Blue Streak McCoy

B. Reaves Eason: Blue Streak McCoy (US 1920) starring Harry Carey as Job McCoy. Glass slide. Collection Rob Byrne.

(Orel Západu aneb Hrdina z Divokého západu) (L’avventura di Bill Percival) / Ingen rädder här. (US 1920) regia/dir: B. Reeves Eason. sogg/story: H. H. Van Loan. scen: Harvey Gates. photog: William Fildew. cast: Harry Carey (Job McCoy), Lila Leslie (Eileen Marlowe), Charles Arling (Howard Marlowe), Breezy Eason Jr. (Albert Marlowe), Ruth Fuller Golden (Diana Hughes), Ray Ripley (Frank Otis), Charles Le Moyne (Mulhall), Ruth Royce (Conchita), ? (Billy Smith). prod, dist: Universal. uscita/rel: 23.8.1920. copia/copy: incomp., DCP, 38'14" (da/from 35 mm, imbibito/tinted); did/titles: CZE. fonte/source: Národni filmový archiv, Praga.

    Unreleased in Finland.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Harry Carey, 8 Oct 2023.

Richard Abel (GCM 2023): " The film opens with McCoy collapsed outside a bar somewhere in the Southwest, still drunk from celebrating as Prohibition goes into effect. Reaching a train stopped to take on water, he corrals Eileen’s wind-blown hat and, gun in hand, returns it, meeting Marlowe (a gold mine owner), his wife Diana, and their young son Albert. Reaching the town of Nineveh, he spots kids teasing Albert and shows him how to fight when Mulhall, one of Marlowe’s cowboys, tries to intervene. After McCoy enlists in the Border Rangers, he visits the Marlowe hacienda, both to see Eileen, finding he has a romantic rival named Billy, and to play with young Albert. One day he overhears Otis, Marlowe’s superintendent, with his mistress Conchita, framing Marlowe in order to convince Diana to elope with him. Otis has Mulhall and his henchmen cleverly rob bullion from the safe in the mine’s storeroom and briefly stashes Diana and Albert in the mine’s office. McCoy finds them and convinces Diana that Otis has deceived her; but Otis breaks in, which leads to another knockabout fight. Mulhull and his men attack the office, and McCoy is wounded in his gun hand. Feeling betrayed, Conchita guides the Rangers to the rescue. Although in the end McCoy doesn’t “get the girl,” he eyes a decanter and makes one little request of Marlowe. "

" This Czech print is missing footage at times, especially in the beginning, and it dispenses with the name of McCoy and simply calls the star Harry. Carey’s drunken comic bits from Hell Bent carry over into Blue Streak McCoy, and his playful scenes with little Breezy Eason, who loses his curls in the final scene, will return in The Fox. Once McCoy discovers Billy courting Eileen, his actions turn more serious. But Carey keeps up his rueful slouching, except when he can grin at the boy or at Otis. The story may be rather ordinary, but there still are striking moments in the filming: trade press reviews praised the night scenes; several shots from inside the mine’s tunnel produce iris-like effects that frame figures at the entrance; Mulhall’s gang drills up through the tunnel and into the storeroom to rob the safe; and they look down from a hillside to spot McCoy fighting Otis in the illuminated off ice by means of a window. Margaret I. MacDonald, in Moving Picture World (7.8.1920), wrote of Carey, “The actor makes a distinct impression in his ‘lone hand’ scenes in the first reel, and grows steadily in favor with the spectator.” The film’s Czech release title can be translated as “Eagle of the West, or Hero of the Wild West.” " – Richard Abel

AA: Harry Carey was a natural since the beginning: in 46 films directed by D. W. Griffith and 25 by John Ford (of those only three survive). Strikingly, Carey emerged on the screen already fully formed, a grown-up man, whose boyhood we are not allowed to witness. By the time he started his association with John Ford, Carey had already assumed the character of Cheyenne Harry, and in a way, in his Westerns, we always think of him as Cheyenne Harry.

Immediately Carey establishes a confidential relationship of goodwill with the audience. He can play the hero or the villain or anything in between, and we follow him and hope all the best. He is never the jeune premier. He can get the girl or lose the girl. Yet we feel that he would deserve the girl.

In this movie, he becomes a father figure to the bullied little boy Albert. Harry teaches Albert to defend himself and fight back.

The character of Job McCay has some affinity with Owen Davis's Lazybones, a loser even in the meaning of losing the girl, interpreted by Buck Jones in the movie directed by Frank Borzage. McCoy is a drunkard and a loser, but he is a fearless fighter, and like Lazybones, he has a heart of gold.

I am not sure about the meaning of "Blue Streak". The idiom means something moving very fast. But maybe here it is about getting drunk as Prohibition goes into effect.