The Alamo (1960 movie)

There are those who dislike “THE ALAMO” – starring and directed by John Wayne – for its gung-ho patriotism but (for me) it’s a big action war movie of the ilk that is made so often these days.

I watched it for the third time yesterday

The story is of a make-shift fortress, the Alamo, commanded by an austere stickler Colonel William Travers (Laurence Harvey) who cannot control the Tennessean conscripts of Davy Crockett (John Wayne) and Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) who refuse to abandon the post in the face of the insuperable odds of the Mexican army under Santa Anna, numbering 7000, to the mere 168 inside the Alamo.

In the last sequence a blonde woman leads out her daughter to the clear respect of the Mexican army.

The notion of a small group holding out against the odds and thereby earning the respect of the enemy was carried forward into “ZULU” (1964) and the Alamo bears other similarities too.

In the former, the patriotism of the South Welsh Fusiliers under Lieutenant Chard (Stanley Baker) and a fight-out in the hospital, where the malingerer James Booth as Hook exhibits his new found bravery, stood out.

Moral courage sits well with American cinema audience. Sadly, the courage shown by the oppressed dockworkers in “ON THE WATERFRONT” (1954) was not replicated by its director Elia Kazan who cravenly gave names to the USA’s McCarthy Commission of the 1950s.

In “HIGH NOON” (1952) the towns-people were unsupportive of Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper, a confirmed Republican) returning on his wedding to rid the town of an evil gang of hoodlums yet Cooper testified before the McCarthy Commission on behalf of script writer Carl Foreman who had been charged with being a Communist.