Angel and the Badman (1947)
A wounded gunfighter is taken in and nursed back to health by a Quaker family, whose pacifist convictions and their daughter's quiet affection gradually pull him away from the violent life he has always known, even as old enemies and the law close in.
Angel and the Badman marked the directing debut of James Edward Grant, who had already scripted several of John Wayne’s Republic pictures, and it was also the first film Wayne produced independently, through his own newly formed company. Harry Carey, a veteran of silent Westerns and one of Wayne’s own early mentors, appears here in one of his last screen roles before his death later that year.
Background
Angel and the Badman marked the directing debut of James Edward Grant, a screenwriter who had already written several of John Wayne’s films for Republic Pictures, and it was also the first film Wayne produced independently through a company he had just formed himself, a significant step in his control over his own career. The story follows a wounded gunfighter taken in and nursed back to health by a pacifist Quaker family, whose convictions and whose daughter’s quiet affection gradually draw him away from the violence that has defined his life.
What to watch for
Watch for Harry Carey’s performance in one of his final screen roles before his death later that year; Carey had been a star of silent Westerns decades earlier and was an early mentor to Wayne himself, which gives his appearance here a certain symbolic weight within the Western genre’s own history. The film’s gentler, more contemplative tone, less concerned with gunplay than with its central character’s moral transformation, sets it apart somewhat from more conventional Westerns of the period.
