User Reviews

This film is sort of like "The Spoilers II", as the three leads in this film had just starred in THE SPOILERS and the tone and style of the two movies are so similar. Once again, Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott and John Wayne star as people who are all determined to strike it rich, and like the previous movie, they do. But it all comes at a great cost, as Wayne slowly looses sight of what was important in life and he slowly becomes a twisted and greedy industrialist. At the same time, Scott and Dietrich are waiting in the wings---waiting and hoping that Wayne will come around to his senses.

The film begins during WWII and Scott is making a patriotic speech about how everyone needs to continue giving their best for the war effort. Then, in an office, Scott, Wayne and their old friends reminisce about the old days. At this point, the film gos back about twenty years. All of them are poor and Scott and Wayne are humble coal miners. However, to impress Dietrich (who wants more out of life than to just marry a humble miner), he connives and builds himself a dandy little empire.

Oddly, although the film is set in the 1920s, Universal Studios did a lousy job of trying to achieve the look. Everyone dresses like they do in the 40s and the cars are all late models--barely a 20s-era car in sight! This is just sloppy. While it doesn't ruin the film, this must be considered when giving the film a rating.

Also, while Wayne does a very good job of evolving into a total jerk, because the film starts out with Wayne and Scott together, you know that eventually, Wayne changes back to the character he was at the beginning of the film. This takes out all the suspense, plus it seems a bit hard to believe--after all, he was very, very bad before this. On top of all this, the preachy narration seemed preachy and the WWII propaganda aspect was a bit heavy-handed.

Despite the film following this formula and the anachronisms, the movie still is quite entertaining and worth seeing. Just don't expect Wayne's or Scott's best.

I think with this film John Wayne's casting potential was stretched to its very limit. After his image was established, he could never have been been given a role as a heel like Pittsburgh Markham.

Pittsburgh and his buddy Cash Evans (Randolph Scott) start out as a pair of happy-go-lucky coalminers who on a night on the town where Wayne tricks Scott into going a round with a heavyweight prizefighter (almost like the way Crosby used to bamboozle Hope in the Road Pictures)they meet up with Marlene Dietrich. They got the hots for her, but she has eyes for Wayne and Wayne is now determined to better himself. And he does and his methods are pretty shady. They even include marrying into a wealthy family, but he wants to keep Marlene on the side. That's where she gets off.

And at some point in the picture Randolph Scott gets tired of Wayne's arrogance and the way he's treated Marlene and that climaxes in the only screen fight John Wayne ever lost. It's not as long a fight as they had when they duked it out in The Spoilers, but it's exciting and Randy puts him down for the count.

The three leads are fine and also watch for a nice comic turn by Shemp Howard. Marlene and the Duke were winding up a long term relationship that began on the set of Seven Sinners. Supposedly she found Wayne something of a philistine in terms of education and tried to get him to read Proust and Zola and other European novelists. Wayne wasn't having any of that and they went their separate ways. Marlene tried the same with George Raft and he too told her that they ought to call it a day.

One thing that people do not realize is that back in her native Germany, Marlene Dietrich was considered a traitor for appearing in American films, especially ones like these that started and ended on a patriotic note.

Another reviewer said this was a western moved east, maybe because the male leads were so identified with westerns. Personally I think it has elements of Edna Ferber in it. Lot of similarities between this and films made from her novels.

"Pittsburgh" represents a follow-up to the successful teaming of the three stars in "The Spoilers" released the same year.

In this one, Marlene Dietrich has little to do except look beautiful, and she does. The movie is essentially Wayne's playing the title character, Pittsburgh Markam with Randolph Scott as his partner Cash Evans. The film follows the boys rise to power in the coal industry in the 1920s. The Wayne Character then becomes overly ambitious and makes many enemies, including Scott and Dietrich, before finding redemption in the final reel.

As there was in the previous film, there is a knock down drag out fight between Scott and Wayne that is the highlight of the picture. All in all, "Pittsburgh" is an entertaining movie but it can't escape the obvious comparison to "The Spoilers".

It's odd that no one, not even a professional reviewer, notes the rather obvious fact that "Pittsburgh" is a remake of "Boom Town". John Wayne, Randolph Scott and Marelene Dietrich reprise the roles originally played by Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Claudette Colbert, and Oklahoma oil fields become Pittsburgh steel mills. The plot remains the same: (SPOILERS follow) two friends with a common girl friend become successful partners, then eventually become rivals when one of them (Gable in the original, Wayne in the remake) lets success get to his head, gets involved with wealthy people and marries into society, then lets his boorish behavior get him booted out. Meanwhile, his former friend marries the girl and is highly successful.

John Wayne shares the screen with Randolph Scott and Marlene Dietrich. The Duke plays Charles 'Pittsburgh' Markham, who is always looking for something better, tries to make some quick bucks with his best friend Cash Evans (Scott). The two take jobs in the coal mines. Markham is unsatisfied, but has more than enough ambition and by "hook or crook" manipulates financial backing to eventually become a wealthy tycoon in the coal and steel industry. His over bearing and sometimes underhanded methods as a player in in the battle between labor and management affords him the loss of his best friend Cash and drives away the woman he loves (Dietrich).

Rounding out the cast: Frank Craven, Samuel S. Hinds, Louise Allbritton, Paul Fix, Thomas Gomez, Charles Arnt and Ludwig Stossel.

The star trio of THE SPOILERS (1942) – Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scoot and John Wayne – were re-united for this one, but the resulting film isn't as satisfactory or as well-regarded as that brawling Western saga. However, PITTSBURGH (which, naturally, deals with the coal industry) is still quite entertaining and, indeed, somewhat better than Leonard Maltin's unflattering review would suggest – he even calls it "slow" when, if anything, I'm of the opinion that the epic narrative involved (spanning several years) felt rushed in the film's standard 91-minute duration!

That said, the film has problems: for one thing, Dietrich isn't believable as a coal-miner's daughter; also, being a wartime effort, it resorts to flag-waving in order to smoothen the conflicts between the various characters. In fact, Wayne is depicted as something of a tyrant (anticipating but not matching his role in Howard Hawks' classic Western RED RIVER [1948]). Finally, reading the film's credits through, I couldn't help noticing the curious connection it has with the horror genre – not only would three cast members (Louise Albritton, Frank Craven and Samuel S. Hinds) appear together again in SON OF Dracula (1943), but cinematographer Robert De Grasse later shot the Val Lewton masterpiece THE BODY SNATCHER (1945), while editor Paul Landres eventually graduated to director and helmed both THE VAMPIRE (1957) and THE RETURN OF Dracula (1958)!

"Pittsburgh" is the second movie for the team of Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, and John Wayne. It is better than "The Spoilers". It is fun to see almost the same cast in completely different movies.

Ms. Dietrich becomes a career woman and is the love interest for both men. The musical score is beautiful but repetitious. This is a good "B" movie with an "A" cast. Too bad they never worked again, for instance, in another western. It's fun to see Mr. Scott as a mature love interest.

Pittsburg is a follow-up to The Spoilers, reprising the dynamic lead trio of Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, and John Wayne. The three attractive leads are backed up by the likes of Frank Craven, Thomas Gomez, Samuel S. Hinds, and Louise Allbitton. Shemp Howard is also on hand for some comic relief, displaying a somewhat more subtle brand of humor than when hanging around with brother Moe and Larry Fine. Released just one year after Pearl Harbor, this Universal "A" production wraps some timely, flag-waving boosterism for the war effort around a twenty-year saga of the steel and coal industry. Should have been a top-notch picture, but falls far short of the mark.

The chemistry between Dietrich, Scott and Wayne, which worked so well in the Spoilers is not here, partly because Marlene and the Duke are both over the edge of their respective ranges. Scott was fine as a baddie in The Spoilers, and he is quite good here as the good-natured, ethical foil for the heel John Wayne plays in Pittsburg. The likable Wayne was not far removed from his days as a low-budget cowboy star, and he was perhaps not quite ready to play such an overbearing, cruel, tyrannical character, though he would have that role well refined by the end of the 1940's in time for two riveting performances in Red River and Wake Of The Red Witch (see my review). Still, he comes off better in the role handed him by the lack-luster script, which was much of the movie's problem, than poor Marlene. Nothing could better illustrate the sobering and sanitizing effect World War II had on the movies than to compare the sexy Marlene with her see-through tops and her hot song and dance numbers in The Seven Sinners (1940) and The Spoilers (early 1942) to the drab creature she is reduced to in Pittsburg. No see-through, no legs, no seductive looks, no cigarette holder, not an inch of flesh showing below the collar! The martyr-like character she becomes after being dumped by Wayne while he's stepping on all the people who helped him to the top is almost like somebody's dowdy old maid sister. Even in The Garden Of Allah (see my review) she managed to look sexy while convincingly playing a nice, good Catholic girl. Wasted here.

Pacing was the worst problem in Pittsburg. It was too fast when it should have taken some time but too slow when it should have moved on. The pivotal transformation of Wayne's character from a somewhat arrogant, but likable big lug of a poor coal miner to a rich, ruthless, power hungry, robber baron mine owner seems to take only about three seconds of screen time, and we are given too few details of how it happened. Yet when Scott courts the spurned Marlene on the rebound, it takes forever before anything happens. No wonder the principle characters became middle aged without having any children! Lay this poor pacing at the door of director Lewis Seiler. A perusal of his filmography turns up few winners and an unsurprising dearth of "A" productions.

In spite of all this Pittsburg was still a fairly entertaining movie. The acting was good from top to bottom of the cast, especially considering the script they were handed. There were some good action scenes including the obligatory mine cave-in, a wild prize fight scene, and a rock-'em-sock-'em fist fight between Scott and Wayne, really better done than the one in the Spoilers. The patriotic scenes of American industry going into high gear to produce war material for fighting the Nazis and the Rising Sun, effectively and sincerely narrated by World War I veteran Scott, will be stirring to one who is a red-blooded American, rather than a "citizen of the world".

While below expectations, Pittsburg is still a pretty good watch.

Pretty entertaining false look at history as seen through a foursome of friends whose association creates the modern Pittsburgh industry of steel and coal. The narrative starts in 1942 where three of the four explain how their industry will aide the war effort. They get together and recall darker days for themselves personally and remember the struggle which brought them to where they are in the present time.

The three men are John Wayne as a character nicknamed Pittsburgh, Randolph Scott and Frank Craven. Wayne and Scott were coal factory workers and pals of scientist Craven. By chance they meet Marlene Dietrich, the glamorously dressed sophisticate they instantly refer to as "countess". Ironically, she's from the other side of the tracks, and together, this foursome quickly (at least in screen time) rises, creating an industry that under different names, still remains prominent in the real Pennsylvania city. It isn't until Scott and Wayne separate over personal issues that the real conflict starts, leading to a tragic series of circumstances.

As entertainment goes, it's o.k., often funny but obviously fictional. I guess that was the point, just to explore how in general industry becomes involved in war. Louise Albritton plays a socialite who distracts Wayne from Dietrich with a little ceremony called matrimony, while Shemp Howard provides comic relief as a tailor. Craven provides a dramatic narration in trying to explain how the industry worked and the science behind it, but the inadequacies in a historically correct time-line is wrong in many details. As for the cast, they are all excellent, a reunion of the three younger leads from the same year's "The Spoilers".

John Wayne at his greatest. This particular movie doesn't have horses or guns or even the Wild West but it has America at its best.

The movie isn't your typical John Wayne movie at all. But like many of Wayne's movies he is the unlikely hero who pulls no punches.

The movie is about a man that starts at the bottom and works his way to the top and finds himself back at the bottom again. But in any good redemption story he shows hard work and determination can get you at the top again.

The first time around is for money and power but the second time is for love and friendship.

Many people won't give this a ten and they are wrong. It's a beautiful John Wayne movie and I'll continue to watch it for years to come.

. . . in a movie plot which eerily foreshadows his Real Life descent from being a regular Joe to a personage some biographers have dubbed "the American Anti-Christ." As Charles "P!TTSBURGH" Markham, Wayne states that he's against adequate public schools, because he does not want any of the children of U.S. workers to become smart enough to see through his own shady business dealings, his habitual prevarication, his personal philandering, his work place safety violations, his exploitative wage structure, and his Solipcistic (not to mention Sociopathic) self-absorption. "In my book, every time that the clock strikes, it ought to ring like a cash register," Chuck tells his partners as he weasels out of a major medical research commitment because it might prove a tad less lucrative than his other ventures. Perceptive Americans know that President Reagan was merely Wayne's hand puppet (from beyond the grave, yet!), and that the Rich People's Party continues to implement Wayne's goals to dumb down Today's America by poisoning working people's kids with leaded water and denying funding for the fight against Zika, since both lead and Zika produce the sort of voters that the RPP can easily dupe. This movie would merit a rating of "10," except that the U.S. War Dept. Censors forced the writers to tack on a totally implausible ten-minute "happy" ending for Wayne.