Catholics in the Movies: Raoul Walsh (1887-1980)

Last updated on: December 9, 2018 at 7:23 am by Pat McNamara

Catholics in the Movies: Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) 2018-12-09T07:23:51-07:00 Pat McNamara

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

He was one of Golden Age Hollywood’s most prolific figures, its premier action director. Over fifty years he directed the likes of Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and James Cagney. He gave young Marion Morrison his first starring role (and stage name). Raoul Walsh never won an Oscar, but he more than held his own with the era’s best directors. Yet the last thing he wanted, biographer Marilyn Ann Moss notes, was to be called an artist.

Born Albert Edward Walsh to Irish-American parents in Manhattan, “Raoul” was a nickname he acquired as a teen. Rambunctious and restless, he skipped from school to school until he was sent to Seton Hall College (now university). There, he recalled, he met Lionel and John Barrymore. “When the three of us got together,” he recalled, “we were out in a week.”

Walsh once described the Irish as “a wild lot,” as “nomads, who wander on the face of the earth.” Such describes his early years. He drifted into directing almost accidentally, starting as an actor under D.W. Griffith. In 1915 he played John Wilkes Booth in Griffith’s controversial 1915 film Birth of a Nation. (His brother George, after playing briefly for the Brooklyn Dodgers, became a popular silent star.)

Moss writes that “Walsh learned two great lessons from Griffith: get your picture finished on time, and take a businesslike, no-nonsense approach to work on the set.” His first directing job in 1914 was a quasi-documentary on Mexican general Pancho Villa. Regeneration soon followed, a melodrama considered a pioneer gangster film. Peopled with real criminals and filmed in the Bowery, it feels like a documentary.

One of his great silent hits was The Thief of Bagdad (1924), featuring cinema’s first action star, Douglas Fairbanks. His 1926 World War I drama What Price Glory? was one of the decade’s phenomenal successes. He was good at making action-based movies and stuck with it. It was a lesson he learned from Evangeline, a 1919 flop he directed based on the poem: “The picture didn’t make a quarter. So I said, ‘That’s the end of art. Give me the dagger, the sword and the gun.’”

A car accident ended Walsh’s acting career just before he was set to play the Cisco Kid in his first sound film. For the rest of his life he wore an eyepatch. In 1930 he took a chance with widescreen film in The Big Trail, a flop chiefly notable as John Wayne’s first starring role. (Walsh chose the name, based on Revolutionary War general “Mad Anthony” Wayne.) One reason Walsh chose this novice actor was, he later said, “The son of a bitch looked like a man.”

After a series of unremarkable films in the thirties like The Bowery and Klondike Annie, in 1939 Walsh scored a popular and critical success in The Roaring Twenties, a seminal gangster film, with James Cagney and an unsympathetic Humphrey Bogart. When asked in later years about the length of Cagney’s death scene, he replied: “Well, it’s damn hard to kill an actor.”

The 1940’s saw Walsh’s greatest success. Moss writes that he “helped transform the Hollywood studio yarn into a breathless art form.” Westerns, war movies, gangster films, Walsh did it all exceptionally well: White Heat; High Sierra; They Died With Their Boots On; Objective, Burma! During this period, he reflected that

Hollywood’s job is simply and directly to furnish entertainment. The man in the street pays his four bits at the box office and he wants a good show. To hell with sermonizing.

One contemporary noted: “Raoul enjoyed people, enjoyed directing, enjoyed pictures, and it came off when he directed.”

As Moss notes, there were many similarities between the films of John Ford, Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh. Ford, she writes, was “the great poet of American community,” whereas Hawks “poeticizes the smaller group, the band of brothers.” But, she adds, the “truest Walshian character is the lone wolf,” such as Bogart in High Sierra, Gary Cooper in Distant Drums, and all of the seven movies he made with Errol Flynn.

Walsh considered directing a day’s job of work. Actor Hugh O’Brian recalled: “He was absolutely a no bullshit guy.” In 1964, Walsh directed the last film of his career, an uninspiring Western titled A Distant Trumpet. Yet by then French critics were praising his earlier work lavishly, as they considered him a prime example of director as auteur, the driving creative force behind a film. B then, Walsh was happy for the attention.

Yet Walsh lived in quiet, happy retirement with his third wife Mary Simpson, in California, granting interviews to the likes of director and film scholar Peter Bogdanovich. One visitor said of him: “He is a survivor from the old Western days when men were men and toughness was something to be proud of.” Not long before Walsh’s death in 1980, critic Richard Schickel wrote to him:

You gave to me before I even knew you with your movies… taught me a lot of what a young man needs to know about being a GROWN UP MAN, about strength and tenderness and honor and the need for love between man and woman, man and man.

In an interview toward the end of his life, actor James Coburn reflected: “Today we have action films, not films with action.” Many of today’s films, Coburn felt, involved “killing and shooting and blowing things up” without asking people to think. There is a difference. High Sierra, The Roaring Twenties, and White Heat, to name a few, are among the finest films in American cinema. Whether Walsh wanted to admit it or not, he was as much an artist as Hawks and Ford (in relation to whom he called himself “the other Irishman.”)

(*The above drawing of Raoul Walsh is by Pat McNamara.)

Catholics in the Movies

Irish Americans

Previous Post

December 8, 2018

Brooklyn College Dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, 1915

Next Post

December 10, 2018 Scandal and Renewal at Gethsemani Abbey

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category African-American Catholics Alabama Catholics American Catholic History American Catholic women American History Anniversaries Anti-Catholicism Arkansas Catholics Benedictines Bishops Blessed John Henry Newman Book Reviews Books Boston College Brooklyn churches Brothers California Catholics Capuchins Cardinals Carlo Carretto Carmelites Catholic authors Catholic Cemeteries Catholic Historians Catholic History in Less Than 5 Minutes Catholic musicians Catholic Poetry Catholic Press Catholic School Textbook Catholic University of America Catholic Worker Catholics and Music Catholics and Race Catholics in Politics Catholics in the American Revolution Catholics in the Military Catholics in the Movies Catholics in the South Catholics in the West Catholics on Stage Catjolic Women Catolic Poetry Charles de Foucauld Children's Masses Christian Brothers Christmas Church Reform Civil Rights Movement Civil War Colleges and universities Converts D.C. Catholics Deaf Catholics Dominicans. Dorothy Day English Catholics Florida Catholics Fordham University Franciscans French Catholics Georgetown University German Americans Good Shepherd Sisters Hispanic Catholics Historians and Archivists Holy Cross Fathers Holy Name Society Idaho Catholics Illinois Catholics Indian Wars Indiana Catholics Irish Americans Irish Catholicism Italian Americans Italian Catholics Jesuits Josephite Sisters Kentucky Catholics Know-Nothings Laetare Medal Recipients laity Liturgical Movement Maine Catholics Manhattan College Maryland Catholicism Michigan Catholics Middle Ages Minnesota Catholics Missionaries Mississippi Catholics Missouri Catholics Monasteries Montana Catholics Native Americans New England Catholicism New Jersey Catholics New York Catholics North American College Ohio Catholics Oratorians Oregon Catholics Parish Mission Parishes Passionists Pat McNamara's Books Paulists Pennsylvania Catholics Popes Presidents Priests Quotations Religious Orders Rhode Island Catholics Saints Salesians Seminarians Seminaries Sermons Servants of God Siisters of Charity Sisters of Mercy South Carolina Catholics Spanish-American War Sports St. Francis of Assiai St. John Henry Newman Suplicians Tennessee Catholics Texas Catholics The year in review Thomas Merton Throwback Thursday Photograph Trappists Uncategorized University of Notre Dame Video Presentations Vincentians Virginia Catholics Visitation Nuns Washington West Point West Virginia Catholics West Viriginia Catholics Wisconsin Catholicism Women Religious World War II

Select a Month December 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 March 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

"Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine _____."

Select your answer to see how you score.

Kinsmen Friends Enemies Children