Wow, a ‘new’ Sam Peckinpah western!  While we await the rumored Blu-ray of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid to surface (or was Alex Cox misinformed?), correspondent Darren Gross has come across a watchable web encoding of a Peckinpah TV drama that seems to be more or less ‘lost.’ Good star performances (Jean Simmons, Bradford Dillman, Alex Cord) and intense characterizations prove once again that Peckinpah could deliver superior dramatics. The home video companies should do some investigating — there’s a market out there for this one.

The Lady Is My Wife
TV episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater
CineSavant Revival Screening Review
1967 / Color / 1:33 TV / 47 min. / first Aired February 1, 1967 / Not on Home Video
Starring: Jean Simmons, Bradford Dillman, Alex Cord, Begoña Palacios, L.Q. Jones, Roberto Contreras, Alan Baxter, Jim Boles, Billy M. Greene, E.J. André, Billy M. Greene.
Cinematography: Dale Deverman
Art Director: Lloyd S. Papez
Costumes: Kay Hayden
Film Editor: Edward Biery
Theme music: Johnny Williams
Teleplay by Halsted Welles from a story by Jack Laird
Executive Producer Gordon Oliver
Associate Producer Jeannot Szwarc
Produced by Jack Laird
Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Every so often CineSavant reviews a title not available on home video, as a sort of quiet protest. A couple of weeks back associate Darren Gross located online an encoding of a TV show directed by Sam Peckinpah that I’ve never heard of. It’s only given brief mentions in the excellent Peckinpah biographies by David Weddle, Marshall Fine and Garner Simmons; back when those books were written they probably didn’t have access to the show. It’s possible that newer editions have filled in that gap.

The show is The Lady Is My Wife, an episode of NBC’s anthology series Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater. It aired on February 1, 1967.  After the career debacle of Major Dundee Sam Peckinpah encountered another setback by being fired from The Cincinnati Kid. He bounced back almost immediately, adapting and directing a teleplay of Katherine Anne Porter’s Noon Wine with Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland. The prestigious ABC Stage 67 show impressed critics and went a long way toward rehabilitating his reputation as a screen artist.

Who knew that Peckinpah had directed Jean Simmons, and in a western-themed show no less?  In terms of westerns Peckinpah’s TV career has been given short shrift — he wrote at least 48 episodes between 1957 and 1960, and directed at least 14. The modest drama The Lady Is My Wife holds up quite well; to this viewer it played better than Noon Wine, which comes off as a little dry and pretentious. The available encoding of Lady is no beauty, but we’re encouraged by the possibility that a film master is vaulted somewhere, ready to be restored. Noon Wine originated as some kind of funky film-videotape hybrid, so it’s only going to look so good no matter what they do to it.

The accomplished Halsted Welles is credited with the teleplay, from a story by producer Jack Laird. Ten years before, Welles adapted Elmore Leonard’s excellent 3:10 to Yuma for Delmer Daves, and has a co-screenplay credit on Daves’ follow-up Gary Cooper classic The Hanging Tree. This offbeat story is about an unusual marriage in a western setting. Although Sam Peckinpah isn’t given a writing credit his fans will recognize his signature both in the casting and the dialogue. Peckinpah was of course doing other writing work at this time, and his masterpiece The Wild Bunch was beginning to come together. In this show, L.Q. Jones previews one of Robert Ryan’s memorable dialogue lines as Deke Thornton:

“What I need and what I want are two different things.”

Dead broke and exhausted, Charleston gambler Adam Bannister and his wife Ruth (Bradford Dillman & Jean Simmons) are dumped in a tiny town by a stage driver who will take them no further. The proprietor of a ratty hotel resents Adam’s background as a Confederate colonel; they have to earn some money before they can get some sleep. Adam gambles and Ruth tells fortunes. Town drunk and telegraph operator Ernie Packer (L.Q. Jones) makes advances, and is warned off by Adam, who we find out has already killed at least two men ‘defending his wife’s honor.’ Ruth’s attitude is strange . . . is she a puppet in the warped game her husband is playing, or an active participant?

Equally enthralled by Ruth’s looks is Lucky Paxton (Alex Cord), a millionaire horse breeder with a large ranch outside of town. She reads Paxton’s fortune: “You’re going to kill a man and marry his wife within a year.” Lucky announces his intentions first in the hotel lobby and then after barging into Ruth’s room: he wants her just to leave Adam and marry him. There’s also a dead body on the barroom floor to contend with. Lucky saves Adam from arrest but only if he takes a job at his ranch.

Soon thereafter Ruth is sipping tea while Adam works with Lucky’s prime horses. Lucky has a mistress, Lolla (Begoñia Palacios), but with his interest now directed towards Ruth, he asks Lolla to play the role of servant. Lolla also seems to be involved with Lucky’s foreman, Matteo (Roberto Contreras). Things become bizarre when Lucky and Adam spend the evening playing billiards — on horseback. When Adam bets his wife in the game, Lucky can’t believe it. Also surprising is Ruth’s sober response: “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

The Lady Is My Wife succeeds by keeping us guessing as to what’s exactly going on; the performances are excellent. Peckinpah paces everything well, smoothing over the introduction of the unlikely millionaire and his brash insistence on taking Ruth for his own. So much happens that is implausible, we accept elements that would otherwise be strained.

This is a fairly early, fairly impressive role for Alex Cord, who just the year before laid an egg in the Gordon Douglas remake of Stagecoach. Cord’s Lucky Paxton is making Wall Street deals through the incompetent telegraph operator in this one-horse town. He has hundreds of thousands of dollars in ready cash, and even leaves $50,000 unattended in his saddlebags outside the hotel. In today’s money 50,000 would be a lot, lot more.  ((Can that be right?))

Lucky’s mansion is mostly empty, and the brilliant bit of playing billiards on horseback adds just the right touch of decadent eccentricity. Some of Alex Cord’s mannerisms, and his general laid-back attitude, seem very much patterned on Brian Keith’s Dave Blassingame in Peckinpah’s well-remembered TV series The Westerner. That helps soften the more than a little implausible Lucky Paxton character.

Lucky’s come-on to Ruth includes some so-so dialogue comparing her to one of his Arabian horses, but the screenplay’s handling of the dysfunctional Bannister marriage is very well done. Adam is a black sheep outcast from Charleston, perhaps a nod to John Carradine in the original Stagecoach. Ruth describes that experience as ‘being expelled from the Garden of Eden.’  A former Lady of consequence, she’s reduced to telling fortunes in their present situation — an activity that finds customers only because she’s so attractive.

The story focus is on male honor and pride. Adam Bannister’s perverse way of dealing with his failures is to put Ruth in a Catch-22, daring her to leave him while treating her like property. Ruth loves Adam, even though he’s become a killer out of frustration for his bad luck, and is using her as an excuse to pick fights. He accepts a deal from Lucky Paxton for Ruth to sing for $1,000. He reneges on his billiard bet but then insists on a duel for Ruth’s honor. Ruth deflects her husband’s distrust with a bit of dialogue that seems adapted from the screenplay of One-Eyed Jacks, to which Peckinpah made a major contribution:

“No one can dishonor me I can only dishonor myself.”

In One-Eyed Jacks, Pina Pellicer directed the same observation toward Marlon Brando’s dishonorable bandit.

The story advances a rather sick macho view of marriage. Adam repeatedly punishes Ruth with demeaning tests of loyalty; he all but urges her to sleep with Lucky, so he can later kill them both. We eventually learn that Adam also killed Ruth’s brother, which explains their expulsion from Charleston society. But she sticks with him, like her Biblical namesake. A good wife, Ruth obediently degrades herself to prove her love.

Sam Peckinpah habitually altered the screenplays he directed, often winning praise for his excellent, authentic dialogue brush-ups. Did he re-interpret this teleplay?  Adam Bannister’s cruel ‘pedestal vs. gutter’ mindset seems consistent with Peckinpah’s macho view of women. Begoñia Palacios was Peckinpah’s wife at the time. Her Lolla seems to have a flexible arrangement with the Big Man Lucky Paxton. When the Bannisters move in, Lolla can sense Lucky’s intentions with Ruth. He politely asks her to wait on his Anglo guest-employees as if she were a servant. Lolla complies but makes her statement by insisting on doing it barefoot.

The ironic wrap-up includes a twist that is utterly misogynistic, yet fairly benign for what we have come to expect from Peckinpah. Adam Bannister appears to have learned a lesson . . . has Lucky Paxton taught him to appreciate Ruth’s love and devotion?

Sam Peckinpah distinguished his westerns by spinning fresh variations from established rituals. When he began selling scripts the average TV oater was so codified, any deviation from formula seemed inspired. Lucky and Ruth drink from fine teacups, on horseback, watching Adam ride. Lucky buys and sells on the stock market from a remote telegraph office. The billiard game on horseback, while the Mexican servants look on, plays as fresh as the camel that races a horse in Ride the High Country. Ruth accompanies them on a grand piano, in a low-cut gown. The situation is almost western-Gothic.

Almost every scene has an ‘auteurish’ angle. Peckinpah stock player L.Q. Jones is introduced as a comic drunk, in a convincingly messy mud puddle scene. Peckinpah was fond of setups framed in mirrors, and Lady structures two confrontations with ‘parallel’ mirror scenes — Ruth must fend off both a covetous suitor and later her own unstable husband.

In his non-‘scope movies Peckinpah had a tendency to skip mastershots in favor of standard coverage, briskly edited. The pacing here is sometimes a bit ‘cutty’ when more than two characters are present. The show uses only a few insert cutaway close-ups, to a dirty hand when Ruth reads a miner’s fortune, and to a drawn pistol or two. Given special emphasis are several cuts of Lolla’s bare feet . . . somebody tell Quentin Tarantino.

Although the show can’t have been sold as a Peckinpah action movie, it does feature two scenes of gunplay. In the final brief shoot-out, just when we think a duel has been resolved, another shoot-out comes out of nowhere, against an unexpected third gunman. It’s another Peckinpah directorial fillip. Further proof that Peckinpah oversaw the editing arrives with this last killing — it’s depicted with at least 12 very rapid cuts, of just a few frames each.

Segregated Cause and Consequence!

That fast-cut flurry of gunplay is fairly timely, preceding by six months two 1967 theatrical features noted for violence, Bonnie and Clyde and Point Blank. A few network TV shows were also upping the violence envelope at the time, such as The Felony Squad. TV network Standards and Practices reportedly had a weird guideline governing onscreen gun violence: it might be OK if the weapon and the victim are not shown in the same shot at the same time.  The Lady Is My Wife appears to follow the rule.

Alex Cord proceeded to a long career in films and TV, never attaining star status. He’s good in the next year’s The Brotherhood, but this is his most demanding performance we’ve seen so far. By this time Bradford Dillman had mostly retreated to starring TV work, showing up frequently in good feature supporting roles. The marvelous Jean Simmons is excellent in what is really a difficult and demanding part. After twenty years of terrific starring features and two Oscar nominations, she’d stay busy on TV for many more.

Credited as associate producer is the future director Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time, Supergirl). ‘Johnny’ Williams takes a music credit. We don’t know if he did the telefilm’s full score, or just the main Chrysler Theater theme.

There is no official release of The Lady Is My Wife. Anyone who can do an online search can find it, and I’m grateful to Darren Gross for sending it my way.  [ We ask readers not to add links to the comments, so as to not hasten the show’s removal. ]

As you can see by these frame grabs, the image quality we saw is pretty dire. We improved them a bit, goosing the color and contrast. It suffices to judge the performances, and the audio is very clear. Looking at the show, one might think it could be reformatted for widescreen, at least 1:66. The encoding runs 47 minutes and feels reasonably complete. The IMDB’s stated 60-minute running time probably refers to the TV show’s overall time slot.

Perhaps other readers know more about The Lady Is My Wife and care to inform us?  For all we know it may by now have been thoroughly analyzed and acknowledged as part of Sam Peckinpah’s western canon. I found it more than worthwhile, an example of the writer-director at his most creative. It’s certainly more engaging than the later action thrillers that would type Peckinpah as a purveyor of slow-motion violence.

A TV review in the Nashua Telegraph indicated that The Lady is My Wife had a repeat airing on July 26, 1967, and it may have been shown again in the next few years. NBC invented themed hours with titles like NBC Adventure Theatre,  NBC Action Playhouse,  NBC Comedy Playhouse and NBC Comedy Theater.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Lady Is My Wife
Not presently on Home Video
Screened from the Web
Reviewed: February 26, 2023
(6890lady)

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