Archie Mayo | The Petrified Forest / 1936 || Dave Powers | The Putrified Forest / 1972 [TV sketch on "The Carol Burnett Show"]

everyone goes to the blue mesa bar-be-que

by Douglas Messerli

 

Charles Kenyon and Delmar Daves (screenplay, based on the stage play by Robert E. Sherwood), Archie Mayo (director) The Petrified Forest / 1936

Stan Hart, Larry Siegel, and Gail Parent (teleplay), Dave Powers (director) The Putrified Forest / 1972 [TV sketch on “The Carol Burnett Show”]

 

Robert E. Sherwood was one of a number of US playwrights whose every work during a period of time seemed like a major statement of theater, but whose works today are sometimes so outrageous as to be laughable. Even Eugene O’Neill has a few works that fit this category, as well as William Inge, Maxwell Anderson, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Paddy Chayefsky, and numerous others (almost all of whom later wrote for film as well) whose works are now remembered more through their movie recreations than from their revivals on stage. But then even in film, where often experienced screenwriters—such as Charles Kenyon and Delmar Daves who recreated this film—worked hard to wipe away their most serious literary blunders, the evidence of their theatrical absurdities remains.

      No one can possibly blame contemporary audiences for simply laughing at the truly bizarre plot contrivances and linguistic bombast of Sherwood’s once popular play (although it lasted only 197 performances on stage) The Petrified Forest. Imagine even thinking up a play which takes place inside Arizona’s The Petrified National Forest, near the Blue Mesa, part of the Painted Desert. The unlikely spot is home to Blue Mesa Bar-Be-Que, the last gasoline station and diner stop before the park itself. There you will find a proto-rightwing militarist, Jason Maple (Porter Hall), his father (Charley Grapewin) who loves to spin tales of his youth when he claims he was shot at by Billy the Kid and knew Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), and Jason’s unhappy daughter, Gabrielle (Bette Davis) who longs to run off the Bourges, France, where her mother, who long ago has left the wilderness where her US Army man took her as a young bride, has returned to her native homeland.

     Gabby (the nickname she hates) reads French poet François Villon and paints when she’s not waiting tables, keeping their business accounts, or trying to shoo off the unwanted attentions of their gas pumper Boze Hertzlinger (Dick Foran).

     If this quartet isn’t ludicrous enough, Sherwood introduces a British-sounding intellectual snob, sometimes poet (Leslie Howard), who having been fired from what sounds like a job of being a gigolo to a wealthy publisher’s wife (the publisher, incidentally, of his only book) has inexplicably determined to go West, or East—it doesn’t matter since he, himself, doesn’t know in which direction he’s headed—on foot without a cent in his pocket. He’s somehow hitchhiked and walked into this godforsaken dusty spot, where, of course he finds someone to quote Villon to and who’s willing to listen to every silly pronouncement about how nature is punishing man (stolen evidently from T.S. Eliot) for his hubris and how many “breeds” of individuals—like all such snobs, he loves gathering people into types—are near extinction, himself included. Alan Squier, the queer man’s name, is what you might describe as a trueblood “cynical romantic,” disappointed about a world that never existed in the first place.

     Gabby, desperate for anyone with an IQ over 60, is fascinated by the newcomer, although totally aware of his ridiculousness. She shows him her secret paintings and immediately falls in love with him, imagining him whisking her off to France to show her everything she’s missed in the metaphorical world of fossilized beings that Sherwood has conjured up for us. Conversely, in Gabby, Squier recognizes the vitality, wonderment, and possibilities he has long ago abandoned, tempted for a moment or so to take her up on her desires, but too exhausted to imagine that he might be much use to her, even ignoring the unspoken element of sex.

      She serves him up a meal and beer while he serves her up all the nonsense she’s long been writing for, coming from someone as queer as she perceives herself to be. Howard has taken on this role, previously on stage, immediately after playing the poof of The Scarlet Pimpernel and just before he would perform as the misogynist Henry Higgins of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion; he performs this role without powdering his nose or growling at womenkind, but nonetheless makes it apparent that he’d be of utterly no use to the high-spirited Gabrielle, just as he probably wasn’t of much value sexually to his publisher’s wife. Sherwood doesn’t seem to even bother himself with anything sexual let alone homosexual, although it’s interesting in the wonderfully satiric version of this movie, whipped up by Carol Burnett’s writers for “Old Old Movies” series, The Putrified Forest, he’s called by the name that everyone if America’s macholand perceives him to be, a “sissy.”

      Back to the movie, the writer introduces yet a few other passersby on this desert deserted dirt road: a wealthy investment banker, Chrisholm (Paul Harvey), his frustrated and at first imperious wife (Genevieve Tobin), and their chauffeur who have just stopped for a fill-up and a moment in the public bathroom to clean themselves off. Since he’s just about ready to continue on his journey, Squier, with help from Gabby, hitches a ride with the driver to the couple’s destination, the hotel of the nearest city. They don’t get far.

      If you haven’t yet reached your limit of incredulity, perhaps if I tell you that the gangster Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) has just escaped from prison and is heading their way with his gang, which should convince you of this work’s absurdity. Not only is he heading “their way,” but he has picked out the Black Mesa Bar-Be-Que as the meeting-up place for his girl and two other guys. Unfortunately, their get-away car has broken down, but fortunately the Chrisholms with the sissy aboard are also heading their way. The Duke and his gang kidnap the car, leaving the wealthy couple and their chauffeur to ponder the situation, while Squier heads back on foot to the diner.

      Before you know it, everyone’s at Rick’s—sorry, wrong movie!—everyone who’s anyone in this part of the country has gotten together at the Black Mesa Bar-Be-Que, most of them under gun point of the Duke and his gang as Squier further pontificates, aligning himself with the gangster as types that are doomed for petrification. Still worried for Gabby’s future, he pulls out a life insurance policy he has been carrying with him, forces Mrs. Chrisholm to witness his signature, and demands Duke kill him before he leaves, having willed the $5,000 policy to Gabrielle.

     The rest of the story really doesn’t matter since it consists simply of further character revelations from figures in whom by this time we’ve lost all interest—although there is a wonderful moment when one of Duke’s gang members, a black man, attempts to make communication as a “bro” with the Chrisholm’s black chauffeur, who hasn’t a clue what the other is saying to him. Duke’s friend tries to explain that he’s been liberated since the Civil War, without the other fully comprehending what he’s saying. That scene alone, in the midst of racist 1936, seems remarkable.

       Duke hears word that his girl and the others have been captured by the police and finally attempts to leave, despite the fact that by this time the police have surrounded the diner and are shooting to kill anyone and everyone in the place. In his hurry to escape, he’s forgotten all about his agreement to kill off Squier, who now stands in the doorway to prevent his exit until Duke finally plugs him just to get out the door, the true outsider of this world finally finding the opportunity to die in Gabrielle arms, the closest he probably has ever gotten to female adoration.

      Gabby, accordingly, will get her chance to see gay Paris. But what this movie has really been about other than that free ticket and a moment of imaginary love is beyond my comprehension. Sure, as Chris Barsanti writes in Slant magazine: “The Petrified Forest seems to have bigger things on its mind, though, than romance and a hostage situation. From the sign in the diner that says, “tipping is un-American, keep your change,” to Gabby’s father’s tin soldier posturing and the grandfather’s endless romanticized Old West spiels to Squier’s long ruminations on being the last of a vanishing race, ‘the intellectuals,’ much of what’s on display here evokes a society on the decline, propping itself up with patriotic guff, fairy tales, and violence.” But in the end, despite its attempt to fluff itself up as play of ideas, the original and its film recreation is nothing but another botched “ship of fools.”

      I liked The Putrified Forest, with Burnett as the desperate Gabby, Harvey Korman as Squier, Steven Lawrence as Duke, and Paul Sand as the Duke’s mad dog killer, Weasel (not in the movie) better. Weasel, desperate to shoot up the place, is calmed down only like a dog by petting his head, which Gabby successfully does, Sand’s tennis shoe tapping in rhythm just like a dog’s tail. When finally, Duke refuses to shoot this satire’s Squier, Gabby herself picks up his gun and does him in, as she and Duke march out the door singing "La Marseillaise," which does sort of turn her former diner in Rick’s Café Américain.

 

Los Angeles, April 9, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).