When I started watching the epic western, The Big Country, it didn’t take me long to start wondering, Am I going to make it through three hours of this?
So I found myself web-browsing on my laptop, only half-watching the actual film, when I read that Burl Ives won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Big Country, playing Rufus Hannassey.
Burl Ives is in this picture?, I thought. Then his character made his first appearance on screen, and the movie suddenly got very, very good.
Early on, the movie seems almost cartoonish, but this speech reveals a bit of what’s really going on between the seemingly good guys, the Terrill family, and the seemingly bad guys, the Hannassey family:
Major Henry Terrill: What do you want Hannassey?Rufus Hannassey: Just payin’ back the call that you and your men did to my boys this mornin’… sorry I wasn’t there to give you the proper welcome. I got me something to say that’s about thirty years overdue. This is a mighty fine house, Major Terrill, a gentleman’s house. Those are mighty fine clothes your wearin’. Well, maybe you got some of these folks fooled, but you ain’t got me fooled, not by a damn sight! The Hannassey’s know and admire a real gentleman when they seen one, and they recognize the smell of a high tone skunk when they smell one. Now, I’m not here tonight complaining about twenty-three of your brave men, beating three of my boys until they couldn’t stand. Maybe they had it coming anyway — they’re full grown and can take their lickin’s. I’m also not here complaining that you’re trying to buy the Big Muddy, to keep my cows from water. It’s interesting to see the daughter of a genuine gentleman like Glenn Maragon under this roof!
I’ll tell you why I’m here, Major Terrill. The next time you come a busting and blazing into my place scaring the kids and the women folks, when you invade my home, like you was the law or God Almighty… then I say to you, I’ve seen every kind of critter God ever made, and I ain’t never seen a more meaner, lower, pitiful, yellow, stinking hyprocrite than you! Now you can swallow up a lot of folks and make them like it, but you ain’t swallowing me, I’m stuck in your craw, Major Terrill, and you can’t spit me out! You hear me now! You’ve rode into my place and beat my men for the last time and I give ya warning, you step foot in Blanco Canyon once more and this country goin’ to run red with blood until there ain’t one of us left! Now I don’t hold mine so precious, so if you want to start, here, start now!
That’s when he throws his rifle to the ground, in front of the Major — and in front of the whole splendid party the Major has thrown for his daughter and her fiancé, our protagonist, played by Gregory Peck — who, by the way, is clearly the voice of the Hollywood filmmakers, who decry the entire conflict between Terrill and Hannassey, which is meant to be a stand-in for the conflict between the US and Russia.
Anyway, Rufus has some wonderful lines, where he berates his cowardly bully of a son, Buck, played by Chuck Connors:
Buck Hannassey: You want me, Pa?Rufus Hannassey: Before you was born I did.
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Rufus Hannassey: Why ain’t you dead? You let ‘em run my cows off and you come back standing up!Buck Hannassey: What could we do, Pa? There was twenty of them… just a few of us!
Rufus Hannassey: Them cows is worth more than the whole lot of ya.