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Belle Starr

1941, Movie, NR, 87 mins

Belle Starr: Review

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This movie and the facts of history have nothing in common, yet Tierney makes such a beautiful, if mythical, Belle in radiant color that it is impossible to take your eyes from her. In this romanticized version, Belle takes up with Confederate guerrilla leader Scott after her mansion is burned. Together they continue to fight for "The Lost Cause," long after Lee's surrender, battling Yankees, banks, railroads, and sheriffs until Tierney, loved by the Yankee captain (Andrews) pursuing her and Scott, is killed as she rides to warn her husband of an ambush. Wills gives good support as Scott's chief aide. Ironically, he is named Blue Duck, which was the name of Belle's second husband in real life after Sam Starr was shot to death. In reality, Belle was a common horse thief and prostitute who once ,for an early photo, dressed up in a velvet gown and adorned her body with pistols while sitting atop a horse she had stolen. She had the face of an aged crone, one that would stop a freight train, but Fox transformed this mean-minded, hatchet-faced bushwhacker into the lovely Tierney, and the uninformed world reveled in the spectacle. Since GONE WITH THE WIND had been released only two years earlier, Tierney was instructed to affect a Southern drawl a la Scarlett O'Hara, and she even has a mammy, Beavers, similar to Hattie McDaniel. Belle never lived in a glorious mansion as does Tierney; she was a Missouri low-life who slept with any outlaw who would have her, including the notorious Cole Younger with whom she had a child, Pearl. She married Sam Starr in 1880, 15 years after the Civil War; neither of them ever fought for the South, only their own mercenary selves, ending in the dust of lonely Oklahoma roads. In addition to the absolutely marvelous photography of this film, Newman's score is bold and haunting, one of his best. leave a comment
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