Anthony Mann directs James Stewart for the eighth and final time in ‘The Man from the Plain’. The filmmaker and the actor should have worked together again on another western, but a disagreement precipitated the end of their collaboration.
The Man of the Plain : a summit for Anthony Mann and James Stewart
Through five feature films, James Stewart and Anthony Mann have brought a colossal contribution to the western. When they first worked together in 1950 on Winchester 73, the actor and the director have already known each other for several years, the former having been part of the Stock Company theater group founded in 1934 by the latter. In the space of three years, they then find themselves on The Hungers (1952), The Bait (1953), I am an adventurer (1954) and The Man of the Plain (1955).
Apart from the western, James Stewart also works under the direction of Anthony Mann for unfinished romance (1954), where he lends his features to the musician Glenn Miller, as well as on Port of passions (1953) and Strategic Air Command (1955). Projects less striking than all the aforementioned films. Before Clint Eastwood became Sergio Leone’s no-name man, the actor then famous for Mr. Smith in the Senate, Life is Beautiful and The rope already embodies enigmatic western heroes with troubled pasts in these feature films, and whose behavior is never marked by exacerbated heroism, unlike those interpreted by John Wayne.
In The Man of the Plain, James Stewart lends his features to Will Lockhart, freight conveyor from Laramie who stops in Coronado. In this remote New Mexico town near Apache territory, he meets old rancher Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), his out-of-control son Dave (Alex Nicol), and his devious foreman Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy). He finds himself involved despite himself in their quarrel and their struggle for powerjoining forces with their rival Kate Canaday (Aline MacMahon) to try to put an end to arms trafficking with the Indians.
A ninth aborted collaboration
Tragedy freely inspired by King Lear, The Man of the Plain highlights a family drama observed by a protagonist in search of revenge, on lands that are built in violence. Anthony Mann would have liked to develop different links between Will Lockhart and the other characters, in order to accentuate the emotional springs of the story. Quoted by CNChe explains to Cinema notebooks in 1957:
If I had been left entirely free to The Man of the Plain, Stewart would not have been a character from outside: I would have made him the young man’s older brother (Dave, editor’s note) and the violence of the relationship between the characters in the drama would have been increased; in fact, he would even have discovered at the end that his father was the real author of the arms trade with the Indians. I believe that the story would have had much more force that way, but the producer didn’t dare.
This is another disagreement over a scenario that would have precipitated the end of the collaboration between James Stewart and the filmmaker. After The Man of the Plainthey plan to work on a sixth western, The Survivor of the Distant Mountains. But Anthony Mann believes that the script is inconsistent. He’s also not a fan of comedian Audie Murphy’s choice. He therefore declines Universal’s proposal and entrusts the Cinema notebooks that his favorite actor has always resented him. After the failure of this film finally directed by James Neilson, the director and James Stewart never made a feature film together again. According to the American site DVDTalk, they would never even speak to each other again.
