The Baron of Arizona (1950)
The Baron of Arizona (1950), written and directed by Samuel Fuller.
A fictionalized account of the career of James Reavis, forger and con-man, who spent years creating a phony history to establish his ownership of a big chunk of the American Southwest.
This is a small, quickly made film. I review it because I want to be a completist for Vincent Price and director Fuller.
Swindler though he is, somehow we are rooting for Reavis. This is an odd subject for tough-guy Fuller, who we expect to be on the side of the common folk rather than a would-be nobleman.
We understand why the citizens of Arizona are angry when told they are now subject to a Baron and have to pay him rent on their own property, but lynch mobs are always unlovely.
Our cast:
Vincent Price is delicious as the forger with big plans, playing a long game. It's not just the money: he has a need for greatness, to win big over everyone else. Eventually he falls in love with his wife, selected when she was a child for her role in his drama. He didn't expect that. Price starred in another historically-based film of American landed aristocracy: Dragonwyck (1946).
Ellen Drew is the woman he has created as heir to old Spanish land grants. Last seen in Isle of the Dead (1945), she was in another tale of unwitting fraud: Christmas in July (1940).
Familiar faces: Vladimir Sokoloff and Beulah Bondi.
Ed Wood -- age 26 -- gets his first IMDB mention for uncredited stunt work. If there he is hard to spot.
Photographed by James Wong Howe.
Available on DVD from Criterion.
