MovieChat Forums > The Law and Jake Wade (1958) Discussion > Did Robert Taylor get away with Murder? ...

Did Robert Taylor get away with Murder?

posted 17 years ago by wtl471629
9 replies | jump to latest

Since this happens in the first few minutes of the movie I am not listing it as a spoiler. Robert Taylor feels he owes his life to Richard Widmark (and even though he is a sheriff at a far away town) so he breaks Widmark out of jail to save him from hanging to even up the score. As they start to leave two deputies come in and are gunned down by Widmark. True Taylor didn't shoot them but he was committing a crime in helping an outlaw break out of jail and probably should have been charged as an assessory to murder. Of course no one would know about it except for one jailer that Widmark knocked out with his gun but the odds are high that the jailer would ever come accross Taylor again.

Still one wonders how that one got through the codes since back then if you did a crime you had to pay in the movies. That was movie rules back then.

[–] wtl471629 17 years ago

I may have jumped the gun in my question. I read where one of the reviewers said the jailers were wounded and not killed. It has been a while since I have seen the movie and hopefully he was right. He probably is right and that is probably why the code let it pass. I hope so. But Taylor still committed a crime in releasing Widmark and setting an outlaw free to possible do harm to innoncent people.

[–] wtl471629 17 years ago

A friend of mine let me watch a video he had purchased at his house the other night and it was brought out that the three deputies Widmark shot and the one he pistol whipped survived so I guess it made it all right for the censors. But Taylor did commit a crime in breaking out a convicted outlaw and killer.

[–] grhmb 16 years ago

I remember seeing this splendid western as a child in England in 1958. It seemed in western movies and especially western comic books pistol whipping people from behind, often just knocking them out for a few minutes, was regular practice and it didn't really hurt at all. Now it seems as an aged adult: Ye Gods! Americans are a brutal race!

[–] hondo551 16 years ago

Thank your lucky stars we brutal Americans are always there to pull your fat out of the fire! Besides, you Englishmen didn't seem to be all that polite when you were subjugating the people of the world when you were forming your great empire on which the sun never set. LOL

Really good westerns are morality plays where decisions are made, issues are resolved, by people questioning what they do and why and not being able to afford themselves the luxury of a police officer and a court. The Westerner is someone who has to do the dirty things in life we now let the government do for us, and we all know the government rarely does anything well.

So much of what is in a western is fanciful story telling that bears little resemblance to the truth. 140 years ago the first classic gunfight took place with Bill Hickok. The days of the Old West were half over and those sorts of things almost never happened. Outlaws taking over a town were usually shot up by armed townspeople. Think of the James and Younger and Dalton brothers. Winchester model 1892s are used across the latter half of the 19th Century in westerns, but they didn't show up till 1892 as the rare new gun in the neighborhood. Clubbing a cowboy over the head with a Colt is almost as bad as a carpenter's hammer and just as deadly as a .45 to the head. The old knock 'em out with a Colt "hammer" is pure Hollwood.

If you're looking for history, stay away from westerns and tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur and Ivanhoe. Get to the meat of story, the lessons to be learned, and just get past all the fanciful crap the legends throw in there!

[–] grhmb 16 years ago

Exactly my point Honey. Lancelot

[–] Captain_Augustus_McCrae 12 years ago

hondo,
You are not quite correct about the business of using a revolver as a club. This practice, now called "pistol whipping", was referred to as "buffaloing" on the Frontier. Wyatt Earp shot maybe 8 or 9 men, but as a Frontier law officer in Wichita and Dodge City he buffaloed hundreds. Both these towns were "posted", meaning guns could not be carried openly in city limits. If Earp, his brothers, Bat Masterson or any of the lawmen saw a cowboy carrying a revolver, they would slip up behind them, give them a tap on the head with a revolver butt, and cart them off to jail. The lawmen were paid $2.00 per arrest. This is exactly what Virgil Earp did to Ike Clanton on the morning of October 26, 1881- just hours before the so-called OK Corral shootout. Clanton was taken before a judge and fined.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae

[–] kindeyes 12 years ago

Better to beat em up then kill em....
The early bird might get the worm,
But the 2nd mouse gets the cheese!
Kindeyes

[–] cowgoesmoo 16 years ago

By 1958, community standards had changed dramatically since the Hays Code of the 1930s. I think a number of films were emerging around this time (The Apartment and Some Like It Hot come to mind) that flaunted aspects of the code. Although those were the movie rules back then, that doesn't mean they were being faithfully observed.

[–] wtl471629 16 years ago

Hey cowgoesmoo I once hear that in the end they had to pay $1M to leave Clark Gable's d word in the movie. They paid it because it added to the movie. And in 1939 $1M was really some money probably about $100M today. But the movie did great at the box office and they felt like it was worth it.