Western icons - the saddlebum

Wanderer, drifter, saddlebum - the lonely yondering man would become a mainstay of the western genre both in literature and on film right from the formation of the genre.

Early silent screen cowboys William S. Hart and Harry Carey were good bad guys who were often out of step with the law but would always throw their weight and guns behind the cause of justice.

With the advent of sound the lone figure was watered down somewhat with the darker edges of Hart and Carey lightened up considerably for the B-westerns that had very clear definitions of right and wrong.

However by the Fifties the western genre changed and became much more complex than it had ever been before. Film Noir was doing big business and its inky tendrils spread to the good old oater. Even the once bright western landscapes looked darker - shadows twisted natural formations until locations like Monument Valley looked as much sinister as beautiful.

The western heroes became far more passionate and would often walk a very thing line between good and bad.

A good example of the change in western heroes is in the movie Shane.

Alan Ladd's character is an aimless drifter with a mysterious past when he rides into the homesteaders lives. Indeed it is hinted that there is something sinister in his past but this is never really discovered by the homesteaders or audience. The character is also driven by a love that can never be fulfilled and there is much happening in Shane's eyes when he looks at the homesteader's wife.

That Shane looks like the classic western hero - Aryan blond hair, dressed in buckskin and when he first appears in the film it is as if he has ridden down from the clouds - this introduction has been used again and again in movies as diverse as Pale Rider and The Gunfighter.

There is also something of Shane in the Ethan Edwards character as played by John Wayne in John Ford's, The Searchers. Ethan too drifts into the film and he too is the slave to a love that can never be forgotten or fulfilled, this time it is a love for his bothers wife. Ditto for the Eastwood character in Pale Rider which is basically an unofficial remake of Shane.

Most of Anthony Mann's classic western heroes can be fitted into the saddlebum role, men drifting who carry an inner guilt that keeps them alone and prevents them from ever becoming a part of a community. The same goes for directors like Sam Peckinpah, Raoul Walsh and just about anyone else who ever stepped behind a camera and pointed it at a western landscape.

In the 60's Clint Eastwood's Man with no Name (who did actually have a name in each movie) was a grotesque mutation of the wandering bad good man. In fact most of the good in the characters had been erased and they were only good in comparison to the much worse and psychotic bad men of these movies.

Indeed in Leone's movies the distinction between good and evil was so obscured as to be non - existent. The protagonist were often motivated by greed or revenge however like the saddlebums of previous westerns they would ride off, alone, into the sunset just in time for the end credits. That was, of course, if they survived.

The great westerns of the seventies - The Beguiled (perhaps the most noir of westerns) ,Josey Wales, High Plains Drifter, True Grit, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid would always present their protagonist as a loner, someone who walked alone. And the tradition continues to the present day - William Munny was never more at home than when out in the wilderness with only his horse for company and the heroes of Lonesome Dove just needed that one last cattle drive before retiring to the rocking chair and their memories.


Wherever the western goes in the future one thing is certain - the lone saddlebum will always have a part to play.