The Films of Joseph H. Lewis - by Michael E. Grost

Joseph H. Lewis

Joseph H. Lewis was a Hollywood director, especially of Westerns and thrillers. He made many films for theaters (1937-1958) and US television (1958-1966).

Lewis has two different audiences, which do not overlap much:

Film lovers know Lewis for his great crime thrillers, Gun Crazy and The Big Combo, both classic examples of film noir.
Western TV fans admire The Rifleman, perhaps the best Western series ever made for television, and the 49 episodes Lewis directed for this series.

A hope of this web-book on Lewis is that it will bring all of his audiences together, and encourage a look at all of his over 100 films.

This web-book begins with what I call an "auteurist checklist", setting forth common themes and techniques in Lewis films. Hopefully, this checklist will form a useful overview of Lewis, for everyone from beginning film lovers new to Lewis, to professional film historians.

Some common subjects and techniques of Joseph H. Lewis films (followed by lists of films that contain them):

Detection and thinking:

Plots full of mystery - often involving the hidden past lives and personal relationships of characters (The Last Stand, The Silver Bullet, The Falcon in San Francisco, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Hangman, Suspicion, The Bullet, The Fat Man, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name)
Genuine detection, with slow, step by step uncovering of truth (Blazing Six Shooters, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, The Big Combo, Surveyors, The Hangman, The Wyoming Story, Suspicion, The Bullet, Boots With My Father's Name) and films with brief episodes of real detection (Texas Stagecoach, The Silver Bullet, Pride of the Bowery, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, The Pet, Baranca, Flowers by the Door, Sheer Terror, The Stand-In, Pompey, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, The Man from Nowhere)
Truth emerging from the unconscious mind, through sleep, illness, delirium, emotional breakdown or young children (Invisible Ghost, The Falcon in San Francisco, The Big Combo, Surveyors, The Spoiler, The Deserter, Face of Yesterday, The Wyoming Story, The Shattered Idol, The Quality of Mercy, The Hiding Place, Night of the Wolf) Truth emerges in mirror (The Spy Ring, The Silver Bullet, Surveyors) dying messages (Texas Stagecoach, The Pet)
Detectives and reasoners as heroes (The Spy Ring, The Last Stand, Blazing Six Shooters, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, The Big Combo, Surveyors, The Hangman, Suspicion, The Bullet, The Fat Man, The Hiding Place, One Killer on Ice)
Technology used to collect or interpret evidence (The Spy Ring, The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, The Bullet, The Vindicators) Lie detectors (The Big Combo, The Hiding Place)
Searches through someone's property or papers, which reveals hidden information about them, by bad guys (Singing Outlaw, The Pet, The Wyoming Story) or kids (The Spoiler, The Journey Back, The Shattered Idol, Suspicion, The Man from Nowhere) Failed searches which leave rooms in chaos (The Undercover Man, Eddie's Daughter)
Metaphors comparing the plot to classical music (The Big Combo, The Fat Man) a game of checkers (Death Never Rides Alone) street noises (A Lawless Street) a spy novel by Oppenheim (The Spy Ring) Detective hero compared to adding machine (The Undercover Man, The Big Combo)

Non-conformist Heroes - and bonding with men and women:

People who stand up to society and defy the powerful and mass opinion (The Man from Tumbleweeds, Duel of Honor, Shivaree, Eddie's Daughter, Panic, Hero, The Deserter, The Hangman, Strange Town, Baranca, The Vaqueros, The Bullet) And films which look at the dark side of conventional opinion (My Name Is Julia Ross, The Vindicators)
Male bonding, especially with social outsiders (The Man from Tumbleweeds, Pride of the Bowery, Duel of Honor, Shivaree, Hero, The Deserter, Strange Town, Baranca, Closer Than a Brother, The Journey Back, Honest Abe, Death Never Rides Alone, The Bullet, Pompey)
Sympathetic dance hall women, social outsiders who bond with the hero (The Big Combo, Eddie's Daughter, The Wyoming Story, The Vaqueros, Night of the Wolf)

Society and economics:

Whole cities or towns depicted, both characters and businesses (Pride of the Bowery, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, A Lawless Street, The Rifleman as a whole, Duel of Honor, The Safe Guard, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Strange Town, The Wyoming Story, Long Gun from Tucson, Waste, Suspicion, The Bullet, Pompey, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf)
Mutual aid, as an economic and social principle among decent citizens (The Last Stand, The Return of Wild Bill, Bombs Over Burma, The Undercover Man, A Lawless Street, Terror in a Texas Town, Panic, The Deserter, Baranca, Honest Abe, Long Gun from Tucson, The Fat Man)
Nonviolent resistance to war (Bombs Over Burma) Mass street protests (Terror in a Texas Town, The Deserter) Proposed peace rally (The Hiding Place)
Sinister leaders who take over towns, and who encourage the inhabitants to riot and run amuck (A Lawless Street, Shivaree, Panic)
Reigns of terror, with bad guys intimidating towns and the family men who have small businesses there, often through fire (The Man from Tumbleweeds, The Return of Wild Bill, That Gang of Mine, Arizona Cyclone, A Lawless Street, Terror in a Texas Town, The Patsy, Baranca, Miss Milly, The Wyoming Story, Long Gun from Tucson, Squeeze Play, The Bullet, The Guest, The Man from Nowhere)
Towns in economic decline (The Wyoming Story, Waste, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf)
Towns about to undergo economic expansion from a new resource, big rich crooks try to gain a monopoly on town (telegraph: Arizona Cyclone, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, ore smelter: A Lawless Street, oil: Terror in a Texas Town, railroad: Squeeze Play) Crooks exploit a store's monopoly (Miss Milly) Conflict over water rights monopoly (The Silver Bullet, The Man from Nowhere)
Financial exploitation of workers by bosses (Gun Crazy, The Safe Guard, Hero, The Fourflusher, Pompey) Exploitation of immigrants (A Lady Without Passport) Crooked landlord of farmer (The Fourflusher) Women sold into marriage to pay a family debt (I Take This Woman) Men who sell themselves as workers for a period to a boss (Pride of the Bowery, The Fourflusher, Pompey)
Slavery (Pompey)
Honest businesses coming to town, making for progress (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, The Safe Guard, Surveyors)
Telegraphs seen as a positive social influence (The Return of Wild Bill, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, The Deadly Wait, The Deserter) Radio used to send messages (The Spy Ring, Bombs Over Burma, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, The Hiding Place) Telegraph offices (Courage of the West, The Vindicators, The Man from Nowhere)
Roads being built (Texas Stagecoach, Pride of the Bowery, Bombs Over Burma) Railroads being built (Surveyors, Suspicion) Telegraph wires laid (Arizona Cyclone, Boss of Hangtown Mesa) Dams built (The Silver Bullet) New public library proposed (Flowers by the Door) All such construction is seen as good in Lewis
Honest working women (Courage of the West, Blazing Six Shooters, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, Arizona Cyclone, The Silver Bullet, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, A Lawless Street, The Safe Guard, Panic, Hero, The Fourflusher, Miss Milly, Sheer Terror, Death Never Rides Alone, I Take This Woman, Suspicion, Sidewinder, The Fat Man, Night of the Wolf)
Heroines that rescue themselves - and go on to rescue the hero (The Return of Wild Bill, Sheer Terror)
Concern for minorities, pro-Civil Rights (Border Wolves, That Gang of Mine, Invisible Ghost, Bombs Over Burma, A Lady Without Passport, 7th Cavalry, The Halliday Brand, Terror in a Texas Town, Duel of Honor, The Fourflusher, Baranca, Closer Than a Brother, Pompey, The Vindicators, Night of the Wolf)

Personal desires - with social consequences:

Difficulties of growing up, with impractical plans that have to change and evolve (That Gang of Mine, Pride of the Bowery, Shivaree, Boomerang, Surveyors, Hero, Heller, The Fourflusher, The Martinet, The Shattered Idol, A Young Man's Fancy, Sidewinder, Old Tony) Anti child abuse (The Pet, Heller) anti corporal punishment for kids (The Undercover Man, Face of Yesterday, The Hiding Place) physical transitions to manhood (Courage of the West, The Jolson Story, Baranca)
Young men seduced into sinister cults of guns (Gun Crazy, A Lawless Street, The Safe Guard, Shivaree, Boomerang, The Letter of the Law, Day of the Hunter, Face of Yesterday, Honest Abe, Death Never Rides Alone, Sidewinder, Old Tony; perhaps the shooting contest in Singing Outlaw, the new gun and research in The Spy Ring, the song "Blaze Away, Cowboy" in Border Wolves, the opposition to using guns to solve quarrels in Texas Stagecoach, the hitmen insisting on carrying guns in Secrets of a Co-Ed, The Big Combo, the gunsmith in Long Gun from Tucson and the ballistics in The Bullet and One Killer on Ice are related) However, collecting specialized guns can be seen as positive (Duel of Honor, The Man from Nowhere) Men with hand or arm problems, which affects their work as gunslingers (A Lawless Street, Terror in a Texas Town, The Deadly Wait, Shotgun Man, Face of Yesterday, And the Devil Makes Five) Sgt. Lewis made training films about the M-1 rifle for the US Army during World War II, and Retreat, Hell! concentrates on rifle combat.
The seductive pull of militaristic life styles (Courage of the West, The Spy Ring, Pride of the Bowery, Gun Crazy, Retreat, Hell!, Panic, The Deserter, The Martinet, The Prisoner, The Journey Back, Honest Abe) Non-military, US Government institutions organized on militaristic lines (Courage of the West, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Pride of the Bowery, The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport)
The high costs of war: shown in the aftermath, not in combat scenes (Bombs Over Burma, The Deserter, Face of Yesterday, The Prisoner, The Journey Back, Honest Abe, The Vindicators) Lewis' four films on the US Cavalry have plot connections, and have Harry Carey, Jr. in similar roles (7th Cavalry, The Deserter, The Journey Back, The Vindicators) US soldiers are massacred in battle (Retreat, Hell!, 7th Cavalry, The Journey Back, The Vindicators) A wagon train massacred (Courage of the West, Border Wolves) Opposition to air war (The Spy Ring, Bombs Over Burma)
Good guys who refuse to kill or shoot a menace or villain (Texas Stagecoach, Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, Duel of Honor, Shivaree, Boomerang, Day of the Hunter, Heller, The Martinet, Sidewinder, Pompey)
Men in crisis who strike a man who is close to them - then bitterly regret it (That Gang of Mine, The Big Combo, 7th Cavalry, Night of the Wolf) A verbal chewing out, with bad results (The Undercover Man)
Ministers and priests who preach gentleness and acceptance, as opposed to militarism and violence (Shivaree, The Martinet, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Young men with a benevolent love of riding and racing horses (Courage of the West, That Gang of Mine, The Return of October, The Pet, Hero, The Fourflusher, A Young Man's Fancy, Old Tony, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf) But also a sinister horse race (A Lawless Street) Polo (The Spy Ring)
People with strong desires for non-standard sexuality (Invisible Ghost, Secrets of a Co-Ed, Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, Duel of Honor, The Actress, A Young Man's Fancy) Some early films have humor about non-standard sexuality (Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, The Last Stand, The Silver Bullet, Boss of Hangtown Mesa)
Duels and Western fights using unusual weapons or means of combat (Pride of the Bowery, Gun Crazy, Retreat, Hell!, Terror in a Texas Town, Duel of Honor, Strange Town, Baranca, Honest Abe, The Shattered Idol, Death Never Rides Alone, Sidewinder, Pompey)
Villains who are obsessed with knives (Bombs Over Burma, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Trade, Eddie's Daughter, The Spoiler, The Guest, The Fat Man, The Hiding Place, maybe the whittling villains of The Patsy, Hero, Shotgun Man). Or who carry whips or switches (My Name Is Julia Ross, Shivaree, The Martinet, A Young Man's Fancy) Heroes can use whips (Arizona Cyclone)
Warnings that trying to be publicly recognized as The Best at something can lead a person to disaster (So Dark the Night, Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Letter of the Law, Day of the Hunter, Death Never Rides Alone) So can Thinking Big (The Spoiler) An early hero who tries to win contests as The Best (Singing Outlaw)
Workaholic characters, often slave-drivers of others (The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, The Deserter, The Guest, Night of the Wolf) This often destroys romance
The dangers of alcoholism (The Return of October, The Big Combo, 7th Cavalry, Shivaree, Boomerang, The Patsy, Eddie's Daughter, Heller, The Wyoming Story, Closer Than a Brother, The Stand-In, One Killer on Ice) The dangers of using alcohol as a stress-coping mechanism, even for non-alcoholics (The Pet, The Visitor, Night of the Wolf)
Gambling seen as purely bad, and run by villains (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, The Undercover Man, A Lawless Street, The Fourflusher, The Wyoming Story, The Bullet, The Fat Man, One Killer on Ice) Bad guys who like to gamble (The Spy Ring, Arizona Cyclone, The Undercover Man, The Shattered Idol, I Take This Woman, The Quality of Mercy) A hero with a past as a gambler he is trying to conceal (7th Cavalry)
Loss of early dreams, realization that dreams of youth will not be fulfilled (The Trade, Night of the Wolf)

Plots:

People held hostage in their homes (Courage of the West, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Big Combo, Shivaree, The Deadly Wait, The Patsy, The Spoiler, Heller, Flowers by the Door, The Prisoner, Sheer Terror, The Stand-In, I Take This Woman, Boots With My Father's Name)
Characters in jail (Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, Border Wolves, Invisible Ghost, The Silver Bullet, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Secrets of a Co-Ed, The Falcon in San Francisco, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Letter of the Law, The Deserter, The Hangman, The Martinet, The Wyoming Story, Suspicion, Sidewinder, The Hiding Place) Prison wagons (The Man from Tumbleweeds, The Stand-In) Characters who want revenge for being sent to prison (Courage of the West, The Deadly Wait, Shotgun Man, The Prisoner) courtroom scenes (Blazing Six Shooters, Invisible Ghost, Secrets of a Co-Ed, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy)
Crooks with complex swindles or schemes (The Last Stand, The Undercover Man, The Wyoming Story)
Highly emotional reunions, of people who had planned to separate, but change their minds (Gun Crazy, Night of the Wolf) or after long absence (The Undercover Man, The Wyoming Story, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name, The Man from Nowhere)
People who change their identity - voluntarily as part of heroes' undercover police roles (The Last Stand, The Falcon in San Francisco, A Lady Without Passport, The Wyoming Story, The Fat Man), or crooks with schemes (Courage of the West, Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, The Silver Bullet, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, The Falcon in San Francisco, Gun Crazy, Sheer Terror, The Journey Back), other times through coercion (Singing Outlaw, Border Wolves, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Stand-In, Pompey, The Man from Nowhere), mental illness (Honest Abe), emotional problems (Minstrel Man), amnesia (A Man Called Shenandoah episodes, The Man from Nowhere). Somewhat in-between are innocent people who change identities to protect themselves from bad guys (Courage of the West, Shivaree, The Spoiler, The Fat Man, Pompey, The Vindicators) or to go on the stage (The Jolson Story, A Lawless Street)
People who run away from home, in the course of the film (Courage of the West, Pride of the Bowery, Secrets of a Co-Ed, Minstrel Man, The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, The Big Combo, The Trade, Surveyors, Hero, The Deserter, The Wyoming Story, Closer Than a Brother, I Take This Woman, Pompey, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf) or before the film starts (Invisible Ghost, A Lawless Street, Shivaree, Eddie's Daughter; The Spoiler, The Martinet, The Shattered Idol, Sidewinder, The Fat Man, The Man from Nowhere) Some runaways abandon children (Courage of the West, Minstrel Man, The Undercover Man, Retreat, Hell!, The Wyoming Story, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Government manhunts (Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, The Trade, The Deserter, Strange Town, The Journey Back, The Hiding Place) Threats to bring in the militia, in communities that won't surrender escapees (Strange Town, Pompey) Sinister bounty hunters (The Trade, One Killer on Ice)
People murdered at night or in their beds (Invisible Ghost, Secrets of a Co-Ed, The Falcon in San Francisco, So Dark the Night, The Visitor, The Hangman, Flowers by the Door, The Bullet, The Guest, The Fat Man, One Killer on Ice)
Men looking for their father's killer (The Last Stand, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, The Silver Bullet, The Undercover Man, Terror in a Texas Town, Boomerang, Sidewinder, The Guest, The Vindicators) or that of a brother, sister, uncle or son (Blazing Six Shooters, The Martinet, The Journey Back, The Fat Man)
Struggles with illness or injury, which often has its source in animals; people are nursed back to health (Invisible Ghost, The Return of October, Retreat, Hell!, A Lawless Street, The Pet, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Panic, The Letter of the Law, Day of the Hunter, The Deserter, Strange Town, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, The Vaqueros, Honest Abe, Waste, Pompey, The Vindicators, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) Snakes attack humans (A Lady Without Passport, Suspicion, And the Devil Makes Five, Pompey) Men collapse in public (The Deadly Wait, Boomerang, The Deserter, The Vaqueros, Night of the Wolf) The anti-hunting films are related (Gun Crazy, Day of the Hunter, Pompey) Anti-euthanasia (The Visitor, The Quality of Mercy)
Mourning and funeral rituals (Border Wolves, Invisible Ghost, Bombs Over Burma, Minstrel Man, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Retreat, Hell!, 7th Cavalry, Duel of Honor, The Pet, Boomerang, The Visitor, Hero, The Spoiler, The Martinet, Face of Yesterday, Honest Abe, The Shattered Idol, Squeeze Play, And the Devil Makes Five, The Guest, The Hiding Place, The Fat Man, The Quality of Mercy, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf)
Seemingly dead characters who apparently come back to life (Invisible Ghost, Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, The Return of October, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, Face of Yesterday, The Fat Man)
Finales in swamps (Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Old Tony) This characteristic was first noted by Fred Camper. Struggles in ocean or lake (Courage of the West, Pride of the Bowery, My Name Is Julia Ross) Lyrical scenes by lakes or rivers (Courage of the West, Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Pride of the Bowery, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, The Shattered Idol, Old Tony, The Fat Man, The Man from Nowhere) Boats used by government officials (The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport, The Fat Man)
Characters buried up to their heads in the ground (Waste, The Bullet, Old Tony)

Story telling devices:

Signs (Courage of the West, The Spy Ring, Border Wolves, Blazing Six Shooters, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, Pride of the Bowery, The Falcon in San Francisco, The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Safe Guard, The Trade, Boomerang, Eddie's Daughter, Panic, Surveyors, The Spoiler, The Fourflusher, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, Honest Abe, Long Gun from Tucson, The Fat Man, The Hiding Place, The Vindicators, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) A sign-painter (Suspicion) Signs projected as shadows on walls (The Falcon in San Francisco, The Undercover Man, The Fat Man)
Newspapers used to tell story (Courage of the West, Invisible Ghost, Minstrel Man, The Jolson Story, The Return of October, Gun Crazy, The Fat Man, The Hiding Place) newsreels (The Undercover Man) TV news (The Fat Man)
Wall maps in goverment offices (A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, 7th Cavalry) maps on tables (Courage of the West, Texas Stagecoach) map in letter (The Man from Tumbleweeds)
Portraits (Invisible Ghost, The Return of October, Closer Than a Brother, The Guest) police sketches of people (So Dark the Night, A Lady Without Passport, The Hiding Place) photographs of people (Border Wolves, Pride of the Bowery, The Silver Bullet, Secrets of a Co-Ed, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, Eddie's Daughter, The Wyoming Story, Face of Yesterday, Honest Abe, The Fat Man, The Vindicators) statues of persons (Boots With My Father's Name) Wanted posters and newspaper photos of wanted men, usually of good guys (Singing Outlaw, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Gun Crazy, The Wyoming Story, The Hiding Place)

Characters:

Folksy characters who are from the Old Country somewhere in Eastern Europe (A Lady Without Passport, Strange Town, Old Tony, The Hiding Place) Italian-Americans (The Undercover Man, The Big Combo, The Fat Man, The Guest)
Comic supporting characters in Westerns, who are itinerant pitchmen driving fancy wagons (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, The Hangman, Suspicion) There is also a toy vendor (Bombs Over Burma) a fruit peddler (A Lady Without Passport) street vendors (So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man)
Comedy relief scenes, showing characters hopping or jumping about (The Trade, Suspicion) Somersaults (The Jolson Story) Piggy-back rides (The Falcon in San Francisco, The Fourflusher) Kick-the-can (Panic) Knocking on wood (I Take This Woman)
Gentle men who sing in intimate surroundings, accompanying themselves on instruments (Courage of the West, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, A Lady Without Passport, Honest Abe, A Young Man's Fancy, Old Tony, The Quality of Mercy) A Cavalry bugler (7th Cavalry) Hero who plays harpsichord (The Fat Man) villain who plays organ (The Spoiler)
Live stage entertainment, usually musical (The Silver Bullet, Secrets of a Co-Ed, Minstrel Man, The Jolson Story, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Vaqueros) Proprietors of boxing or shooting contest entertainments (Pride of the Bowery, Gun Crazy)
Men who have conferences in a hotel room, with one sitting on the other's bed (The Jolson Story, Duel of Honor, Boomerang) A man and a woman on a bed (7th Cavalry, The Trade, Sidewinder)
Two allied men who leap in synchronized unison, at the start of a gunfight (Baranca, One Killer on Ice)
Men who play chess (Invisible Ghost, Hero) or checkers (Border Wolves, Shivaree, Shotgun Man, Sheer Terror, The Journey Back) solitaire (The Bullet, Boots With My Father's Name) horseshoes (The Return of Wild Bill, The Return of October)
Men and women who like to share outdoor activities (The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, The Visitor, Old Tony)
Men who like to read, often at night (Singing Outlaw, Invisible Ghost, Bombs Over Burma, The Falcon in San Francisco, Eddie's Daughter, Panic, Surveyors, Miss Milly, Flowers by the Door, Closer Than a Brother, The Journey Back, The Shattered Idol, I Take This Woman, Squeeze Play, The Guest, Old Tony, The Fat Man, The Quality of Mercy, Pompey, Night of the Wolf) villains or anti-heroes who read newspapers (Gun Crazy, The Patsy, Squeeze Play)
An older government official at an organization expert at technology, and a young, good-looking deputy (Courage of the West, Pride of the Bowery, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, The Bullet) In some ways the unofficial Micah-Lucas team on The Rifleman also fits into this mold, as do the private eye team on The Fat Man
Mechanical devices and gizmos: wire cutters (Bombs Over Burma, Old Tony), a food stirrer with rope (Boss of Hangtown Mesa), butter churn (Flowers by the Door), long straw (The Spy Ring) bamboo pipe (And the Devil Makes Five), fixed wagon (The Shattered Idol, Suspicion), blacksmith tools (Pompey)
Disillusioning encounters by young people with celebrities they idolize (That Gang of Mine, Day of the Hunter, The Shattered Idol)
Suave, confident villains with (usually) two thug-like henchmen to carry out their orders (Secrets of a Co-Ed, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, Terror in a Texas Town, The Safe Guard, The Patsy, Eddie's Daughter, The Wyoming Story, Sheer Terror, Death Never Rides Alone, Squeeze Play, The Bullet, The Fat Man) The pattern is reversed in Hero and Long Gun from Tucson, where the villain is thug-like, and his henchmen are more gentlemanly.
Smooth, ultra-confident villains (The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Patsy, Hero, The Wyoming Story, A Young Man's Fancy, Death Never Rides Alone, Squeeze Play, The Bullet)
Crooked women, who want to be rich, and who share in their men's crimes (Gun Crazy, Terror in a Texas Town, The Visitor, Waste, The Bullet, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name)
Women who marry old men for their money (So Dark the Night, The Actress) Men who marry women for their money (The Silver Bullet, My Name Is Julia Ross) Men who marry women to get back at other men (Secrets of a Co-Ed, A Lawless Street)
Loyal wives or girlfriends of men in serious trouble (Invisible Ghost, Arizona Cyclone, The Undercover Man, 7th Cavalry, Terror in a Texas Town, Hero, The Fourflusher, The Hangman, Pompey, Night of the Wolf) Decent couples in trouble (Shivaree, The Trade, Panic)
Characters who keep promises not to speak up and reveal what they know (Pride of the Bowery, The Fat Man, The Vindicators, Night of the Wolf) or who make a heroic effort not to (The Spoiler, Baranca, The Wyoming Story, The Journey Back, The Hiding Place, The Quality of Mercy) morally dubious interrogation techniques (The Spy Ring, The Undercover Man)
Misguided kids whole steal one time (Pride of the Bowery, Gun Crazy, Heller, My Name Is Tommy)
Strange weddings (So Dark the Night, Gun Crazy, Shivaree, I Take This Woman, The Quality of Mercy, Night of the Wolf)

Food and drink:

Men who cook, and who serve the food to others (Singing Outlaw, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, Pride of the Bowery, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, The Big Combo, The Safe Guard, Shivaree, Boomerang, Eddie's Daughter, Panic, Day of the Hunter, Hero, The Fourflusher, Flowers by the Door, The Journey Back, Honest Abe, And the Devil Makes Five, Old Tony, The Fat Man)
Women who cook (The Return of Wild Bill, Invisible Ghost, Gun Crazy, A Lawless Street, Panic, The Visitor, The Spoiler, The Fourflusher, The Hangman, Flowers by the Door, Pompey) We see women actually cooking at stoves more than men; men tend to be dishing up food on the table to others, which they have cooked off-camera.
People like pie (The Spy Ring, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, Invisible Ghost, Duel of Honor, The Letter of the Law, The Visitor, Miss Milly, Sheer Terror, The Shattered Idol, I Take This Woman, Sidewinder, Old Tony, One Killer on Ice)
Apples, often stolen (Texas Stagecoach, Surveyors, Day of the Hunter, The Bullet)
Cake, at often tragedy-shrouded family celebrations (Singing Outlaw, Minstrel Man, Retreat, Hell!, The Safe Guard, Honest Abe)
Coffee (The Spy Ring, Blazing Six Shooters, That Gang of Mine, Invisible Ghost, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, 7th Cavalry, Terror in a Texas Town, Duel of Honor, The Safe Guard, Shivaree, Boomerang, The Letter of the Law, Surveyors, Day of the Hunter, Hero, The Spoiler, Heller, The Deserter, Strange Town, Miss Milly, Flowers by the Door, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, The Prisoner, The Vaqueros, The Stand-In, The Shattered Idol, A Young Man's Fancy, Death Never Rides Alone, I Take This Woman, Sidewinder, And the Devil Makes Five, The Guest, Old Tony, The Fat Man, The Quality of Mercy, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Crime bosses who eat lobster (The Big Combo, Terror in a Texas Town) or lavish meals (The Undercover Man, The Bullet) But: a good guy gourmet (The Fat Man)
Thirst (The Spy Ring, The Big Combo, The Deserter, The Prisoner, The Vaqueros, The Stand-In, Night of the Wolf)

Camera Movement:

Elaborate camera movements
Long takes, occasionally interrupted by brief insert shots
Extended sequences in which each shot has some sort of camera movement, and which have a cumulative kinetic impact (My Name Is Julia Ross, A Lawless Street, Duel of Honor, Surveyors, Baranca)
Sets that include both interiors and exteriors, allowing camera movement through both
Camera movement involving staging through windows (Singing Outlaw, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Minstrel Man, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, A Lawless Street, Shivaree, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Panic, Surveyors, Hero, The Fourflusher, Baranca, Flowers by the Door, Sheer Terror, Long Gun from Tucson, Death Never Rides Alone, Squeeze Play, Suspicion, Sidewinder, The Fat Man, The Vindicators)
Camera movement, shot from the windows of a moving car (The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport) shot from moving train (Courage of the West) from within a moving covered wagon (Panic) parallel to a moving motorcycle (The Spy Ring)
Moving camera close-ups of body regions: marching feet (The Spy Ring, Invisible Ghost, So Dark the Night, The Safe Guard, The Vaqueros, Long Gun from Tucson, Waste, Squeeze Play, And the Devil Makes Five), a holster (A Lady Without Passport, A Lawless Street, Terror in a Texas Town, Squeeze Play) a carried weapon (The Hiding Place)
Objects sliding along surfaces: the gun in the street (Gun Crazy), the bottle and glass on the bar (The Deadly Wait, One Killer on Ice), billiard balls on a table (The Shattered Idol)
Staircases, often filmed with camera movement (Invisible Ghost, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, A Lady Without Passport, A Lawless Street, The Safe Guard, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Death Never Rides Alone, The Bullet, The Fat Man, Boots With My Father's Name) Creative lighting effects on staircases (Invisible Ghost, Bombs Over Burma)
Paired sequences in which the first is a mirror image or reverse of the second - people come to an area, then leave it along a similar path (Courage of the West, The Spy Ring, Blazing Six Shooters, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, Arizona Cyclone, The Silver Bullet, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, The Pet, The Deadly Wait, The Letter of the Law, The Spoiler, Shotgun Man, The Fourflusher, Strange Town, The Actress, Face of Yesterday, The Wyoming Story, Honest Abe, Waste, I Take This Woman, The Hiding Place, One Killer on Ice, The Man from Nowhere)
Camera movements that circle around a character (Courage of the West, Invisible Ghost, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, The Deadly Wait, Honest Abe, A Young Man's Fancy, Boots With My Father's Name) Also, aerial camera movements, circling around a group below (A Lady Without Passport)
Camera movement or static shots that show people from the back, especially gunslingers (The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, That Gang of Mine, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, So Dark the Night, Gun Crazy, A Lawless Street, Terror in a Texas Town, Duel of Honor, The Safe Guard, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, The Patsy, Surveyors, Hero, The Spoiler, The Fourflusher, Strange Town, Baranca, The Wyoming Story, Death Never Rides Alone, Squeeze Play, Sidewinder, The Hiding Place, The Fat Man, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Camera movements that move straight down, vertically (Minstrel Man, Retreat, Hell!, A Lawless Street, The Fat Man)
Camera movements that follow someone as they walk completely around a table or desk (A Lady Without Passport, The Spoiler) A partial walk (The Guest) A walk around a piano (Minstrel Man)
Camera movements that stop and start, down a bar (Terror in a Texas Town, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) or a table (The Last Stand) across a room (So Dark the Night)
Camera movements that oscillate between left and right (Secrets of a Co-Ed, The Jolson Story, A Lawless Street, Duel of Honor, The Fourflusher, Miss Milly, The Shattered Idol, The Fat Man, The Quality of Mercy)
Camera movements that seem to go through walls, as they move from room to room (Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, Blazing Six Shooters, The Man from Tumbleweeds, The Return of Wild Bill, Invisible Ghost, Arizona Cyclone, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, So Dark the Night, The Hangman, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, Pompey)

Staging:

Depth filming and staging, with people crossing from background to foreground, or the reverse (Courage of the West, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Minstrel Man, My Name Is Julia Ross, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, 7th Cavalry, The Pet, Boomerang, The Patsy, Panic, Surveyors, Heller, Shotgun Man, Strange Town, Miss Milly, The Actress, The Vaqueros, Sheer Terror, The Journey Back, Honest Abe, Sidewinder, Pompey, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) Parallel walks, with two similar crossings to foreground (The Last Stand, Retreat, Hell!, Shotgun Man)
Characters surrounded by large empty space
Panoramas, showing buildings or cities in the distant background, slightly from above (Courage of the West, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, The Hiding Place) panorama with roads and landscape (The Letter of the Law)
Suspense sequences staged around mirrors (The Spy Ring, The Silver Bullet, Gun Crazy, Surveyors, Waste). A reflection in a saloon window opens the film and its suspense scene (The Pet) Mirrors used to reflect a staircase (Invisible Ghost) a fight (Boots With My Father's Name) or spiral metalwork (The Trade) Mirrors seen through windows (The Deadly Wait) Helpful women seen together with reflection (So Dark the Night, Night of the Wolf)
Two-level deep staging, looking through windows or doors (The Last Stand, The Silver Bullet, The Falcon in San Francisco, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport, The Deadly Wait, The Deserter, The Vaqueros, The Hiding Place, The Man from Nowhere)
Entrances of characters, seen through complex architecture such as doors, porches (The Return of Wild Bill, The Martinet, Sheer Terror, The Man from Nowhere)
Entrance of characters on staircases (Bombs Over Burma, The Return of October, The Visitor)
Entrance of characters seen through stagecoach windows (A Lawless Street, Eddie's Daughter, The Shattered Idol)
Characters sitting on ground, with their backs to trees (The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, The Letter of the Law, The Guest, Old Tony, Night of the Wolf)
Characters sneaking around in the background of the screen, often to evade watchers in the foreground (The Falcon in San Francisco, Shivaree, The Trade, Surveyors, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name)
Staging that sets characters facing at 90 or 180 degrees from each other, or looking in the exact same direction (The Last Stand, Bombs Over Burma, Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, Shivaree, The Trade, The Deserter, The Journey Back, Long Gun from Tucson, A Young Man's Fancy, Death Never Rides Alone, Sidewinder, Night of the Wolf)
Characters who speak dialogue while facing away from the camera
Unseen voices, coming from people off-screen (Courage of the West, Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, Border Wolves, Arizona Cyclone, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy, Retreat, Hell!, A Lawless Street, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Panic, Day of the Hunter, The Deserter, Baranca, Flowers by the Door, The Actress, The Journey Back, Sidewinder, And the Devil Makes Five, Old Tony, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Intense close-ups of men on their knees, who are suffering emotional crises. Often, a second person is trying to help them, in the background of the shot (Face of Yesterday, The Shattered Idol, And the Devil Makes Five, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) This is often linked with the subject of mourning. Heroes on their knees to sing (The Jolson Story) to examine bodies on the ground (So Dark the Night, One Killer on Ice) Similar intense close-ups of a person and a friend, but not on knees (Eddie's Daughter, Heller)
Completely still moments showing motionless objects and no people, to highlight suspense (That Gang of Mine, A Lawless Street)
Low camera angles (Blazing Six Shooters, The Jolson Story, Boomerang, Shotgun Man, And the Devil Makes Five)
Grids: list of telephone messages (Secrets of a Co-Ed) race track program (The Return of October) the line-up (The Undercover Man) floor plans (Gun Crazy) chair fabric (The Martinet) chart of dates (Night of the Wolf)
Time-lapse photography with editing jumps (Pride of the Bowery) a watch jumps in time (Secrets of a Co-Ed) superimpositions (The Jolson Story) mental image in champagne glass (The Spy Ring) tilted camera angles (Texas Stagecoach, So Dark the Night) very slow dissolves (The Undercover Man) flashbacks with odd continuity (The Vindicators)

Architecture:

Compositions with complex peaked roofs in the background (Courage of the West, The Man from Tumbleweeds, That Gang of Mine, Pride of the Bowery, Arizona Cyclone, The Return of October, Gun Crazy, The Undercover Man, Retreat, Hell!, A Lawless Street, 7th Cavalry, The Trade, Boomerang, Surveyors, The Spoiler, The Fourflusher, The Hangman, Closer Than a Brother, Strange Town, Face of Yesterday, The Journey Back, Honest Abe, A Young Man's Fancy, Suspicion, The Guest, Old Tony, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Streets that meet at a 90 degree angle, and shots that show people moving around such corners (Border Wolves, That Gang of Mine, Pride of the Bowery, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Secrets of a Co-Ed, So Dark the Night, Gun Crazy, Retreat, Hell!, A Lawless Street, Strange Town, Miss Milly, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf) Movement around a corner of a building (The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, Squeeze Play) Street plan of one receding street, one perpendicular to the right (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Return of October, Retreat, Hell!, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, The Vindicators, The Fat Man, Night of the Wolf)
Building with one door in front, one door at end of alley on left side (Gun Crazy, Surveyors, The Spoiler, Heller, The Wyoming Story, Sheer Terror)
Hay, often large amounts, used to structure an image or setting (The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, The Silver Bullet, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, Gun Crazy, 7th Cavalry, The Pet, Eddie's Daughter, Heller, The Fourflusher, Baranca, The Actress, Face of Yesterday, The Shattered Idol, A Young Man's Fancy, The Bullet, Old Tony, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf) Bales of hemp (The Falcon in San Francisco) Hay in dialogue (The Spy Ring) Odd note: many of the hay films focus on young people or teenagers
Fences with short wooden posts and thin wires running between them (Singing Outlaw, Border Wolves, Blazing Six Shooters, Texas Stagecoach, Surveyors, Squeeze Play, The Man from Nowhere) White picket fences, usually around front yards (Courage of the West, The Last Stand, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Arizona Cyclone, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, A Lawless Street, Old Tony, The Hiding Place, The Vindicators, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf) lattice work arbors, through which people pass (So Dark the Night, Night of the Wolf)
Rooms with alcoves in back (The Spy Ring, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, A Lawless Street, Duel of Honor, Flowers by the Door, Face of Yesterday, The Wyoming Story, The Guest, The Vindicators, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf)
Hidden rooms, filled with technology (Bombs Over Burma, The Big Combo) Secret passages (My Name Is Julia Ross) Secret tunnel-like pass (The Last Stand) a kid's secret lair (The Hiding Place) hiding under a bridge (Blazing Six Shooters, Boss of Hangtown Mesa) small caches for objects (The Fat Man)
Small buildings with walls mainly windows (The Return of October, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!) Inside offices with windows (The Falcon in San Francisco, The Return of October, Gun Crazy) Grillwork office backstage at theater (The Big Combo)
Decayed roofs with holes (Shotgun Man, The Wyoming Story, Waste)
Multi-paned windows that get smashed (The Man from Tumbleweeds, So Dark the Night, A Lawless Street, Shotgun Man)
Wells, often with cover structures (Secrets of a Co-Ed, So Dark the Night, The Letter of the Law, The Fourflusher, Strange Town, Flowers by the Door, The Wyoming Story, The Vindicators, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere)
Wash hanging on lines (Blazing Six Shooters, The Silver Bullet, So Dark the Night, Retreat, Hell!, The Pet) wash on fences (Surveyors, Boots With My Father's Name) a laundry (Night of the Wolf) telegraph or telephone poles, with hanging wires (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Retreat, Hell!)
Rows of horses, tied up with ropes (Texas Stagecoach, Night of the Wolf)
Semi-circular arched windows, often in police stations (So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, The Big Combo)
Deep focus shots outdoors, with cities or buildings in distance (The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, The Hiding Place)
Model ships (Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, Night of the Wolf)
Lamps, candelabras or chandeliers with hanging glass prisms (Courage of the West, Border Wolves, Blazing Six Shooters, The Return of Wild Bill, Secrets of a Co-Ed, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Return of October, The Trade, The Martinet, The Actress, The Wyoming Story, Suspicion, The Bullet, The Guest, Old Tony, The Quality of Mercy, The Fat Man, Boots With My Father's Name)
One character shining a light on another (The Falcon in San Francisco, The Jolson Story, The Big Combo, The Hiding Place)
Street lights and lanterns, geometric and used as part of complex compositions (Arizona Cyclone, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, Duel of Honor, The Deadly Wait, Eddie's Daughter, Panic, The Letter of the Law, The Hangman, The Actress, The Prisoner, A Young Man's Fancy, Squeeze Play, The Fat Man, Night of the Wolf)
Doorways with hanging curtains made up of separate straight lines (The Last Stand, Face of Yesterday, The Vaqueros, Honest Abe, The Shattered Idol, The Vindicators, Night of the Wolf)
Swinging doors (Courage of the West, The Last Stand, The Man from Tumbleweeds, The Return of Wild Bill, Arizona Cyclone, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, Duel of Honor, Shivaree, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Boomerang, Eddie's Daughter, Panic, Baranca, The Wyoming Story, Closer Than a Brother, The Vaqueros, Squeeze Play, The Fat Man, The Quality of Mercy, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere), sliding doors (Texas Stagecoach, The Big Combo, Sidewinder) and curtains that pull apart (Invisible Ghost, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Fat Man, Night of the Wolf)

Foreground objects:

Shooting through wagon wheels - Lewis was nicknamed "Wagon Wheel Joe" for liking to shoot through wagon wheels (Courage of the West, Border Wolves, Blazing Six Shooters, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, The Return of Wild Bill, That Gang of Mine, Arizona Cyclone, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Bombs Over Burma, Duel of Honor, The Deadly Wait, The Stand-In, Honest Abe, The Shattered Idol, Long Gun from Tucson)
Shooting through foreground objects, often in lateral tracking shots (The Spy Ring, Blazing Six Shooters, The Return of Wild Bill, That Gang of Mine, Invisible Ghost, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, Secrets of a Co-Ed, Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, The Halliday Brand, The Trade, Eddie's Daughter, Face of Yesterday, Sheer Terror, I Take This Woman, Suspicion, The Quality of Mercy, Pompey, The Vindicators, The Man from Nowhere) The camera movements tend to have a strong propulsion along a straight line
Compositions shot through arching tree branches (Courage of the West, Singing Outlaw, The Spy Ring, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Blazing Six Shooters, The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, Pride of the Bowery, Arizona Cyclone, Bombs Over Burma, The Silver Bullet, Minstrel Man, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, Terror in a Texas Town, The Pet, Shivaree, Panic, The Letter of the Law, Surveyors, Hero, The Spoiler, The Actress, The Journey Back, The Shattered Idol, Squeeze Play, Sidewinder, Old Tony, The Quality of Mercy, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name, The Man from Nowhere) Tree branches can arch over grave stones (Boomerang, And the Devil Makes Five) Conifer forests, filled with danger (Day of the Hunter, The Shattered Idol, Old Tony) Wiry shrubs and tangled branches, which cover the screen (Bombs Over Burma, So Dark the Night, Gun Crazy, The Fourflusher, Strange Town, Squeeze Play, One Killer on Ice, The Man from Nowhere)
Shooting characters through bars or grill work (Singing Outlaw, Border Wolves, Invisible Ghost, Arizona Cyclone, The Silver Bullet, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Secrets of a Co-Ed, Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Safe Guard, The Letter of the Law, Surveyors, The Deserter, The Hangman, The Martinet, The Prisoner, The Vaqueros, The Stand-In, Suspicion, Sidewinder, The Bullet, The Hiding Place, The Fat Man)
Shooting through barred chair backs (The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, So Dark the Night)
Shooting through doors with small, grill work windows (Bombs Over Burma, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Jolson Story) a small window (So Dark the Night, A Lawless Street) Shooting through lace curtain doorways (Face of Yesterday, Squeeze Play)
Shooting through pillars or posts (That Gang of Mine, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, A Lawless Street, The Trade, The Deadly Wait, Surveyors, Sheer Terror, The Journey Back, Long Gun from Tucson, Squeeze Play, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) The camera often moves from one side of a row of posts, to the other
Shots seen through blacksmith's (Arizona Cyclone, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, Duel of Honor, Eddie's Daughter, Pompey) through fire or fireplaces (The Spy Ring, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Invisible Ghost, Arizona Cyclone, Secrets of a Co-Ed, So Dark the Night, Eddie's Daughter)
Shooting through hanging baskets (Bombs Over Burma), chandeliers (Courage of the West, Suspicion, The Bullet), ceiling fans (That Gang of Mine, Minstrel Man, So Dark the Night), a glass lamp (Sheer Terror) candelabra (I Take This Woman) clock with pendulum, hanging bell (The Spy Ring) triangles (The Man from Tumbleweeds, Texas Stagecoach, Arizona Cyclone) cooking pots (Arizona Cyclone) circular magnifying glass (The Undercover Man, The Bullet) reins of a wagon (Border Wolves, Blazing Six Shooters, Texas Stagecoach, Arizona Cyclone, So Dark the Night) steering wheel (Gun Crazy) pitchfork (Boomerang) musicians seen in silhouette (A Lady Without Passport)
Shooting through shelves (The Silver Bullet, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, So Dark the Night, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo) closets (The Journey Back) sleeping berth (The Falcon in San Francisco)
Spirals in metal work (Bombs Over Burma, Secrets of a Co-Ed, The Falcon in San Francisco, My Name Is Julia Ross, The Jolson Story, The Return of October, The Undercover Man, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Duel of Honor, The Safe Guard, The Trade, Eddie's Daughter, Baranca, Flowers by the Door, The Wyoming Story, The Shattered Idol, Long Gun from Tucson, Waste, Squeeze Play, Suspicion, The Fat Man, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) There are also spirals in a curtain (Squeeze Play) in a chair (Singing Outlaw, The Falcon in San Francisco, The Return of October, The Fat Man, The Quality of Mercy) Spiral shadows are projected onto white clothes (A Lady Without Passport) or walls (The Safe Guard) Spirals in women's hair (Gun Crazy, I Take This Woman)

Costumes:

Men in white clothes: especially good guys, who are often wily, individualistic, intelligent non-conformists (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, A Lady Without Passport, The Big Combo, Duel of Honor, The Deadly Wait, Hero, The Shattered Idol) White clothes linked to a profession: polo uniform (The Spy Ring) scientist's lab coat (The Return of October) meat plant workers (Gun Crazy) chef, doctor (The Fat Man) The all-white and all-black clothes in The Undercover Man, The Vaqueros seem different.
Black clothes signifying villainy or not-necessarily-evil gunslingers (Courage of the West, Border Wolves, The Last Stand, Blazing Six Shooters, Texas Stagecoach, That Gang of Mine, Boss of Hangtown Mesa, My Name Is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy, A Lady Without Passport, Terror in a Texas Town, The Safe Guard, The Trade, Hero, Baranca, The Wyoming Story, Sheer Terror, Long Gun from Tucson, Death Never Rides Alone, Sidewinder, The Hiding Place, One Killer on Ice) This is mainly a Western movie tradition, not a Lewis personal characteristic, although he uses it regularly. Sometimes, the leather clothes are echoed by black leather furniture (A Lady Without Passport, The Trade, Sidewinder) A brown version of the gunslinger's costume is worn by good guy Nick (Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) Black police uniforms (The Return of October, The Undercover Man, The Fat Man, The Hiding Place)
Boots as a symbol of militarism or empty bravado (Gun Crazy, A Lawless Street, The Trade, The Patsy, Surveyors, Shotgun Man, Strange Town, The Martinet, The Prisoner, Long Gun from Tucson, Death Never Rides Alone, Waste, The Bullet, The Guest, The Vindicators, One Killer on Ice, Boots With My Father's Name, Night of the Wolf) There are also some positive images of boots, associated with sympathetic characters (The Spy Ring, The Last Stand, Bombs Over Burma, So Dark the Night, The Return of October, Eddie's Daughter, Day of the Hunter, Hero, The Fourflusher, The Wyoming Story, The Hiding Place)
Hats held in front as phallic symbols (The Last Stand, Blazing Six Shooters, Duel of Honor) guitars (A Young Man's Fancy, Old Tony) axe (Texas Stagecoach) wine bottle (So Dark the Night) coffee pot (The Quality of Mercy)
Chauffeur uniforms (The Spy Ring, So Dark the Night, The Fat Man)
Fringed cowboy outfits, the sign of a fake character (Gun Crazy, Sheer Terror) or an exaggerated one (Day of the Hunter) They can also be worn by good guys (Pompey)
Black-and-white horses (Courage of the West, Singing Outlaw, Border Wolves, The Quality of Mercy, The Vindicators) white horses (Blazing Six Shooters, Texas Stagecoach, Baranca, The Guest)
Tuxedos (The Spy Ring, The Jolson Story, So Dark the Night, Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, The Fat Man) white tie and tails (The Jolson Story)
Heroes who take their shirts off (Courage of the West, Border Wolves, Pride of the Bowery, The Undercover Man, The Big Combo, A Lawless Street, The Pet, The Deadly Wait, Boomerang, Panic, Miss Milly, The Stand-In, The Vaqueros, Squeeze Play, The Guest, The Quality of Mercy, The Man from Nowhere) Men who force other men to switch clothes with them (Boss of Hangtown Mesa) or to roll up their sleeves (The Silver Bullet) or to change their clothes (The Spy Ring, Retreat, Hell!, Branded credits, Boots With My Father's Name)
In color Westerns, heroes often dress in various color-coordinated shades of brown (A Lawless Street, Night of the Wolf, The Man from Nowhere) Brown suits, sports wear (The Return of October)
Men who shave with electric razors (Bombs Over Burma, The Big Combo) or straight razors (The Trade, The Patsy) Barbershops (A Lawless Street, The Patsy, The Vindicators) Men who clean up with a bath and shave off-screen (The Silver Bullet, One Killer on Ice)
Women who wear hanging scarves on their sleeves, which they adjust (A Lawless Street, Sheer Terror)
Criminals and bad guys who keep putting on different clothes (Boss of Hangtown Mesa, My Name Is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy, A Young Man's Fancy, The Fat Man)

These are common characteristics of Lewis, but of course, they are not found in all works. Warning: the above list is sure to be incomplete. I have only seen a portion of Lewis' film and television work.

What is "Genuine Detection"?

The phrase "genuine detection" is regularly used by critics of prose mystery fiction. But it appears less often in film criticism. Since Lewis' films are full of genuine detection (also known as "real detection" or "solid detective work" by mystery writers) it is worth a look.

"Genuine detection" can be defined as mysteries that are solved by investigation, finding evidence, and reasoning about that evidence to reach conclusions, that help solve the mystery. The opposite of genuine detection is when a character discovers the truth though dumb luck, chance, coincidence, or making a lucky guess out of the blue.

Most mystery writers and readers believe that books that show genuine detection are good; books that lack it are poor (all other factors being equal, of course).

Lewis regularly structures plot developments, so that his characters learn new things, through a process of real detection.

Pompey (1964) centers on a runaway slave's encounter with Daniel Boone, in Revolutionary War era America. How does Daniel Boone first encounter the escaped slave? Through genuine detection. Daniel is in Salem, North Carolina, when he and his friend discover that sometone has stolen blacksmith's tools from their supply wagon. Why, Boone's best friend asks, would anyone steal a blacksmith's chisel, when they could have stolen a much more valuable rifle from their supplies? At first the men are puzzled by the mystery. But Daniel gets an idea. He has seen Wanted posters around the city, about an escaped slave who still has a chain around his ankle. Daniel reasons that the thief is probably the ex-slave, who needs the chisel to remove the chain. Next, Daniel uses his woodsman's tracking skills, to follow the trail of footprints the thief has left in the forest. After a detailed, step-by-step demonstration of these skills, Daniel and his friend finally catch up with the escaped slave in the forest. This whole process is "genuine detection" using reasoning from evidence to solve a mystery.

Few other film directors would structure a story this way. It would be more common for the escaped slave to be encountered by Daniel through sheer coincidence. Ol' Dan could be stopping by a brook in Kentucky to water his horse, and he could suddenly trip over the foot of an escaped slave, thus setting the plot in motion.

In Pride of the Bowery (1941), Mugs is taking the rap for a crime committed by a friend. Mugs does not believe in squealing on others, to defend himself. When I saw this film, I expected one of two things might happen. One: Mugs would decide that being a stool pigeon was good after all, and speak up. Or Two: Maybe the authorities would stumble, through chance, on the real crook committing the thefts. But neither of these events happen. Instead, Mugs' friend Danny finds some evidence, and he starts reasoning out from it that Mugs is covering something up. Danny's shrewd, clever deductions finally allow truth to come out. Once again, Lewis has structured his plot so that truth is revealed through genuine detection (Danny's reasoning), rather than through the chance of an accidental discovery, or the deus ex machina of a confession.

Real detection is hard work. The sleuth has to investigate, find all the evidence they can, and use their reasoning powers to the utmost to deduce a conclusion. In Lewis, finding truth is hard work, a slow difficult process. This is not because Lewis is cynical about truth. Rather, it is because he believes that truth, like all good things in life, is only produced by hard work and using our brains.

Authors that stress real detection often show it leading first to false or only partially true conclusions, before further hard work of detection leads to the real truth. See E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) or Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932), for some famous prose mystery examples. Lewis follows this paradigm. In his films, detectives can work and work, only to reach conclusions that are mistakes. In Lewis' The Big Combo, hero Lt. Diamond's sleuthing leads him to some conclusions half way though the film about Alicia. Further hard sleuthing eventually shows him his ideas were completely wrong! This is not a criticism of any sort by Lewis of Diamond, who is the hero of the movie. Rather, it is a realistic account of what real sleuthing and thinking are like. One has to work and work and go through false answers, before one can find the truth.

Lewis' films and Sexual Orientation

Lewis became famous among cinephiles for Gun Crazy, perhaps the most admired and most delirious portrait of sexual obsession and l'amour fou (mad love) in the history of the cinema. The couple in Gun Crazy are heterosexual - they are even married.

Lewis' other most famous film, The Big Combo, also has a heroine who has a sexual obsession for the gangster villain, including the only scene in studio-era Hollywood history of oral sex. It also has one of the few gay couples in Hollywood history, the hitmen Fante and Mingo. Despite their being villains, Fante and Mingo are oddly sympathetic, and have been called the most likable persons in the movie.

Some of Lewis' early B-movies, also have respectable characters who develop heterosexual-but-forbidden sexual relationships with lower class characters, such as the rich girl in Secrets of a Co-Ed with the mobster boyfriend, and the engineer who is sleeping with the maid in Invisible Ghost.

People who turn from these films to Lewis' episodes of The Rifleman are in for a surprise. The hero of the show, Lucas McCain, is often most gung ho when bonding with other men. Lucas has a special feeling for social outsiders. He develops a personal bond with them, and also stands up for their rights, in shows that preach liberal social values. The male bonding shows up most strongly in Duel of Honor, Shivaree, Hero, The Deserter, Strange Town, Baranca, Closer Than a Brother, The Journey Back, Honest Abe, Death Never Rides Alone, The Bullet. It is present throughout much of The Rifleman, in a lower grade intensity. Lucas sums up his feelings by quoting Proverbs 18:24, "There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother", in the episode Closer Than a Brother.

In addition, Lucas develops what seems to be similar bonding with a series of dance hall women, in the episodes Eddie's Daughter, The Wyoming Story, The Vaqueros. Like Lucas' male friends, these women are social outsiders. The detective hero of The Big Combo has a similar relationship with showgirl Rita, and one of Lewis last TV shows, The Big Valley episode Night of the Wolf, also centers on such a relationship.

Lucas' relations with his men friends are intimate and emotionally intense. It would be easy to call these relationships homosexual love stories. But is this accurate? Such a label runs into the usual roadblocks. None of the films show or hint that the men friends are having sex with the hero. By contrast, in The Big Combo, Fante and Mingo are strongly indicated to be having sex, since we see them as roommates, shown sleeping together at night in a common bedroom. Nor does the dialogue of the Rifleman shows ever refer to any sort of physical attraction.

In addition, while Lucas had no steady girlfriends in the first two seasons of The Rifleman, the producers introduced girlfriend characters in the last three seasons to "humanize" him, as the show's publicity put it. Angry queer theorists might describe this as "heterosexualizing" Lucas, instead. While Joseph H. Lewis actually directed the episode that introduced Miss Milly, this show and the other shows directed by Lewis mainly avoided showing much of Lucas' romance with these women.

On the other hand, the imagery of The Rifleman shows about Lucas and his male friends is often intensely physical, of a kind that can legitimately be labeled as "homoerotic". Watching Lucas slug it out with the lead of Baranca, do full contact wrestling with the lead of Honest Abe, or share a hotel room with the lead of Duel of Honor, suggests strong homosexual feelings that have evaded the censors of 1960. Combined with the strong portrait of friendship, works like Baranca and Duel of Honor do indeed seem like gay love stories.

Where does all this leave us? Lewis is a director who spent much of his career focusing on transgressive romantic relationships, whether these are forbidden heterosexual alliances, or tales of male bonding. His work does not fit easily into any categories known to me. Lewis is the director of both Gun Crazy and Duel of Honor. Trying to make his work as a whole align neatly with either heterosexual or homosexual norms is going to be difficult.

Plot Structure and romance

Fritz Lang pointed out to Peter Bogdanovich that M (1931) was one of the few movies that did not have a romance. Observations about the ubiquity of romance in Hollywood films are a truism.

Film historian David Bordwell built on such observations, to point out that most traditional Hollywood feature films have a dual plot structure. Hollywood films almost always have a main plot, and a separate subplot in which the hero and heroine have a romance. For example, a whodunit might have a main plot, in which a cop tries to figure out who committed a murder, and a subplot in which the cop and a woman reporter fall in love. These plots can interact, of course: the reporter heroine might share what she knows about the mystery with the policeman hero, during one of their love scenes, say. Still, the two-plot structure is a norm in Hollywood feature filmmaking.

How does the cinema of Joseph H. Lewis fit into these norms? Many of his features fit clearly. The Big Combo has a main plot in which the hero tries to bring down a mobster, and the subplot in which he romances Susan. A Lawless Street has a similar two-plot structure. Lewis' early Bob Baker and Charles Starrett Westerns, have subplots in which the hero has romance with a woman.

But some of his B-movies, especially, evade such a structure. They use a variety of strategies:

In The Man from Tumbleweeds, the hero and heroine are friends, but have no romance. The hero concentrates on male bonding.
In That Gang of Mine, none of the main characters has any romance. A supporting character, Knuckles, has a girlfriend throughout the film. Their relationship, marginal as it is, has to serve as whatever "romance subplot" that might be found in That Gang of Mine.
In Arizona Cyclone, the hero is friends with the two sympathetic woman characters in the film. He greets the female bank teller warmly, before getting down to a business conversation, and at the film's end, when the hero and the teller get good financial news, they reach out and grasp each other's hands warmly. That is the entire "romance" in the film. It is not clear that this is really a romance at all - the two might just be non-romantic friends.
In Bombs Over Burma, the white hero and the Chinese heroine develop a strong friendship, but never do anything that can be labeled "romantic", perhaps to avoid taboos in the era on inter-racial romance.
In The Silver Bullet, there is no romance between the hero and heroine, till the very end, when all of a sudden there is a brief mention of a wedding for them.
In Invisible Ghost, a man has the romance with the heroine. But he dies in the mid-point of the film. There is no romance or romantic conclusion in the second half of the film.
Romance also collapses into death half way through So Dark the Night.
The hero�s wife dies in childbirth early in Minstrel Man � and there is no more romance in the film, other than his sentimental mourning for her in several later scenes.
In The Jolson Story, there is an elaborate romance subplot - but the film ends with the hero and his wife getting divorced. This is a very atypical conclusion for a Hollywood film.
The soldier hero of Retreat, Hell! says good-bye to his wife, 20 minutes into the film, when he ships out to the Korean war - and there is no more romance in the film. (The hero later does get a photo of his wife in the mail.)
The hero has no romance in the late low-budget Western, Terror in a Texas Town - although the villain does.
The detective heroes of The Fat Man, an hour-long TV pilot, have no romance with women - or even any hint that they are heterosexual.

A few of Lewis' Rifleman episodes have a main plot / romance subplot structure. In Sheer Terror, Milly is held hostage by robbers who plan to rob the stagecoach; in a subplot, she and hero Lucas have a simple romance.

But most Lewis Rifleman episodes do not have any sort of heterosexual romance subplot. The shows are only 25 minutes long, and one could argue that there is too little time to fit a love story into each episode. Also, love stories in Hollywood feature films often tend to imply marriage will soon follow the conclusion of the picture. The producers of The Rifleman had no intention of marrying their hero off. They wanted him to be in the same single state in each episode.

I do not know what a systematic study of series television shows would conclude about the presence or absence of romance subplots, as a norm. There is a good doctoral dissertation in this, for somebody!

But what is notable is that such Rifleman shows as Duel of Honor, The Deserter, Baranca, Closer Than a Brother, have both a main plot, and a male bonding subplot. In the main plot of Duel of Honor, the visiting Count has to deal with local bullies; in the subplot, Lucas and the Count male bond. The male bonding in Duel of Honor, has the exact same role in the plot structure of Duel of Honor, that heterosexual romance has in a typical Hollywood feature. This is another reason to consider Duel of Honor a gay love story. Its male-bonding plays the same structural role that straight love does in a conventional movie.

Goals - and Plot Structure

David Bordwell sets forth his ideas on narrative structure, in his book Narration in the Fiction Film (1985). I've been trying to compare what he describes as norms of Hollywood narration, with Lewis' films.

One of Bordwell's key assertions is: "The Classical Hollywood film presents psychologically determined individuals who struggle to solve a clear cut problem or to attain specific goals....The story ends with a decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the problem, and a clear achievement or nonachievement of the goals."

Trying to find such goals in many of Lewis' films can be difficult. The heroes of his detective stories such as The Undercover Man, The Big Combo and The Bullet have clear goals: find evidence that will allow the killer to be convicted. And the heroes of Border Wolves, My Name Is Julia Ross and The Stand-In are trying to escape from the false identities that have been imposed on them: also a clear problem. But quite a few of Lewis' other films do not seem to open with a clear cut goal, that is resolved at the end. What is the goal in Duel of Honor, Shivaree, or Gun Crazy?

(It is important not to read such a statement as a disagreement with Bordwell. Bordwell's neo-formalism asserts that there are group norms that appear in art movements, such as the Classical Hollywood film, and that there will be artists or groups of artists who violate or bend such norms. So the appearance of a filmmaker like Lewis who violates a norm is to be expected, and is consistent with Bordwell's ideas.

Which brings up the Big Disclaimer. I am not in a position to evaluate whether "most 1915-1965 Hollywood films have protagonists with goals". It is easy to see that a LOT of Hollywood films have such protagonists with goals. So looking at "whether a film has a protagonist with a goal" is a worthwhile research question to ask. But I don't know whether it is true that MOST or nearly all Hollywood films have "heroes with clear cut problems" - or what patterns of exceptions exist to this proposed norm.)

Subjects - rather than goals. Films like Duel of Honor and Gun Crazy have subjects, rather than clear cut goals. In Duel of Honor, the subject is "how society treats, and should treat, people who are different - especially people who seem gay". In Gun Crazy, the subject is "a couple who are obsessed with guns, and where this leads them". Duel of Honor and Gun Crazy are focused clearly and firmly on these subjects. But it is hard to translate such subjects into goals for the protagonists.

Films like Shivaree push this approach to a greater extreme. Shivaree deals with "the difficult transition to adulthood, and mistreatment by grownups" - a big diverse subject that is hard to summarize as some sort of goal.

Films About Everything. Some Lewis films have so many apparent subjects, that it is hard even to describe in one sentence what they are about: Pride of the Bowery, Invisible Ghost, So Dark the Night, Old Tony. I can't tell you who the protagonist of Old Tony is, let alone whether he has a goal.

The Complex Resolution. Lewis' films about young men who raise race horses, That Gang of Mine and The Fourflusher, open with seemingly clear cut goals for their protagonists: the young man wants to win the Big Race riding the horse he is raising. A thousand sports films have similar goals. However, the resolution of these films surprise. The hero neither succeeds nor fails at his goal. Instead, ingenious plot twists move the story in unexpected directions. There is nothing modernist about all of this: the plot is fully and clearly resolved. Lewis' message seems to be: life is more complicated than we originally thought - and we have to modify our plans as we grow up. Lewis' polo movie The Spy Ring, similar in many ways to his horse racing films, also subverts its Winning the Big Game goal through plot twists.

A Mysterious Protagonist. We don't learn till around two thirds of the way through Face of Yesterday, Closer Than a Brother, The Journey Back or The Vindicators what the protagonist knows, or what his goals are. The hero of The Vindicators turns out to have a clear cut goal; the other protagonists are faced with difficult situations in which it is difficult to formulate clear goals.

Multiple Protagonists. Gun Crazy has a couple as the leading characters. The scenes are often structured to show the man's point of view - but both characters are prominent throughout most of the film. Similarly, Retreat, Hell! starts out as if Richard Carlson will be the hero, but Russ Tamblyn and Frank Lovejoy soon get equal weight. The Rifleman is structured to have two protagonists, rancher Lucas and his son Mark. Several of Lewis' episodes have both characters involved in the same storyline - but with differing points of view on how to interpret events and judge the issues they are seeing. Examples include Surveyors, Day of the Hunter, Hero, The Deserter, Shotgun Man, The Fourflusher, all from the second season of the show.

The Erupting Plot Event. Plot events often erupt suddenly in Lewis films. In Gun Crazy, the hero is visiting a carnival for fun, when a chance encounter with a female shootist triggers overwhelming sexual excitement, and a lifelong commitment. Lewis has carefully foreshadowed this - much of the early part of the film presents the hero's obsession with guns. But this is the first indication such interest could be sexual. It is not a "goal": it is something that erupts from his subconscious, and which suddenly drives the story. Lewis' films are full of forbidden sexuality, that often seems to erupt. Such sexuality is not linked to a goal that opens the story. Gun Crazy was apparently first discovered as a classic by French surrealist Ado Kyrou, who wrote about Gun Crazy in his book Le Surréalisme au cinéma (1953). Surrealism, which celebrates the eruption of unconscious drives, is deeply in tune with Lewis' delirious treatment of sexual impulses.

However, it is not only sexuality that suddenly erupts in Lewis. It is also politics. The hero is suddenly confronted at the end of Shivaree with a choice between violence to solve problems, and non-violence. This is a political decision, related to Lewis' consistent support in his films for the non-violence of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Once again, this political conflict was:

NOT set forth as an initial goal or problem to be resolved;
but is foreshadowed by a discussion of how the hero's minister father raised him to be non-violent.

Political issues mushroom up in the later sections of other Lewis films, such as The Silver Bullet, A Lawless Street, Day of the Hunter, The Deserter, Pompey. They are foreshadowed by Lewis, but do not seem to be set forth as an initial problem. These political conflicts are not dry - they are as dramatic, unexpected, and emotionally disorienting as the eruptions of sexuality.

Resolving the political conflict is often the climax of the story. This is just as dramatic and definitive as any other Hollywood climax. But it does NOT resolve a problem stated at the opening of the film.

A Lawless Street opens with a seeming goal: the Marshal hero (Randolph Scott) has to deal with outlaws in his Western town, including the one that rides into town in the opening shot. But half way through the movie, there is a violent coup, and the town government is taken over by bad guys, who institute a reign of terror. Now the hero has to deal with something that goes far beyond his original problem or goal. It is linked to his original goal: preserving law and order in town. But the story now has a political dimension that goes far beyond what we thought was happening in the opening scenes.

The unexplained causes of urges. Lewis characters often have strong enthusiasms for something. Sometimes it is for some form of sexuality. Sometimes this seems like a non-sexual emotion, such as their liking for coffee and pie, or the young people in Lewis who love raising and racing horses. Other times, it is not given an explicit sexual link, but one suspects sex might be present, such as the enthusiasm for boots or uniforms. Few of these urges are "explained" psychologically: they are just there, powerful and driving.

Not an Art Film. Lewis films also have lots of plot, and the plot typically follows a logical chain of cause and effect throughout the film (even the surprising sexual or political events are logically foreshadowed). And although Lewis characters' sexual obsessions are not explained in Freudian or other terms, the audience usually has a clear, complete explanation of most other aspects of the film by the end. All of these are Hollywood norms, according to Bordwell. So Lewis' films are closer to Hollywood than to 1960's art films. Lewis is far from being a "modernist who de-emphasizes plot, stripping it of logical causality", some of Bordwell's main characteristics for art films (such as those by Fellini, Antonioni, Resnais, etc.).

Lewis: Politics and Economics

Many of Lewis' films contain political, social and economic commentary. Lewis can certainly be considered as a "socially conscious" director.

But nailing down Lewis' political beliefs, as expressed in the films, can be difficult. Films are works of art, and it can be difficult to align them with political ideas. But my best guess is that Lewis' films reflect:

The New Deal liberalism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The non-violent civil disobedience of Gandhi.
The Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King.
Pacifist ideas.
Disgust for the actions of financiers and the big rich.
Support for small businessmen, farmers and manufacturers.
Support for government work programs for the unemployed.
Support for government building public infrastructure such as roads and the water supply, and for public schools.

Lewis is certainly left-of-center. The sinister conspiracies by the rich to steal ordinary people's property in many Lewis films make that clear. Lewis would choke on the belief of many contemporary conservatives that rich people are a benevolent force, whose financial actions usually benefit the average person. Lewis' concern for the victims of war is also in direct opposition to the pro-war views of many contemporary conservatives, with their nauseating "give war a chance" propaganda. The consistent support for racial minorities in Lewis' films, made during the Civil Rights era, is a further strong indication of Lewis' left-of-center views. The pro-gay subtext running through Lewis, and his support for working women, also places Lewis in opposition to conservative points of view.

But within the left-of-center political continuum, where does Lewis stand on economic issues? Is he a liberal, a democratic socialist, an anarchist or a Communist?

I frankly don't know. But so far, I have not seen any conclusive evidence that Lewis is any more left-of-center than being a liberal. I see little evidence that Lewis films support socialism, anarchism or Communism. Instead, Lewis seems like a liberal.

The one real life historical figure that appears in Lewis' films, Mark Twain in Shattered Idol, was a staunch liberal, but not a political radical.

The Conspiracy Films. The biggest difficulty in interpreting Lewis' economics, is ascribing a real-world political meaning to Lewis' Westerns about sinister conspiracies of the rich and powerful to take over or destroy the property of others. It is easy to say that the villains in these films are financiers, speculators, crooked bankers and the big rich. Maybe one can even say they are "capitalists". But do these films constitute a denunciation of capitalism as an economic system, as some critics have said? I have my doubts.

One problem is that the victims in these films are ALSO businessmen, usually. And they and their businesses are treated sympathetically:

The hero of Arizona Cyclone manages a freight company, and the company owners are also good guys.
The heroes of Boss of Hangtown Mesa work for a benevolent telegraph company.
The good-guy victims in A Lawless Street are a wealthy rancher and a saloon owner.
Some of the victimized farmers in Terror in a Texas Town are dirt-poor farmers, but they are landowners all the same, and some of the victims look like mildly prosperous ranchers.
Lucas McCain in Squeeze Play is also a land-owning rancher.
So are the characters in The Man from Nowhere.
The barber in The Patsy and the gunsmith in Long Gun from Tucson are also small businessmen.

In other words, Lewis films like some capitalists, like ranchers, small businessmen and telegraph companies, but find big-money capitalists sinister and evil.

This point of view is also expressed by a work that is not a conspiracy film: The Silver Bullet. The Silver Bullet is about an election, in which one side represents the "big money interests", and the other side "the small ranchers", to quote the film's dialogue. One might also note Lewis' support for the small bank and its banker in The Safe Guard and Boomerang. He is treated with the sympathy Lewis extends to other small businessmen.

An exchange in Squeeze Play might also be relevant. The big-time financier who is trying to buy up hero Lucas McCain's land tells Lucas that, after all, both of them are just landowners. Lucas disagrees. I actually work my land, Lucas says, but you buy up land just to speculate with it.

A deep suspicion about big-money financiers was shared by liberals, anarchists, socialists and Communists. Lewis' views on the subject do not indicate specifically to which such group he adheres. Lewis' support for small businessmen, even well-to-do ones like bankers and wealthy ranchers, suggests that he is a liberal, not a socialist, anarchist or Communist.

The above discussion perhaps distorts the politics of Terror in a Texas Town. Terror in a Texas Town is clearly the most "radical" of Lewis' conspiracy films. Its rancher victims are the poorest in Lewis. And its villain is not just a financier: he also owns the town hotel, and is constantly referred to in the film as a "businessman". So the film has an "evil businessman oppressing the poor" theme. Still, its plot centers on supporting the small ranchers' claims to their property, which the villain is trying to take away from them through legal swindles. So Terror in a Texas Town is a film in favor of Private Property. And its small landowner heroes are exactly the sort of folks that Stalin would treat as Enemies of the State during his forced collectivization of farms, and who Mao would target during the Great Leap Forward. So it is also hard to see how Terror in a Texas Town can be read as a Marxist tract, however sinister its portrait of big businessmen.

A Lack of Alternative Economics. So far I have not been able to find any labor unions in Lewis films. Or any cooperative-run business enterprises. While I have not been able to see all of Lewis' films, so far there are no alternative economic models in any of them: no labor unions, cooperatives, social security or welfare systems. One exception: Lewis likes the jobs the New Deal provided for the unemployed, in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Pride of the Bowery.

Lewis told Francis M. Nevins that his father and uncles were Jews who had to flee Russia, due to their Socialist politics. And that his parents' apartment building was one of the first cooperatives in New York City. So Lewis was well aware of economic alternatives. They just don't seem to appear in his films. This is a another reason to feel skeptical that Lewis films in any way advocate socialism, anarchism or Communism. These economic doctrines just don't appear in Lewis films.

Public Works. Lewis glorified the road-building US Government-run Civilian Conservation Corps in Pride of the Bowery, part of Roosevelt's New Deal. And the road-building by the Chinese people in Bombs Over Burma. Bombs Over Burma also has a school teacher heroine, the grandmother in The Undercover Man pays tribute to the free schools in America, and there is a brief, neutral depiction of an American public school in Gun Crazy. The political dispute in The Silver Bullet is about water rights and building a dam. So Lewis was supportive of government programs. Belief that government should support public infrastructure like roads or water was a liberal crusade in that era. See the Tennessee Valley Authority, for instance, which was championed by liberals, and loathed by conservatives.

Lewis: a pro-religion director. Lewis' consistent support for ministers, monks and priests also separates him from Communists, who typically loathe religion. One can compare the admirable Buddhist monk in Bombs Over Burma, and the Taoist priest in Night of the Wolf, with a Communist film like Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia, which portrays Buddhist priests as human swine. The opposition to the evil businessman in Terror in a Texas Town meets in the local church, presided over by the town's sympathetic minister.

Lewis and Murnau's Sunrise

A number of features in Lewis recall the famous film Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, 1927):

Both Murnau and Lewis are directors oriented towards complex camera movement.
The moving camera shot to the swamp in Sunrise has the hero moving under a tree branch - anticipating all the arching tree branches at the tops of Lewis shots.
Immediately after passing under the tree, the camera movement in Sunrise turns into a lateral track, with tall grasses in front, masking the hero as he walks. Such "lateral tracks with foreground objects" are a Lewis standard.
Sunrise has a Ride to the City, where we see the countryside from within a moving tram. This anticipates the shots from within a moving car, seen during the Hampton bank robbery in Gun Crazy. Lewis' first film, Courage of the West, has shots from within a moving train, a vehicle even closer in appearance to the tram in Sunrise. Sunrise also opens with shots from a moving boat.
There are path / reverse path camera movements in Sunrise: moving into the nightclub behind the fountain from left to to right; later, moving out of the nightclub behind the fountain from right to left. Such path / reverse path movements are a Lewis trademark. (There is a fountain in front of the hero's hotel in Lewis' A Lady Without Passport, but it is used for stagings that are quite different from anything in Sunrise.)
The opening of Sunrise shows the naive hero sexually overwhelmed by the sophisticated villainess, and lured by her into a murder scheme. Similarly, the hero of Gun Crazy is lured by the heroine into a life of crime.
The swamp set at the end of Gun Crazy is similar to the one that opens Sunrise, seen when the couple plan the murder at night. Both have islands of tall reeds, rising out of small bodies of water.
The hero of Sunrise gets cleaned up, by a shave in a barbershop. This anticipates the several barbershop and shaving scenes in Lewis.
Sunrise contains a shot with spiral shadows on the wall (when the couple talk in the church lobby after the wedding). This anticipates the spiral imagery in Lewis. There is also a building with a spiral sign, in the vision of the city near the start of Sunrise.
The cafe in Sunrise has a partition with glass walls, perhaps anticipating the offices with glass walls in Lewis, such as the payroll office in Gun Crazy. The nightclub in Sunrise also has an inner room for dancers, with glass walls.
The brief scenes in the conifer forest in Sunrise (between the first boat trip and the arrival of the tram), resemble a bit forest scenes to come in Lewis.
In Sunrise, the repentant hero boards the moving tram; in the finale of Lewis' Boomerang, the repentant hero rejoins life by getting on a moving wagon. (George O'Brien had plenty of experience getting on moving trains - that is how he makes his entrance in The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924).)
The finale of Sunrise shows numerous portable hand-held lanterns. These are both like and unlike the lanterns in Lewis' nocturnal cityscapes, in which the lanterns tend to be fixed and attached to buildings or used as street lights.
Sunrise is famous for its gigantic, studio-built "city set". Lewis films are full of detailed depictions of cities and their businesses. However, the low-budget Lewis tended to use standing sets of Western towns; nothing in his films is remotely as expensive or as custom made as the sets in Sunrise. The studio street scenes in The Undercover Man and A Lady Without Passport are Lewis' most elaborate modern day studio-set cities.

Lewis was already working in Hollywood, when Sunrise was made (he arrived in Hollywood around 1924, when he was around 17). Sunrise was hugely influential on many people in Hollywood. It might well have impressed the 20 year old Lewis. See Tag Gallagher's book John Ford: The Man and His Movies (1986) for a discussion of the influence of Murnau and Sunrise on John Ford and Frank Borzage (pp 49-54). For a look at Murnau's The Last Laugh and its influence on a wide range of world filmmakers, see Lutz Bacher's book The Mobile Mise-En-Scène: A Critical Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Long-Take Camera Movement in the Narrative Film (1978).

Lewis and early John Ford

Hangman's House (John Ford, 1928) is said to be influenced by Murnau. It has a few features that anticipate Lewis - but the connections are not too close:

The lateral track following the monk through the countryside, has a wiry tree pass in front of the shot. This looks both like the track-to-the-swamp in Sunrise, and many tracks in Lewis.
A shot of the steeplechase is also framed by an arching tree branch overhead.
There is a shot through a fireplace.
The hero is seen through the grillwork of a prison lorry.
There is spiral metal work in the gate, and spirals in the wood of the judge's chair.
A multi-pane window is shattered, like the end of So Dark the Night.
A portrait (of the judge) is on the wall.
The characters wear boots, like the hero of Sunrise, and many Lewis characters to come.
Horses and horse racing are prominent - although the Big Race is treated in a conventional manner, far removed from the plot ironies with which Lewis will usually treat it.
The idealized portrait of military life and brotherhood that opens Hangman's House will return in Lewis - but usually with irony or modification.

Hangman's House is full of mental imagery - mainly seen in the fireplace. Such mental imagery is common in Sunrise. But it is rare in Lewis: the only mental image I can recall in Lewis is the vision of the Sergeant in the champagne glass in The Spy Ring. The vision in the window at the finale of So Dark the Night might also qualify - but it is different and innovative.

Ford's films often contain moody nocturnal cityscapes, beautifully composed, and with shining islands of light from geometric street lamps. These nocturnes seem like the ancestors of the equally beautiful ones in Lewis. Such nocturnal cityscapes are in such Ford films as Seas Beneath (1931), The Informer (1935) and Stagecoach (1939).

Lewis and Fred Niblo

Mysterious Lady (Fred Niblo, 1928) is a spy thriller silent movie, starring Greta Garbo. It has a few scenes that anticipate Lewis:

Hero Conrad Nagel is publically drummed out of the Austrian Army, in a scene anticipating the credits of Branded: which Lewis may or may not have directed. As in Branded, we see rows of drummers, the hero's sword ritualistically broken, and insignia ripped from the hero's uniform.
The film stars a noble Army officer, being vamped by a Mata Hari-like enemy female spy: as in Lewis' The Spy Ring.
Fancy military uniforms and boots are everywhere, as in Lewis.
A climactic moving camera shot shows Garbo desperately working her way through a sea of dancers at a ball. The camera travels with her, mainly laterally, while various dancers pass in front of the lateral track as foreground objects. The effect is highly Lewis-like.
Moving camera shots follow characters down a staircase. Similar shots are repeated three times, each one following a different character down the staircase (first the hero, then the heroine, then the villain). This anticipates both the many staircase camera movements in Lewis - and the camera movements that follow along the same path in Lewis.
The hero winds up in prison.
The hero changes his identity, and takes part in an undercover operation.
Both the hero and heroine perform musically at parties.
A suave, sophisticated villain.

William Wyler and Lewis

Francis M. Nevins' book on Lewis documents Lewis' intense admiration for director William Wyler, especially Wyler's film The Little Foxes (1941). Lewis had made all of his films up through and including Arizona Cyclone before The Little Foxes premiered in August 1941.

Subject matter that appears in The Little Foxes before it does in Lewis:

Financial exploitation of workers by bosses.
Illness, and people being nursed.
Ill men who collapse spectacularly.
People being married for their money.
Alcoholism.
Scenes of men shaving.

Lewis, who had made two sympathetic films about black people before The Little Foxes, probably also liked the Civil Rights aspects of The Little Foxes, denouncing blacks being exploited by whites.

By contrast, I've looked for possible sources for aspects of Lewis' visual style in Wyler's film, but only found a few. After all, by 1941 Lewis had been directing for five years, making fifteen pictures, and many aspects of Lewis' style had long been fully formed. In particular, Lewis had long employed depth staging. In fact, one can argue that Lewis' use of depth staging by 1941 was more radical and extensive than Wyler's.

Lewis had also used fairly complex stagings in mirrors (The Spy Ring, Invisible Ghost) before The Little Foxes, which is rich in such shots.

It is clear that the depth staging and mirror shots in The Little Foxes might have excited Lewis' admiration. But they do not seem to be ancestral to his film techniques.

Some visual style aspects of The Little Foxes that reappear in later Lewis films:

Herbert Marshall makes his entrance in The Little Foxes moving across the background, while Richard Carlson in the foreground fails to notice him. This might be ancestral to Lewis shots in which characters sneak around in the background.
Regina's alcove is better defined than the alcove in Lewis' early The Spy Ring.

Godard and Lewis

In his article on Lewis, Robert Keser speculates that Gun Crazy influenced Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965).

The circular tracking shot around the farm courtyard in Godard's Weekend (1967) resembles Lewis:

The farm buildings have complex peaked roofs: like many farm complexes in the background of Lewis shots.
The camera movement circles around twice, then circles once more in the reverse direction. Many Lewis camera movements come in pairs, showing people following a path - then return in the reverse direction along the same path.
Godard's dialogue mentions the great pianist Arthur Schnabel. Schnabel's son, actor Stefan Schnabel, starred in Lewis' Old Tony (1963).
There is even a character in Godard's camera movement wearing boots.

All of this could well be a coincidence. But this shot definitely would fit in with Lewis' work.

Rating Lewis films

In his book on Lewis, Francis M. Nevins justly complains that most film historians are only looking at Lewis feature films made in 1945-1958, and that they are ignoring his early B-movies and later television work.

Lewis made more films for television than he did for theaters. Lewis' television films are among his finest works. Lewis becomes a vastly more interesting filmmaker, when one starts looking at his 100+ films as a whole, rather than just the 16 theatrical features from My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) to Terror in a Texas Town (1958). (One cannot give an exact count of the films Lewis directed. Lewis' filmography still has gaps: there might well be television films directed by Lewis not known.)

Here are my ratings for the Joseph H. Lewis films I have seen. The ratings go from **** (best) to "no stars" (a bomb). Anything with at least **1/2 is recommended viewing.

Early B-Movies:

Courage of the West **
Singing Outlaw *1/2
The Spy Ring **1/2
Border Wolves ***
The Last Stand ***
Blazing Six Shooters ***
Texas Stagecoach *1/2 (musical numbers: ***)
The Man from Tumbleweeds ***
The Return of Wild Bill **1/2
Boys of the City no stars
That Gang of Mine ***
Pride of the Bowery ***
Invisible Ghost ***
Criminals Within no stars (probably not by Lewis)
Arizona Cyclone *1/2
Bombs Over Burma ***
The Silver Bullet ***
Boss of Hangtown Mesa **1/2
Secrets of a Co-Ed *
Minstrel Man *
The Falcon in San Francisco ***

Features:

My Name Is Julia Ross **1/2
The Jolson Story **
So Dark the Night **1/2
The Return of October **1/2
The Undercover Man ***
Gun Crazy ****
A Lady Without Passport ***1/2
Retreat, Hell! **
The Big Combo ****
A Lawless Street ****
7th Cavalry 1/2
The Halliday Brand ***
Terror in a Texas Town **

The Rifleman:

Duel of Honor ****
The Safe Guard **1/2
The Pet *1/2
Shivaree ****
The Trade ***
The Deadly Wait ***
Boomerang **1/2
The Patsy *1/2
Eddie's Daughter **1/2
Panic ***
The Letter of the Law **1/2
Surveyors ***
Day of the Hunter ***
The Visitor *
Hero ***
The Spoiler 1/2
Heller **1/2
The Deserter ****
Shotgun Man **1/2
The Fourflusher ***
Hangman **1/2
Strange Town **1/2
Baranca ***1/2
The Martinet ***
Miss Milly *1/2
Flowers by the Door no stars
The Actress *1/2
Face of Yesterday ***1/2
The Wyoming Story ***
Closer Than a Brother **
The Prisoner **1/2
The Vaqueros 1/2
Sheer Terror **1/2
The Stand-In *1/2
The Journey Back **1/2
Honest Abe ***
The Shattered Idol ***
Long Gun from Tucson ***
A Young Man's Fancy ***
Waste no stars
Death Never Rides Alone ***
I Take This Woman *1/2
Squeeze Play ***
Suspicion **1/2
Sidewinder ***
And the Devil Makes Five no stars
The Bullet **1/2
The Guest no stars
Old Tony ***

Other TV Shows:

The Fat Man **1/2
The Hiding Place ***
The Quality of Mercy no stars
Pompey ***
The Vindicators **1/2
One Killer on Ice ***
Boots With My Father's Name *1/2
Night of the Wolf ***1/2
The Man from Nowhere **

All ratings have their arbitrary side, and most Lewis films have interesting shots or scenes.

Most of the assertions in this Lewis book are assertions of fact, or of fairly low-level categorization (this shot is a lateral track with foreground objects, this scene shows one of Lewis' duels with strange weapons, this background is full of peaked roofs, the hero and his friend male bond). Readers can judge the truth or falsity of such statements by comparing them to the films themselves. Because of this, I hope that most of the contents of this book can be considered as knowledge: ideas that are backed up by solid evidence.

By contrast, ratings are far more vague. The above ratings don't explain what factors caused me to give one film a high rank, and another a low one. And many readers would use other criteria than I did, anyway, to rank Lewis' films.

Because of this, it is not really clear that the above ratings have the slightest value, accuracy, or any real informational content.

I am including these rankings, despite this, for two reasons:

Public discussion of the value of Lewis' films has to start somewhere. No one else has ever ranked Lewis' films before. The above can serve as a basis for discussion, and other film scholars' rankings, and reasons for rankings.
Lewis' B-movies and TV films have been so ignored, that it is worthwhile to include rankings that show many of these films to be outstanding Lewis works. If such rankings stimulate interest in Lewis' B-movies and TV films, they will have served a useful purpose.

My Name Is Julia Ross

Hostages

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) is the B-movie thriller that made Lewis' reputation. It is the archetypal Lewis film about people held hostage, often in a home. Lewis would also deal with this subject in The Falcon in San Francisco and The Big Combo, and in The Rifleman episodes Shivaree, The Patsy, The Spoiler, The Prisoner, The Stand-In, Sheer Terror and I Take This Woman. Note how often the hostage character is in the title of these Lewis films. Here the hostage is a woman, but both men and women become hostages to bad guys in Lewis. The bad guys try to coerce the hostage heroine of My Name Is Julia Ross into a new identity: a similar plot gambit will occur in The Stand-In. The villain of My Name Is Julia Ross keeps falsely telling the heroine tha