One-Eyed Jacks
Encyclopedia
One-Eyed Jacks, a 1961
Western, is the only film directed by actor Marlon Brando
, who also played its lead character, Rio.
The film was originally to be directed by Stanley Kubrick
and Sam Peckinpah
. Other members of the cast include Karl Malden
, Slim Pickens
, Katy Jurado
and Ben Johnson
.
Rio figures the Rurales will be "swarming all over us inside an hour." One partner might take the remaining pony and ride to a little jacalito down the canyon about five miles and return with fresh mounts. They shake for it, with Rio fixing the deal so his pal Dad can be the one to go.
Dad gets to a corral, strapping the swag bag onto a fresh pony, but he gets second thoughts. He casts one eye towards a point on the ridge sure to be taken by the Rurales, and with the other he gazes off in the opposite direction out past a low-lying treeline towards the border and safety. One way leads to danger and a poor chance at surviving with half the booty, the other towards a virtual certainty with all of it. After a decidedly short moment of reflection, he takes the latter and leaves his friend to be taken by Rurales. Rio is arrested, and is transported to prison by way of the jacalito, where he learns firsthand of Dad's betrayal from the owner.
Rio spends five years in a "stinkin' Sonora prison," which allows him to concentrate on Dad's having abandoned him. When he locates his former partner in crime, Longworth has become the sheriff of Monterey, California. Dad finally gets a chance to "explain" why he left his friend back in Mexico but tries again to deceive Rio by lying about why he never returned.
Rio plans a bank robbery in Monterey with his new partners Chico Modesto and Bob Emory. But his plans are sidetracked when he falls in love with Longworth's stepdaughter, Louisa, and when Dad administers a vicious beating with a whip in front of the entire town.
While recovering from his wounds near the ocean, Rio struggles with his conflicting desires to love the girl and to kill her stepfather for revenge. He decides to forgo vengeance, fetch Louisa and leave, but Emory kills Chico and pulls off the bank job. However, the heist goes wrong and a bystander is killed. Rio is falsely accused and locked up by Longworth, who desperately wants to kill Rio in an attempt to absolve his own guilt over the earlier betrayal. Rio is due to be hanged in two days.
Louisa visits Rio in jail, first to confess that she is going to have his baby, and then to attempt to smuggle a miniature pistol. Rio bluffs his way out of jail with the unloaded pistol, and helps himself to the revolver of sadistic deputy Lon Dedrick. In the center of town, under fire and left with no choice, he kills Longworth in a final showdown.
In the closing scene, Rio and Louisa ride out to the dunes and say a sentimental farewell. Rio will now be a hunted man and Louisa realizes that they have no future together.
, already famed as the creator of The Twilight Zone
series, wrote an adaptation of the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider (1956) — which was itself simply a novelization of the career of Billy the Kid
relocated to Monterey, California
— at the request of producer Frank P. Rosenberg. The treatment was rejected.
Rosenberg next hired Sam Peckinpah
, who finished his first script on 11 November 1957. Marlon Brando's Pennebaker Productions had paid $40,000 for the rights to Authentic Death and then signed a contract with Stanley Kubrick
to direct for Paramount Pictures. Peckinpah handed in a revised screenplay on 6 May 1959. Later, Brando fired Peckinpah and hired Calder Willingham
, but he and Brando stalled, so both Willingham and Kubrick were fired. Guy Trosper
became the new screenwriter and worked on the story with Brando, who hired himself as director.
The movie had very little resemblance to the Neider novel, and what remains has much more resonance with history than fiction. At various times, the two credited screenwriters and the uncredited Peckinpah have claimed (or had claimed for them) a majority of the responsibility for the film. When Karl Malden answered the query about who really wrote the story he said: "There is one answer to your question — Marlon Brando, a genius in our time."Stuart Mitchner.
' last feature released in VistaVision
. Cinematographer Charles Lang
received an Academy Award
nomination in the Best Cinematography, Color category that year. Upon release, it made no money, leading to Brando turning out unsuccessful films, leading to the disastrous remake of Mutiny On The Bounty
.
Brando shot five hours of additional footage that was later destroyed. Later, other directors worked on the rest of the film after Brando "walked away" from the production. He did not direct another film in his later years, but he did continue to act, and the film would lead to mixed reaction from the critics and some like from Brando fans over the years.
It was the first American film for Pina Pellicer
, who died in 1964 at age 30, a presumed suicide.
reports that 46% critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.2/10. Bosley Crowther
of The New York Times
, favourably influenced by Brando's efforts, noted: "... Directed and played with the kind of vicious style that Mr. Brando has put into so many of his skulking, scabrous roles. Realism is redolent in them, as it is in many details of the film. But, at the same time, it is curiously surrounded by elements of creamed-cliché romance and a kind of pictorial extravagance that you usually see in South Sea island films." Variety
, on the other hand, wrote: "It is an oddity of this film that both its strength and its weakness lie in the area of characterization. Brando's concept calls, above all, for depth of character, for human figures endowed with overlapping good and bad sides to their nature." Dave Kehr
of The Chicago Reader
wrote: "There is a strong Freudian pull to the situation (the partner's name is “Dad”) that is more ritualized than dramatized: the most memorable scenes have a fierce masochistic intensity, as if Brando were taking the opportunity to punish himself for some unknown crime."
created by David Lynch
and Mark Frost
. That it shares the same name as this film is acknowledged in dialogue between Donna Hayward
and Audrey Horne
, where Audrey asks Donna if she has heard of One-Eyed Jacks and Donna responds "Isn't that that western with Marlon Brando
?"
1961 in film
The year 1961 in film involved some significant events, with West Side Story winning 10 Academy Awards.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:* Atlantis, the Lost ContinentB...
Western, is the only film directed by actor Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
, who also played its lead character, Rio.
The film was originally to be directed by Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
and Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
. Other members of the cast include Karl Malden
Karl Malden
Karl Malden was an American actor. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, On the Waterfront and One-Eyed Jacks...
, Slim Pickens
Slim Pickens
Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. , better known by the stage name Slim Pickens, was an American rodeo performer and film and television actor who epitomized the profane, tough, sardonic cowboy, but who is best remembered for his comic roles, notably in Dr...
, Katy Jurado
Katy Jurado
Katy Jurado , born María Cristina Estela Marcela Jurado García in Mexico, D.F., was a Mexican actress who had a successful film career both in Mexico and in Hollywood....
and Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson (actor)
Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns. He was also a rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and rancher.-Personal life:...
.
Plot
Rio (also called "The Kid"), his partner Dad Longworth, and a third man named Doc, rob a bank. The robbery is successful, but some Mexican Rurales attack and kill Doc. Dad and Rio manage to escape in the desert followed by a posse.Rio figures the Rurales will be "swarming all over us inside an hour." One partner might take the remaining pony and ride to a little jacalito down the canyon about five miles and return with fresh mounts. They shake for it, with Rio fixing the deal so his pal Dad can be the one to go.
Dad gets to a corral, strapping the swag bag onto a fresh pony, but he gets second thoughts. He casts one eye towards a point on the ridge sure to be taken by the Rurales, and with the other he gazes off in the opposite direction out past a low-lying treeline towards the border and safety. One way leads to danger and a poor chance at surviving with half the booty, the other towards a virtual certainty with all of it. After a decidedly short moment of reflection, he takes the latter and leaves his friend to be taken by Rurales. Rio is arrested, and is transported to prison by way of the jacalito, where he learns firsthand of Dad's betrayal from the owner.
Rio spends five years in a "stinkin' Sonora prison," which allows him to concentrate on Dad's having abandoned him. When he locates his former partner in crime, Longworth has become the sheriff of Monterey, California. Dad finally gets a chance to "explain" why he left his friend back in Mexico but tries again to deceive Rio by lying about why he never returned.
Rio plans a bank robbery in Monterey with his new partners Chico Modesto and Bob Emory. But his plans are sidetracked when he falls in love with Longworth's stepdaughter, Louisa, and when Dad administers a vicious beating with a whip in front of the entire town.
While recovering from his wounds near the ocean, Rio struggles with his conflicting desires to love the girl and to kill her stepfather for revenge. He decides to forgo vengeance, fetch Louisa and leave, but Emory kills Chico and pulls off the bank job. However, the heist goes wrong and a bystander is killed. Rio is falsely accused and locked up by Longworth, who desperately wants to kill Rio in an attempt to absolve his own guilt over the earlier betrayal. Rio is due to be hanged in two days.
Louisa visits Rio in jail, first to confess that she is going to have his baby, and then to attempt to smuggle a miniature pistol. Rio bluffs his way out of jail with the unloaded pistol, and helps himself to the revolver of sadistic deputy Lon Dedrick. In the center of town, under fire and left with no choice, he kills Longworth in a final showdown.
In the closing scene, Rio and Louisa ride out to the dunes and say a sentimental farewell. Rio will now be a hunted man and Louisa realizes that they have no future together.
Cast
- Marlon BrandoMarlon BrandoMarlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
as Rio - Karl MaldenKarl MaldenKarl Malden was an American actor. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, On the Waterfront and One-Eyed Jacks...
as Dad Longworth - Ben JohnsonBen Johnson (actor)Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns. He was also a rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and rancher.-Personal life:...
as Bob Emory - Katy JuradoKaty JuradoKaty Jurado , born María Cristina Estela Marcela Jurado García in Mexico, D.F., was a Mexican actress who had a successful film career both in Mexico and in Hollywood....
as Maria Longworth - Pina PellicerPina PellicerJosefina Yolanda Pellicer López de Llergo , professionally known as Pina Pellicer, was a Mexican actress known in Mexico for portraying the female lead in Macario , and in the United States as Louisa alongside Marlon Brando in the Brando-directed movie One-Eyed Jacks .- Family :Pellicer was born in...
as Louisa - Slim PickensSlim PickensLouis Burton Lindley, Jr. , better known by the stage name Slim Pickens, was an American rodeo performer and film and television actor who epitomized the profane, tough, sardonic cowboy, but who is best remembered for his comic roles, notably in Dr...
as Lon Dedrick - Larry Duran as Chico Modesto
Adaptation and development
Rod SerlingRod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...
, already famed as the creator of The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...
series, wrote an adaptation of the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider (1956) — which was itself simply a novelization of the career of Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid
William H. Bonney William H. Bonney William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier...
relocated to Monterey, California
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
— at the request of producer Frank P. Rosenberg. The treatment was rejected.
Rosenberg next hired Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
, who finished his first script on 11 November 1957. Marlon Brando's Pennebaker Productions had paid $40,000 for the rights to Authentic Death and then signed a contract with Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
to direct for Paramount Pictures. Peckinpah handed in a revised screenplay on 6 May 1959. Later, Brando fired Peckinpah and hired Calder Willingham
Calder Willingham
Calder Baynard Willingham, Jr. was an American novelist and screenwriter. He cowrote several notable screenplays, including Paths of Glory and One-Eyed Jacks ....
, but he and Brando stalled, so both Willingham and Kubrick were fired. Guy Trosper
Guy Trosper
Guy Trosper was an American screenwriter. He came to prominence in Hollywood because of his scripts for two baseball movies: The Stratton Story in 1949, a big hit for James Stewart, and The Pride of St...
became the new screenwriter and worked on the story with Brando, who hired himself as director.
The movie had very little resemblance to the Neider novel, and what remains has much more resonance with history than fiction. At various times, the two credited screenwriters and the uncredited Peckinpah have claimed (or had claimed for them) a majority of the responsibility for the film. When Karl Malden answered the query about who really wrote the story he said: "There is one answer to your question — Marlon Brando, a genius in our time."Stuart Mitchner.
Production
The film was Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
' last feature released in VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....
. Cinematographer Charles Lang
Charles Lang
Charles Bryant Lang, Jr., A.S.C. was an American cinematographer.Early in his career he worked with the Akeley camera, a gyroscope-mounted "pancake" camera designed by Carl Akeley for outdoor action shots...
received an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
nomination in the Best Cinematography, Color category that year. Upon release, it made no money, leading to Brando turning out unsuccessful films, leading to the disastrous remake of Mutiny On The Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty
The mutiny on the Bounty was a mutiny that occurred aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, and has been commemorated by several books, films, and popular songs, many of which take considerable liberties with the facts. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the...
.
Brando shot five hours of additional footage that was later destroyed. Later, other directors worked on the rest of the film after Brando "walked away" from the production. He did not direct another film in his later years, but he did continue to act, and the film would lead to mixed reaction from the critics and some like from Brando fans over the years.
It was the first American film for Pina Pellicer
Pina Pellicer
Josefina Yolanda Pellicer López de Llergo , professionally known as Pina Pellicer, was a Mexican actress known in Mexico for portraying the female lead in Macario , and in the United States as Louisa alongside Marlon Brando in the Brando-directed movie One-Eyed Jacks .- Family :Pellicer was born in...
, who died in 1964 at age 30, a presumed suicide.
Critical reception
One-Eyed Jacks received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 46% critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.2/10. Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, favourably influenced by Brando's efforts, noted: "... Directed and played with the kind of vicious style that Mr. Brando has put into so many of his skulking, scabrous roles. Realism is redolent in them, as it is in many details of the film. But, at the same time, it is curiously surrounded by elements of creamed-cliché romance and a kind of pictorial extravagance that you usually see in South Sea island films." Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, on the other hand, wrote: "It is an oddity of this film that both its strength and its weakness lie in the area of characterization. Brando's concept calls, above all, for depth of character, for human figures endowed with overlapping good and bad sides to their nature." Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr is an American film critic. A critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for many years, he writes a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases, in addition to contributing occasional pieces on individual films or filmmakers.-Early life and education:Dave Kehr did...
of The Chicago Reader
The Chicago Reader
The Chicago Reader is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded in 1971 by a group of friends from Carleton College...
wrote: "There is a strong Freudian pull to the situation (the partner's name is “Dad”) that is more ritualized than dramatized: the most memorable scenes have a fierce masochistic intensity, as if Brando were taking the opportunity to punish himself for some unknown crime."
In popular culture
One-Eyed Jacks is the name of a brothel in the t.v. series Twin PeaksTwin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
created by David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
and Mark Frost
Mark Frost
Mark Frost is an American novelist, television/film writer, director, who is best known as a writer for the TV show Hill Street Blues and co-creator of the show Twin Peaks.-Personal life:...
. That it shares the same name as this film is acknowledged in dialogue between Donna Hayward
Donna Hayward
Donna Hayward is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost.Donna is the best friend of Laura Palmer, and after her death she is obsessed with finding out who killed her and why, with the help of James Hurley,...
and Audrey Horne
Audrey Horne
Audrey Horne is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. She was played by Sherilyn Fenn.Audrey is 18 years old during the action of the series...
, where Audrey asks Donna if she has heard of One-Eyed Jacks and Donna responds "Isn't that that western with Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
?"