Hell’s Heroes
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Tom Reed and C. Gardner Sullivan from the story “Three Godfathers” by Peter B. Kyne
1929/US
Universal Pictures
IMDb Page
First viewing/YouTube
The girl a goad for banditry, the babe the inspiration that led the three bad men through a hell of heat and thirst to…What? (original print ad)
Not too shabby for your first talking picture, Mr. Wyler!
Three bandits (played by Charles Bickford, Raymond Hatton and Fred Kohler) ride into the town of New Jerusalem. After hanging out at the saloon for awhile so we can get a song and dance in, they head off to rob the bank. During the robbery, the teller is shot dead and one of the three is wounded. They escape into the desert.
There they come upon an abandoned covered wagon carrying a woman who is in the late stages of childbirth. The bandits were counting on filling up with water there but the water hole has been dynamited. The mother gives birth to a boy. Her dying wish is that all three men become the the baby’s godfathers and bring him to New Jerusalem where the father worked (past tense) at the bank.
The three are complete softies when it comes to this baby. Will they be able to get him to town before all four of them die of thirst?
This is a really solid Western and seems to flow in a way I hadn’t seen yet in early talkies. The acting is good and the pacing is pure Wyler. The YouTube print is once again quite fuzzy but not so bad that I did not enjoy the film. Even this early, the story had been adapted for the screen twice previously. It was also remade later several times, most famously by John Ford in 3 Godfathers (1948).
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I also watched a nice documentary on British silent cinema on YouTube called Silent Britain. Very nice collection of clips from the silent era.
