New Jersey-born John Garrison, a.k.a., John Johns(t)on (c.1824–1900) joined the Union Army in St. Louis, Missouri in 1864 and served with Company H, 2nd Colorado Cavalry. Honorably discharged in 1865, Johnson migrated further west and became a notoriously tough and ruthless trapper, Indian fighter, and lawman. In the 1880s he served as Deputy Sheriff in Coulson, Montana and later became Town Marshall in Red Lodge, Montana. He died of old age at a veteran's home in Los Angeles. Such are the rather prosaic facts of the real John Johnson. Then there is the myth. An associate of Wild Bill Hickock named Joseph (John) "White Eye" Anderson (1853–1946) seems to be the main source for the fantastic legends that accrued around Johnson in the second half of the 20th century. In 1941 Anderson regaled western writer Raymond W. Thorp with tall tales of "Crow Killer" or "Liver Eating Johnson," so named because Johnson allegedly slew between 300 and 400 (!) Crow warriors and ate their livers, raw, to avenge the murder of his pregnant wife in 1847 by a Crow hunting party—20 years before John Johnson moved West. Seventeen years after meeting Anderson, Raymond Thorp joined Robert Manson Bunker in writing 'Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson' (Indiana UP, 1958), a highly speculative "biography" that turned Anderson's wild fabrications into uncorroborated "fact." Noted western author Vardis Fisher further burnished the Johnson legend with his novel, 'Mountain Man' (Morrow, 1965). Building myth upon myths, screenwriter John Milius ('The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean') used Crow Killer and Mountain Man as his sources for Jeremiah Johnson, a movie that more realistically chooses to portray Johnson (Robert Redford) as a ascetic, romantic loner, not the vengeful, brutal monster recounted by White Eye Anderson. (Rather than waging a vendetta on the Crow, Redford's Johnson is constantly attacked by them.) Further enhancing Jeremiah Johnson's nobility and the film's lyricism are breathtaking vistas of the rugged Utah Rockies shot by Duke Callaghan (promoted to DP after serving as one of Sydney Pollack's cameramen on his previous film, 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?'). If that were not enough, a lush musical score by John Rubenstein and Tim McIntire completes the picture. Yet, when the movie premiered at the 26th Cannes Film Festival on May 4, 1972, Robert Redford somewhat disingenuously told 'New York Times' interviewer Cynthia Grenier: "I wanted this film to be an antidote to the general feeling in the States today that getting away from civilization is such a terrific thing and is so romantic. I wanted to show the kids what it is really like going it on your own in the wilderness..." 'Jeremiah Johnson' might well have been the gritty western that Redford imagined it to be if producer Joe Wizan had gone with Clint Eastwood as Johnson and Sam Peckinpah as director, as was originally planned. The estimable (and once-blacklisted) Will Geer (best known as Grandpa on "The Waltons") plays Johnson's wilderness survival mentor, Bear Claw Chris Lapp. VHS (1997)and DVD (1997).
Review of Jeremiah Johnson
