Desert Fury (1947)

Film Noir and Technicolor have never really mixed well, so in the few of them made, the plot has needed to be extra colorful in order to make it work. For Paramount's "Desert Fury", the color isn't a metaphor for the lives of the characters here, but definitely a contrast to it. The film could also be considered an update of George Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" where a seemingly devoted mother is actually a madame, and the daughter (here played by Lizabeth Scott) is a seemingly sweet young socialite. But Scott, like her mother (Mary Astor), is attracted to the dangerous, and for her, that is gambler John Hodiak, whose right-hand man (Wendell Corey) is a bit too "devoted" to his boss.A young Burt Lancaster is cast against his normal type as the local lawman, patiently in love with Scott while out to get the goods on Hodiak. Tension arises as the possessive Astor has her own designs on Hodiak (not to mention a slight mustache, accentuated by the color photography and really obvious in a big screen revival of this which I saw) and Corey gets more possessive of his employer. Astor's showy part (her best since "The Maltese Falcon") outshines the others, although Scott's sultriness in this role makes her unforgettable as well. The truth of the matter is that Ms. Astor and Ms. Scott do not at all seem like mother and daughter, as if Lizabeth's character was actually one of Astor's "girls" rather than her own. The Arizona desert is even more impressive in color and is a unique feature to make this must-see film noir, even if it is filled with flaws.

Wow Lizabeth Scott was no winner of an actress. She is just dreadful. I can't see how any producer thought she was gonna be the next big thing back in this day and time. She's basically a short version of Lauren Bacall with half the talent.A noted gambler comes back to town to lay low. The town holds bad memories for him because his wife died in a supposed car accident there. It haunts him all the while he's there. He gets involved with a lot of the old friends he knew from there including an old flames daughter. She's young and stupid and is basically clueless about everything. The local deputy likes her and she the same but she decides to take to the local thug/gambler instead. Her mother and the deputy warn her about him but she doesn't care. She goes against their advice and soon...sparks will soon fly.I didn't go into this one with high hopes because I saw Lizabeth Scott's name in the cast. She was never anything special and in this she show's why. Her portrayal of a 19 year old "I'll do what I want" daughter of a local gambling house owner is just laughable. We get a young Burt Lancaster as the Deputy and the great Mary Astor as the mother but when your working with Lizabeth Scott, all the talent there was in this oozed away with her terrible performance. I mean this one had a really decent cast. With John Hodiak and Wendell Corey playing the heavies I thought maybe it could work but nope. The really unbelievable performance by Ms. Scott threw all that other talent right out of the window.I personally have no problems telling any one to save your time and watch something else but this film has one good thing going for in that there's a little twist in the film you try and try to figure out but won't...until the end. The twist is actually pretty good and after I learned it I had one of those "A-ha" moments. It may be a nothing moment to other viewers of this film but it sewed up a lot of questions I had.

Although Desert Fury was the first film actually released under his studio of Paramount, Burt Lancaster had already made quite a splash for himself in The Killers and Brute Force. In this one he's third billed behind John Hodiak and Lizabeth Scott and all he really does here is flash the pearly whites and be a stalwart hero as a deputy sheriff.John Hodiak is a notorious gambler/racketeer has come home to Chuckawalla, Nevada where the Queen of the town Mary Astor with her casino runs the place. Hodiak left the place under a cloud with the death of his wife in an automobile accident which looked suspicious, but no one can prove anything.Astor's daughter Lizabeth Scott who just quit yet another school is intrigued with Hodiak, but everyone's against the pairing, Astor, Lancaster who has a thing for Scott himself, and Hodiak's sidekick and gunsill Wendell Corey who has a most interesting and quite gay relationship with Hodiak.Desert Fury is one of those several films from the studio days where gay was strictly taboo yet it somehow got to the screen. That scene where Corey tells Scott how he met a ragged and hungry Hodiak at the Automat and bought him a meal and took him home sure sounded like a pickup to me. Many from the generation before Stonewall told me that the Horn&Hardart Automat was one of the great pickup places in New York. Romances and flings have started in stranger places. No way that the writers would not have known that. Corey's devotion to Hodiak can't be explained any other way as the story unfolds. In fact he's the stronger of the two.Corey and Mary Astor walk off with the acting honors. Astor covers a lot of the story's defects with a bravura performance that Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck would envy. Desert Fury neither helped or hurt the rising career of Burt Lancaster, but he's far from the center of this story.

The main town used in this movie is Cottonwood AZ, I know because I live here. My husbands family are pioneers of Sedona and the Verde Vally area. Cottonwood is about bout 5 minutes from where the bridge scene was used at (Tuziegoot)filming was actually at lower Clarkdale area by the Verde River. The Jail, Drugstore, main street, Purple Sage(was Rusty's Bar in old town Cottonwood, in fact Rusty changed the name of his bar to the Purple sage after that movie was filmed there). Scenes of the ranch and out on the roads are at West Sedona, and Big Park by Sedona. We also have a street named Chuckawalla because of this movie. It's really amazing to see what it looked like compared to now days. They give historical tours in old town and Desert Fury is on their pamphlet. It was a big bootlegging town in the prohibition days that made it so popular. Cottonwood was called "the biggest little city in Arizona".