Forty years before "Witness" there was James Edward Grant's singularly original western "Angel and the Badman." John Wayne stars as Quirt Evans, former Deputy to Wyatt Earp, who stumbles upon a Quaker farm when injured within an inch of his life. The Quakers nurse him back to health, and he falls in love with the daughter, played magnificently by Gail Russell (the unforgettable face from that killer ghost story "The Uninvited").
I kept waiting for some dumb action plot to take over from this sugar-sweet love story but it never came. Scene after scene of the Duke made vulnerable by a kind, beautiful woman and her loving family makes this one of the most enjoyable of all his non-Ford films. In fact the performance reminded me of "The Quiet Man," where Wayne does all of the reacting and lets the characters around him take all the action.
A fine example is a gem of a scene where Wayne is talking in his sleep, muttering about the women he has ended more than a few drunken nights with. The Duke is charming and funny, but the camera focuses on Russell, eavesdropping on his subconscious. She takes a ball of yarn and winds it tighter and tighter as the words he says excite her more and more.
Russell is a delightful performer with the warmth of Teresa Wright and the knockout body of her namesake, Jane Russell. The chemistry was so strong she and Wayne teamed up again the next year for "Wake of the Red Witch."
There's nothing big-budget about "Angel and the Badman," yet the two action scenes are entertaining, replacing the thrill of big effects with some humour and heart. The interior photography is consistently sharp and interesting, helping to distinguish the picture from other cheap pretenders. Any insight into the Quakers' lifestyle is limited to a few scenes of prayer and goodwill-hardly a thesis on a subculture, but then you probably don't want the Duke moseying through anything educational.
And of course you can't discuss this film without bringing up one critical point: is there a better title in the history of Hollywood? If T.S. Eliot ever wrote a western he would have named it "Angel and the Badman." If I ever buy a boat I'm going to name her "Angel and the Badman." I am willing to commit a major felony involving someone that looks like Gail Russell, simply so the headline writer can title my front-page story "Angel and the Badman."
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