Ramrod (1947)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Fantastic!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Joel McRea (Dave) is asked by Veronica Lake (Connie) to protect her sheep-grazing land from town bully Preston Foster (Ivey) who wants it for his cattle. McRea recruits a gang that includes Don Defore (Bill) and they are heavily leaned on by Foster and his crew. Can McRea make a difference? The Ramrod referred to is McRea as Lake Veronica's central tough guy. Veronica herself is no shrinking flower in this. In fact, she's the opposite and ditches her glamorous looks. I only spotted one brief scene in which she was wearing make-up and she looked a completely different woman. The glamour role goes to Arlene Whelan (Rose) as McRea's girlfriend. Uh-oh, complications….looks like Lake is moving in on McRea as well.The cast are all good but unfortunately the film is chronically dull. Yawn, yawn….fall asleep….wake up….yawn…..nothing going on….fall asleep again…horses riding and a bit of shooting. There is nothing new about the story and it unfolds at a slow pace. Uninteresting. Shame.

An unusual western screenplay. Veronica Lake, as Connie, is the head-strong daughter of rancher Ben Dickason(Charles Ruggles), who refuses to do her father's bidding, in marrying their prosperous neighboring rancher, Frank Ivey((Preston Foster), as Ivey would like. The main reason seems to be that she's afraid he would be too dominating over her. Despite her lack of a butch physique, she wants to take an active role in the management of the ranch; not just be a traditional trophy wife. Toward this goal, she takes up with sheep man Walt Shipley(Ian MacDonald)who apparently recently acquired some land in the region, and plans to raise sheep in what is considered cattle county. Hence, he is very unpopular with the local ranchers. Presumably, she chose him because she thought she could manipulate him toward her goals. The cattlemen run him out of town. But, before he leaves, he signs his property claim over to Connie.Did Connie achieve her main goals by the end of the film? She obtained a decent -sized spread thanks to the generosity of her suitor, and to that of her ramrod, Dave(Joel McCrea), who seized an outlying cabin belonging to Ives, because Ives failed to file for that land. She chose to raise cattle rather than sheep, so as not to antagonized the cattlemen.(How did she build up a herd so quickly?). But she committed a bad self-destructive act in ordering the stampeding of her cattle. As I understand it, they were stampeded over a cliff. Thus, she lost virtually all her cattle. The point was to blame the stampede on Ivey, so as to send him to jail. But, this depended on no one recognizing her own wranglers as the perpetrators, which turned out not to be the case. Connie conceived this treachery in retaliation for Ivey burning her wooden ranch house(Her new headquarters was made of stone). Thus, her short-term solvency looks bleak at film's end. Also, her current choice of husband appeared doomed, as Dave(McCrea) was put off by her highhandedness, firming up his recent relationship with the conventional town woman, Rose. In this vendetta-riddled story, Ivey was a bad guy in that he ordered the burning of Connie's ranch house, to spite her rejection of him, thus beginning the vendetta. The sheriff came calling to Ives's place to arrest him for stampeding the cattle. He threatened the sheriff, who drew his gun, but Ivey shot him first, blaming the deed on one of his ranch hands. Also, later, he shot dead McCrea's friend, Bill, who supervised the stampede. In turn, McCrea shot Ives in a street standoff, because he had killed Bill, and the sheriff, and because McCrea had shot the man falsely accused of shooting the sheriff.Looked at from a feminist perspective, we can compare Veronica's role with that of Betty Hutton and Doris Day, in the early '50s musical comedies "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Calamity Jane", respectively, as well as Doris in "The Ballad of Josie", from the late '60s. In all of these other films, the female lead is doing something that was almost unheard of for women to do. But, in each case, at the end, she realized that she wanted a male partner who felt superior to her in her special skill, even if he wasn't. Each of these ladies succeeded in finding such a mate. In the present film, Veronica wanted to show that she could wrangle a ranch out of someone other than Ives, and make it work, although she relied on males to do the dirty work. Unlike these other characters, she doesn't come across as a natural 'butch', but primarily as a manipulator of men to accomplish her goals. Hence, she is a different type of feminist example compared to the other ladies.Of course, McCrea and Veronica had worked together previously in the acclaimed "Sullivan's Travels".See it in B&W at YouTube.

Veronica Lake is Connie, a woman who has seen all her life her weak father being dominated by Frank Ivey (Preston Foster). When the man she loves, Walt Shipley cannot stand up to Ivey , she goes on a war against both Ivey and her father. She gets Joel McCrea to be the ramrod and McCrea in turn gets Don De Fore and his friends to help. The problem with Connie is that she is so hurt and scarred by the domineering Ivey that she becomes obsessed in winning this war no matter what. It is a shame that the character of Connie could be not more elaborated, but that would have meant a much longer film. Lake is great as Connie, she is the star of the film. A very good western, a bit hard to follow at the beginning.

As in most stories by Luke Short, this one is more on plot than action. McCrea is good as the 'old cowhand' that eventually does the right thing. Good supporting cast, featuring Lloyd Bridges.