FLAME OF THE BARBARY COAST

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER-DIRECTOR.. JOSEPH KANE
REPUBLIC PICTURES

327

INFORMATION FROM IMDb

Plot Summary

Duke falls for Flaxen in the Barbary Coast in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loses money to crooked gambler Tito, goes home and PL: learns to gamble, and returns. After he makes a fortune he opens his own place with Flaxen as the entertainer. The 1906 quake destroys his place.

Summary written by Ed Stephan

Montana cowboy Duke Fergus travels to 1906 San Francisco to collect a debt from Tito Morell who runs a place on the dodgy Barbary Coast. Though he heads home after losing the money to Morell's card-sharping, Duke takes a crash course on card play and returns with all his savings ready to take on Morell and start up his own place. A lot of this is due to Morell's woman Flaxen whom Duke has fallen for. The earth may soon be moving for him in quite dramatic ways.

Summary written by Jeremy Perkins

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Prescott Chaplin story
Borden Chase screenplay

Full Cast

John Wayne .... Duke Fergus
Ann Dvorak .... Ann 'Flaxen' Tarry
Joseph Schildkraut .... Boss Tito Morell
William Frawley .... Wolf Wylie
Virginia Grey .... Rita Dane
Russell Hicks .... Cyrus Danver, Owner San Francisco Star
Jack Norton .... Byline Conners, Reporter San Francisco Star
Paul Fix .... Calico Jim
Manart Kippen .... Dr. Gorman
Eve Lynne .... Martha, Morell's Secretary
Marc Lawrence .... Joe Disko, Gambler
Butterfly McQueen .... Beulah, Flaxen's Maid
Rex Lease .... Collingswood, headwaiter
Hank Bell .... Hank, cabby
Al Murphy .... Horseshoe Brown
Eddie Acuff .... Smokey, the Train Engineer (uncredited)
Doc Adams .... Barfly (uncredited)
Melva Anstead .... Dancehall Girl (uncredited)
Edmund Cobb .... Townsman (uncredited)
Bud Geary .... Henchman (uncredited)
Frank Hagney .... Morell Henchman (uncredited)
Stuart Hamblen .... Jake (uncredited)
Frank Jaquet .... Prominent Citizen (uncredited)
Willie Keeler .... Barfly (uncredited)
Patricia Knox .... Dancehall Girl (uncredited)
Tom London .... Townsman (uncredited)
Adele Mara .... Marie (uncredited)
Frankie Marvin .... Cowboy (uncredited)
Jack Mulhall .... Gambler (uncredited)
Bud Osborne .... Driver (uncredited)
Jack O'Shea .... Barnes, the Dice Table Croupier (uncredited)
Eddie Parker .... Pedestrian (uncredited)
Victor Potel .... Train Fireman (uncredited)
Bobbie Priest .... Bit (uncredited)
Hugh Prosser .... Fred Mellon (uncredited)
Beverly Reedy .... Dancehall Girl (uncredited)
Arlyn Roberts .... Dancehall Girl (uncredited)
Hector Sarno .... Spectator at Dice Table (uncredited)
Lee Shumway .... Casey (uncredited)
Charles Sullivan .... Calico Jim's Bartender (uncredited)
Emmett Vogan .... Rita's Agent (uncredited)
Bud Wolfe .... Barfly (uncredited)

Stunts

Bud Geary .... stunts (uncredited)
Eddie Parker .... stunts (uncredited)
Bobbie Priest .... stunts (uncredited)
Bud Wolfe .... stunts (uncredited)

Hi,

To mark REPUBLIC'S 10th.birthday, they released this Duke feature.
Herbert Yates, the boss, approved a huge budget, and very substantial for the studio.
They secured the services of Ann Dvorak,Joseph Schildkraut, Virginia Grey, Paul Fix,
and Butterfly McQueen.
Joseph Kane, directed a Borden Chase script.
The reviewer, for the NYTimes said,
John Wayne is perfectly cast ....
That is, he gambles, fights, woos, and rides with consummate ease, if not historic aplomb .
However, reviewers, found the movie, lavish, if a tale too often told before.
Duke received little satisfaction from making the film.
Formulaic and trite, it lacked imagination, and was only just a step above a 'B' movie.
Rating 5/10

Hi,

I have been researching all the threads, back to the start of the JWMB,
looking for previous discussion, relating to this movie.
I have found the following, comments, and have copied them here,
so that they are now under one forum:-

Flame Of The Barbary Coast
Stumpy*
post Nov 24 2004, 04:02 AM

I bought this DVD a month or so ago but just got around to watching it tonight. (Can't remember if I ever saw it before....if I did, it's been many a year ago.)

Anyway, I can't believe some of the goofy facial expressions Duke assumes in this picture. Anybody else agree who's seen the movie?
arthurarnell*
post Nov 24 2004, 09:20 AM

Hi Stumpy

My wife when she watches his films counts his expression, for example when he gets hit on the head or kocked out his eyes roll up and his mouth opens into a sort of gape and she says that expression number nine, he uses it in all of his pictures.

Regards

Arthur
Stumpy
post Nov 24 2004, 10:48 AM

QUOTE(arthurarnell @ Nov 24 2004, 04:20 AM)
Hi Stumpy

My wife when she watches his films counts his expression, for example when he gets hit on the head or kocked out his eyes roll up and his mouth opens into a sort of gape and she says that expression number nine, he uses it in all of his pictures.

Regards

Arthur
*
I know the expressions you're talking about, Arthur, but those he gets on his face in this movie are completely different and unlike any I've seen on the Duke before. He gets the expression I'm talking about without even being hit,
Robbie*
post Nov 24 2004, 10:51 AM

Stumpy and Arther I know exactly what you are talking about, regarding Dukes expression when he gets hit I think its just to be comical e.g. when he does it in Mclintock.

Flame of Barbarry Coast is a terrible movie one of Dukes worst.
A Girl Named Jen
post Nov 24 2004, 02:16 PM

I agree that The Flame of Barbary Coast ranks toward the bottom of the heap. The woman in it annoys me (can't think of her name off the top of me 'ead) and she and Duke have no chemistry. Bleah.

But now I'm curious to see these facial expressions Stumpy mentions. Next time it's on AMC I'll tune in just for that.

My favorite look is his standard squint with the tiny half-grin and the eyebrows angling up and knitting together.*
arthurarnell
post Nov 24 2004, 06:15 PM

Hi Jen

The two women in Flame of the Barbary Coast were Ann Dvorak and Virginia Grey probably considered middle of the road actresses, although the former was possibly slightly higher thought of than the latter.

It is like some of the other Duke pictures, and I don't know if it is intentional in that the film doesn't have an out and out rotter for a villain. True Joseph Schildkraut as Tito does swindle Duke at the start of the picture and try to take over the San Fransico saloons and is beaten by Wayne, but at the end they all appear to end up a friends, the matter is treated as one big jape, they all pull together to rebuild the city after the earthquake, and Duke even tells Tito that he is stealing his girl friend from him, and Schildkraut shrugs his shoulders and smiles his acceptance of the fact.

Mind you with Ann Dvoraks voice, if she did the singing perhaps he was going to put her in San Francisco Bay as a fog horn.

If anyone is the villain its Paul Fix, and even that made a change.



Regards

Arthur
Robbie*
post Nov 24 2004, 08:53 PM

Duke also had an expression when he was put in an akward situation sometimes by a female lead.

It would be interesting to see all these pictures an idea might be to post them all here so we can better understand what expression each member is talkign about, it might be fun as well looking at the many faces of John Wayne. :D
itdo*
post Nov 25 2004, 08:16 AM

For me, the most interesting thing in Barbary Coast to look at is the script: Written by Borden Chase, one of the very best in western writing, you'll find a lot of the constallations he used so well, like the special friendly relationsship between hero and antagonist: friends at first, enemies then, and so on, like he did in Bend of the River with Jimmy Stewart and Arthur Kennedy, and of course in Red River between Wayne and Clift.
arthurarnell
post Nov 25 2004, 09:27 AM

Hi Roland,

I think you and I are on the same tack, and which I hope starts to prove my point.

In Richard D McGhee's book John Wayne, Actor, Artist, Hero he looks at these three aspects that went towards John Wayne's make up and attitude towards pictures giving what I think, in a very insightful book, is a very good statement. He says:

As the character he plays in Paradise Canyon (1935), John Wyatt, says,"About all I can do is ride and shoot," He had vigor, determination, and perseverance. they added up to "heart." These earned him the work he did in numerous low-budget films he made in the 1930s.

I think that McGhee doesn't go far enough in his assessment in that concentrating on the the actor the artist and the hero, he skips over what I think should have been a fourth part - the Man, for I think the man John Wayne was the actor the artist and the hero, possibly the man was a better actor than the actor, more of an artist than the artist and a bigger hero than the hero he portrayed.

In my previous post on this subject I suggested and which Itdo took up on, that in Flame of the Barbary Coast, whether the film is good bad or indifferant, the plot was gentle. Hero and antagonist were not that far apart, and given reasonable circumstances might have gone on to become good friends again.

An examination of many of John Wayne'n non westerns around the time of the early 1940's i.e A Man Betrayed, Lady for a Night, Lady from Louisiana, show a gentle John Wayne, a sympathetic, even sentimental person reflecting his emotional and difficult upbringing, a sentimentality and a gentleness that made men want to be his friend and woman want to mother him.

In no way would I want to suggest that his ability as an actor was negated by this because every actor brings something of his life experiences to his craft, but I think that his gentleness and sympathy come very much to the fore in many of his films and the scripts were deliberately set out to highlight this aspect.

This is also seen in many of his films where his carries the reputation of being a hard riding shoot em up gunman who always gets to kill the villain. Yet how many times does he kill the villain, In[/I]Riders of Destiny, his final show down with Slip Morgan, John Wayne's character of Singing Sandy described as one of the meanest killers since Jesse James, only wounds Earl Dwire, albeit ending his career as a gunfighter for all time, but at the end of the fight both men walk away. In'[I]Angel and the Badman'[I] it is Marshal McLintock who kills Laredo, in [I]The Shepherd of the Hills, again He spends the entire picture hating his father and threatening that if they ever meet he will kill him, but when he eventually learns the truth about Harry Carey, they embrace and walk away. Coming up to date in Chisum Forrest Tucker is killed when he falls on to a steers horn lying on the ground.

I have already in a previopus post quoted the fact that in his indian pictures he didn't get to kill many indians, I would argue that that was also the case in many of his other pictures. Certainly when the part demanded it he killed when he had to, but in general, the man rather than the actor stood out in many of his pictures and the man showed by his performances as Dunson in Red River and Eathan Edwards in the Searchers, what a fine actor the man was.

Regards

Arthur
Robbie*
post Nov 25 2004, 09:24 PM

Interesting last post Arther, in regards to Flame of Barbary Coast when you take an overview of it it simply fails in its basic objective
to be interesting and to entertain the audience.
Now some people are going to like it but in general many would rather forget it.

For me this ranks in the same category as other poor Duke efforts such as

Legend of the Lost
Undefeated
Three Faces West
And of course The Quiet Man

Only joking with my final choice. :D
A Girl Named Jen*
post Nov 29 2004, 04:56 PM

Hey Robbie - good idea with posting photos of the expressions we like. I'll try and do that some time soon.
I have a picture of him making that expression stuck to my cubicle at work, and am looking at it right now. :D

I'm not too sure about this film I got a bit bored at one point.Perhaps I have to sit down again and watch it another time.

This movie is very dull in my opinion with few to no redeaming features.

Robbie
:agent:

So many negative comments about this one... I saw it for the first time yesterday and loved it! Plenty of priceless moments. Duke is at easy in his role, and Dvorak and Schildkraut are very good too

Originally posted by etsija@Nov 12 2006, 03:34 PM
Plenty of priceless moments.
36879

That's it! :rolleyes:

I can't believe that no one mentioned the special effects in this movie. Sure the plot may be ho hum, a little slow or boring. But when that earthquake struck, I was amazed at how great it looked. The casino caving in, the street swaying and breaking apart, the hydro lines starting the fire, all great. Considering that the movie is sixty years old, I was stunned!

Here's a poster from this film -

1952

This second one is a 1950 reissue poster -

1953

The guy in the first poster looks much more like John Wayne than the guy in the reissue poster, don't you think?