MESTON TO HITE

A WOMAN WITH CHOICES 

Kathleen Hite's tv adaptation of Kitty's Outlaw is a study 
in how she actually puts the woman 
in a story that is supposed to be about a woman. 
Meston's original radio script was indeed in large part about Kitty-- 
to whom her loyalties really belong, 
how each of her three friends react to her apparent betrayal, 
and how she is redeemed in the end. 
Yet despite the fact that this story has a lot to do about her, 
Meston's script doesn't really give Kitty much...  air time. 
Hite's script, on the other hand, gives Kitty a lot more...  screen time. 
In radio, Kitty hardly has any contact with Cole--  
she flees the Long Branch at the sight of him, 
and exchanges a look with him on the street.  
They only get to talk in the end, when Cole is dying in Doc's office.  
On tv, Kitty and Cole have a happy reconciliation on the boardwalk,  
meet again on the street later for a long exchange, 
and in between share a passionate moment in the back alley 
of the Long Branch, Kitty initiating as much as receiving 
a kiss, an embrace, and perhaps more.  
As can be expected, Hite in her rewrite rights the equation 
and enlarges the woman's role; or to put it another way, 
she enlarges the woman.  She is no longer just one of the boys, 
a loyal follower, a known quantity in the background.  
She is now an actor in the story, a woman with choices, 
a determinant, in view.  
All these matters are on the serious side, but consider another aspect:  
Hite's biggest triumph, perhaps, is managing to write in 
a derriere shot of another man, in a show usually focused on the marshal's.  
Her script begins with a scene of Cole rising, 
checking his gun, and emerging from his hotel room.  
Cole goes down the stairs, the camera shooting him 
only from the waist down, focusing on his legs and backside.  
Not bad from a female viewpoint.  



LEAVING WELL ENOUGH ALONE 

One can see why Hite chose Cows & Cribs to adapt--  
not too many Gunsmoke episodes come with three 
ready-made female characters, each with her own plight. 
Hite wisely leaves it alone--if Peckinpah were the adaptor, 
he would have had the two homesteading women 
have a blazing lesbian shotgun fight, and invented a chaplain 
(played by Sebastian Cabot) who sodomizes a burro 
in Moss Grimmick's stable. 
Fortunately, Cows & Cribs escapes the fate suffered 
by Yorky and The Queue at Peckinpah's hands, and survives intact. 
Hite does add a quirk to Ma Smalley--she meets the marshal 
outdoors because she thinks 'it's unlady-like 
to go into any man's office.' 
It is also tempting to believe that it is Hite's doing 
that Ma and Mrs. Nadler break into a hat fashion show 
during their scenes--the semantic shades of sunbonnets 
have yet to be exposed. 
The tv version of Cows & Cribs is helped considerably 
by the fact that the two homesteaders--one afflicted by spotted fever, 
the other by a spotty husband--are played by sublimely 
beautiful actors, Kathie Browne and Anne Barton 
(who resembles Geraldine Fitzgerald). 
Ma Smalley is played by the redoubtable Mabel Albertson, 
who would go on to play Gody and Kate Heller 
in the b&w hour era. 



October 31, 2005 



Copyright © 2005-2011 E. A. Villafranca, Jr. 
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