Drag Harlan (1920) User Reviews

Rare William Farnum western

[zpzjones · 6/10 · 21 March 2010]

It's a pity that nearly all of William Farnum's silent career is missing, mainly in several Fox Film vault fires. Farnum quite possibly is the missing western hero from the trio of himself, Tom Mix and William S. Hart. Farnum, a veteran Broadway stage actor like Hart, had an extensive silent film output performing in everything from westerns to prison dramas to even a 1917 version of Les Miserables. His main active years in silents were 1914 to 1924, a decade in which a heavy amount of American silents remain lost. (Farnum would retire in 1924 after getting hurt falling off a horse. He would return in character roles when sound came in at the end of the 1920s.) "Drag Harlan", which luckily survives, is a western from 1920 and has Farnum nearly in a pseudo anti-hero role. The copy of the movie I watched was a VHS from Grapevine Video with a bar hall style piano accompaniment. The print is quite murky but seems to have survived intact as released. There is static camera throughout though the scenery reveals it was shot right off the cuff in the elements in the desert. Jackie Saunders the female costar is a pretty tassel-haired blond with large presumably blue eyes that photograph light in this movie and in silent movie stills that I've seen of her. She has nothing to do but be the usual winsome heroine in support of the hero. The film has the usual consortium of heavies of which the final recipe to a good western is complete. This film is directed by J. Gordon Edwards who directed many Farnum films at Fox Studios and who directed Farnum in "IF I WERE KING" (1920) released just before "Drag Harlan". After watching "Drag Harlan" and "If I Were King", the only two Farnum-Edwards films available, one can detect the versatility of Edwards and actor Farnum as the two films are so diametrically different. In my review of "If I Were King" I mentioned how clear the print had been which is important in searching for details in a silent film. "Drag Harlan" survives just the opposite in a murky but viewable version, a condition which it most certainly was not released . "Drag Harlan" keeps within the already formulaic/programmer style of Hollywood westerns but it and the superior "If I Were King" makes you want to see more of the film efforts of William Farnum and his prolific director J. Gordon Edwards.