The Woman They Almost Lynched - 1953

The dangerous city of Border City is run by women and into its midst comes a contest of wills between two head-strong ladies who are both good with guns.

Though a "western," this film belongs in that sub-genre of films set in the Ozarks. Instead of the perpetually open-ended 1870s "Wild West" of the genre, this film's time-frame is that of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Most of the tale takes place in Border City (located between Arkansas and Missouri), where both Northerners and Southerners are welcome—as long as they keep politics on the down-low. The town’s formidable female mayor, Delilah Courtney (played by Nina Varela), maintains order by ruthlessly suppressing agitators who try to stir up conflict between Yankee and Rebel sympathizers. This threat of violence is very real, as the film opens with a hyper-violent, extended montage (courtesy of cinematographer Reggie Lanning and editing by Fred Allen) depicting burning towns and rampaging looters. As the narrator grimly states, this is a place where “...law and order has disappeared and been replaced by lynch law.”

To run the town, gun-strapping Mayor Courtney is backed by a committee of women who serve as her advisors. Together, they have declared the town "neutral" in the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy—both flags are even shown flying side by side at the town hall. As the narrator explains, Border City has become a haven for "deserters, cutthroats, and the flotsam and jetsam of humanity... a crowded, teeming town."

Who is it they want to lynch? Sally Maris (Joan Leslie) has recently arrived in town to visit her brother, “Bitterroot” Bill Maris (played by Reed Hadley) who she hasn't seen for ten years. On her journey, she travels aboard a stagecoach that is attacked by Quantrill’s Raiders, a guerrilla bandit group led by Charles Quantrill (Brian Donlevy). Amid the chaos, she meets the boyish but lethal Jesse James (Ben Cooper), one of Quantrill’s men. The two form an unlikely, perversely immediate bond, resembling an improvised brother-sister relationship. Once in Border City, Sally discovers that her brother runs the town’s largest gambling saloon—and is stunned when she’s mistaken for a "new dance hall queen" hired to decorate his business. When one man leers, "...wonder if she knows any kissing games?" Jesse James steps in and warns the group: "Stand back and keep your talk clean. She’s a genuine article society lady."

Horrified to discover the extent of what her older brother has been doing in the ten years they've been apart, it gets worse when he doesn't even recognize her, but immediately looks her over as fresh meat for his establishment. They both recoil when their mutual identification is made clear.

Beyond her disorientation in this new world, Sally must also contend with the sometimes nearly psychotic Kate Quantrill, wife of Charles Quantrill (Audrey Totter). Kate carries and uses a revolver and has a volatile temper and was once romantically involved with Sally’s brother, Bill, before being abducted by Quantrill’s Raiders and disappearing for years. Now back in town, Kate launches a one-woman psychological assault on Bill, taunting him with memories of their past. When Bill asks what happened to her during her absence, she replies icily, "I like masterful men," referring to her husband, Quantrill, though whether she really means it in the way she is stating it is a totally different question.

In many ways, The Woman They Almost Lynched is soaked in tangled psychological motivations, pulling in multiple directions and undermining any straightforward reading of its characters—except, perhaps, for Brian Donlevy’s Charles Quantrill, whose violent, domineering style is that of an atypical Hollywood gangster. The real character mysteries lie elsewhere, especially in Kate and Sally. As Quaintrill says to Kate "...sometimes you can be the most exciting woman that ever was. But no man alive can even think of being as mean as a woman."

After our rough introduction to Border Town settles down, we mostly watch Kate and Sally and see that everything that happens across the large cast eventually centers on them and their distaste for each other. While Jesse James looks at Sally with admiration, and Quiantrill the same toward Kate (though mixed with questions about her mental state!), eventually Kate is upset and shaken because Sally "...looks at me as if I was dirt." As The Woman They Almost Lynched continues, the differences between them narrow and the similarities begin to overlap, one at a time.

Usually described as a B-movie, The Woman They Almost Lynched is based on a short story by Michael Fessier, originally published in the January 6, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. The film was initially intended to be shot in Republic Pictures’ Trucolor, their discount version of Technicolor, but budget constraints forced a shift to black and white before filming began. Nonetheless, the large cast size pushes the "B-movie" label to its limits, and there's a great deal of ambition in the script. If only Herbert Yates had more dollars on hand to fully exploit the setting, unique story, and the cast's ensemble of characters.

As a consequence of the budget, though, the narrator tells us that Border Town is a "teeming mass" of refugees and that lawlessness is the order of the day, but the budget means the size of the crowds in the street are more limited and the activities of the cast (for example, an extended "cat-fight" between Sally and Kate) means we see them scrambling about most of the time within the saloon set. This is where most of the camera work is done (and director Alan Dwan handles the multi-floored set very well in this regard) and the film's runtime of 90 minutes means we've got to really cover ground fast because of the large number of sub-stories moving along beneath the surface story of woman-against-woman in a town run by women.

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