My favorite movie? Of all time? Cat Ballou. I know you're thinking that's just plain dumb. I could have chosen something high brow and artsy. I do love Wings of Desire and Jean de Florette. Or maybe a classic comedy of my generation, like This is Spinal Tap or Office Space. These are very funny movies. Maybe something middle brow. Lord of the Rings, anyone? Compelling and beautiful. These movies are good, even great, but none had the impact on my life that the low brow 1965 comedy Cat Ballou did. And therefore they can't be my favorite.
When I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, independent television stations often showed an afternoon matinee every day, to compete with the soap operas, game shows, and Watergate hearings offered by network affiliates. I rushed home from school every afternoon and planted myself in front of the TV for an endless cycle of Abbott and Costello, Irene Dunne, Bing Crosby, Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, etc. That's how I came to see Cat Ballou more than a dozen times before the age of 16.
To someone younger than my generation I find it difficult to explain what a dearth of strong women were to be found on television back then. Lucy was goofy and manipulative. Carol Brady was a subject in her own home. Even the widowed Shirley Partridge was led around by a gang of children. I favored Julia, widowed mother and nurse. And Mary Tyler Moore. Single. Working. These were the rare examples of truly independent women. And unlike even the strong vixens of previous generations, they didn't use their feminine wiles simply to manipulate men into fighting their battles for them. They fought their own battles. Julia and Mary were working professionals surviving by using their own wits.
But Cat Ballou was even better. She rode a horse and shot a gun. She was decidely female but not a paragon of femininity. She was a tomboy. Like me. And she was a leader! Of men!
The story of Catherine Ballou begins with Cat returning home to her father's Wyoming ranch in the late 1800s. While away she has gotten her education and become a school marm. She is hewed perfectly by the conventions of her times. But circumstances, and a black-hatted noseless bad guy, intervene. Rancher Ballou has refused to sell his land to a developer. Currupt town officials and the developer have responded by hiring Tim Strawn (Lee Marvin) to kill Mr. Ballou. Cat hires famed gunfighter Kid Shelleen (also played by Marvin) to protect him. But Strawn succeeds and Cat is forced to take matters into her own hands. Together with the drunkard Shelleen and a collection of ne'er-do-wells, Ballou goes on crime spree, robbing trains and hanging out at the Hole in the Wall. Eventually, she does use her feminine wiles to sneak into the developer's train car, and in the ensuing melee, the developer is killed. Cat is caught and sentenced to death. At her hanging, the ne'er-do-wells come through and break Cat out. She rides away into a life on the run. Her fate to be determined by her and her alone.
The movie is a comedy and I think it is a reasonably good one. There's a whacky bit about Ballou's father being convinced that his hired hand, Jackson Two-Bears, is a descendent of the lost tribe of Isreal and is hiding his knowledge of Hebrew! Lee Marvin was really a great comedic actor (see also Paint Your Wagon) and his droll Tim Strawn and drunk Kid Shelleen are terrific. He even won an Oscar for this movie. The film is narrated by the singing duo of Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole, appearing nearby as the action unfolds. I frankly love the songs.
Cat Ballou, Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou. She's mean and evil through and through.
Cat Ballou was everything I wanted to be. I wanted to make my own decisions. I did not want to be constrained by conventions, especially those of femininity promoted by my mother. I wanted to wear pants and a cowboy hat. I want to lead, not follow. And if anyone violated my rights, I wanted to shoot them with a pistol.
Below is a photo of my fifth or sixth birthday. That's me holding the cake with Santa on it (God, having a December birthday sucks!). And to my immediate left is Jeannie Foote, whose mother understood me better than my own. In the gift box Jeannie holds is a set of toy pistols and a holster. I treasured them.
I'm not particularly proud, or even satisfied, that the movie that had the greatest impact on my life is Cat Ballou. But I take it as an indictment against the times rather than me. That a young girl of the early seventies could find no better example of a strong, independent woman than Jane Fonda in a western comedy says a lot about those times. I didn't grow up to be a cowgirl like Cat Ballou, but I did break conventions in my own way eventually. I thank Cat for showing me that I could be my own woman and be happy.
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My grandfather gave me a tiny little Craftsman tool kit from Sears & Roebuck. He caught me playing in the welding shed with his tools and decided to give me a set of small, real tools of my own. He also bought me a cowgirl outfit complete with six shooters that used caps!
These facts are among the prelimiary reasons why I measured all men against him.
Wasn't Lee Marvin wonderfully funny in this movie? I had seen him play evil before this and didn't expect him to be such a rubbery drunk.
:-)
Believe it or not, I've never seen this one. It's going into my queue. Thanks for the rec. Sounds like just what I've been looking for lately.
Great post.
It took years for my own mother to understand that I didn't want to be constrained by the conventions that had allowed her to flourish. She was a terrific seamstress and a good cook. She loved to read, read, read all day long. Housewifery and child-rearing, in particular, suited her. She loved me and she did the very best she could, but she struggled to understand me. And I struggled to understand her.
Thank God, though, that there were others out there fighting for young girls like me. It does seem like some sort of faint dream now that things have changed so much.
I once overheard my own daughter say to a friend, "Mommies don't cook!" She had never once seen me working in the kitchen (and she never will). I laughed and laughed and laughed. I don't think she'll ever be able to understand that the very job that I never do is the one that the whole world expected me to do.
Wolf City, Wyomin', eighteen ninety four!
They're gonna drop Cat Ballou
Through the gallows floor!
She killed a man in Wolf City, Wyomin'
Wolf City, Wyomin', killed a man it's true -
And that is why they're a-hangin'
Hangin' Cat Ballou!
She has the smile of an angel
(Fights like the Devil)
The eyes of an angel
(Bites like the Devil)
The face of an angel
(I say she's the Devil)
She's mean and evil through and through!
Cat Ballou, Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou!
She's mean and evil through and through!
Also, I wonder how many strong feminists were strangely inspired by their supportive fathers' undermining by corporate America? I know I was. My father encouraged my brazen independence as he knuckled under and did his job. And I wonder how many discouraged fathers encouraged their daughters at least partly because they thought daughters, in this strange new world, might have more/different freedom than sons?
Joan, you have hit upon something that is very important. My father was my idol. I followed my father's footsteps into physics because of this. He wisely chose not to intervene in the wars that raged between my mother and myself, but he never discouraged me from doing anything I wanted to do. He was a workaholic and I think he enjoyed his job most of the time, but I am certain he swallowed a lot of crap (he was a civil servant!) for the sake of his family. And wished for better for all of his children.
But most of all, my father hated the idea that people judged him based on his background. He was poor as a child and his divorced mother was a cocktail waitress. But he was fortunate to come of age during a time when the G.I. Bill lifted a lot of young men out of uneducated poverty. He eventually got a Ph.D. in physics (on $125 per month, with three kids, as my mother loved to tell it). This was the ultimate in-your-face for him, against all those who thought he would end up in jail instead of college. And it was this experience, I think, that put him so firmly in my corner. He sympathized with me, in that, as a woman, I was the "underclass" just as he had been before me.
Someday I really hope to examine and write about the story of both of my parents and especially about the government programs like the TVA and the G.I. Bill that transformed the lives of more than a generation of poor Southerners. It resonates so completely with current times.
Absolutely one of my favorite movies. ;-) My dad introduced me to it in my youth, and I think I wore my VCR tape out over the years. Really do need to add it to the DVD collection.
When we moved South, a little girl walked into our kitchen, looked around and said "Where's the Mom?" I knew we were in trouble then.