McClintock ! Sexist ?

[ken123]

Duke Waynes treatment of Maureen.


Duke Waynes treatment of Maureen. e

[moira finnie]

Sexist? A Western! Uh, yeah. So?

Did anything compel Maureen O'Hara to make this movie? I doubt it, other than a paycheck, which I suspect wasn't a top priority for her at the time. Maybe she just wanted to keep her hand in the movie game and work with her friend John Wayne again. My only problem with the movie is really that it is noisy without reason, poorly plotted, and one of the many John Wayne movies that I wish he'd never made. The Duke never seemed to think that less was more, however. Why should he have been more selective? Keeping his mug on movie screens was his life, and it sure worked for him for about 5 decades, even if many of his movies are snoozefests for this viewer.

Btw, Ken, though there are plenty of mealymouthed parts for women playing victims, uptight school marms, and sodbuster's 99 and 1/4% pure daughters, I've often found that there were sometimes more opportunities for women characters to shine in Westerns than in other genres. I am thinking of Barbara Stanwyck in several films, such as Annie Oakley and Union Pacific, Gene Tierney in Belle Starr and The Return of Frank James, Ella Raines in Tall in the Saddle, Mildred Natwick in 3 Godfathers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, as well as numerous appearances in a variety of Westerns by strong-minded women in oaters such as Ava Gardner, Linda Darnell, Eleanor Parker, Marjorie Main, Hope Emerson, Linda Hunt, and even Maureen O'Hara (who was particularly fine in Rio Grande opposite J.W.).

[movieman1957]

I think Duke was making anything he thought would make money so he could pay off his "Alamo" debt. Pleasant entertainment may have been all he was looking to do. I think O'Hara would have done anything for him.

[Lzcutter]

I would like to submit that director Andrew McLaglen and screenwriter James Edward Grant are more to blame for the sexism in McLintock! than either Wayne or O'Hara.

Scenes like the spanking of Maureen usually originate with the screenwriter. It is said that Grant's inspiration for the screenplay was as a western Taming of the Shrew which would give credence to the spanking scene having been written by Grant and not a piece of improvisation thought up by Wayne or O'Hara on the set.

[stuart.uk]

The scene where Duke chased Maureen, dressed in her underwear may in some peoples eyes be seen as sexist. However, my own view was not only did she look great, we got a chance to see what a great athlete Maureen was. I also felt it was one of the rare occassions that another actor stole a scene from Wayne in a movie. It also appeared he was more than happy to let her dominate the screen on this occassion. I loved the line where Miss. De Carlo asked Maureen, 'What's a matter Mrs. Mclintock, settin' a new style'

Other plus' was Barry Van Dyck's Harold Llyod like dance. It was also nice to see stuntman, bit actor Chuck Robertson in a featured role

The one sexist thing in the film I didn't like was when Duke's pals encouraged him to raise his hand to his wife. Mind you Maureen was more than capable of hitting him back

[mrsl]

.
Stuart:

Slugging him is more like it than hitting.

I do believe all the others hit the nail on the head in assuming the Duke was paying off the debts incurred in making The Alamo, which I never understood the failure to make an excellent impact. With stars like Wayne, Widmark, L. Harvey, Richard Boone, and so many others, it should have gone icon. Comparing it with the recent remake, makes it golden to me. It's so much more family oriented, and you end up caring about the characters. With the new one, you just want Santa Anna to attack and be done with it.

Back to McClintock it was definitely sexist from the very beginning with the immediate dislike between Maureen and Yvonne. All through the movie, Wayne was seriously questioning what went wrong with his marriage, and when he finally decided it wasn't worth worrying about any more, his actions were the typical male stone age kind. However, because of the spanking and chasing, I have never warmed up to this movie. In The Quiet Man, the walk to her brothers' place, over the rough countryside, was part of the culture (hopefully that's changed by now), so it never angered me or seemed malicious, just playful. Another thing that irritated me was, I always felt that bit was stolen directly from The Quiet Man, and I heartily dislike copy-cats.

I like Wayne when he is totally frustrated by the woman in his life at the moment, like Elsa Martinelli in Hatari, Capucine in North to Alaska, and Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo, throwing up his hands and roaring like a lion. I felt that physical bit in McClintock was beneath him, but sometimes we have to do things we don't like because of lifes little digs.
.

[ken123]

This morning and early afternoon I've been reading review of various films, including McClintock!, from Amazon. Many of the favorable reviews applaud the " political incorrectness " of it, due to Waynes spanking of Ms O' Hara. I just dont know, at one time I loved with film with all its slapstick, now I'm more anti ! But I do love the scenes with Maureen in her undergarments, well I guess that I'm just a sexist too, or at least a dirty old man.

[klondike]

Is McClintock!, sexist?
Well, by strict definition, in view even of 60's cultural mores . . yes, probably.
But in my estimation, this film would first have to boast some element of appreciable worth or lasting value in order for that issue to be one of focus or concern . . and by my judgement, it does not.
This movie, IMO (having suffered through 3 attempts to change my mind), is pretentious, slow, condescending, salacious, redundant, poorly written, gratuitously broad, frequently under-edited, inadvertently goofy and just plain chock-a-block loaded with textbook examples of what made Andrew McLaglen (apologies to his Dad) a director/filmmaker of very thin merit & shallow potential.
Proof, I guess, that even with a meaty budget, first rate cinematography and a cast to die for, you can still sculpt a turkey out of spam & baloney.

[JackFavell]

I think they treat each other equally badly. However, I guess the bottom line is, I just don't care.

Moira - A couple more good westerns with great roles for actresses:


Roughshod - with Gloria Grahame
Westward the Women

[klondike]

Moira - A couple more good westerns with great roles for actresses:

Roughshod - with Gloria Grahame
Westward the Women

Westward the Women ! Yeah!
Hope Emerson stole that movie, and Robert Taylor & John McIntire didn't seem to mind at all!
Hope, Hope, hurray!

[pvitari]

just plain chock-a-block loaded with textbook examples of what made Andrew McLaglen (apologies to his Dad) a director/filmmaker of very thin merit & shallow potential.

I wonder if McLaglen was, at heart, a "teller of short stories" rather than a "novelist" -- cinematically speaking. A lot of the half hour episodes he directed for Have Gun Will Travel are really marvelous examples of compressed storytelling, whereas the feature films tend to be dramatically limp (IMHO). Of course in television the director is second or third on the totem pole (the producers come first, and the writers second if they're also producers) and they have to make their work conform to the overall aesthetic of the series, but I'm just thinking about how in the literary world some writers really are much better at short stories than novels, and whether that would also apply to McLaglen.

[klondike]

Thanks, Paula, I'd forgotten about McLaglen the Younger's early TV work . . and looking back to it, it does make one wonder . .
Did his evolving skills as a director become arrested, and/or begin crumbling, under the "get-it-done-yesterday" pressure of delivering big box-office assignments like McClintock!, & The Rare Breed?
Was he, like Rod Serling & Irwin Allen, just naturally better-suited to the reduced-yet-concentrated venue of television drama?
Hmmmmm . . .

[JackFavell]

I agree that his TV work was very strong, whereas his movie work was almost too relaxed. He always had a good sense of space and composition, he just seemed to let things ramble in his movies.

[mrsl]

.
'Yo Jack:

He tended to do that in his hour long Gunsmokes too. We didn't need to watch Matt and/or Chester ride across a meadow or down a dusty road. But I guess there was a necessity to take up some time when writing failed to offer a filler.
.

[klondike]

Does anybody consider this scene from a classic Western to be sexist?

I do !!


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