Dallas*

Dallas

Directed by Stuart Heisler. 94 mins. (1950)

Gary Cooper – Blayde “Reb” Hollister

A former Confederate soldier turned fugitive arrives in the booming Texas town of Dallas under an assumed identity, seeking vengeance against the outlaw brothers who destroyed his life—only to find the law and his past closing in.

Also starring Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey, and Barbara Payton.

Reed Hadley appears as Wild Bill Hickok in the film. Gary Cooper had previously portrayed the legendary frontier figure in The Plainsman (1936), creating a subtle connection between the two westerns.

MARIA’S NOTES

Dallas was made as one of a group of films the studio offered my father with not much leeway in choosing yeah or nay. It was a Western between two non-Westerns - Bright Leaf, based on a true tobacco family drama and Distant Drums, that dealt with not the American West but the Seminole Indians in Florida. Getting “back in the saddle” was something my father was always comfortable with, but an actor/artist always wants to stretch his own limits and feel he’s moving in new directions, honing his craft. Was he able to do that in Dallas? I don’t know, he never spoke about it and I suspect, as Picasso said, “I learn from the paintings that don’t work.” Maybe to study Dallas, one can see what spurred my father to move on and bring other elements to his roles in Westerns.

Maria Cooper Janis