A Man Named Cash

(“Alarums and Excursions” is a Shakespearian stage direction used frequently during battle scenes. The phrase indicates a call for a good deal of noise and actors running back and forth across the stage.)

I always thought he would have made a great King Lear. He was that big. As Paul Beston wrote, “Besides being a great loss to our musical heritage, Johnny Cash’s passing means that America has lost one of its few remaining human landmarks. They don’t make shadows in his size anymore.”

Perhaps his humility would have made it difficult for him to have played that arrogant ancient Briton successfully. For despite that powerful persona, I often sensed a vulnerability. Still, many actors, including some great ones, have done well with the hubris at the top of the tragedy and been less than persuasive on the heath and at Cordelia’s death. In the long run, villains are easier to act than good guys.

Performers need to recognize humility and vulnerability as essential attributes of any but the shallowest portrayals. As Robert Shurtleff exhorts would-be actors in his handy book, Audition, “Look for the love.” Too many actors don’t get beyond the ability to express anger and rage. That limitation prevents them from telling the whole story.

James Earl Jones performed what is still my favorite Lear, but I would have liked to have seen the Man in Black try it. Although Cash made a number of television appearances in acting roles, most prominently in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, I have always felt he accomplished his best dramatic work back in 1971 in a film commissioned by an Apache tribe. The tribe wanted to make some money so they hired Cash and Kirk Douglas to star in the film, a Western actually.

But it was a film noir Western written by Harold Jack Bloom. Lamont Johnson, who had attained fame as a director of television shows such as The Rifleman, Peter Gunn, Have Gun, Will Travel, and The Twilight Zone, was chosen to direct the film. It was called A Gunfight.

It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie, but as I recall, two pretty well washed-up gunfighters wind up in the same town on the Mexican border. Cash’s character has just come to town. Kirk Douglas’ version of another has-been quick draw is supporting himself and his family as a bouncer in the local gin mill where he regales the customers with stories of his checkered past.

The two men know each other by repute and commiserate in an existential way before coming up with a plan to ameliorate the nowhereness of their lives. They decide to rent the bullring across the border and stage a gunfight to which they will sell tickets. The winner will take all because the loser will, of course, be dead. After all sorts of handwringings, moanings and other displays of angst, the fight does take place.

Obviously, I am not going to reveal the ending. Critics didn’t think very highly of the film. I don’t believe the Apaches made a whole lot of money, if any. Still, I came away from the film with a huge respect for both Cash and Douglas. The risks they took as performers were significant and I found their performances entirely credible. Credibility in the context of the unthinkable is no mean feat. It was the simplicity of the proposition which made the minimalism of the film work. I was reminded of Fritz Lang’s M with Peter Lorre.

In any case, that’s how I know that Johnny Cash could act and why I thought a Lear of his creation would be worth watching. I am resisting the urge to write of his faith, of his love for Miss June and of his enduring place in Americana. I cannot write of those subjects for the same reason that Stalky and his companions were unmanned in Kipling’s The Flag of Their Country. Some things you just don’t talk about.

Sherri King, a graduate student who does research at the Heritage Center, put it very well indeed in a letter she addressed to Cash after his death last month, “Paradoxically, what made you a legend was the fact that you refused to attempt to be anything other than a man.”

I remember hearing Johnny Cash’s first recording played on a jukebox in New Hampshire when I was 12. I was delighted as he made each one of his comebacks. I often sent cards to him when I knew he was in the hospital. I’m going to miss him, but he did bequeath us more than many do.

Video of the Month
I doubt I’ll ever have another video of the month, but if you haven’t seen Cash’s excruciating video of Trent Reznor’s (Nine Inch Nails) Hurt, then you need to watch MTV until it comes around again. Cash covers the song on his American Recordings IV, a pretty shattering effort in itself, but the video absolutely stuns you on first seeing it. I recommend subsequent viewings because the work contains layer upon layer of meaning. I’ve never beheld a film that accomplishes so much in such a brief amount of time. It is almost as if Cash is in the chasm which he mentions below.

Quotation of the Month
“How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”—Johnny Cash

Bill Lannon is Co-Founder and Associate Publisher of the Midcoast Review. Contact him at <wlannon@midcoastreview.com>.

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