“Men Have Tears in Them”: The Other Cowboy Hero

Abstract

With exception of word I have italicized, following characterization of Western acceptable: Western makes an absolute and value-laden division between masculine and feminine spheres, linking masculinity with such things as activity, mobility, adventure, [and] emotional restraint, and femininity with passivity, softness, romance and domestic containment (Buscombe 181). Absolute too extreme, though I doubt that many people will balk at its use in this passage. Most people accept description of Western hero as taciturn, macho, and generally aloof. In her well-received book, Jane Tompkins even goes so far as to say that Westerns celebrate the suppression of inner life, that they stamp male hero's interior consciousness (Tompkins 66, 64). Indeed, she regards cowboy hero's supposed silence and willfully controlled emotions as most salient manifestation of trying to prove his manhood and trueheartedness (Tompkins 54, 56-57). So intent on this he, she argues, that even when he suffering he is forbidden to register pain (Tompkins 126). Thus, Western teaches us to cry out or show that we care. For to show that your heart not hard, to cry when you feel pain, your own or someone else's, ... soft, womanish, emotional, very qualities Western hero must get rid of to be a man (Tompkins 121). Consequently, she continues, Western heroes are 41 awkward.. around women, can't read or dance or ... play ... [or] look at flowers... [or] carry on a conversation of more than a couple of sentences... [or] daydream or fantasize or play fool [or] make mistakes (Tompkins 127). The most serious result of all of this, she concludes, that hero cannot enjoy living with himself or other people. In what follows I intend to show that these generalizations about how Western heroes think and behave do not apply in a significant number of Westerns, in almost every case films that critics-including Tompkins-have singled out for analysis or praise. In so doing, I will offer a more balanced picture of how cowboy heroes feel, think, and act. Anyone with even a casual familiarity with Westerns will automatically reject Tompkins' extreme statement that hero of Western films cannot enjoy living with himself or other people. But what about common belief that heroes of Western films are silent or taciturn, their vocabulary largely characterized by Yep or Nope? Many Western heroes fit this stereotype, but majority exhibit a wide range of behavior. Gary Cooper's Virginian in The Virginian (1929) one of most loquacious cowboys ever to appear on screen, and shrewd character Cooper plays in The Westerner (1940) almost as talkative; in High Noon (1952), by contrast, Marshall Kane considerably more reticent with words-as befits an older man, especially one increasingly aware that he may have only a few more hours to live. Though sullen in some Westerns, in Man Without a Star (1955) and The Gunfight at OX Corral (1957) Kirk Douglas' characters love words. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), John Wayne's Tom Doniphon not at all a reluctant talker but Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) far more spare with words. Of all cowboy roles, Henry Fonda probably least talkative as Earp, Wyatt Earp; Frank in Once Upon a Time in West (1969) takes some pleasure in using language. Then again, there are some cowboys who are taciturn because of star's persona. Alan Ladd one of these, most famously in Shane (1953). Speaking slowly, distinctly, and without a Western accent in rich, bass-baritone voice made him stand out in Westerns, but fact of matter that way he spoke in virtually all roles, whether as a Western gunfighter (Shane), a railroad detective out West (Whispering Smith, 1948), or a professional killer in a modern urban setting (This Gun for Hire, 1942, film that made him a star). …