The Baron of Arizona
With Vincent Price, Ellen Drew, Vladimir Sokoloff.
US, 1950, 16mm, black & white, 97 min.
Print source: HFA
Fuller dove deep into the arcane early chapters of American history to create one of those wonderfully offbeat "yarns" that so delighted him as both a screenwriter and, before that, a crime reporter; the stranger-than-fiction true story of James Addison Reavis, a rogue forger and fraud who, in the late 19th century, almost convinced the US government that he was rightful heir to the former Spanish and Mexican land claims for the then new state of Arizona. The Baron of Arizona offered a classic part for Vincent Price, who effortlessly glides with unctuous theatricality between the roles of injured nobleman and devious blackguard, remaining strangely sympathetic throughout. Often dismissed as a minor Fuller entry, The Baron of Arizona is important for understanding the mode of critical and conditional history often engaged by his films, whose frequent and pointed questioning of the "what ifs ..." of America's past challenge assumptions about its present identity.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
The Naked Kiss
Underworld U.S.A.
The Baron of Arizona
Merrill's Marauders
House of Bamboo
Fixed Bayonets!
Forty Guns
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
A Fuller Life
Run of the Arrow
Street of No Return
The Steel Helmet
The Big Red One
Shock Corridor
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
