Welcome to Hard Times

Another of the movies that I had the chance to watch and do a post on because it's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archives collection is the western Welcome to Hard Times.

Henry Fonda plays Will Blue, the pacifist mayor of the small western town of Hard Times, or as close as the town has to a mayor. Coming to town one day is the mysterious Man from Bodie (Aldo Ray), who is violent for what seems like no good reason. He's at the saloon looking for Molly Riordan (Janice Rule) looking to rape her, and that leads to a confrontation between Bodie and much of the town resulting in a whole bunch of people getting killed and the town being burned to the ground.

The few survivors are Will, Molly, young boy Jimmy Fee (Michael Shea), and Indian medicine man John Bear (Royal Dano). There's not much for them to do but try to rebuild now that Bodie has left. They're in a bit of luck, however, in that Zar (Keenan Wynn) comes to town one day. Zar runs a traveling saloon/bordello, and realizing that there are miners around who are going to spend all their earnings on booze and women, this might not be a bad place to stop for the time being.

Zar and his women think that Molly is the wife of Will, and Jimmy their son, something that Will for one isn't particularly willing to disabuse Zar of. Molly is in many ways tremendously unhappy with this arrangement. She thinks Will is a coward for not even trying to do anything about Bodie, and she's going to make damn sure that, should Bodie ever come back, Jimmy might at least be able to shoot Bodie and not just be a coward like Will. But Molly stays with Will in part because Jimmy needs both a mother figure and a father figure, and where is she going to go anyway?

Hard Times starts to grow a bit with all the miners spending their money there, and the brother of the old general store owner even shows up. With a consignment of goods having been paid for and only now being delivered, why not set up shop here and provide a needed service? Even with all this activity, however, it's going to be pretty difficult to get the town going the way a town should be.

And of course, there's always the specter that the Man from Bodie might show up again. Who's going to be able to survive when that happens? And will Will get some stereotypical courage? Will that even help?

Welcome to Hard Times is one of those westerns that doesn't have all that much action, most of it being confined to the very beginning and the very end. But it's also not really a character study. I think that the combination ultimately leads to something less than the sum of its parts. It's not bad, to be sure, but it's also not particularly memorable, even considering the actors playing supporting characters, like Elisha Cook and Warren Oates.

Still, I think fans of westerns will still probably enjoy Welcome to Hard Times.