Simply Perfect

Just what I expected

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

One fictional Ramsay MacKay(Joel McCrea) begins with a local mail and package delivery service in upstate NY. Soon, he joins WF, which is about to expand it's stagecoach services west to St. Louis. Of course, it would soon initiate stage service between St. Louis and San Francisco, which MacKay was involved in. The film deals almost exclusively with the role of WF in transportation and mail, ignoring it's importance to banking, especially in CA. In fact, it was the major bank company in early CA. The film dramatizes the occasional attack of stagecoaches by Native Americans, who also burned down a station, killing all the people. Historically, this happened at least once, during the Paiute War of 1860, at Williams Station, NV. Also, an incident is dramatized in which a Confederate cavalry unit held up a stage, confiscating a large amount of gold, so that it wouldn't contribute to the Union war effort. I was unable to find information confirming that this actually happened. Actually, the great majority of gold and silver from CA-NV was transported by ship to the East. On the other hand, gold from Colorado and Montana probably was often sent south or east on stages. Of course, it wasn't long before railroads began to compete with stages for freight, mail and passengers. However, stages would continue for some years to service feeder routes to the railroads. .....Getting back to the story, Bob Burns makes his frequent appearance known by his distinctive voice and gab. He often serves to do odd jobs for MacKay, but doesn't play his bazooka, as he sometimes did in films. Near the end, he gives a rousing speech at a dinner about the accomplishments of WF....Francis Dee, soon to become Mrs. McCrea off the set, played MacKay's love interest, as Justine. He meets her in NY state, and later delivers a package to her home in St. Louis. They marry, but have disagreements about his time spent on the road, and working for a company that exclusively served the Union(her family being from the South). Eventually, they split, although not divorced. MacKay happens to arrive at Justine's house the day before the birthday for their 17y.o. daughter, who invites him to her party. He declines, saying he must leave immediately. However, he does show up, and suggests to Justine that they get back together......MacKay opens a WF office in San Francisco, and delivers mail out in the gold fields, returning with gold to keep in his safe for the miners.....A little bit is mentioned about competition in CA , and the eventual merger with Wells Fargo of several of their big competitors.....Paramount sank $1.5 million into this film, which was a tidy sum in those days. Don't know how it fared at the box office. See it on YouTube.

This is a largely fictional account of Ramsay MacKay (McCrea) who rises from a humble wagon driver in pre-Civil War New York state to become, after much travail, one of the Vice Presidents of Wells Fargo, the Butterfield Overland Stage Company, American Express, the Bank of America, the Ford Motor Company, AT&T, American Airlines, Ben and Jerry's, and Microsoft Corporation. Yes, he reaches dizzying heights.But it costs him dearly over the years. He marries Frances Dee and is alienated from her by the conflict between the Union, for which he works, and the Confederacy, which is her homeland. It takes more than ten years just so straighten that ONE misunderstanding out so the movie can end happily. And there are plenty other misunderstandings and deaths along the way.The movie fits into the end of a genre, which might be called the rough-hewn biography of an individual or a corporation. The genre flourished in the 30s. There were stories of Reuters, Lloyds of London, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Walter Reed and others. Those were more or less historical. Some were completely fictional, like Howard Hawks' "Come And Get It." They were all pretty much the same -- simple and entertaining -- except that, I guess, "Citizen Kane" fits in there somewhere too.Joel McCrea is as likable as ever. It's not his fault that I always have to look up the spelling of his last name. He married his co-star here, Frances Dee, and they stayed married for some fifty-seven years. Lucky Joel. She really sparkles and looked just fine well into middle age.I wish this had come off better than it did. I can't quite pin down the reasons why it's less satisfying than others of its type. I suppose, for one thing, the editing is really clumsy. A stagecoach rushes into a town and the citizens turn out to cheer its arrival. And I swear that for several minutes I couldn't figure out whether we were in San Francisco or St. Louis. The actual BUSINESS of Wells Fargo isn't made clear enough. The telegraph lines figure prominently but seem to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Butterfield's Overland Stage and the Pony Express are worked adventitiously into the plot. Lloyd Nolan shows up and then promptly disappears. We see quite a lot of Mister Wells but I can't remember meeting Mister Fargo, although he's in there somewhere because he's listed in the credits. In 1868, Mister Wells was generous enough to build a college for ladies in the Finger Lakes Region of New York.No reflection on any of the actors. For the most part they hit their marks and say their lines professionally. An exception is the twenty-seven-year old Robert Cummings, who is not yet ready for prime time. There are several scenes of action. As incidents in themselves, they're reasonably well done. It's the script that torpedoes the production.

Paramount with the production of Wells Fargo and The Plainsman started the return of westerns to the A picture list with big budgets. Though the Cecil B. DeMille production of The Plainsman is flashier and splashier, Wells Fargo under the direction of Frank Lloyd seems to have had more staying power. It certainly has the budget of a DeMille film and kind of hard to think that Adolph Zukor would have sprung for two big budget westerns in the same year. If they had flopped Paramount would have gone under.Frank Lloyd is a name all but forgotten by today's fans. Yet he had won two Academy Awards by the time Wells Fargo came out, for The Divine Lady in 1929 and for Cavalcade in 1933. And he had just missed winning a third the year before for his greatest film, Mutiny on the Bounty. He got good performances out of the whole cast.Stuart Lake wrote the script and he borrows from Edna Ferber's style of story telling. The action of the film covers a twenty five year period from the early 1840s to Reconstruction. Joel McCrea as Ramsey MacKay is an Edna Ferber like hero, a heroic man involved in a big enterprise who sacrifices a lot of personal happiness towards that end. Frances Dee, Mrs. McCrea in real life, is his loving if not always understanding wife, also in the Ferber tradition.The fictional Ramsey MacKay is an important part of the growing company of Wells Fargo. Henry O'Neill and Frank Clark, play the real life partners of John Wells and William Fargo, with Clarence Kolb as John Butterfield who later merges his stagecoach line with them.The only part of the film I found a bit ridiculous was the battle between McCrea who is taking a gold shipment east and the Confederates led by Johnny Mack Brown. Somehow I don't believe the desperate Confederacy towards the end of the war would have had Brown offer to parley with McCrea and give him a chance to surrender peacefully if the Confederates were outnumbered. Even with Brown being a friendly rival for Dee's hand earlier on, this was in fact war. When the shooting starts the battle is well staged.Paramount shot this one on location for the most part and the production values do show. Frank McGlyn played Abraham Lincoln in this film as he did in The Plainsman. Bob Burns who was a regular on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall at the time and appeared in a few Paramount films with Bing plays the sidekick role here. Look for Bob Cummings in a small part as a young prospector.Wells Fargo is a well done epic western and in fact it's the film that really made Joel McCrea a western star.

Since getting a channel exclusively devoted to Westerns, I've seen movies that are never seen on regular channels, like Wells Fargo.Joel McRea, whom I'd enjoyed immensely in These Three, is impressive in a Western. He's rugged and tough, but goes beyond the stereotype, and is sensitive and understanding. He ages from his 20's to his 60's believably. The story of courier service extending out west makes me want to read more about these pioneers of exploration.