Connery and McGoohan Try to Get Out of Dodge
In the late 1960’s two actors best known for playing secret agents, both fulfilled boyhood ambitions to wear cowboy hats and saddle up for a ride through the American West.
Patrick McGoohan, who needed to pad out his series about a spy who finds resignation from the secret service a difficult needle to thread, plays a frontier marshal turning in his badge in a particularly hallucinatory episode of The Prisoner called “Living In Harmony.”
Sean Connery, after vowing he would never again don 007’s tux, was wooed by British film producer Euan Lloyd to play the title role in Shalako, an international co-production based on a novella by Louis L’Amour, who also suggested hiring Connery to play the hero. It would be the actor’s first million-dollar paycheck for appearing in a film.
For differing reasons, I would not catch up with either of these Westerns until long after the dust had settled.
CBS skipped over “Living In Harmony” during the network’s first airing of The Prisoner, perhaps sensing that for viewers already struggling to wrap their heads around the series, this episode was a metaphor too far. It was also an installment rife with violence, containing brutal fistfights, a girl who is strangled to death twice (yes, the same girl), a deadly gun duel, and a suicide.
Shalako did brisk business overseas, but after taking a drubbing from American critics, the film limped away to the drive-in circuit, and second-run movie houses.
Two critical responses from the time have stuck with me all these years. One writer complained of Connery’s “strangely non-Western accent,” as if the West had not been a cultural melting pot.
Another critic called Shalako “a nasty shambles of a Western,” while detailing the jumble of continuity lapses she had noticed in one section. Judging solely from her description, I guessed that the projectionist at the screening she attended had played two reels out of order late in the film, probably reels eight and nine. After finally getting to see the film for myself I was sure of it.
I first saw Shalako in 1971 as part of a double-feature with a more recent John Wayne movie, Chisum. The pairing of the films must have seemed appropriate since both are set in New Mexico Territory circa 1880, although Chisum was filmed a thousand miles away in Mexico and Shalako’s rugged landscapes are courtesy of the Tabernas Desert in southern Spain.
Chisum is familiar territory for fans of the genre, a land-rights Western that pits kindly cattle baron John Chisum (John Wayne) against unscrupulous land dealers and a corrupt sheriff during the Lincoln County War. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid also figure into the screenplay, which requires a bunkhouse full of recognizable character actors.
Far off the beaten path by comparison, Shalako concerns the efforts of an Army Scout to protect a caravan of European aristocrats on a big-game hunt in the American West, when they stray into forbidden territory and are threatened by Apaches. Having a hunting party composed of upper-class visitors imperiled in the West gave the filmmakers a broad range of casting possibilities.
Brigitte Bardot as Shalako’s love interest seems the weakest link of the film. Besides being cast for her international star power, Bardot may have been hired to help lure Connery to sign on. Bond producers Broccoli and Saltzman had reportedly planned to add her to the cast of OHMSS for the same reason. Unfortunately Bardot recites her English dialogue phonetically, giving lifeless line readings which are also difficult to decipher. Only after filming moved to Pinewood for interiors and intimate night scenes, did the actress begin to sparkle, bringing a touch of kittenish playfulness to the role.
Besides its stars, a few other members of the cast and crew, along with some plot details, serve as a reminder that Shalako was made in the immediate aftermath of Bondmania.
Director of Photography Ted Moore and Stunt Coordinator Bob Simmons, who worked together on several Bond films, took advantage of the lull in production caused by Connery’s departure from Eon's 007 factory, to hire on with the crew for Shalako. The result is a handsome Western with skillfully-staged action scenes. The film probably would have benefitted from also having Peter Hunt at the movieola to tighten the final act.
Cast as Sir Charles Daggett, recent laryngectomy patient Jack Hawkins was dubbed by Charles Gray, who had appeared as Henderson in You Only Live Twice a year earlier, and would be cast as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever three years later.
Playing Lady Daggett, Honor Blackman reenacts her famous rendezvous in the stable from Goldfinger, though her sparring partner this time is the villain of the piece, Bosky Fulton portrayed by Stephen Boyd, who seems to be having the time of his life. Boyd would return to the Spanish desert to churn out several less expensive Westerns, including another Louis L’Amour adaptation, The Man Called Noon.
Alexander Knox, who played the American Secretary of State in You Only Live Twice (dubbed by an American actor, according to one source) is given a moment to shine in Shalako as former U. S. Senator Henry Clarke, who becomes tipsy at the hunting party’s outdoor banquet and wistfully imagines the political career he might have had.
Recalling a turning point in 1860 when he seemed poised to snatch the second spot on the Republican ticket away from Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Clarke muses that a twist of fate could have led him to the Presidency. The Senator’s reminiscence may have had a deeper significance for the actor. In 1945 Knox had been nominated for an Oscar for one of his rare leading roles, portraying a President of the United States in the film Wilson. He lost to Bing Crosby for Going My Way.
The Senator’s faithfully supportive wife is played by Valerie French, the girl who dies twice in “Living In Harmony.” I was happy to see the pair among the few survivors of the hunting party at the end of Shalako (sorry for any spoilers).
The movie actually downplays a secret which lies at the heart of L’Amour’s novella, revealed only near the end, when readers learn that the mysterious Shalako Carlin is a globe-trotting adventurer, skilled in military tactics and intelligence work.
Conversant in several languages, Shalako has fought wars on three continents, blended into the background to carry urgent dispatches past enemy lines, and can simulate Apache smoke signals expertly enough to send their raiding party on a wild goose chase. A crack shot, he’s also a demon in knife fight. In short, he was conceived as James Bond on the High Plains before there was such a thing as a James Bond movie. No wonder L’Amour liked Connery for the part.
Fortunately, the screenplay scales back Shalako Carlin's resumé, reducing him to the status of frontier legend.
Rather than appearing on a double-bill with a John Wayne Western, “Living In Harmony” might be the perfect pairing for Shalako, a film in which we watch an actor trying to shed his image by appearing in a movie which keeps reminding us of that image. It’s not a far cry from seeing Patrick McGoohan, shot dead by the Mayor of Harmony, waking to find that he’s alive, but still trapped in that same damn Village. And then Valerie French dies again.
Watching Connery in Shalako only reminds us that the actor would never quite break free from the role that made him a star. He would only get to take the occasional sabbatical from it.
At least he and McGoohan proved that they both look good in cowboy hats. Not everyone does.