Fort Smith in Fact and Fiction
Since the late 1800s, the characters who played out their lives in Fort Smith and the Indian Territory have inspired many books and novels. In the 20th century, American cinema have also found them a goldmine for imaginative stories of harrowing adventure. Hollywood’s vision of this region is gripping – but the real story of what happened here is just as fascinating!
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Background: “Hang ‘Em High”
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The first and the most significant of the popular accounts of the federal court in Fort Smith is Homer Croy’s He Hanged Them High: An Authentic Account of the Fanatical Judge Who Hanged Eighty-Eight Men published in 1952. Croy, a newspaperman from Missouri, was a prolific writer whose historical works include other western topics, such as Jesse James Was My Neighbor. Adept at spinning a good tale, Croy had a reputation among other writers as someone who “frequently dreams up things.” The first edition of the book featured a bright and dramatic cover with illustrations of Judge Parker and the gallows in the background. Later paperback editions would go even further with this imagery.
Published by Little, Brown and Company, He Hanged Them High, reached a national audience. The vivid, engaging style of Croy made a good story even better. Croy’s work was based on the standard narrative of the federal court and Judge Parker as established in earlier books, but it extends through many embellishments that would soon form a part of the standard orthodoxy of the Judge Parker story. Previously, writers of the early twentieth century had separated Judge Parker from the story of the executions. Croy intertwines Judge Parker with the gallows and executions. Croy’s work introduced a second narrative view of Parker and the gallows; depicting Parker as a man driven by fanatical religious beliefs, obsessed with punishing the wicked. In regards to the number of executions, Croy states, “There is no way to establish that eighty-eight were hanged… I have used eighty-eight for Judge Parker… because it appears to be as accurate as any. After eighty, a man or two, one way or another, doesn’t matter.” While sensational and inaccurate, Croy’s book is significant in that it raised public attention to the history of the federal court and helped spark the community movement to restore the courtroom and gallows.
Judge Isaac C. Parker as depicted by Homer Croy comes to represent the frontier justice ideal. Common elements of the mythology of frontier justice are that justice was simple, moral, necessary, swift, public, and rugged. As presented by Homer Croy, Judge Parker and the executions at Fort Smith include all of these elements.
The Film
Clint Eastwood had starred in the television series Wagon Train, in the late 1950s and 1960s. In the mid 1960s, Eastwood went to Italy and starred in Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti-Western’ series, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More¸and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Hang ‘Em High was Eastwood’s return to Hollywood.
The story of the film appealed to Eastwood; “it had a subject matter that was interesting; the pros and cons of capital punishment.” Director Ted Post had first worked with Eastwood during his time on Wagon Train. The film became a break through role for Clint Eastwood, and within a few years he would go on to star in the first of the “Dirty Harry” series and gain prominence as a major western star.
More than just a revenge thriller, the film is about the politics of law enforcement and the consequences of justice. Hang ‘Em High was made in a leery, late sixties visual style, with cameras pushing in on faces and cuts which seem timed to upset a viewer’s internal rhythms and accentuates the violence featured in the film.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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