Serial of the Month: Custer’s Last Stand
The word epic is not used very much when talking about serials…okay never used when talking about serials. The low budgets precluded any attempt by filmmakers to even attempt to do something on the scale of Birth of a Nation (1915) or Gone With the Wind (1939). The closest anyone came was the Weiss brothers’ Custer’s Last Stand (1936), a complicated and sprawling serial with a large cast that tells a fictional account of what led the the Battle at Little Big Horn.
The serial starts a year before the battle, with the Sioux attacking a wagon train. Ex-Confederate army doctor Henry Trent (Josef Swickard) kills the tribe’s medicine man and takes the sacred medicine arrow he carries. He and fellow wagon driver John Cardigan (Rex Lease) escape into the hills.
Young Wolf (Chief Thundercloud) discovers the theft and is enraged. He and Red Fawn (Dorothy Gulliver) were to be entrusted with the arrow on the medicine man’s death. Finding the wagon train’s log book on the dead wagon master, he takes into into the town of Blackpool. He goes to see Tom “Keen” Blade (Reed Howes) who owns half the local saloon with Belle Meade (Lona Andre), and secretly sells whiskey to the Indians on the side. Giving the book to Blade , Wolf explains that the stolen arrow has markings on it that show where a hidden cave of gold is, and needs Blade to read the book so he can locate who took the arrow.
Blade agrees to help him, planning to loot the cave when he finds out where it is. Using the list of drivers as his guide, Blade starts tracking all of the survivors down and killing them after finding out they don’t have the arrow. He shoots Cardigan in the back and takes his distinctive, initialed gun as his own. The only person he can’t track down is Trent.
A year passes and Trent is returning to the area on another wagon train, this time with his grown daughter Barbara (Nancy Caswell) and his young son Bobby (Bobby Nelson). This train is also attacked by the Sioux. They circle the wagons and try to fight it out but are hopelessly out numbered.
John Cardigan’s son, Army scout Kit Cardigan (Lease again), sees the trouble and rides to help out. Getting through the circling warriors to the train, he finds that Bobby plays the bugle. Grabbing him up, Kit breaks through the line again and rides into the nearby hills. He has Bobby play a calvary charge, which tricks the Indians into thinking that soldiers are coming and they scatter.
Cardigan leads the train to Fort Henry so they can get resupplied. They arrive in time to see the arrival of General George Armstrong Custer (Frank McGlynn, Jr.) who is taking over command of the fort. He is disgusted to find the current company commander Lieutenant Frank Roberts (George Chesebro) passed out drunk in his office. Roberts is immediately arrested and Custer bans the soldiers from Blade’s fort based second salon.
With hardly anyone in the fort to serve drinks to, Belle closes th salon down and heads back to Blackpool to run the main saloon. A Blade henchman is with her. He goes into Blade’s office and tells him he spotted Trent at the fort. Wolf is in the office and slips away to gather up his warriors.
Trent, being an unrepentant Confederate, refuses to stay at a Union fort and decides to head in to Blackpool without the rest of the train. After he leaves, Kit and his pal, fellow scout Buckskin (Milburn Moranti), decide to follow behind just to make sure nothing happens.
Good thing they do as Wolf and his warriors attack the lone wagon. Wolf and Kit both climb aboard the wagon and fight each other. Wolf is knocked off just as the horses break free and the driverless wagon plunges into a ravine……..
This was the last serial the Weiss brothers would make under their own banner, Stage and Screen (though they would make Columbia’s first three serials before getting out of film), and as such they go for broke
with this one. This has a much larger cast than their previous two films, with a lot more action. Unfortunately like Universal’s western serials, a great deal of the action, like the Indian attacks, is silent footage inserted between close ups of the main actors reacting to the it.
The plot is excessively complicated with two different parties searching for the arrow, the hero searching for his father’s killer while also investigating renegade Indian attacks, a disgraced officer seeks revenge against Custer for his court martial, while the Sioux gather at Little Big Horn and discuss whether or not to go to war. In an interesting rewrite of history the actual battle is inadvertently caused by the main villain when he shoots a brave during a peace conference as a distraction so he can rescue one of his men from Custer’s stockade.
Custer isn’t the only historical figure to appear in this serial. Calamity Jane shows up as another Army scout who is having an on again off again romance with a sergeant major. Wild Bill Hickock gets hired as the sheriff of Blackpool for a few chapters, and even gets to be the one in peril for a cliffhanger in Chapter Seven. Buffalo Bill makes the briefest of cameo appearances, rescuing the heroes from an Indian attack in Chapter Four.
A major problem with the serial is that it is just too old fashion for the time. When compared to serials like Universal’s The Phantom Rider (1936) or Republic’s The Vigilantes Are Coming (1936) from the same year, Custer’s Last Stand looks like a Mascot serial from 1930. An image that is not helped by having the main cast made up of popular silent stars like Rex Lease, William Farnum (as te local Indian agent), Reed Howes and former child star Nancy Caswell.
That being said most of the acting is above par. Rex Lease gives his best performance in a serial. He is a relaxed and easy going hero who can turn tough as nails on a dime when trouble erupts. The steely eye glint he has during the final confrontation with the villain would have made Tom Tyler proud. This is miles away from his stiff performance in Sign of the Wolf (1931).
Likewise Reed Howes gives his best performance here as the nasty, sneering villain. He swaggers across the screen, all tough bluster and contempt, only to turn into a sniveling coward in the last chapter when confronting Lease’s rage. Howes might have had a better sound career if he had taken villainous roles sooner, like Walter Miller did.
Nancy Caswell unfortunately doesn’t seem to have adapted too well to sound acting. She still makes over exaggerated gestures and vocal reactions making her eyes as big as possible as if she is in a silent movie. Contrast this with Dorothy Gulliver’s subtle performance where she does an effective job of conveying the inner conflict of her character wanting to remain true to her own people while befriending the hero.
Chief Thundercloud also gives a good performance as the villainous Young Wolf. His face is a menacing mixture of pride, ambition and hate. It is hard to believe this snarling mad killer was also the helpful Tonto just two years later.
The best performance by far is by George Chesebro as a weak man who digs a deeper and deeper hole for himself before finally redeeming himself at the end. He s full of anger and self loathing until he hits a line in the villain’s schemes he can’t cross. The disgusted and sad way he pushes his whiskey bottle away in Chapter Twelve is a truly dramatic moment that Chesebro uses to show his character’s turning point as his hardened expression softens into thoughtful introspection.
Jack Mulhall is wasted in a small role as an Army Lieutenant. He mainly just stands at attention in Custer’s office and probably doesn’t have more than ten lines, most of them uttered during the climactic Battle at Little Big Horn where he has the second best death scene in the film.
Mulhall always did everything exuberantly and this film is no exception as he exuberantly dies in Chesebros arms proclaiming he can hear the army band palying the victory march. Chesebro tops this by refusing to let the American flag touch the ground while being riddle with bullets, eventually using his own body to prop it up before dying.
The actual battle is pretty spectacular considering the budget constraints, with the Army surrounded by a circling band of Indians closing in for the kill like a pack of wolves. Even more surprising is how dramatic and moving the aftermath is, with scenes of Ruth Mix as Mrs. Custer being informed of her husbands death. Even more heart wrenching is Lona Andre’s bitter and heart breaking reaction to Chesebro’s death, knowing he did it to prove he was worthy of her love. Rarely has a serial ever attempted this kind of character depth and emotion, much less succeed at it.
