Long before Raquel Welch graced the big screen in nothing but a Mexican poncho, gun belt and Colt .45 in Hannie Caulder, America and the Westerns-loving world fell in love with the original Lady Outlaw, Jane Russell.
Ms. Russell, who changed American cinema and Western movies with her starring role as the voluptuous Rio McDonald in 1943’s The Outlaw, passed away on February 28, 2011. Russell’s role as the bodacious girlfriend of Billy the Kid redefined casting of the femme fatale in Hollywood. Before the censors allowed the release of The Outlaw in 1946, pre-WWII saloon girls like Marlene Dietrich’s outrageous Frenchy in Destry Rides Again, Claire Trevor’s prim Dallas in Stagecoach and Mae West’s comedic, pistol packin’ singer Miss Flower Belle Lee in My Little Chickadee defined the outlaw woman in Westerns. After 1946, Western cinema casting of outlaw women, singing saloon girls, soiled doves and dance hall divas have been measured against Russell’s larger-than-life figure, opening the saloon doors for future big screen outlaw ladies like Welch, Jennifer Jones, Angie Dickinson, Marilyn Monroe, Claudia Cardinale and Sharon Stone.
Decades before the release of the first silent Western movie, the dime novels filled their Wild West tales with vivid stories and illustrations of cowboys and Indians, saloon girls and outlaws, including Calamity Jane and Pearl Hart, Big Nose Kate and Squirrel Tooth Alice. Early Westerns writers knew their audience always loved a romance, so the hero’s love often conflicted between the frontier goddess of the saloon and the beauty from back home. Frontier photographers also documented the fallen angels of the Wild West, providing future artists, historians, novelists and filmmakers with ample subject matter for creative inspiration.
As silent filmmakers began adapting the early 20th-century fiction onto the silver screen, from Owen Wister’s The Virginian to Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage, the audience always knew a good Westerns hero would find himself fighting for the honor of a woman, whether she wore stockings and sang in public, or wore a homemade dress and bonnet. Filmmakers realized the need for great romance and female stars in their Westerns, and ever since Gary Cooper as the Virginian fell in love with Mary Brian’s Molly the schoolteacher in The Virginian, directors have almost always cast sensational leading ladies to grace the screen with their cowboy heroes. Famed Westerns director Anthony Mann believed a “woman is always added to the story because without a woman the Western wouldn’t work.”
In the 1930s and ’40s, writers and directors began reflecting their views of American society in their films, while studios sought more and more profit. The A-Western soon became a genre where producers marketed the great beauties of the studio stable and directors explored the sensational and dangerous themes on the frontier between good and evil, the church lady and saloon girl, civilization and chaos. While John Ford nimbly juxtaposed his social views between outlaw saloon girl Dallas and Southern belle Mrs. Mallory in 1939’s Stagecoach with great success, four years later, Howard Hughes challenged America’s audiences and war-time censors with the bodacious and sexually dangerous Jane Russell as the ultimate Western outlaw woman and pin-up in The Outlaw. Saturday afternoons at the Westerns would never be the same for directors, writers, studios or the audience: ever since Russell, pretty much every A-Western hero has had to face the temptation of the most beautiful woman Hollywood could cast into the story. That’s why the Lady Outlaw is celebrated worldwide as an American icon and as a beloved heroine of the real and imagined West.
Photo Gallery
Culture, society, honor, feminism and motherhood are all themes in John Ford’s 1939 classic Stagecoach. While John Wayne’s Ringo Kid became the star of Ford’s ensemble cast, his costars, (from right) Louise Platt, John Carradine and Claire Trevor, symbolized the late-1930s social issue of class conflict in America. Ford utilizes black-and-white cinematography expertly to juxtapose the thin line between good and evil, dark and light. Trevor’s saloon-blonde Dallas warms the screen in contrast to Platt’s dark Southern belle, Lucy Mallory.
Claudia Cardinale’s Maria is a redefining role for outlaw women. While she is the object of men on both sides of the border in The Professionals, Cardinale’s refusal to return to her rail baron husband Ralph Bellamy and remain instead with Jack Palance’s Mexican bandit Jesus Raza at his lawless, free-loving, south of the border rancho is a reflection of the changing norms of society in 1960s America. She is shown here flanked by her costars Lee Marvin (left) and Burt Lancaster (far left) who were hired to rescue Maria.
Before Raquel Welch, Jane Russell’s starring role in Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw shocked the censors and scorched movie houses from Iowa City to Manhattan in 1943. With her legendary figure and engineered super-bra (cantilevered in such a way that her heaving bust could be displayed perfectly for the camera), the film drove censors crazy. They pulled it after just one week in general release. Banned but not forgotten, Russell and her larger-than-life figure were re-released into post-WWII America. As a result, The Outlaw remains the defining film for all women with big guns.
Jennifer Jones’s 1954 role as Pearl Chavez, opposite Gregory Peck’s Lewt in David O. Selznick’s blockbuster Western epic Duel in the Sun, masterfully exploits America’s post-WWII fear of miscegenation and social unrest. As the attention of Lewt’s smoldering temper and lust, Pearl offers a deadly romance that is defined by her brazen sexuality (more dangerous than a loaded six-gun).
Considered the Western genre’s first feminist outlaw, Joan Crawford’s character Vienna, in the 1954 film Johnny Guitar, is a pistol packin’ mama who rules her dusty edge of the West with guns and sex. Vienna’s control of men in the bedroom and the saloon leads to gunplay and a groundbreaking woman-against-woman, six-shooter showdown with rival Emma Small (played by Mercedes McCambridge). Crawford is shown here with her costar, Sterling Hayden, who plays Vienna’s ex-lover Logan.
While movie serials featured Roy Rogers singing to a good-hearted woman like Dale Evans, John Wayne’s rebel lawman enjoyed the company of sexy female outlaws like Angie Dickinson’s Feathers in Howards Hawks’s 1959 film Rio Bravo. Angie’s legendary legs and titillating dance hall silk stockings were as important to this Duke horse opera as Russell’s bustline and super-bra in The Outlaw.
High Noon’s plot is best known for Gary Cooper’s leading role as the embattled sheriff, but the B-storyline between two women—one outlaw, Katy Jurado, one pure, Grace Kelly—is at the heart of this Cold War Western. Cooper, symbol of law and order, faces his temptations and human weaknesses between good and evil, not only with his town but also with his women. These gals discover that love in the West offers no victors, only survivors.
John Ford’s 1946 cinematic masterpiece My Darling Clementine, filmed on location in Monument Valley, allowed the director a return to his themes of class culture, race and sexual tension in the lawless West as shown so well in Stagecoach. In the middle of good and bad, dark and light, sits Linda Darnell’s Mexican senorita Chihuahua as the dance hall love interest for Doc Holliday. She sits between Henry Fonda’s lawman Wyatt Earp (far left) and Victor Mature’s lawless Doc Holliday (left).
Mae West, starring as Miss Flower Belle Lee in the 1940 Western romp My Little Chickadee, set the standard for all female outlaws and pistol packin’ mamas. Cast opposite W.C. Fields, West offers a two-fisted, gun-toting, sexual double entendre. Her rapid-fire sassiness makes her America’s original outlaw lady.
Following Russell’s casting in The Outlaw, directors and studios alike sought out stars like Marilyn Monroe to give their oversized CinemaScope productions a boost at the box office. Monroe and Robert Mitchum (far right) delivered the sizzle in Otto Preminger’s 1954 flick River of No Return as saloon singer Kay and ex-con Matt Calder. Monroe’s Kay, who was left in charge of Mitchum’s son while he was in prison, is an archetype of the post-war American woman—self-sustaining, no matter her profession, while her man is gone (war, prison), yet vulnerable and in need of protection upon his return.
In the title role of Hannie Caulder, Raquel Welch reprises her role from 100 Rifles as the sexiest outlaw woman of all time. Director Burt Kennedy’s shocking violence and his casting of well-known badmen Jack Elam, Strother Martin and Ernest Borgnine opposite Welch’s scorching beauty are simultaneously disturbing and familiar. In the opening sequences of the 1971 film, Welch’s husband is murdered; she is raped and left for dead; and her house is burned. The only clothes she has left is a Mexican serape and gun. Her vengeance trail against the gang has not been equaled before or since on the big screen.
Viva Outlaw Women! Raquel Welch redefined the Western female outlaw forever in 1969 when she played Sarita, a Mexican-American Indian outlaw fighting for her people alongside Arizona lawman Lyedecker (Jim Brown), in the racially groundbreaking 100 Rifles. Their on-screen “pulp Western” romance was the first interracial kiss in film history.
Sam Peckinpah’s Westerns of the 1960s-70s always featured beautiful outlaw women—many of whom were prostitutes living free, but on the edge of the law—as companions for his anti-heroes. Rita Coolidge’s Maria was no different; she was the beautiful love interest of Kris Kristofferson’s Billy in 1974’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Sharon Stone’s leading role as Ellen “The Lady” gunslinger in 1995’s The Quick and the Dead redefines the grit and grace of Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar and Raquel Welch in Hannie Caulder, as well as the blonde sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson and Grace Kelly. Stone’s six-shooting exploits are the best in the West, and folks should be requesting her return as the “The Lady With No Name.”
Sophia Loren’s lone Westerns role as a blonde dance hall singer in 1960’s Heller in Pink Tights gave director George Cukor the opportunity to redefine the American Western woman, Italian-style. Loren defied cinema convention worldwide as a groundbreaking international star, leaving movie audiences wondering why she never starred in another Western. But then again, Cukor’s idea of a Western was more about his artistry then re-creating the drama of Louis L’Amour’s novel Heller with a Gun. Loren is shown here with her costar Anthony Quinn, both dolled up in lavish costumes designed by Academy Award winner Edith Head.
Stella Stevens’s “whore with a heart of gold” with capitalist aspirations in The Ballad of Cable Hogue is symbolic of director Sam Peckinpah’s interpretation of the West as America’s land of endless dreams and opportunity. Stevens’s Hildy is an outlaw woman for the 1960s: confident, sexually free and business savvy, a role even Cosmopolitan’s former Editor-in-Chief Helen Gurley Brown would love. She is shown here with her costar, Jason Robards, who plays the title role of Cable Hogue.
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Long before Raquel Welch graced the big screen in nothing but a Mexican poncho, gun belt and Colt .45 in Hannie Caulder, America and the Westerns-loving world fell in love with the original Lady Outlaw, Jane Russell.
