere stagecoach hold-ups and horse-rustlings. A posse of Hollywood's most gifted A-level directors crafted psychologically complex Westerns during the turbulent '50s: Fred Zinnemann (High Noon), John Ford (The Searchers), George Stevens (Shane), Anthony Mann (The Man from Laramie), William Wyler (The Big Country), Henry Hathaway (Garden of Evil), Michael Curtiz (The Hangman), John Huston (The Unforgiven), King Vidor (Man Without a Star), and Fritz Lang (Rancho Notorious). But there were directors galloping under the radar who also used the western genre to comment on human and social conditions, including Robert Aldrich (Vera Cruz), Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar), Samuel Fuller (The Baron of Arizona), Budd Boetticher (Seven Men from Now), Joseph H. Lewis (Terror in a Texas Town), and Allan Dwan (Silver Lode). Grab your spurs and saddle up as film historian Max Alvarez leads a sprawling multimedia cattle drive through hostile territories of beleaguered sheriffs, gunslingers, bank robbers, ruthless land barons, and jaded saloon gals. General Information View Common FAQs and Policies about our Online Programs on Zoom .