Joanne Dru Movies
The daughter of a druggist, Joanne Dru worked as a New York model before landing a major role in the 1941 Al Jolson Broadway musical Hold on to Your Hats. She made her first film appearance in the execrable screen version of the stage hit Abie's Irish Rose (1946) then disappeared from view for nearly a year, during which time she concentrated on her marriage to singer Dick Haymes (the first of three husbands). In 1948, she was "discovered" by director Howard Hawks and cast as leading lady in Hawks' Red River, the film that forever typecast her as a Western actress even though she claimed to dislike the genre. While working on Red River, she met her second husband, actor John Ireland, with whom she later co-starred in the Oscar-winning All the King's Men (1949). Her film career on the wane by the late '50s, Dru agreed to star in the 1960 TV sitcom Guestward Ho, which lasted 39 weeks. Thereafter she made only two big screen appearances, the last of which was the negligible Super Fuzz (1980). Joanne Dru was the sister of comedian/TV host Peter Marshall, the aunt of baseball player Pete LaCock, and the sister-in-law of actor/producer/director Tommy Noonan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The old "Cain and Abel" plot device is redefined within Western terms in MGM's Vengeance Valley. Burt Lancaster stars as ranch-hand Owen Daybright, who has been raised as a son by rancher Arch Stroble (Ray Collins). Stroble's natural son Lee (Robert Walker) has always been envious of Owen, who in turn has spent most of his life pulling Lee out of trouble and keeping the boy's misdeeds a secret from the elder Stroble. When Lee fathers an illegitimate child, he tries to shift the responsibility on Owen, leading to a life-threatening confrontation with the vengeance-seeking brothers of the baby's mother (Sally Forrest). There's plenty more plot twists before virtue finally triumphs. Joanne Dru co-stars as Lee's long-suffering wife Jen, who harbors a secret yen for Owen. Since lapsing into public domain, Vengeance Valley has shown up with increasing frequency on cable television; it has also been made available in a narrated version for the visually impaired. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker, (more)
Wagon Master, splendidly directed by John Ford, is a superlative western. The film is the outwardly simple tale of a Mormon wagon train headed for Utah. Along the way, the group, led by Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond) hook up with two horse traders Travis Blue (Ben Johnson) and Sandy Owens (Harry Carey Jr), the members of a traveling medicine show and a tribe of Navajo Indians. The group is threatened by a gang, known as the Clegg family, who have robbed an express office and murdered the clerk. This wonderful film emphasizes the virtues of solidarity, sacrifice and tolerance, and shows John Ford at his most masterful, in total control of the production from the casting to the bit players to the grandeur and scope of the visual compositions. The film, with its breathtaking scenery, brilliant performances by a cast of character actors, and an engaging sense of humor, is a superlative example of the American western. Wagonmaster inspired the television series Wagon Train and was also shown in a computer-colorized version ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr., (more)
- 1950
Edmond O'Brien plays a telephone repairman whose electronic savvy earns him a job with a bookmaking concern. O'Brien's bookie boss Barry Kelly wants to get instant results from the nation's racetracks, and to this end O'Brien illicitly plugs into several communication centers. The wealthier O'Brien becomes, the more scruples he sheds. Eventually he runs afoul of the Big Boss of an Eastern bookie syndicate (Otto Kruger) and vainly attempts to escape with his life in a slam-bang final at Boulder Dam. 711 Ocean Drive was made to cash in on a then-current national newspaper expose of bookmaking operations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edmond O'Brien, Joanne Dru, (more)
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men is a roman à clef inspired by the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long. Broderick Crawford won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Willie Stark, a backwoods Southern lawyer who wins the hearts of his constituents by bucking the corrupt state government. Journalist Jack Burden (John Ireland) is impressed by Willie's seeming sincerity, and aids Stark on the road to political power. Once he's reached the governor's mansion, however, Willie proves himself to be as dishonest and despotic as the crooks whom he's replaced. He also cheats shamelessly on his wife with both his campaign manager (Mercedes McCambridge, another Oscar winner) and with Anne Stanton (Joanne Dru), the sister of idealistic doctor Adam Stanton (Sheppard Strudwick). Fiercely protective of his power, Willie organizes a fascistic police force and arranges for "accidents" to befall those who oppose him; even so, he retains the love of the voters by lowering the poverty level, improving the school system, and financing building projects. Even when Willie all but orchestrates the suicide of Anne's uncle, a highly respected judge (Raymond Greenleaf), those closest to him are unable to escape his power and the charismatic hold he has over people. Stockton, CA, stands in for the unnamed state capitol where most of the film's action occurs. In addition to its Oscars for Crawford and McCambridge, All the King's Men won the Best Picture prize. Warren's novel would later be adapted into a stage play, a TV special, and even an opera. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Broderick Crawford, John Derek, (more)
The second of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only one of the three to be lensed in Technicolor. In an Oscar-calibre performance, 42-year old John Wayne plays sixtyish Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles. In his last days before his compulsory retirement, Brittles must face the possibility of a full-scale attack from the Arapahos, fomented by the recent defeat of Custer and by double-dealing Indian agents. After a series of minor victories and major frustrations, Brittles decides to ride into the Arapaho camp, there to smoke a pipe of peace with his old friend, Chief Pony That Walks (Chief John Big Tree). Before he leaves, he is presented with his retirement present by his troops: a pocket watch, with the inscription "Lest We Forget"(Wayne's playing of this scene, barely holding back tears as he adjusts his spectacles to read the inscription, is one of his finest moments on film). Brittles is able to forestall an Indian attack, just in time for his official retirement. The film really ends here, but there are two more potential climaxes before the words THE END dissolve into view. The patchiness of the Frank Nugent/Lawrence Stallings screenplay (attributal to the fact that it is adapted from two different short stories) prevents She Wore a Yellow Ribbon from reaching the same lofty heights as the Ford/Wayne collaborations Fort Apache (1947) and Rio Grande (1949). The gratuitous offscreen narration of Irving Pichel is also rather distracting. Even so, Wayne's flawless performance, coupled with the supporting contributions of Ford's stock company (John Agar, Harry Carey Jr., Victor McLaglen et al) and the Academy Award-winning photography by Winston C. Hoch, automatically elevates She Wore a Yellow Ribbon to classic status. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wayne, Joanne Dru, (more)
John Wayne -- showing off a darker side to his screen persona than we'd previously seen -- portrays Thomas Dunson, a frontiersman who, with his longtime partner Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan), leaves abandons a westbound wagon train in 1851 to make his future as a rancher in Texas. Doing so forces him to abandon Fen (Colleen Gray), his fiancee -- and when she is killed in an Indian raid a short time later, it taints any good that Dunson might find in the future he carves out for himself, destroying any joy he might derive from life. The sole survivor of the raid is Matthew Garth (Mickey Kuhn), a young orphan who is unusually handy with a gun for one his age -- and already knows how to channel his grief and horror at what he's seen, as much as Dunson does. Dunson informally adopts Matt as his son, and over the next 14 years he builds up one of the largest ranches in the entire state of Texas. And all of it is worth nothing, a result of the economic ruin wrought on the state in the aftermath of the Civil War. Matthew (Montgomery Clift, now back from the war and doing some of his own adventuring, finds a darker, more taciturn Dunson than he's ever known -- as Groot tells it, he afraid, because he just doesn't know how to fight the threats he now faces. With Matthew now returned, Dunson decides to move his herd, nearly 10,000 head of cattle, to Missouri, where there is a market for beef, over 1000 miles away through territory controlled by border gangs hundreds of men strong that have stopped every cattle drive up to now, and Indians who have picked off what the gangs missed. Dunson drives his men as hard as he does himself, relentlessly, till even some of his best hands break under the strain -- and he's not above killing anyone who challenges his authority on the drive. He's able to hold them in line as long as Matthew backs him up, and he does until Dunson, exhausted and worn down by lack of sleep, finally goes too far. Matthew steps in, backed by laconic, smirking gunman Cherry Valance (John Ireland) and most of the rest of the men and takes the herd from Dunson. Leaving his father and mentor behind, he heads the herd toward Kansas, where -- so the men are told -- there's a new railroad. Along the way, he meets Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), a card-dealer who falls in love with the young man. But he has to finish the drive and leaves her behind, much as Dunson left Fen. And they all know that Dunson is coming after Matthew to kill him. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, (more)
- 1946
Abie's Irish Rose, the surprise hit of the 1922-23 Broadway season, was old-fashioned when it was first filmed in 1928, and this 1946 remake, though updated by playwright Anne Nichols, was even more anachronistic. It's the story of what happens when Jewish-American Abie Levy (Richard Norris) marries Irish-Catholic Rosemary Murphy (Joanne Dru, in her film debut). At first, Abie and Rosemary try to hide their ethnic differences from their feuding fathers Solomon Levy (Michael Chekhov) and Patrick Murphy (J. M. Kerrigan). When the truth comes out, the couple attempts to molify their families by going through three wedding ceremonies: Jewish, Catholic and Protestant. But the Cohens and the Murphys are reconciled only when Rosemary has a baby. Produced by Bing Crosby, Abie's Irish Rose was a terrific flop when first released, which may be one of the reasons why director Eddie Sutherland never again worked in Hollywood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joanne Dru, Richard Norris, (more)
