Synopsis
A novelist receives a letter denying the existence of the characters in his stories. In reply, the novelist looks at a painting called “The Misdeal” by western painter Frederick Remington. As the author stands by the painting, the camera approaches and enters the picture which comes to life.
A shooting has occurred in a bar. One man states that the stranger who shot up the game declared that cheating had occurred. The stranger has ridden away. The sheriff and his posse chase the stranger to a river. As the stranger crosses the river he enters the next county where the sheriff cannot follow and arrest him. The posse turns back.
Across the county line, the stranger, Cheyenne Harry (Carey), gets off his horse and dunks his head in the river. He is staggering drunk. He taks out the many cards hidden in his clothing and throws them away. He rides on.
The town of Rawhide is terrorized by Beau Ross’s robber gang. The stage arrives without the strong box that the sheriff has brought in another wagon. In the Wells Fargo office, Bess Thurston (Gerber) and her brother, Jack (Pegg), receive a letter from their mother requesting money. The brother says that they do not have the money.
The center of life in the town is the dance hall and saloon. Harry rides his horse into the saloon. He wants a bed, the only room with only one man in the bed is occupied by Cimmaron Bill (Lee) who does not want any bedmates. Harry rides his horse into Bill’s room. he pulls his gun, kicks out the window, and tells Bill to jump. Bill jumps. He comes back holding his gun and tells Harry to jump. Harry jumps. Returning, Harry hears Bill loudly singing “Sweet Genevieve, My Genevieve”. Harry joins him in song. By morning, they are best friends.
Outside the saloon the next morning, a sober Harry is talking to Bill. Bess, walking down the street, accidentally bumps into Harry and smiles at him. She looks back and smiles again. He smiles after her and looks thoughtful. The bar owner asks Harry to be the bouncer. He agrees, hoping to see more of Bess.
The Pony Express brings the mail. Jack Thurston (Pegg), Bess’s brother, gets a notice that he is fired. He is angry and wants revenge. Brother and sister need money, and the Jack says that since he is out of work, Bess must go to work.. The only work available is in the dance hall, and Bess is surprised that her brother says she can work there. She does not want to do it, but agrees.
Bess’s debut in the dance hall brings in a crowd. Harry is upset. Men are crowding around her, and Harry pushes them away. He takes Bess to a table and offers her a drink., He’s thinking that he took the job to be near Bess and did not expect her to be in the saloon. Roughly, Harrry tries to kiss her. She rejects him with the comment that he is no better than the others.
Bill laughs at Harry, and they drink. Beau Ross (Harris) enters the bar and sits with Bess and Jack, angering Harry. Harry is upset about Bess talking with Beau, he felt she was different. Harry and Bill laugh and drink some more. Jack tells Beau that he wants money and indicates that he is unconcerned about how he gets it.
As the saloon is closing, Harry apologizes to Bess and tells her that he is leaving town. She invites him to come to her home and talk about it. Bill, watching them leave together, laments that Harry is interested in a woman; he was such a good guy to sing with. At her cabin, Bess asks Harry if he likes tea. He looks confused, scratches his chin, and says he would like a drink. Obviously he does not know what tea is. She makes tea. Harry hesitantly drinks the tea, while trying to hold his tea cup as she holds hers.
Harry does not leave town. He combs his hair and straightens his clothes before visiting Bess at her cabin. He gives her a puppy as a present.
Later, the bandits raid the town. Harry rushes to the bank and waits for them. He holds two bandits at gunpoint. One is Beau, the other is Jack. Harry cannot turn them in, but they do not rob the bank. Beau warns Harry to leave town.
Beau sees that Harry is dangerous and will interfere with his gang’s activities. He has a plan to get rid of Harry. The gang kidnaps Bess, and Harry goes looking for her. Harry tells Bill to come for him if he is not back in four hours.
The robbers set a trap for Harry. Ross has a cabin in the mountains. The gang is holding Bess in the cabin and show that her brother is a member of the gang. Bess is shocked. Jack is sorry and angry at Ross.
Harry is aware they are waiting for him, thinks it over, and goes on. They capture him. Ross asks Harry if he has heard of Mazeppa. The gang tie Harry to a horse and set if off at a gallop. The horse falls over a ridge and slides down a sandy hillside. Harry gets loose as the horse slides to the bottom of the hill.
Ross has taken Bess into the desert. Harry returns to his horse and follows them.
Cimmaron Bill and a posse have set out after Bess and Harry. The posse arrives at the cabin where most of the bandits have remained to count their loot. Jack rides away before the posse arrives. After a gun battle at the cabin, the remaining bandits flee in a wagon, the posse in pursuit. The coach falls off a mountain road, presumably killing the bandits.
Harry catches up with Bess and Ross. He get Bess and engages in a gun duel with Ross in which both are wounded. Only one horse is able to proceed. Bess takes it. Harry and Ross must walk. When they tire and become very thirsty, they crawl. A sand storm approaches. Harry covers his head and tucks up his legs. Ross lies helpless in the sand.
Bill and an Indian guide, searching for Harry, cover up as the blowing sand overtakes them. The sand storm clears; Bill and the guide ride on. They finds Ross dead. Harry is buried in sand but alive.
Days later, Bess, at home, is waiting for Harry. Harry, dressed in a suit, comes to her and proposes. As Bess accepts him, Bill, at a distance, starts singing. Harry and Bess look toward him and smile.
Discussion
The John Ford and Harry Carey films emphasize two major characteristics of the old west: the magnificence of the landscape and the simplicity, even primitiveness, of the lives of the residents. The films dramatize the characters’ emotional responses to life in the west. The cinematography showcases the rugged terrain of mountains and valleys (of Southern California of the early 20th century). Ford and Carey cooperated on writing the scenarios, often co-writing the stories with established screenwriters. Hell Bent was written with assistance from screenwriter Eugene B. Lewis.
An unusual opening introduces the western setting. A writer of westerns, questioned about the accuracy of his stories, looks at a painting named The Misdeal. The painting, by acclaimed western painter Frederic Remington, apparently represents events that occurred in the real west that are included in the writer’s books, thus affirming their truthfulness. In the painting, several men have been shot as the result of a dispute during a card game. The gunman, not included in the painting, has left the scene.
The camera enters the picture frame and follows the action out of the bar and into the streets. A posse chases the gunman, who crosses a river and reaches safety in the next county. The film now introduces its hero as not only a gunman, but also a drunk and a cheater. Cheyenne Harry (Carey) is staggering drunk. He pulls multiple cards out of his clothes, laughs, and throws them away. It is unclear if he is an outlaw or only a rather wild rangerider.
The drunken Harry expects to get what he wants. He wants a bed and rides his horse into the hotel bar and up the stairs. The man with the bed is equally determined. However, they unite over a drunken rendition of “Sweet Genevieve”, ignoring the complaints of other sleepers.
The heroine has a conventional living arrangement with her brother. Harry meets her, and one smile convinces him that she is a good woman. However, the brother is unprincipled. When he loses his job, he lets his sister go into the dance hall to make money. Harry is disappointed because “good” women do not take this type of work. The film shows that a “good” woman does not do many things, including drinking beverages stronger than tea. The hero may be a drinker and a rowdy, but the heroine must be respectable. At the finale, the love of the good woman has subdued the irresponsible gunman.
The most dramatic events in the film occur in the final minutes: Harry’s Mazeppa-like ride on the horse, Harry and Ross crossing the desert, and the destruction of the robber band.
To find Bess, Harry allows himself to be captured. Ross, planning a spectacular death for Harry, asks him if he knows the story of Mazeppa. The outlaws throw a horse to its side, tie Harry to its back, and stampede the animal. After a short scene of the galloping horse with Harry supposedly tied on its back, the horse takes a spectacular fall over a cliff and down a sand hill. The object on the horse must be a dummy. The scene cuts to bottom of the hill. The horse half rolls into view, and Harry, free with the ropes hanging loose, staggers away. The horse rolls some more, legs kicking before it regains its feet and stumbles away. Careful cutting makes it appear that Carey has been released from the falling horse.
Ross takes Bess across the desert toward Mexico. Harry catches up and frees her. She rides back to town on the only horse, and the two men set off walking. These scenes emphasize the hardships of crossing the desert on foot. With little water, the two men end up crawling in the sand. A dust storm covers them both in dust, and only Harry survives and is saved by Cimmaron.
After a shootout with the posse, the robbers board a wagon and race away along a circuitous mountain road, the posse in pursuit. The remaining robbers are killed when the wagon slides off the road and tumbles down the hillside.
Neva Gerber was 21 years old in 1912 when her film career began with the Kalem Film Company. She joined the Universal Film Company in 1916 and was Carey’s costar in four films. In the 1920s Gerber teamed with actor-director Ben F. Wilson to make action movies, mostly serials and westerns. Gerber appearred in two talkies directed by Wilson. After his death in 1930, she left the screen.
Cinematographer Benjamin F. Reynolds was assigned by Universal Studios to The Scrapper (1917), John Ford’s third and final film as both star and director. Reynolds continued with Ford on his next film, The Soul Herder (1917), Ford’s first film directing Harry Carey. Both these films were shorts (two reels). Reynolds was the photographer on Straight Shooting (1917), Ford and Carey’s first feature and worked with the pair on eleven more of their 21 feature films.
In many interior scenes, the actors occupy the brightly tinted center of the frame surrounded by dark shadows at the edges. The exteriors emphasize the impressive panorama of multiple ridges sweeping into the distance. Horsemen and wagons cross these hills on twisting mountain roads. In 1918, much of the area around Los Angeles, where the film was shot and now covered by development, was open country.
The entrance to the gang’s hideout, an impressive passage between two vertical walls, is called Beale’s Cut. The outlaws and Carey ride through this gap. Carey’s mounted figure is centered in the gap as he exits. This photogenic site was first excavated as a pass in 1854 and enlarged (to 90 feet deep) by troops under General Edward F. Beale in 1863. The location was obviously a favorite of Ford who included it in his first feature Straight Shooting (1917) and in later films including Three Jumps Ahead (1923), The Iron Horse (1924), and Stagecoach (1939).
The life story of Ivan Mazeppa (1639-1709), an officer in the Russian/Ukranian military, is well-known in his homeland of Ukraine. A colorful legend concerning Mazeppa became wide spread in Western Europe and the United States during the 19th century. In the legend, a nobleman finds the young and handsome Mazeppa in bed with his wife. The outraged husband punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to the back of a wild horse and taunting the animal into a frenzy. Mazeppa spends days on the horse and is close to death before he is rescued.
In 1819, British Romantic poet George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) turned the legend into a narrative poem, Mazeppa. The tantalizing vision of the naked man tied to the horse appealed to painters and was a frequent subject for their art. Theatrical versions of the story were also popular, especially in the American west. Both men and women played the role. In the 1850s, the actress Adah Isaacs Menken was a sensation tied to a horse and looking naked in her flesh colored bodystocking.
Whether or not Carey and/or Ford had seen a theatrical production, they wanted to include the stunt in the film. However, they do not make much out of it. The scene of Carey supposedly on the horse is filmed from distance and passes quickly with little emphasis or excitement. The only noticeable aspect is the rough handling of the horses involved.
“Sweet Genevieve”, composed by Henry l. Tucker with lyrics by George Cooper, was published in 1869. The selection of that song for the film probably references Neva Gerber’s given name, Genevieve.
Further Reading