The Cheyenne Social Club / Firecreek

The teaming of James Stewart and Henry Fonda was a natural: not only were the two men veteran stars of their generation, but they'd actually been friends and even roommates since early in their careers. These two Westerns offer the stars in their relaxed end-of-career mode, with Stewart in the hero roles and Fonda as either villain or burr-under-the-saddle sidekick.

Firecreek is a grim 1968 Western that carries a strong residual aroma of High Noon. Stewart plays a farmer who happens to be the nominal (but rarely needed) sheriff of Firecreek, which means he must go into service when Fonda and his scurvy bunch of desperados (among them Gary Lockwood and Jack Elam) come to town looking for trouble. This slow, stripped-down picture has a philosophical undertone, with Fonda's weary, wounded outlaw trading bitter wisdom with local girl Inger Stevens. It goes on too long and Stewart is in the phase of coasting on his familiar persona, but overall it's a decent little Western fable.

The Cheyenne Social Club, from 1970, gets off to a marvelous start, with a sequence of saddle tramps Stewart and Fonda riding across half the West as Fonda maintains a fractured monologue throughout. Screenwriter James Lee Barrett was a veteran who worked frequently with Stewart (Shenandoah) and John Wayne, and some of the Western flavor is fine, but... things turn crass as soon as the pals realize Stewart has inherited a bordello in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Everybody except Fonda overacts mercilessly, and director Gene Kelly--yes, that Gene Kelly--indulges a leering style that undercuts some of the authentic laughs. Shirley Jones is around to provide comfort at the club; some predictable gunplay is mixed in with the jokes. However middling these two films might be in the filmographies of their formidable stars, it must be said that the widescreen transfer of both films to DVD is very good. --Robert Horton