Second Reel: Poster posture: Women with six-guns

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Poster posture: Women with six-guns

The Bushwhackers (1951)

One style of poster repeatedly used for westerns featuring women shows the women illustrated, not photographed, standing head to toe, looking and pointing two 6-guns straight at us. A typical example is the artwork currently associated with a 1951 film called The Bushwhackers (at right), though it is unclear to me if this is original poster art or something affiliated only with the Synergy Entertainment DVD release of the film. In any case, several authentic examples follow, ordered by how well I think they meet the ideal form of the style, with the strongest examples first, followed by slight variations: photographic art, women with a single gun, and women not entirely shown. I couldn't help but conclude with a French poster for the film noir Gun Crazy (aka Deadly Is the Female), whose leading woman is first introduced wearing a western outfit, twin six-shooters in hand.

Some of these posters make a promise that isn't kept by the film — I don't recall Patricia Medina, for example, doing much shooting in The Buckskin Lady, nor Babrbara Stanwyck having as much gunplay as Ronald Reagan in Cattle Queen of Montana. Conversely, the poster for Johnny Guitar, while featuring Joan Crawford as the dominant element, does not depict her showdown with Mercedes McCambridge in a rare example of a western whose climactic gunfight is between two women.

Finally, note the taglines on some of these posters, which sexualize the women through innuendo despite their apparent mastery of a traditionally male (and Freudianly phallic) weapon. My favorites are from The Buckskin Lady ("She hid her past behind a pair of silver .45's!") and Cattle Queen of Montana ("She strips off her petticoats . . . and straps on her guns!"). The posters further fetishize these women through costume, with prominent gun belts offset by tight or low-cut clothing.