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| Hugh O'Brian has Raymond Burr behind bars in The Brass Legend |
Hugh O'Brian plays the film's hero, Sheriff Wade Addams. O'Brian was just beginning as successful run on Television as Wyatt Earp. His role in The Brass Legend is not that dissimilar to his Earp, but it is far, far grimmer. Addams is so haunted by the threat of violence looming over himself in his role as Sheriff that his face becomes a mask of resolute despair. O'Brian delivers his best performance in a role that displays a talent not often on display in a host of uninspiring films. Sheriff Addams' troubles with his girlfriend stem primarily from his devotion to his professional duties. A comparison to a similar trope in High Noon shows the more subtle power of The Brass Legend. Like Rio Bravo, a conscious riposte to High Noon, The Brass Legend is a superior variant of the Fred Zinnemann flick. Even with B wattage names, as opposed to Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, the relationship between O'Brian and the winning Nancy Gates (Comanche Station) is the more believable and palpable romantic union.
Another thing in The Brass Legend's favor is that it has a more memorable villain than High Noon. Tris Hatten relishes the freedom and booty of his outlaw life. Raymond Burr's career, starting after World War 2, offers an impressive roster of checkered characters in films as unsung as Pitfall, The Blue Gardenia, and Ruthless plus more heralded films such as A Place in the Sun and Rear Window. He is quite good in The Brass Target, with the chance to show off a more physical aspect of his talents. He was versatile enough to range from modern noirs to period oaters. His success as Perry Mason led him away from feature films. He would reunite with Oswald rewardingly in the 1957's Crime of Passion, which features Barbara Stanwyck, before springing unjustly accused defendants for all eternity.
Part of what makes Tris Hatten so frightening is how playful and normal seeming he is. Jovial and talkative, he even expresses admiration for the boy who divulged his hideout to the sheriff. However, after a violent jailbreak, the mask hiding Hatten's psychopathology falls. Hatten's wounded cellmate has a derringer hidden in his boot and Hatten uses it to disarm an elderly deputy and gain his freedom. The deputy is played by Russell Simpson, a beloved and aged (he was 77) supporting player whose career dated to the silent era. He is most famous for playing Pa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. He is called "Pops" in The Brass Legend. Oswald's closeup of Simpson's face through the bars when he realizes Hatten has the drop on him emphasizes the rings around Simpson's eyes and his doddering vulnerability. Once he is free, Hatten seizes the opportunity to repeatedly pistol whip Pops. Beneath a charming façade lurks a psychopath and Burr is adept at showing us both sides of the coin. When, after the inevitable showdown, Hatten lies dying, he asks the sheriff if he winged him. Reassured that he did, Hatten dies happily in the knowledge that he was barely bested; a childish reaction surely.
The Brass Legend was shot hurriedly and has little in the way of production values. If the film's town looks familiar, it is because it was filmed at the Ray Corrigan Ranch, a set used in over four hundred Westerns. Oswald career had a brief flurry in feature films before petering out into episodic television work. Like Hugh O'Brian, Oswald worked in a large number of projects that were unworthy of his abilities. The threat of violence hangs over his standout films as it did over America during the Cold War. I heartily recommend A Kiss Before Dying, a Technicolor noir, and his western Rashomon, Valerie. Complete cultists might want to search out his mid-Eighties Twilight Zone episode, 'The Beacon". This Shirley Jackson knockoff features Charlie Martin Smith and Martin Landau. The Brass Legend has sunk into such obscurity that it doesn't have a rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The plus side is that it is currently streaming on Tubi.
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