Virginia City

Virginia City was meant to be a follow-up to the acclaimed 1939 western Dodge City with both films have essentially the same crew working on them. It was not a sequel, though, having an entirely new cast of characters and taking place years earlier. Errol Flynn came back for Virginia City but his costar, Olivia de Havilland was forced to drop out, replaced first by Brenda Marshall, then later by Miriam Hopkins. Bogart also joined the cast after Victor Jory also dropped out. All this shifting of leads coupled with a director who had little love for westerns could have derailed the film before the first camera rolled. Instead it ultimately ends up being a competently, if not spectacularly made film that flows easily over the course of two hours and presents audiences with two sides of a conflict, neither of which is painted as villainous. 

The film begins with Captain Kerry Bradford (Errol Flynn) and his two comic relief sidekicks, Moorehead (Alan Hale) and Marblehead (Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams), escaping a confederate prison during the tale end of the Civil War. The leader of the prison, Captain Vance Irby (Randolph Scott) has just been informed that there is a large amount of confederate gold in Virginia City, Nevada but no apparent way to run it to the south to help bolster the nearly defeated southern troops. Vance devises a plan to smuggle the gold out. Bradford overhears about this and, upon escaping to the north, gets orders to track down the southerners and prevent the smuggling. 

Julia Hayne (Miriam Hopkins) is a dance hall singer who is also an undercover spy for the confederacy sent to Virginia City to aid in the smuggling operation. She meets Captain Bradford on the stage and he is instantly smitten with her. When Vance discovers this he uses it as an opportunity to set a trap for Bradford to get him out of the way and get the gold safely out of the city. He also offers a large sum of money to outlaw John Murrell (Humphrey Bogart), a factionalized version of a real outlaw, to create a diversion so the gold can get through the blockades set up by the army and, while this works, Murrell has his own designs on the gold and arranges for his men to take it by force once the gold is out in the open desert.

There are some terrific stunt sequences throughout the films runtime. Early on while Bradford is traveling via coach to Virginia City there is a confrontation between him and Murrell, who was captured attempting to rob the stage. This leads to a runaway coach, Bradford jumping between the galloping horses as they speed out of control and another man being dragged underneath the carriage much like Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This scene is tense and exciting, a taste of what is yet to come during the films climatic last half hour. The middle section of the film slows down in comparison but never dulls. This is in large part due to the chemistry between Flynn and Hopkins as he falls quickly for her while she finds herself conflicted between her slowly developing feelings for him and her duty to the south. Even Randolph Scott, who is playing things too stiffly, comes across sympathetic and likable. This, too, can be attributed to Hopkins, whose scenes with Scott serve to soften his otherwise hard exterior. 

If there is a weak link in the cast it is Humphrey Bogart. By this point in his career, Bogart had an established on-screen persona. He was primarily typecast as scowling gangsters with little to no real humanity to him. Here, he is being asked to stretch and play a jovial bandit who is used to being one step ahead of everyone. This character could have worked except for one fatal flaw. Bogart is playing the character with a badly over-the-top stereotypical bandito accent that is not only distracting but out-right offensive. At its best it is just distracting, at its worst it is reminiscent of Mickey Rooney’s character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Mercifully this character has very little screen time.

The most impressive thing about Virginia City, even more so than the first-rate stunt work, is how both sides of the conflict are portrayed. Both sides of the conflict come across as sympathetic and likable. This is personified in not only the leads but also the character of Colby Gill (Dickie Jones), an excitable eleven year old boy loyal to Julia and the south. His ultimate fate is among the most shocking scenes in the entire film and humanizes the southerners. Dickie Jones, later to play the title character in Disney’s Pinocchio, is perfectly cast here and sells both the humor and the tragedy.

This film is not a home run. Bogart’s character for one is a major disappointment. The final scene involving Lincoln and the end of the war seems like a convenience to get out of a tragic ending, too. But these are merely stumbling blocks in an otherwise superb film that further cements Michael Curtiz’s reputation as a director. It runs over two hours but the film moves along easily thanks to a great leading cast and a well written script. It rivals Dodge City if not quite surpassing it, yet it doesn’t need to. It’s great on its own merits and further cemented Flynn as an action star who could also lead westerns.

Release Date: May 16, 1940

Running Time: 121 Minutes

Starring: Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins, Randolph Scott and Humphrey Bogart

Directed By: Michael Curtiz