Browning in Buckskin

by Peter Corris

  The director John Huston, a noted boxer in his youth, gives an account of a fight he had with Errol Flynn. It occurred at a party in David O. Selznick's house:

  Errol must have been spoiling for trouble . . . for he very quickly got around to saying something wretched about someone – a woman in whom I'd once been very interested and still regarded with deep affection. I was furious at his remark, and I said, "That's a lie! Even if it weren't a lie, only a sonofabitch would repeat it." Errol asked if I'd like to make anything out of it, and I decided that I would. Errol led the way and we went down to the bottom of the garden – just the two of us. No one knew we'd left the party.

  According to Huston, he and Flynn fought for almost an hour, until the party broke up. He credits Flynn with being a good and fair fighter. Huston's recollection is that the fight was fair, but the language was foul. Flynn suffered two broken ribs and Huston a broken nose, cut eye and damage to his elbows. (John Huston, An Open Book, Macmillan, London, 1981, pp. 97–8).

  Again, David Niven's account is substantially different:

  John Huston . . . liked a good punch-up now and then. On one famous occasion, he and Flynn decided that they were bored at a Hollywood soiree. 'Tell you what, kid,' said Huston. 'Let's get the hell outa here and go down to the bottom of the garden and just mix it a little. Whaddya say?'

  'You're on!' said Flynn.

  (Bring on the Empty Horses, p. 107)

  Errol Flynn makes no mention of the fights with Huston and Browning; perhaps he had so many that no single one stood out in his memory.

  In this context, Browning's account of incidents that occurred while The Plainsman was being filmed can be seen as additional touches on the fast-fading historical record. The autobiographical accounts of Anthony Quinn and Cecil B. De Mille differ slightly, but significantly, in their treatment of the famous episode in which Quinn impersonated a Cheyenne Indian.38 In general, Browning's account is close to Quinn's, reflecting their common status as bit players. In some respects, Quinn's memory is faulty. He records wearing an 'old torn shirt' in his celebrated scene but in the film he is bare-chested. On other points, however, he is accurate. Quinn says, 'I looked over and there was a man dressed just like me, with the same make-up.' That man, we now know, was Richard Browning.

  NOTES

  1. See Browning Takes Off.

  2. New Jersey's Mickey Walker fought three hundred bouts between 1905 and 1930. He held the world welterweight and middleweight titles and fought successfully in the top ranks of the light-heavyweight and heavyweight divisions.

  3. Browning's reckoning is fairly accurate. Geronimo died in 1909, but his military operations had ceased in 1886. See Geronimo: his own story, ed. S.M. Barrett, (London, 1924).

  4. Browning uses the word in the American sense, referring to what Australians and the British call scones.

  5. Strictly, a 'sweetback man' is a pimp, one who lives off the earnings of a prostitute, but by extension any apparently lazy man who seems to be supported by a working woman.

  6. For Browning's association with Clara Bow, see 'Beverly Hills' Browning, p. 174–7; for Belinda Douglas, see later in this book.

  7. Browning's memory seems amiss here. The expression 'race riot' was not in use in the 1930s.

  8. The Empire State Building on 5th Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets was built in 1930-31. At 102 storeys, it was for many years the tallest building in the world.

  9. For Browning's experiences in Mexico, see 'Beverly Hills' Browning, chaps. 6–13.

  10. Yass is a town approximately 33 kilometres south-west of Sydney.

  11. King Kong was remade in 1976. There have been two Japanese spin-offs, King Kong vs Godzilla (1963) and King Kong Escapes (1968). In King Kong Lives (1986) the giant ape is revived and provided with a mate and offspring.

  12. The geek was a circus performer, typically alcoholic or mentally deficient, who bit the heads off live chickens.

  13. Browning refers to the kidnap and murder in the 1930s of the infant son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh.

  14. Primo Carnera was world heavyweight champion from 1932 to 1934; he was succeeded by Max Baer, who lost the title to James Braddock one year later.

  15. See 'Box Office' Browning, p. 123.

  16. Owen 'Owney' Madden was a Liverpuddlian who migrated to the United States as a child. After a violent, criminal youth he was sentenced to 10 to 20 years for the murder of another gangster. He was released in 1923 and continued a career in crime as a union heavy and hijacker, but with a lower profile. He was gaoled briefly in 1932 for parole violation and quit the rackets shortly after. He died in 1964 of natural causes.

  17. In 1934 Butte's mineral industry was disrupted by a series of long, bitterly fought strikes. See Joseph H. Howard (ed.), Montana: high, wide and handsome, (New Haven, 1959), p. 100.

  18. Browning is close: Joe Louis won the fight in the third round.

  19. As a New Deal measure, jobs were created with the Montana State Park Authority. Officers responsible for the preservation of forests were popularly known as the 'tree army'.

  20. See Browning Takes Off, chaps 12–14.

  21. For Browning's association with Douglas Fair banks, see 'Beverly Hills' Browning, chaps. 16–22. Arthur Rosson was born in England, and came to America as a child. He worked as a goldminer in Nevada and briefly on the stage before becoming a stunt man and bit player. He wrote and directed numerous silent films but with the coming of sound he worked chiefly as a production manager and assistant director. His two brothers Richard and Hal also worked in movies, as a director and cinematographer. Hal Rosson was the last husband of Jean Harlow.

  22. 'Stoush' is Australian slang for a fight.

  23. Erich Von Stroheim was famous for his extravagance in the mounting of the films he directed. He is said to have ordered silk underwear for a thousand extras in a costume picture because the feel of wearing silk would add conviction to the extras' movements, see Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures, (New York, 1981), pp. 219–50.

  24. See Browning Takes Off, pp. 171–2.

  25. Charlie Stevens was said to be a grandson of Geronimo. He made a career of playing villainous, frequently drunken, Indians in Westerns.

  26. See Browning Takes Off, pp. 157–60.

  27. Ned Kelly, an Australian outlaw hanged in 1880 for the murder of several policemen, is reputed to have said 'Such is life' on the scaffold.

  28. Browning is wrong in saying that the film has a happy ending. Hickok is shot dead, although it is implied that frontier civilisation progresses.

  29. See Appendix for a discussion of Browning's account of these events.

  30. 'School' is an Australian expression for a group of gamblers or drinkers.

  31. See Browning Takes Off, pp. 171–2.

  32. Browning does not precisely locate the house, and Columbia Drive has been much developed since the 1930s. It has not been possible to identify 'Casablanca'. The difficulty in questioning old residents on the matter is that they confuse the name of the house with the film.

  Several of Browning's photographs from this period survive, but they are of very poor quality. Some show a big, white stucco house in the background but provide no useful locating clues. Similarly, the faces of the groups of men and women are faded beyond recognition. Nor do the hastily scrawled initials on the back help. Browning was not an assiduous memorabiliast.

  33. James Murray experienced some brief success in movies in the 1920s and 1930s but his career failed to prosper, possibly due to his alcoholism. He committed suicide in 1936. Cornell Woolrich wrote hundreds of stories for pulp magazines and a series of black suspense novels. His periods in Hollywood were a mixture of screenwriting, drinking and homosexual cruising. Jim Thompson was the author of tough guy novels, many of which have been filmed. He enjoys a higher reputation in France than in America or England. He worked in Los Angeles in the 1930s as a journalist and scriptwriter.

  34. Browning is correct in respect of Marlene Dietrich
and Billy Wilder, who were German-born. Paul Muni, however, was born in a part of Austria that was later incorporated into Poland, and Zimmerman was born in Vienna. Why Browning should have included Fred Astaire is unclear. Perhaps his aversion to Top Hat is responsible. Astaire's real name was Austerlitz, which is a place in Czechoslovakia. Geography, presumably, was not a subject at which Browning scintillated at Dudleigh Grammar.

  35. There is no record of Johnny Weismuller performing such a feat. Perhaps Browning simply thought it would be a good stunt.

  36. See Appendix.

  37. Mushy Callahan (Vincent Morris Scheer) was junior welterweight champion of the world, 1926-30. He worked in Hollywood for many years preparing actors such as Flynn, Kirk Douglas and Elvis Presley for their roles in boxing pictures. Jimmy Sharman was a showman who toured Australian cities and country towns for many years with a boxing troupe. See my Lords of the Ring: a history of prizefighting in Australia, (Sydney, 1980), chap. 9.

  38. Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin, (New York, 1972), chap. 17; Cecil B. De Mille, Autobiography, (New York, 1959), pp. 349–53.