Reel Classics: The Ox-Bow Incident

Our Reel Classic today is set in Bridger’s Wells, Nevada in the year 1885. A cou­ple of drift­ing cow­boys ride into town and head for the local saloon. So far, this sounds like your typ­i­cal Western, doesn’t it? But here it turns from the for­mu­la­ic “good guys wear white hats and win in the end” Western. There is no Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy char­ac­ter in this story.

Henry Fonda plays Gil Carter, one of the drifters; his pal is Art Croft (Harry Morgan). They are a cou­ple of inno­cent cow­boys who get caught up in a dra­ma after walk­ing into that saloon. The news comes in that a local ranch­er, Larry Kincaid, has been mur­dered, and his cat­tle rus­tled from his ranch. The ranch­er was well-liked, and the towns­peo­ple are upset. The sher­iff is out of town, but a posse is quick­ly formed. A local for­mer Confederate army offi­cer quick­ly assumes lead­er­ship of this mob. We soon learn that Major Tetley (Frank Conroy) has a very big ego and loves to feed it with the need to be in con­trol. Our two drifters decide to join the posse. Arthur Davies (Harry Davenport) also joins the posse, hop­ing to pre­vent a lynch­ing. He is the voice of rea­son and jus­tice in a mob dri­ven by vengeance. 

As the sto­ry pro­ceeds, the posse finds three men with cat­tle bear­ing the Kincaid brand in Ox-Bow Canyon. The three are ques­tioned by mem­bers of the posse and claim to have bought the cat­tle but have no bill of sale. The three are Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), a hus­band and father to young chil­dren, a Mexican named Juan Martinez (Anthony Quinn), and a senile old man named Alvin Hardwicke (Francis Ford).

Martin pro­claims their inno­cence and indi­cates that the posse has no proof of their guilt, but dri­ven by Major Tetley, the mob decides to hang the three at dawn. Arthur Davies protests the deci­sion, argu­ing for jus­tice and a fair tri­al, but to no avail. Tetley struts his ego and pow­er, and the mem­bers of the mob fol­low his lead. 

Realizing his fate, Martin writes a let­ter to his wife and gives it to Arthur Davies for deliv­ery. As dawn approach­es, some dis­sen­sion begins to arise, but Major Tetley is adamant that jus­tice be served with the lynch­ings. He calls for a vote—hang them or take them to town. Only sev­en of the mob vote to take them to town to stand trial—Gil Carter being one of those to speak up and protest the lynching. 

You may already know the out­come of this sto­ry, but just in case you don’t know it, I will offer no spoilers.

Henry Fonda had a per­son­al inter­est in this sto­ry. He report­ed­ly iden­ti­fied The Ox-Bow Incident as one of his favorite films. In the trail­er below, you will hear him speak of the pow­er of the orig­i­nal nov­el The Ox-Bow Incident and his desire to be involved in the film. Interestingly, Fonda was a wit­ness to a lynch­ing at the age of 14 in Nebraska in 1919. The lynch­ing took place in Omaha when a mob lynched an African-American man, Will Brown, accused of rap­ing a white woman. The inci­dent had a last­ing impact on him.

In an inter­view in 1975 with Norman Parkinson, Fonda described his expe­ri­ences from the night he wit­nessed the lynch­ing:  “After sup­per, [my dad] put me in the car with him, and we drove back down­town [to the print­ing office]. And it was very unusu­al for me—for my dad to be tak­ing me at my age and turn­ing lights on and unlock­ing doors and going up the stairs. It’s not like doing it in the day­time. I remem­ber those phys­i­cal things, and walk­ing across this emp­ty office to a win­dow that over­looked the cour­t­house square. This was where the riot was hap­pen­ing. My father nev­er talked about it. He nev­er preached about it. We both just were observers...  It was the most hor­ren­dous sight I’d ever seen... My hands were wet and there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man dan­gling at the end of a rope.”

The inci­dent laid heavy on Fonda and report­ed­ly impact­ed his roles through­out his career, includ­ing Abe Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and Juror #8 in 12 Angry Men.

Obviously The Ox-Bow Incident was not a “feel good” movie or fan­ta­sy escape from the war going on in Europe at the time. Because of that, the stu­dio sat it on the shelf, con­cerned about how to mar­ket such a film. It was final­ly released in 1943, and though the crit­i­cal reviews were most­ly pos­i­tive, the box office recep­tion was not so good. Darryl F. Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century Fox, called it “a flop. In spite of its sig­nif­i­cance and its dra­mat­ic val­ue, our records showed that it had failed to pay its way.” 

The crit­ic for The New York Times wrote, “It is not a pic­ture which will bright­en or cheer your day. But it is one which, for sheer, stark dra­ma, is cur­rent­ly hard to beat.”  Variety described it as “a pow­er­ful preach­ment against mob lynch­ing... Director William Wellman has skill­ful­ly guid­ed the char­ac­ters and dri­ven home the point that hang­ing is unwar­rant­ed. Fonda mea­sures up to star rat­ing.”  It received one Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Best Picture. It lost out to Casablanca.

Henry Fonda iden­ti­fied two films as his favorites made dur­ing his stay with 20^th Century Fox—this film and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Interestingly, actress Jane Darwell appeared with him in both of these films. In The Ox-Bow Incident she por­trayed the gruff Ma Grier, part of the lynch mob. In The Grapes of Wrath she por­trayed the much more lik­able Ma Joad.

In September 1944, “The Screen Guild Theater” broad­cast­ed a radio adap­ta­tion of the movie. Another inter­est­ing note is that Gil Carter’s role was ini­tial­ly offered to Gary Cooper, but he turned it down. He would lat­er star in anoth­er clas­sic Western that was not the “typ­i­cal” cow­boy movie, High Noon (1952).

The direc­tor, William Wellman, had to nego­ti­ate with Zanuck to get this film made even though he was a well-respect­ed direc­tor known for such pop­u­lar films as The Public Enemy (James Cagney), Nothing Sacred (Carole Lombard), and A Star Is Born (Frederic March). Wellman report­ed­ly loved the nov­el and was adamant about bring­ing the sto­ry to film, hav­ing bought the rights him­self. Zanuck wasn’t con­vinced that the pub­lic want­ed to see a “social mes­sage” film but relented.

As men­tioned above, the film was based on the 1940 nov­el The Ox-Bow Incident, writ­ten by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. It was his first nov­el. He had anoth­er nov­el adapt­ed to the screen—Track of the Cat (1954) star­ring Robert Mitchum. 

The Ox-Bow Incident was includ­ed in the 1998 American Film Institute’s list of films nom­i­nat­ed for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies. It has also been includ­ed in Steven Schneider’s “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.” 

This sto­ry focus­es on the con­cept of jus­tice and the law and how we as a soci­ety car­ry that out. In one of the final scenes, the accused Donald Martin’s let­ter to his wife is read aloud to the crowd. The mes­sage in that let­ter is pow­er­ful. Martin states, “A man just nat­u­ral­ly can’t take the law into his own hands and hang peo­ple with­out hurtin’ every­body in the world, ’cause then he’s just not break­ing one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sher­iffs you hire to car­ry it out. It’s every­thing peo­ple have found out about jus­tice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very con­science of human­i­ty. There can’t be any such thing as civ­i­liza­tion unless peo­ple have a conscience...” 

Though set in a sto­ry based in Nevada in 1885, this mes­sage holds just as true today. We must be wary of the ego­tis­tic, pow­er-hun­gry peo­ple who will work to try to make peo­ple buy into their def­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice, as you can be sure that there will be inno­cent folks suf­fer­ing at their expense.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates The Ox-Bow Incident at 8 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 92% and an Audience Score of 91%. 

In search­ing my Roku device, I found the film avail­able for free stream­ing on the Classic Film Time site. The Clark County Public Library does not have a copy of the DVD on the shelf, but I feel cer­tain staff will obtain a copy if you ask. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia. I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below, let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon. Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed. More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site, Facebook page, and WinCity Voices Facebook page.