The Kansan (1943) - Once Upon a Time in a Western

Richard Dix plays John Bonniwell, who stops in the town of Broken Lance on his way to Oregon and helps foil a robbery by the James Gang.

Wounded and hospitalized, he wakes to a pretty nurse (Jane Wyatt as hotel owner Eleanor Sager) and the sounds of celebration.

Seems he’s just been elected marshal of Broken Lance, a job he wasn’t looking for, but one town leader Steve Barat (Albert Dekker) made sure he got.

Barat is owner of the bank the James Gang tried to rob; the marshal’s badge is his way of showing gratitude.

Bonniwell is appreciative too, for a while. Then Jeff Barat (Victor Jory), Steve’s brother, shows him around Broken Lance.

Seems Steve Barat is charging tolls at the bridge leading out of town. And exorbitant fees to any cattleman who wants to drive their herds across his land.

He’s also using minor clauses in sales contracts to make them null and void, claiming back the property he sold to unsuspecting buyers, but keeping the original payments for the land, of course.

Bonniwell finds himself at odds with Jeff Barat for a completely different reason. He’s growing fond of that nurse/hotel owner named Eleanor, the very woman Jeff Barat planned to make his wife.

Richard Dix as John Bonniwell, who gets a badge without asking and finds trouble in the town of Broken Lance in The Kansan (1943)

Albert Dekker as Steve Barat, getting a lesson in stampeding steers from Bonniwell in The Kansan (1943)

Review:

The bright spots here include some rousing action scenes — check out that wild barroom brawl — and a pretty neat ending that echoes the film’s opening.

Unfortunately, the film still comes across as hopelessly outdated, the depiction of Jeff Barat’s “boy” Bones is cringe-worthy and Dix delivers one of his stiff performances.

Donning Westerns duds with regularity a decade after “Cimarron” (1939) was named best picture, Dix was 50, and looked it, when this film came out.

Wyatt, 33 at the time, is fine in a romantic role that isn’t very demanding. Victor Jory gets to play a sympathetic bad man for a change.

Jane Wyatt as Eleanor Sager, the hotel owner and sometimes nurse in The Kansan (1943)

Victor Jory as Jeff Barat, trying a ploy on his brother’s allies while accompanied by Willie Best as Bones in The Kansan (1943)

Directed by:
George Archainbaud

Cast:
Richard Dix … John Bonniwell
Jane Wyatt … Eleanor Sager
Albert Dekker … Steve Barat
Eugene Pallette … Tom Waggoner
Victor Jory … Jeff Barat
Robert Armstrong … Malachy
Willie Best … Bones
Beryl Wallace … Soubrette
Clem Bevans … Bridge-Tender
Hobart Cavanaugh … Josh Hudkins
Francis McDonald … Gil Hatton
Douglas Fowley … Ben Nash
Rod Cameron … Kelso
Eddy Waller … Ed Gilbert
Ray Bennett … Messenger

Runtime: 79 min.

Francis McDonald as Gil Hatton with his sidekick, old enemies of John Bonniwell in The Kansan (1943)

Eugene Pallette as Tom Waggoner working with Richard Dix as John Bonniwell to avoid Steve Barat’s tolls in The Kansan (1943)

Memorable lines:

Tom Waggoner: “Reminds me of a jug-headed, loco horse we was breaking last year. Seems he knowed all the tricks. He’d just roll his eyes, back up and sit down the minute you walked toward him with a saddle.”
Bonniwell: “What’d you do? Shoot him?”
Tom Waggoner: “No, we cured him.”
Bonniwell: “How?”
Tom Waggoner: “We built a good fire and let him back up and sit down. Of course, he did a lot of extra eye-rolling, but one treatment made a gentleman out of him.”

John Bonniwell, when Steve Barat balks about a herd crossing his land without paying: “You know, for a smart man, you surprise me. Have you ever tried to tell a stampeding steer that he didn’t have the right to go any place?”

Jeff Barat, when Bonniwell suggests Broken Lance would be better off without his brother, Steve: “He means that my brother is a businessman, interested in profits.”
John Bonniwell: “I mean your brother is squeezing this town dry. He owns everything in it except the people.”

Steve Barat to his brother Jeff: “Someday, your precious sense of honor is going to send you to your grave.”

Jeff Barat to brother Steve: “Why did you give the (stolen bank) money to Bonniwell?”
Steve Barat: “I thought it would be a change to have an honest man in the family.”