When her father, the local mail coach driver, is murdered by bandits, his daughter Ruth takes over the route and soon finds herself battling her father’s killers as they try to seize a valuable shipment.
Home Media Availability: Stream courtesy of the NFPF.
With Sheriffs Like These…
From the dawn of cinema, international audiences were in love with westerns, so much so that non-American studios made their own. The French Gaumont company shot westerns in Camargue but the Éclair company took things a step further by setting up shop in Arizona.
The Girl Stage Driver is a two-reel action picture about a kindly mail stage driver (Will E. Sheerer) with a doting daughter, Ruth (Edna Payne) and her boyfriend, the sheriff (Norbert A. Myles. The local general store has gathered a shipment of gold and packs it away in sight of the El Paso Kid (H. Stanley) before handing it over to the mail stage. A bit later, the locals discover the stage with the strong box open and the driver murdered. They recover the gold but the bandits are gone.
Ruth mourns and then takes over her father’s job driving the stage. Meanwhile, the El Paso Kid and his partner in crime, Black Mike, discover that a prospector is sending a large cash gift to his daughter on the mail stage. They waylay Ruth, steal the money and leave her tied to her own stage. The sheriff releases her and rides off after the villains.
The sheriff is quickly overpowered by the bandits and tied up. Ruth returns with the deputies and a posse. Spotting the sheriff, she helps him turn the tables on the bandit guarding him and then leaves to fetch the posse. The bandits turn the tables back on the sheriff and handcuff him. (Are you sensing a pattern?)
Ruth spots the bandits and gets the jump on them, trapping them inside a well and then running off to get the posse. The sheriff has escaped his cuffs and rushes to help. Meanwhile, the bandits escape the well and ambush Ruth but are finally captured (finally?) by the posse.
I don’t know, guys, I think we probably could have fit in a few more “Ha ha, the tables have turned” sequences into those two reels.
For all the silliness, Edna Payne does commit to her role as the unsinkable Ruth and she is a likable performer who clearly is performing her own stunts. I particularly liked the sequence where she climbs down a rope to get the jump on the bad guys and save her hapless dude in distress boyfriend. The death of Ruth’s father is also handled well, with the murder occurring offscreen and the film cutting to a shot of the stage with his body underneath.
As the National Film Preservation Foundation’s notes point out, the French Éclair company chose to film in Arizona in order to capitalize on European interest in the Mexican Revolution. Other European-backed films (such as Across the Mexican Line) were shot on the topic, most presenting heroic Americans and villainous Mexican characters. The Girl Stage Driver is no exception, with extravagant costumes making the nationality of the bandits clear.
However, the film also reflects American culture of its time; the Éclair company used local talent in front and behind the camera. For example, Ruth’s promotion to mail coach driver reflected the very real way women could attain stereotypically male jobs without too much social pushback.
Women had always worked for money in America but what a woman could do was strictly, though usually unofficially, policed. Women could be schoolteachers, entertainers, shop clerks, typists, telephone operators and more but a great many dangerous, prestigious and well-paying professions were cut off—unless they were inherited.
For example, Huron County, Michigan was overseen by Sheriff Lulu McAulay, who declared war on bootleggers during Prohibition and who took over the job when her husband died unexpected of appendicitis. Senator Hattie Wyatt Caraway, the first woman to be directly elected to the United States Senate, took the seat left empty when her husband passed away.
(Inheritance as a way to bypass the hurdles of extreme youth was also explored in Tol’able David, when Richard Barthelmess is permitted to drive the mail coach after his brother is attacked and left paralyzed by bandits.)
Ruth in The Girl Stage Driver quickly proves that she is just as capable (or, given the context of the film’s plot, incapable) as any man and manages to save the mail, her boyfriend and all future shipments from the El Paso Kid and Black Mike. Not a bad day’s work, all told.
The film was praised by Moving Picture World, which raved that director Webster Cullison “has again demonstrated his peculiar ability to make a film crowded with punches.” However, I must agree with the Motion Picture News review that states “Virtually a one-reel subject, and so it appears a little lengthy at two. A little too much escaping and recapturing occurs to sustain the interest.”
In my opinion, unless the film is particularly about the subject of capturing and escaping (like a P.O.W. picture or a fugitive story) then captures and escapes should be limited to one-to-a-customer. Otherwise, everyone just kind of comes off as incompetent, as is the case with The Girl Stage Driver. When the sheriff is released by Ruth and is then recaptured by the bandits in seconds, things turned farcical, especially when they lost him in turn a few minutes after that!
In fact, nobody in this picture is terribly good at their jobs. The bandits don’t find loot through cunning, they just go for whatever money the naïve townsfolk wave under their noses. Ruth and the sheriff play swapsies capturing and being captured with the bandits and nobody seems to be able to hold onto anyone else. In my opinion, all the characters are not cut out for the west and should have immediately booked one-way tickets to Boston.
The Girl Stage Driver is of interest to fans of early film outside of Hollywood and anyone who wants to follow the history of female action stars. However, it’s more of a film for completists rather than one that would win over new fans.
Where can I see it?
Stream for free courtesy of the National Film Preservation Foundation.
☙❦❧
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