HAIL THE CONQUERING VILLAIN

There used to be a joke about the frontier judge who sentenced a man to 50 years at hard labor and then said, “It’s a good thing you were innocent or I’d really have thrown the book at you.”

They knew how to make heroes and villains in those days, on and off the bench--and with and without badges. There wasn’t time for ambiguity, and I’ve always been sure that their clarity was one of the great appeals of the Westerns. Thanks to the white hats, you could even tell the good guys from the bad guys in long shots.

One of the several homages that Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” paid to the Western past was its villain: a lean, mean, cold-blooded, easy-to-hiss triple-dyed dastard if ever there was one, the kind who shoots first and never does get around to asking questions later.

He was the itinerant marshal, riding the trails with a troupe of long-coated gunslingers and dispensing death on order, the samurai-Lone Ranger tradition turned upside down. He was John Russell, all 6 foot 3 of him, with cheekbones you could take shelter under and eyes that would cut stone. When he and his boys made a sieve out of an innocent man in the snowy street, you knew you’d seen pure evil, with spurs on.

The marshal got his comedownance in the end, naturally, honoring another canon of the traditional Western, which is that justice must be served, one way or another, by the final fade-out.

Russell is an urban cowboy, born and raised in Los Angeles (L.A. High School, UCLA). He had his towering height when he was 14, and it was probably inevitable that he’d find his way into action pictures. While he’s been in films as varied as “A Bell for Adano,” “Sitting Pretty” and “Forever Amber,” his principal fame has come in the Western, from a small part in “Jesse James” in 1939, to roles in well-remembered vintage exemplars like “Yellow Sky” and “Rio Bravo.”

From 1958-60 Russell was television’s “The Lawman”--holding his own, he noted with some pride at lunch the other day, against Ed Sullivan between 8:30 and 9 on Sunday nights. The series was eventually sold in 15 languages and still makes the rounds.

Having begun in a time when actors tended to be cast as good persons or bad persons (to make clarity that much easier for audiences), Russell has been both hero and villain. But--a true actor--”always featured,” he adds.

Most recently he has been an unofficial member of Eastwood’s unofficial stock company and, playing Eastwood’s commanding officer, died in his arms in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.” He was also in “Honkytonk Man,” although much of his part was cut out, he says, with just enough left to earn him residuals.

Russell obviously has a vested interest in the return of the Westerns. But he is not optimistic about a large-scale revival. (There are mixed signals from the box-office performances of both “Pale Rider” and “Silverado,” neither a stampeding success.)

“I go to these Western film fairs,” Russell says, “and at one of them a researcher told me there’d been 150 Western series on television. I have to think that led to their demise. They just wore out their welcome.”

But there was more to it than that, he thinks. “Later audiences wanted more reality,” he says. “The new frontier is space, I guess, and the old frontier got to be old stuff. Everybody’s been talking about the Western coming back, but I’ve been skeptical. You can’t stretch the audience’s credulity too far.”

Still, he expects there’ll always be Westerns, although in small numbers. “I’ve been riding along with the decline of the Golden Age of Westerns, I’m afraid,” Russell says.

But he’s happy to play villains if asked. “If you’re going to be the antagonist, or a villain,” Russell explains, “you’re permitted--encouraged is more like it--to be larger than life. You can be very, very nasty. Well, it just draws the poisons out, you know, and you get rid of ‘em.”

John Russell smiles sweetly, and takes a sip of coffee. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.