Jimmy, Hank, and the Disneyland Hookers
One watches "The Cheyenne Social Club" in a kind of wry amazement. There are scenes where James Stewart and Henry Fonda share the screen together...two handsome men in varying stages of older age...and you think: My God, look at all the film history standing right there, side by side!
I mean we're talking Mr. Smith and Tom Joad; "Harvey" and "Twelve Angry Men"; George Bailey and Mr. Roberts; Scottie Ferguson and Manny Ballestrero. Right there in front of us. Don't they know who they ARE?
All the movies those two had been in, all the classics tales they COULD have been in (Henry Fonda was Wyatt Earp in "My Darling Clementine" and Jimmy Stewart was almost Doc Holliday, but John Ford went with Victor Mature), and here they are in 1970 as a new decade of New Hollywood commences and Jimmy and Hank are doing a cool cowboy-buddy act at a whorehouse with Disneyfied Playboy bunny babes, led by Shirley Jones.
Briefly on Shirley Jones: I think she did this movie while also playing the white-bread single mom on "The Partridge Family," and it was a wonderful flashback to see Shirley in seductive long hair in "Cheyenne Social Club" instead of that pert short cut that made her so decidedly "mom-like" on the Partridge show.
Jones had famously won the 1960 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for what writer Stephen Rebello called "an abrupt about-face as a hooker" in "Elmer Gantry." It was quite nostalgic to see Jones...and her cleavage...at work in this new hooker fantasy ten years after "Gantry".
The other hookers were a familiar bunch. Always-grinning, always-on Sue Ann Langdon had been trying to push the sex starlet envelope for years...she had shown bare bottom with Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford a few years earlier in the equally randy "The Rounders." Jackie Joseph was Ken "F Troop" Berry's pixieish little wife, here outfitted with a cleavage dress and surprisingly seductive in the playing.
And a va-va-VOOM redhead whose name escapes me famously came on to James Stewart in a see-through blouse in a scene that Jimmy and director Gene Kelly(Gene Kelly!) said never should have been put in the picture. Yeah, right. (This redhead also tempted Walter Matthau in a spectacular black teddy in 1967's "Guide for the Married Man." She must have been a Playboy model. She had the look.)
The plot? Jimmy and Hank are cowpokes on the Texas range. Jimmy inherits his brother's "property" and the boys ride 1,000 miles to Wyomoing to find out that it is, as Jimmy says... "A whor...whoh...ho...a whorehou--" Well, Jimmy never does get it all out.
In a nice bit of 1970's style moral relatism, Jimmy tries to close down his whor--ho...house, but the Disney Hookers look pitfully homeless-bound (hence the onslaught of the redheaded cleavage in a desperate attempt to turn Jimmy around), and the town's menfolk turn against Jimmy in the polite but time-honored manner of good Rotarians since time immemorial. "You can get a drink in the bar down the street," a bartender tells Jimmy, "...but don't tell them who you are."
Meanwhile, as Jimmy goes all self-righteous(as only Jimmy can), the somewhat-more-tan-and-handsome Fonda reminds us why he's the daddy of sexpot Jane and free spirit Peter by quietly partaking of the pleasures of Jimmy's whor--hoh--ho...as best he can.
Because Jimmy's so willing to over-emote(as always), Hank slyly steals the picture away with his laid-back cool. Turns out that Fonda didn't want to do this picture and recommended Jack Elam(Jack Elam!) to play it instead. But as Jack Elam himself said, "the studio didn't want Jimmy Stewart and Jack Elam no way, no how,"...so Fonda took the part.
Stimulated by that one great line that even the most mediocre of movies can have -- in this one, its when a mean varmint introduces himself to Jimmy by saying "You know what I don't like about YOU?" -- "The Cheyenne Social Club" brings on the Western gunfight action at the end. Jimmy and Shirley look to have to fight the varmint's whole family all alone...but you just know Hank will come riding to the rescue.
"Winchester '73," this isn't. "The OxBow Incident," this isn't.
But darn if it wasn't great in 1970 to see Jimmy and Hank striding side by side (they'd been pitted AGAINST each other 3 years earlier in the nastier "Firecreek") and amiably walking into that whor-hoh-ho..house for a near final ride into the sunset together. Stewart made only one more film as a leading man -- "Fool's Parade" the very next year, 1971. This is better.