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William A. Wellman's Short Video Biography from Turner Classic Movies

The Spanish Translated Release Promo Poster for Yellow Sky

20th  Century Fox Publicity Stills for Yellow Sky

A Yellow Sky Punch Cartoon

Monsters and Men

In The Tempest, playwright William Shakespeare explores the theme of an individual's freedom and control over their world. William A. Wellman, director of Yellow Sky, takes this theme and focuses on the characters' desires and struggles to usurp someone else's freedom to gain control. This struggle for power is emphasized through Wellman's use of both the prospects of a goldmine and the affections of the character Mike to entice the dramatic action of bandits. By juxtaposing the relationships between the male characters in the film and Mike, as well as the relationships between the outlaw gang and the gold, Wellman emphasizes the monstrous greed that drives men to mutiny. 

From the beginning of the film, we are introduced to a gang of thieves that lust after the idea of striking rich as they escape from the law after committing a bank robbery. By setting the main action of this film in the lives of ruthless and lawless bandits, Wellman is creating a platform for the true rotting of human greed to manifest itself in these characters. Though Stretch Dawson (Greggory Peck) is the leader in the gang and the pecking order descends from him, the men often question his authority. As the men discuss the ways that they can take control over Grandpa (James Barton)’s gold mine, Stretch commands his gang to give Mike and Grandpa their equal share of the gold. The men are furious and ask Stretch for a vote. When Stretch refuses Dude (Richard Widmark) threatens, “It’s 5 to 1. Nobody wants to see you dead, Stretch, but we want that gold and we want all of it!” Dude is willing to kill his leader for the opportunity to get rich and take control. Dude in particular throughout the film is in constant question of who is the rightful “heir,” so to speak, of the gang and finds himself oppressed by Stretch. To Dude, the idea of ruling the bandits is the only path to his true freedom from Stretch and from the law. The gold is a symbol of who has the control of the gang as well as a symbol of true self-realization in wealth.  

         Wellman parallels this desire for absolute wealth with the desire for absolute pleasure in order to illuminate the jealousy that propels the men to rearrange their pecking order.

         Mike, the film’s only female, is seen as the object of affection and desire for the gang. Stretch develops “purer” intentions for Mike as the film progresses and his affections toward her become a point of contention within the gang. Lengthy, the Caliban-like character of the piece, intends to go as far as to rape and steal her from her grandfather. Wellman delves into this idea of power and in both its greedy and lusty aspects. He suggests that to the men of Yellow Sky, Mike is a symbol of utter and complete control in their world.
         In the some of the final actions of the film, Stretch's mutinous men, Dude and Lengthy, develop their plot to leave Yellow Sky with all of the gold and with Mike as a prize for their villainy. The idea of this complete autonomy is something that fascinates both the characters in Yellow Sky as well as myself. The belief that it is possible to reach the point of absolute power and freedom is something that interests both Wellman and Shakespeare in their works. Although both works suggest that it is possible to obtain complete dominion, they both add the notion that all power comes at a cost: one's very own humanity.  

Miranda into "Mike" - Ferdinand into "Stretch" -

One of Wellman's most notorious projects in constructing Yellow Sky, his loose adaptation of The Tempest, was to create a female character whose desirable attributes were not in her innocence and virginity, but in her ability to keep up with and often outlive the men who surround her. Wellman was interested in creating a transposition of The Tempest that highlights the attributes of the American Western genre in film. Part of this project was to create a strong and gritty female ingenue that was appealing to this rough western setting. 

         In adapting Miranda into an independent woman, Wellman sets her up to fall in love with a character that is both headstrong and full of action. 

         This adaptation completely swifts the protagonist in the story from the Prospero-esque character to the Ferdinand-esque character. By shifting the protagonist to Ferdinand, Wellman is putting an emphasis in the plot on the relationship between the lovers. Mike and Stretch are the classic "unlikely couple" that discover that their differences make them all too similar, a classic american love story. Wellman rearranges the structure of The Tempest to appeal to western audiences through romantic and action film devices. To assist this transition, he creates a protagonist that both encompasses the exciting rough and rowdy bandit and the strong tender lover. 

Yellow Sky At a Glance

The Tempest V. Yellow Sky: Shakespeare Meets The Wild West 

            William A. Wellman’s classic film, Yellow Sky (1948), re-imagines Shakespeare’s masterpiece, The Tempest, in the brutal and fantastic American Wild West. The film is told through a gang of bank robbing outlaws that find themselves deserted in a desolate ghost town named Yellow Sky.

Plot

            James “Stretch” Dawson is the leader of a rough and violent gang of outlaws. After the gang’s notorious bank robbery in 1867, they flee out into the desert where they find themselves without water. The gang comes across an old abandoned ghost town with two precocious residents, an old man (Grandpa) and his granddaughter (Mike).  Mike is an aggressive and hardworking young woman that Stretch becomes attracted to.  Many of the other men take an interest in Mike and attempts to rape her in a later scene. The youngest member of the gang, Bull Run, comes to Mike’s aid and unsuccessfully tries to fight Lengthy until Stretch shows up and almost drowns Lengthy.

The more pragmatist of the gang, Dude, has scoped out the ghost town and discovered that Grandpa is mining for a huge sum of gold. Dude involves the other gang members in this information. Unsatisfied with their 6-way split earnings in bank robberies, the gang develops a plot to steal the gold. Stretch is uninterested in tampering with Grandpa’s prospects and a fight ensues between Dude and Stretch over who should be the gang leader.

Later Stretch gives his loyalty to Grandpa and Mike. Grandpa attempts to bargain with the men and says that he would be willing to split the gold sum amongst them.

The next day a band of Apache Indians come into town while the men are mining gold. Grandpa convinces the Apache to return to their lands. Stretch gives gratitude top grandpa for not persuading the Apache to kill his gang and tells his gang that they will split the gold profit. Furious at this proposition, Dude pulls a gun on Stretch and a gunfight between all of the men ensues throughout the ghost town. Stretch becomes wounded and Lengthy attempts to run away with the gold, but Dude and Stretch chase after him. The three are caught in a shoot out to the death in the old saloon. Mike later finds that Dude and Lengthy are dead and Stretch is severely wounded. Stretch and the rest of the gang decide to give back the bank money that they stole and split the gold with Grandpa and Mike.

          

Cast

Yellow Sky                                                                                           The Tempest

• Gregory Peck as James "Stretch" Dawson                                  Ferdinand/Ariel
• Anne Baxter as "Mike" (Constance Mae)                                   Miranda
• Richard Widmark as Dude                                               Stephano
• Robert Arthur as Bull Run                                                          Shipwreck Survivor
• John Russell as Lengthy                                                              Caliban
• Harry Morgan as Half Pint                                                          Shipwreck Survivor
• James Barton as Grandpa                                                 Prospero
• Charles Kemper as Walrus                                                Shipwreck Survivor

Elements of The Tempest

Although Yellow Sky is an extremely loose adaptation of The Tempest, many of the same elements and themes are present in both works. For example, The Tempest has an element of comparing men to monsters. Throughout Yellow Sky there are many allusions to that theme. Mike, similar to Miranda, experiences both the brutish monster of aggression within men, as well as the human conscience that they possess and is thus driven to find solace with the love of a good man. In the Tempest, Caliban is seen as the monster among men that fails to be accepted amongst the humans of the Island. In Yellow Sky, the character Lengthy possesses the same rejection from the humanity of the group that Caliban is imprisoned by.

Another popular theme that is present in both works is the idea of justice being fulfilled. Throughout the film, Stretch’s men, as crooked as their profession may be, are held to a pecking order of justice within the group. When one of them does wrong by another, Stretch is often the father figure that steps in with punishment and a keen sense of what is right. Although the story of Yellow Sky is told through the eyes of a protagonist that is more similar to Ariel and Ferdinand, we see this same sense of justice within Prospero inThe Tempest.

Classification

As classified by Julie Sanders: 

Adaptation: "Reinterpretations of established texts in new generic contexts or with relocations of an 'original' or source text’s cultural and/or temporal setting, which may or may not involve a generic shift."

 Transpositions: A type of adaptation where a text from one genre is delivered to new audiences by means of aesthetic conventions of an entirely different generic process or further, through cultural, geographical, and temporal terms.

 Analogue: A type of adaptation, a stand-alone work that is deepened by the understanding of the source text.

 Yellow Sky is a vivid transposition of The Tempest into the western genre that can be view as a stand-alone work. Yellow Sky deepens the understanding of the themes in The Tempest as well as reinterprets its meaning.

Adaptations of Yellow Sky

Stretch Dawson (1950)- A novel by William A. Wellman

Yellow Sky (1949)- A Radio Adaptation by William A. Wellman

The Jackals (1967)- A South African Adaptation by Robert D. Webb

Reception From Audiences

            Many critics were skeptical at first of William A. Wellman’s vision. Many critics worried that setting The Tempest in the American West and ultimately changing the protagonist of the storyline would disrespect the original work. Despite these fears, when the film was received by audiences as one of biggest block busters of the year and as a film that could stand alone as well as beside The Tempest. To this day, William A. Wellman’s Yellow Sky is revered as a classic western as well as a beloved Shakespeare adaptation.

References

Gallagher, Cullen (November 30, 2010). "'Stretch Dawson' by W.R. Burnett

              (Gold Medal, 1950)". Pulp Serenade. Retrieved 2014-11-10.

Howard, Tony (2007). "Shakespeare's cinematic offshoots". In Jackson, Russell. The

Cambridge companion to Shakespeare on film. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 303–23. ISBN 978-0-521-68501-6.

Yellow Sky- Full Film