Along Came Jones

Hi Aki,

Today I watched Along Came Jones a Gary Cooper western.

The story shows us a hold-up of the stage of the Express Company at night. The robber is masked, but he kills one of the drivers and escapes with the money bag. The other driver shoots the robber, who loses his prize rifle engraved with his name, but he rides away. Wanted posters are put up all over the territory, for Monte Jarrad, dead or alive, who robbed the stage and is often seen with his half-witted ‘Uncle Roscoe.’

Melody Jones (Cooper) and cranky old sidekick George (William Demarest) happen to be riding through, by mistake (four or five hundred miles back, Melody took the wrong turn). Melody is a light-hearted ‘bronc stomper’ and they’ve just finished a cattle drive and are headed for jobs somewhere else. When they get into town, the locals in Payneville (‘What town is this here?’ asks George. ‘It’s Payneville,’ says the local. ‘Well, what’s painful about it?’) catch sight of the ‘MJ’ on Melody’s saddle and see that he’s tall and thin just like the posters say Jarrad is. So naturally the whole town thinks he’s the killer. And they treat him with great respect, even fear. Some though aim at him through windows to shoot him.

A pretty girl, Cherry de Longpre (Loretta Young) helps Melody get out of town, explains the whole matter to him, and sends him on his way. But the truth is, she’s helping the wounded Jarrad, and wants to send the posse after Melody so Jarrad can go the other direction and get away. Melody figures this out and returns to the de Longpre ranch, in part because he’s falling in love with the girl.

Comedic complications (and a few killings) follow before Melody, who’s a total klutz with a gun, faces off with Jarrad. But Cherry has to shoot Jarrad to save Melody’s hide, and all ends happily.

This is a charming picture. It follows in the vein of the 1939 Destry Rides Again although Destry does turn serious for its final act, and Tom Destry turns out to be good with his dad’s guns; Jones is light-hearted throughout.

Cooper produced in part of the new trend of stars and star directors making pictures independently with an eye towards profits after the income tax had risen so high that the old system of salaries looked less advantageous, and when the ‘Consent Decree’ gave independently-distributed pictures a better shot at bookings. For this Cooper put together a fine cast and brought in Nunnally Johnson to write the script, adapted from a story or novel. Johnson in fact was given his name above the title: Nunnally Johnson’s Along Came Jones which is extremely rare, especially back then. I’ve seen it happen that the best-selling brand-name author of the source material can get his name above the title: Graham Greene’s blah-blah or Noel Coward’s blah-blah but for the mere screenwriter?

The picture gives us a glimpse of what the golden age was all about, even apart from the studios. Everybody knows just what they were doing, everybody agreed on making an entertaining picture which nobody took very seriously, just a piece of rollickin’ good-natured fun. (About the only people who might have taken this seriously would have been the young boys watching on a Saturday matinee – but even they must have been disillusioned when Melody never does come up to the mark with a gun – he can throw a good punch, at least.) Cooper even sings to meet the ‘singing cowboy’ label, though this too is given us as tongue-in-cheek. Stuart Eisler is listed as director, a name I don’t know. Direction is solid, though, including most notably the way Melody hauls back and kisses Cherry in the two scenes that cement their love and close the picture.

(25 April 2009)