Custer of the West (1967)

 

         George Armstrong Custer has been the subject of many books, as has his famous defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There have been several movies about him and the battle.  The most famous is Errol Flynn’s “They Died with Their Boots On” (1941).   In 1967, director Robert Siodmak intended to deliver a similar hero turned martyr treatment.  Siodmak had made a reputation as a director of thrillers and film noirs and you would assume he was tough on his actors.  You would be wrong in this case.  The studio cast Robert Shaw, who was coming off “Battle of the Bulge” two years ago.  He was paid $350,000.  Shaw took one look at the script and felt it was the 60’s, man.  That meant revisionism was in when it came to Westerns.  He rewrote parts of the film to make Custer more of a villain and the Native Americans more sympathetic.  He apparently did not get along with Siodmak and punched him during the big ball room dance scene and walked off the set.  I don’t know if it was a mutual agreement, but Shaw directed the battle scenes.  Speaking of “Battle of the Bulge”, Robert Ryan appeared for free.  He was in the area and felt he owed the producer for reviving his career by casting him in that film.  And like “Battle”, this film was also filmed in Spain.  That and lack of historical fidelity are similarities between the movies.  And for you History nerds, another similarity is the Battle of Washita has no snow.

 

                    The movie is a biopic that starts with Custer leading a charge in the Civil War.  And then two years later, another charge (the same one reused?).  Thus Custer’s Civil War career is summarized by two charges into the mouths of cannons.  When the war ends, the adrenalin-addicted warrior is called into Gen. Sheridan’s (Lawrence Tierney) tent and given a chance to continue killing. This time it will be Indians in the West.  In the first red flag, Sheridan is identified as the Commander in Chief of the Army of the Potomac, a position George Meade held (poor George, never the credit).  Sheridan pronounces history’s judgment on Custer:  “You could become a living legend or get yourself killed.  Dead men make better legends.”  So, he and Libby Custer (Mary Ure) head west.  The thriller in Siodmak comes out in a ridiculous scene where the Indians strap two miners to a runaway wagon for a ride down a steep road (with POV!).  From here, like for those trappers, it’s all downhill.  Custer meets his command and is immediately on the outs with Maj. Reno (Ty Hardin) and Capt. Benteen (Jeffrey  Hunter).  (The two actors appear on screen together, thus disproving the theory they are the same person.)  The rest of the movie takes some moments in Custer’s biography and mutates them to the point where anyone with knowledge of Custer will get whiplash from shaking their head and nodding at the same time.  Plus, there will be a lot of hair-pulling and jaw dropping.  The movie is a real workout for your head and a real ache for your brain.  For example, Shaw reenacts Custer cracking the whip when he takes command of the 7^th Cavalry, but this is exemplified in a ludicrous and ludicrously long scene where he has the men run laps in full gear with Custer leading.  There is a log riding scene that rivals Disneyland’s flume ride and a runaway railway car that crashes off a bridge.  Prepare for more laughs as the movie builds to the climactic battle.  The battle looks like a high school play parody of the Errol Flynn movie.  Or footage from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

 

                    “Custer of the West” is an historical atrocity.  It makes “They Died With Their Boots On” look like a documentary.  That movie was bad enough, but it was made in the 1940’s, so what could you expect?  This movie was made twenty years later when scholarship had begun to rectify the hero-worshipping of Custer.  Shaw may have tilted the screenplay toward a less sympathetic view of Custer, but clearly he could have given a damn about the real events in Custer’s life.  He is a bit closer to the real Custer than Flynn, but the movie still gets him wrong.  He is portrayed as the glory hound that he was, but Shaw plays him more as a cynic.  He is not really sympathetic to the Indians, he is more the “just following orders” type.  Custer as a rule follower, interesting… and wrong.  He also gets drunk, which any cursory reading up on him would prove was not a vice of his.  The movie is sloppy like this.  But someone must have done some Encyclopedia Britannica scanning (the equivalent of Wikipedia back then, non-Boomers).  Someone with severe dyslexia.  I can excuse that every Indian and trooper has a repeating rifle, but the other botches are infuriating.  Or perplexing.  For God knows what reason, the Indian foe is Dull Knife!  Not Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull.  The staging of the Battle of Little Big Horn is incredibly ridiculous.

 

                    So, what if we treated it just as a Western instead of a historical war movie?  It is still a terrible movie.  The acting is poor, even by Shaw.  I am a fan, but he really was miscast. He doesn’t even bother to have long hair!   Nor is he even close to Custer’s personality.  That’s probably a good thing since if you hire Shaw you are certainly not going to ask him to play a long-haired dandy.  His Custer whipsaws from Indian fighter to Indian apologist.  The cast should have been strong (with Hunter and Hardin), but even the Indian extras are bad.  The action is poorly staged with those laughable action scenes standing out.  There are several long, pointless scenes.  It is a movie that starts stupid and just gets stupider. 

 

                    If “They Died…” is the “Braveheart” of Custer movies, what does that make “Custer of the West”?  The closest I can think of would be John Wayne as Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror”.  It does not anticipate the revisionism of “Little Big Man” which is an immensely better movie.  And it is on the opposite end of the spectrum from “Son of the Morning Star”.  If you have not seen either, please watch “Son” and skip “Custer of the West”.  And for God’s sake, don’t get your history from this movie!

 

GRADE  =  F

 

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  The depiction of Custer leading charges in the Civil War is simplistic, but gets the jist of his Civil War service.  He did make a name for himself in gallant charges and was promoted to the youngest general in the Army of the Potomac.  After the war, Sheridan convinced him to take command of the 2^nd Cavalry in Texas.  Sheridan was not commander of the Army, he was commander of the Military District of the Southwest.  One year later, he was given command of the newly created 7^th Cavalry.  He did run a tight ship, but the running in full gear would not have happened.  Especially with Custer in the lead.  He was followed by his wife Libby to western forts.  He did have Major Reno and Capt. Benteen as his subordinates.  They did not really disagree on Indian policy, but Custer did have a problem with Reno’s drinking.  The movie gets events out of order.  Sheridan did send him to deal with the Cheyenne, but this was after he was suspended for deserting his men in the field.  In this embarrassing incident, George left his men to rush back to the arms of Libby.  The incident with the deserters was also part of this campaign. The Battle of the Washita occurred in 1868 after Custer had been restored to command under the urging of Sheridan.  It was an attack on an Indian village, but in wintertime in the snow.  Custer would not have been sarcastic in reporting the victory.  In fact, he reveled in it and over-reported the “victory” which, if not a massacre, was certainly unfairly one-sided.  All of the Indian fights in the movie up to the Little Big Horn (other than the Washita) are farcical. 

 

                      In 1873, the 7^th was tasked with protecting a railroad surveying mission (not loggers) in the Black Hills.  The discovery of gold led to the influx of miners.  Custer was not relieved of command, but he was summoned to Washington to testify before a congressional committee.  He did not argue that treatment of the Indians was due to corruption.  His concern was over corruption in the post trading system.  He accused Secretary of the Interior Belknap of getting kickbacks from the traders.  Grant’s brother Orvil was part of the scheme, according to Custer.  This made his relationship with Grant even worse, since earlier Custer had arrested the President’s son Fred for drunkenness.  Grant suspended Custer because of his outspokenness. Custer did not write a letter to Grant, instead he went to see him, but was not allowed to.  It was intervention by Sherman and Sheridan that got Custer restored to command.  The movie has Custer outlining the Little Big Horn campaign on a map.  He says the parts of the army would rendezvous at the river on June 25.  First, it was not Custer’s plan.  Second, it is laughable to have Custer knowing the date and place of the battle.  Even more guffaw-inducing is the idea that the Indians were hoping to push the whites across the Mississippi.  They were simply defending their land and refusing to go to the reservation.  The purpose of the Army’s campaign was to force them onto reservations in the area.  Basically, the government had sided with the miners and Custer had no problem with that.

 

                    The cinematic battle is a mess.  Custer did divide the 7^th.  Reno assaulted the village (there is no village in the movie).  The Indians were surprised.  There was no encounter with Indians before Reno’s attack.  He was repulsed and took refuge in some woods, but Benteen (who had been sent on a wild goose chase) did not join him until he further retreated to a hill.  Custer did not parley with Dull Knife.  His companies rode to the other end of the village, but probably tried to cross at the middle.  He was forced to retreat in the face of Indian pressure.  His men were not really surrounded.  They made a stand in groups and the Indians snuck up on them on foot at first.  They did not circle on horseback.  Some of Benteen’s men (not led by him) did make an attempt to reach Custer, but they were not ambushed.  They turned back when the odds seemed too great.  Meanwhile, Custer’s command was being whittled down.  Some of the Indians had repeating rifles, but most were armed with traditional weapons.  None of the cavalry had repeaters.  They were all armed with single shot 1873 Springfields.  They were breechloaders, but sometimes jammed at the most inopportune times.  Custer would not have fought with a sword.  They had purposely left them behind (as with the Gatling guns).  The Indians were led by Gall and Crazy Horse, with the latter leading a cavalry charge that overwhelmed the few survivors at the end of the battle.  The death of Custer is ridiculous. He almost surely was not the last man standing and obviously had not interaction with Dull Knife (who did not play an  important role in the battle).  There was one horse left (Comanche), but he was not Custer’s horse.  The movie neglects to show the mutilation of the dead bodies.  Although it looks like about 30 men died with Custer, in actuality it was around 200.