Hombre

In English, the Spanish word, “hombre,” means “man.”   The 1967 Western movie, Hombre, was directed by Martin Ritt and starred Paul Newman, Frederick March, Richard Boone, Martin Balsam, and Diane Cilento.  I consider it to be one of the best Westerns, in the same category as High Noon (Gary Cooper), Shane (Alan Ladd), The Searchers (John Wayne), The Ox-Bow Incident (Henry Fonda), and Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood).  Perhaps the title derives from whether the protaganist fulfills someone’s definition of what it means to act like a man.

Newman (the protaganist) portrays a white man, John Russell, who was raised by and lives with Apaches on their reservation in Arizona.  When his biological father dies, he inherits a boarding house.  Russell decides to sell it and use the proceeds to buy some horses which would improve the quality of life of his chosen people.  To do this, he finds himself travelling on a stagecoach with six other passengers, Dr. Favor (March) and his wife, Cicero Grimes (Boone), Jessie (Cilento – the former caretaker of the boarding house Russell inherited and sold), and a young couple.  Balsam portrays the stagecoach driver, Henry Mendez.

Dr. Favor is the government Indian Agent for the reservation where Russell lives and works for the police.  However, dressed as a white man for a change, Dr. Favor and his wife do not recognize Russell.  When he reveals his identity, they don’t want him riding inside the coach with them, preferring that he ride on top with Mendez.  None of the other passengers objects to this prejudicial treatment. 

Unknown to Russell and some of the others, the Favors are running away with the money they stole from the Apaches which had been allocated by the Federal government.  However, that fact was not unknown to Grimes who has organized a gang to steal the stolen money from the Favors.  When Grimes’s four associates hold up the stagecoach, the five of them take the money and Favor’s wife as a hostage.  However, with a hidden gun, Russell kills two of the gang, recovers the money that he intends to return to the Apaches, but not Favor’s wife, carefully guarded by Grimes.  Russell flees from the three outlaws along with Dr. Favor, Jessie, Mendez, and the young couple.

Grimes and his remaining two associates trail after Russell and company to steal back the money.  They offer to exchange Favor’s wife for it.  However, Russell knows that, once an exchange is made, Grimes will kill them all.  Thus, they have nothing to gain by accepting his offer.  To pressure Russell and the others, Grimes places the woman out in the open in the hot sun, tied down, pleading for her husband to help her.  Dr. Favor hears her cries, but does nothing.  Nobody does anything until Jessie, who expresses a sense of common morality, goads Russell into making an attempt to save the woman, at the risk of his own life.  He must prove if he is the hombre or not.

I read a story on the Internet that six years later (1973), Newman tried to persuade Boone to join him in the making of the very successful film, The Sting, to play Doyle Lonnegan, the crime boss.   The director, George Roy Hill, wanted him as well.  Boone turned them down apparently because of script concerns and the part went to Robert Shaw.    

There is a scene midway through Hombre, before the stagecoach holdup takes place, when Grimes (Boone) confronts Mendez (Balsam) in a hostile manner about why he has changed the route of the trip.  The change was made at the suggestion of Dr. Favor because he suspected they were going to be robbed along the original route.  A good guess!  Grimes was angry about the change because it affected his plans for the robbery.  It had already been established at this point of the movie that Grimes is the villain.  Earlier, he threatens to kill a man if he does not give him his ticket for the stagecoach.  On the other hand, Mendez is shown to be honest and hard working.

Nine years earlier, in 1958, the same two actors, Richard Boone and Martin Balsam, were in a similar situation, face to face, in a dramatic scene, except under opposite  circumstances.  It was the first episode of the second season of the very successful and popular TV series, Have Gun Will Travel.  Boone portrays Paladin, the tough, sophisticated and highly-principled man for hire.  Balsam is the guest star for this episode called “The Manhunter.”  (He returned to Have Gun Will Travel two years later, in Season 4, episode 5, “Saturday Night,” as a corrupt lawman.) 

Balsam’s character, Charlie Dawes, seeks revenge against Paladin because he killed his brother.  Dawes’ brother, accused of murder, had run away from the law.  The family of the murder victim hired Paladin to find him and bring him in to stand trial.  Paladin finds the brother, but kills him in self defense.  Paladin brings the body of the brother back to his home town for burial.  Charlie can not accept his brother’s death.  In the climactic scene of this episode, it is Paladin, the hero, facing Dawes, the villain, the reversal of their roles in Hombre.  I must never forget they are actors playing a role.

Boone and Balsam were both born in the second half of the second decade of the Twentieth Century.  Boone was born in Los Angeles and Balsam in New York City.  Both of their mothers were Jewish.  Another thing they had in common was a desire to study acting.  Boone used the G.I. Bill after World War II to enter the Actors Studio in New York City.  Balsam, also a veteran, studied first at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School (also in New York City) before later transfering to the Actors Studio, as well.  Therefore, it is very likely that Boone and Balsam knew each other during that time in the late 1940s.

Boone made his movie debut with the 1951 World War II picture, Halls of Montezuma, with Richard Widmark.  Balsam appeared in the 1954 acclaimed film, On the Waterfront, with Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint.  Karl Malden, another student at the Actors Studio, was in both films.

I greatly admire actors.  It is uncanny to me how they can preform in a story as someone they are not, to be able to emote, to be able to convince you that for the moment they are who they pretend to be.  I especially admire actors such as Boone and Balsam, who can move back and forth and play different types of characters.  For example, Cary Grant and John Wayne could never be the bad guys.  Their images were always the same and they wanted to keep it that way.  On the other hand, actors like Robert Mitchum (1962) and Robert De Niro (1991) could portray both good guy and bad guy.  The two actually played the same character, Max Cady, a villain, in two different film versions of the same story, Cape Fear.