Ramrod (1947)

DIRECTOR: Andre de Toth
WRITERS: Luke Short, Jack Moffitt, C. Graham Baker
PHOTOGRAPHY: Russell Harlan
CAST: Veronica Lake, Joel McCrea, Don DeFore, Preston Foster
COUNTRY: USA
GENRE: Western
MISCELLANY: 95m; bw

Upon hearing a rival gang galloping to the doorstep, some characters in western movies head for their guns, and others head for the hills. Connie Dickason heads for the mirror.

The rivals riding up to Connie's door are associates of entrenched cattle baron Frank Ivey. He drove Connie's fiance Walt Shipley out of town, partly because he wanted to marry Connie himself, but mostly because Walt had set out to herd sheep in the territory — bad for business. Connie surprises Frank, though. Instead of giving her hand in marriage, she bitch slaps him ... one, two, three, four? times. The diminutive blonde fixes to run the ranch Walt abandoned, partly because she's got the entrepreneurial spirit, but mostly because she wants to bring Ivey to his knees. She'll destroy Frank, she warns her father (just another man in town who is in Ivey's pocket), but she'll do it without violence, because she's a woman.

At first, her disarming femininity manages to keep guns out of the conflict: When faced with Connie, Ivey's men are handcuffed by chivalry. So they target her male ranch hands, particularly "ramrod" Dave Nash, the only truly honest and decent man in town besides the sheriff. An alcoholic past is alluded to, but Dave is squeaky clean in his stiff dad dungarees cinched too high, his carefully tousled mane and his frozen half-smile. As difficult as it is to swallow sweet little Veronica Lake with her cute peek-a-boo hairdo as a scheming spitfire with a case of penis envy, it's tough to buy boy-next-door Joel McCrea as the loner tough guy with a dark past, driven back to the brink in his quest for redemption.

In contrast to Dave, his partner Bill Schell is a risk-taker and, like all the men in Ivey's gang, putty in Connie's hands. It's interesting that Connie's rival for Dave's affections, the golden-hearted, long-suffering Rose Leland, also devises a scheme to thwart Ivey that relies on his chivalry for success: the old half-dressed lady trick to halt a house search.

"Ramrod" is a perverse western in the vein of "Forty Guns" and "Johnny Guitar," but here the woman riding herd does not pack her own pistol or wear pants, and seems all the harder in her softness.
— Becky