The Moviegoer: A Western Lover's Blog

On this Day in 1950...

2010-07-12T04:32:00.000-07:00

One of the all-time great Westerns was released, Winchester 73, starring James Stewart and directed by Anthony Mann. Here's the trailer for the movie:

King Baggot (1879-1948)

2010-07-11T17:40:00.000-07:00

Today in 1948 marks the death of actor and director King Baggot, who appeared in over 300 movies beginning in 1909 and directed some 45 films. Among these was William S. Hart's last film Tumbleweeds (1925), which is available for viewing on Youtube:

On this Day in 1973...

2010-07-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

Cahill, U.S. Marshal was released, starring John Wayne and directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Here's the opening scene (with Greek subtitles, I think), courtesy of Youtube:

Robert Ryan (1909-1973)

2010-07-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

Chicago born, distinguished US actor and long time civil rights campaigner, Robert Ryan served in the United States Marines as a drill instructor (winning a boxing championship) and went on to become a key figure in post WWII American film noir and western productions.Ryan grabbed critical attention for his dynamic performance's as an anti-Semitic bully in the superb Crossfire (1947), as an over-the-hill boxer who refuses to take a fall in The Set-Up (1949) and as a hostile & jaded cop in On Dangerous Ground (1952). Ryan's athletic physique, intense gaze and sharply delivered, authoritarian tones made him an ideal actor for the oily world of the film noir genre, and he contributed solid performances to many noir features, usually as a vile villain. Ryan played a worthy opponent for bounty hunter James Stewart in the Anthony Mann directed western The Naked Spur (1953), he locked horns with an intrepid investigator Spencer Tracy in the suspenseful Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and starred alongside Harry Belafonte in the grimy, gangster flick Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Plus, the inventive Ryan excelled as the ruthless "John Claggart" in Billy Budd (1962), and two different WWII US generals - firstly in the star filled The Longest Day (1962) and secondly in Battle of the Bulge (1965).For the next eight years prior to his untimely death in 1973, Ryan landed some tremendous roles in a mixture of productions each aided by his high calibre acting skills leaving strong impressions on movie audiences. He was one of the hard men hired to pursue kidnapped Claudia Cardinale in the hard boiled action of The Professionals (1966), a by-the-book army colonel clashing with highly unorthodox army major Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen (1967), and an embittered bounty hunter forced to hunt down old friend William Holden in the violent Sam Peckinpah western classic The Wild Bunch (1969). Ryan's final onscreen performance was in the terrific production of The Iceman Cometh (1973) based on the Eugene O'Neill play and also starring Lee Marvin and Fredric March.Legend has it that Sam Peckinpah clashed very heatedly with Ryan during the making of The Wild Bunch (1969), however Peckinpah eventually backed down when a crew member reminded Sam of Robert Ryan's proficiency with his fists !Primarily a man of pacifist beliefs, Ryan often found it a challenge playing sadistic and racist characters that very much were at odds with his own personal ideals. Additionally, Ryan actively campaigned for improved civil rights, restricting the growth of nuclear weapons and he strongly opposed McCarthyism and its abuse of innocent persons. A gifted, intelligent and powerful actor, Robert Ryan passed away on July 11th, 1973 of lung cancer.

(From IMDB)

On this Day in 1954...

2010-07-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

Apache was released, directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Burt Lancaster, Jean Peters, John McIntire and Charles Bronson. Here's the trailer:

Rod Steiger (1925-2002)

2010-07-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

On this day in 2002, Oscar-winning actor Rod Steiger died. He appeared in several Westerns, including Jubal (1956) and Run of the Arrow (1957). The latter is one of my personal favorites with a great cast: Charles Bronson, Brian Keith, Ralph Meeker, Tim McCoy and Olive Carey. There he plays an ex-Confederate who goes off to live with the Sioux and finds his loyalties tested during an Indian war.

On this Day in 1965...

2010-07-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

The Glory Guys was released, starring Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell and Senta Berger. The screenplay was written by Sam Peckinpah.

Brandon DeWilde (1942-1972)

2010-07-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

Born into a theatrical family, he made a much-acclaimed Broadway debut at the age of nine in "The Member of the Wedding." He was the first child actor to win the Donaldson Award and went on to repeat his role in the film version directed by Fred Zinnemann in 1952. As the blonde, blue-eyed Joey who idolizes the strange gunman (Alan Ladd) in Shane (1953), he stole the picture and was rewarded with an Oscar nomination the following year. He starred in his own television series "Jamie" (1953) during 1953-54 and made his mark as a screen adolescent during the 1960s, playing younger brothers in All Fall Down (1962) and Hud (1963) starring Paul Newman. However, he managed to keep his career building up to his adult status. While en route to visit his wife at a hospital where she had recently undergone surgery, he was killed in a vehicle accident as the camper van he was driving struck a parked truck. He was only thirty years old. (From IMDB) He'll be forever remembered for his last line in the movie Shane (1953):

Cameron Mitchell (1918-1994)

2010-07-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today also marks the death of veteran character actor Cameron Mitchell, who appeared in countless TV and big-screen Westerns. One of his best appearances was as the jaded sheriff who takes to outlawry in Paul Newman's Hombre (1967).

Roy Rogers (1912-1998)

2010-07-06T05:52:00.000-07:00

Today in 1998 marks the death of singing cowboy and all-around nice guy Roy Rogers, born Leonard Slye in Oklahoma. Here's the opening of his 1950's TV show:

Katy Jurado (1924-2002)

2010-07-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today in 2002 marks the death of actress Katy Jurado, a Mexican actress whose breakthrough role in the U.S. was as Gary Cooper's ex-mistress in High Noon (1952). She also appeared in many other classic Westerns, including One-Eyed Jacks (1961) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973).

Rex Bell (1903-1962)

2010-07-04T06:19:00.001-07:00

Rex Bell (October 16, 1903 – July 4, 1962), born George Francis Beldam, was Lieutenant Governor of Nevada and a western movie star. Rex was born in Chicago and married actress Clara Bow in 1931. They had two sons, Tony Beldon (born 1934, changed name to Rex Anthony Bell, Jr.) and George Beldon, Jr. (born 1938). In 1931, Rex and Clara founded the Walking Box Ranch. In 1944 Bell ran for the United States House of Representatives on the Republican ticket against Democrat Berkeley Bunker. His wife, Clara Bow, attempted suicide to avoid the public spotlight, thus dampening the zeal for Bell's campaign and contributing to the lieutenant governor's loss to Bunker. Bell was the leader of the Nevada state GOP and in 1948 was an alternate to the Republican National Convention. He was also active in the Nevada Chamber of Commerce and Boy Scouts. The ties Bell forged during those years helped him win the lieutenant governor's office in 1954. That year Charles H. Russell, the incumbent GOP governor, also won. In 1958 Democrat Grant Sawyer unseated Russell, but Bell won re-election as lieutenant governor. His final film appearance was a brief cameo as a cowboy in John Huston's film The Misfits (1961), which was shot on location in Nevada. The Rex Bell Elementary School in Las Vegas was named in honor of Bell. His grave is located in Glendale, California's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.

(From Wikipedia)

Happy Fourth, From a 1930's Western

2010-07-04T05:39:00.000-07:00

Clint Eastwood on What Makes a Good Western

2010-07-04T05:36:00.001-07:00

Warren Oates (1928-1982)

2010-04-03T03:53:00.000-07:00

Today marks the death of that great character actor Warren Oates (1928-1982) (second from left). Here's from IMDB: American character actor of the 1960s and 1970s whose distinctive style and intensity brought him to offbeat leading roles. Oates was born in a very small Kentucky town and attended high school in Louisville, continuing on to the University of Louisville and military service with the U.S. Marines. In college he became interested in the theatre and in 1954 headed for New York to make his mark as an actor. However, his first real job in television was, as it had been for James Dean before him, testing the contest gags on the game show "Beat the Clock" (1950). He did numerous menial jobs while auditioning, including serving as the hat-check man at the nightclub "21". By 1957 he had begun appearing in live dramas such as "Studio One" (1948), but Oates' rural drawl seemed more fitted for the Westerns that were proliferating on the big screen at the time, so he moved to Hollywood and immediately stared getting steady work as an increasingly prominent supporting player, often as either craven or vicious types. With his role as one of the Hammond brothers in the Sam Peckinpah masterpiece Ride the High Country (1962), Oates found a niche both as an actor and as a colleague of one of the most distinguished and distinctive directors of the period. Peckinpah used Oates repeatedly, and Oates, in large part due to the prominence given him by Peckinpah, became one of those rare character actors whose name and face is as familiar as those of many leading stars. He began to play roles which, while still character parts, were also leads, particularly in cult hits like Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Although never destined to be a traditional leading man, Oates remained one of Hollywood's most valued character players up until his sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 53. His final two films, Tough Enough (1983) and Blue Thunder (1983), filmed back-to-back in early 1982 shortly before his death, were dedicated to his memory.

On this Day in 1968...

2010-04-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

The Scalphunters was released, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Burt Lancaster, Ossie Davis, Telly Savalas and Shelly Winters. Davis was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film.

On this Day in 1957...

2010-04-02T04:14:00.000-07:00

The Tall T was released, directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, and Maureen O' Sullivan. Wikipedia says of the movie: In 2000, The Tall T was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Neal Hart (1870-1949)

2010-04-02T04:11:00.000-07:00

Today also marks the death of 1920's Western star Neal Hart (no relation to William S.), who was reputedly a sheriff out West before pursuing an acting career. In the sound era he featured mainly as a character actor.

Ray Teal (1902-1976)

2010-04-02T04:10:00.001-07:00

Most familiar to TV audiences as no-nonsense Sheriff Roy Coffee on the long-running western series "Bonanza" (1959), Ray Teal was one of the most versatile character actors in the business. In his almost 40-year career he played everything from cops to gunfighters to sheriffs to gangsters to a judge at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. He could play a kindly grandfather in one film and a heartless, sadistic killer in the next, and be equally believable in both roles. A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, he was a musician who worked his way through college playing the sax in local bands. At UCLA in the 1920s he formed his own band and led it until 1936. He appeared in several films in minor bit parts, and it wasn't until 1938 that he had a somewhat more substantial part, in Western Jamboree (1938). The next year he had a bigger part in the splashy Spencer Tracy adventure 'Northwest Passage' (Book I -- Rogers' Rangers) (1940) as one of Rogers' Rangers. He appeared in serials, westerns, crime dramas, costume epics (he even appeared as Little John in The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946)!), war pictures, had a small but memorable part as an anti-Semitic blowhard who gets knocked into a store display by Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and a bigger and more memorable part as one of Spencer Tracy's fellow judges in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He also made many appearances on TV, in everything from "The Lone Ranger" (1949) to "Green Acres" (1965). He died of natural causes in 1976.

On this Day in 1959...

2010-04-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

Warlock was released, starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Richard Widmark, and Dorothy Malone.

Noah Beery, Sr.(1882-1946)

2010-04-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

From IMDB: Respected character actor of the silent and early sound period, specializing in cruel villains. The son of Kansas City policeman Noah Webster Beery and Frances Margaret Fitzgerald Beery, Noah Nicholas Beery and his younger brother Wallace Beery both left home in their teens, each seeking a career as a performer. Noah made his stage debut at the age of 16 and worked steadily in the theatre until his early 30s. Following his brother into films, he quickly established himself as a competent player and a familiar heavy in all sorts of films, particularly westerns. He never achieved the great fame of his younger brother, but succeeded in carving a memorable niche for himself in the history of film. His son Noah Beery Jr. became equally familiar as a character actor, though usually in more genial roles.

Gene Evans (1922-1998)

2010-04-01T04:34:00.000-07:00

Today marks the death of character actor Gene Evans (1922-1998). Here's his biography from IMDB: Gene Evans was born in Holbrook, Arizona, on July 11, 1922, and was raised in Colton, California. He served in the army during World War II as a combat engineer, and was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for bravery in action. He began his acting career there, performing an a theatrical troupe of GIs in Europe. After the war, he went to Hollywood, where he made his film debut in 1947's Under Colorado Skies (1947). The rugged, red-headed character actor was a familiar face in such westerns as Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), The War Wagon (1967), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). He also starred in the war films The Steel Helmet (1951) and Fixed Bayonets! (1951) and co-starred with future first lady Nancy Davis (before she became Nancy Reagan) in Donovan's Brain (1953). His other major films include Park Row (1952), Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959), Operation Petticoat (1959) and Walking Tall (1973). He became well known in the 1950s on television, playing the father in "My Friend Flicka" (1956). He remained active in films and television through the 1980s. Evans subsequently retired to a farm near Jackson, Tennessee. He was a popular guest at the Memphis Film Festival for the past decade.

On this Day in 1952...

2010-02-08T08:42:00.001-08:00

Buffalo Bill in Tomahawk Territory was released, starring Clayton Moore in a pre-Lone Ranger role.

On this Day in 1974...

2010-02-07T04:35:00.000-08:00

Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, the highest grossing Western of all time, was released. It is available foe viewing on Youtube:

On this Day in 1973...

2010-02-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

The Train Robbers was released, starring John Wayne and Ann Margret. Directed by Burt Kennedy, it was Wayne's last appearance with that great character actor Ben Johnson. The movie is available for viewing on Youtube:

On this Day in 1953...

2010-02-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

The Naked Spur was released, the third of director Anthony Mann's six Westerns with James Stewart. Here's the trailer for the movie:

Philip Carey (1925-2009)

2010-02-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Today marks the death of character actor and occasional leading man Philip Carey, who appeared in several Westerns during the course of his career. Here's what IMDB has to say about him: Tall, blond and ruggedly handsome Philip Carey started out as a standard 1950s film actor of rugged westerns, war stories and crime yarns but didn't achieve full-fledged stardom until well past age 50 when he joined the daytime line-up as ornery Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan on the popular soap "One Life to Live" (1968) in 1979. He lived pretty much out of the saddle after that, enjoying the patriarchal role for nearly three decades.He was born with the rather unrugged name of Eugene Carey on July 15, 1925, in Hackensack, New Jersey. He grew up on Long Island and served with the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War. He attended (briefly) New York's Mohawk University and studied drama at the University of Miami where he met his college sweetheart, Maureen Peppler. They married in 1949 and went on to have three children: Linda, Jeffrey and Lisa Ann.The 6'4" actor impressed a talent scout with his brawny good looks while doing the summer stock play, "Over 21" in New England, and he was offered a contract with Warner Bros. Billed as Philip Carey, he didn't waste any time toiling in bit parts, making his film debut billed fifth in the John Wayne submarine war drama Operation Pacific (1951). Phil could cut a good figure in military regalia and also showed strong stuff in film noir. A most capable co-star, he tended to be upstaged, however, by either a strong female or male star or by the action at hand. He was paired up with Frank Lovejoy in the McCarthy-era I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), and Steve Cochran in the prison tale Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951). Warner Bros. star Joan Crawford was practically the whole movie in the film noir This Woman Is Dangerous (1952) co-starring an equally overlooked David Brian and Dennis Morgan; Calamity Jane (1953) was a vehicle for Doris Day; and he donned his familiar cavalry duds in the background of Gary Cooper in the Civil War western Springfield Rifle (1952).In 1953, Carey left Warner Bros. and signed up with Columbia Pictures where he was, more than not, billed as "Phil Carey," but he struggled with the same rather bland, rugged mold again as the stoic soldier or police captain. He found plenty of work, however, and some as the top-billed star, but he felt stuck in the "B"-level grind. He battled the Sioux in The Nebraskan (1953); played a former gang member of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid who has to clear his name in Wyoming Renegades (1954); was a brute force to be reckoned with in They Rode West (1954); and had one of his standard movie roles (as an officer) in a better quality movie, Columbia's Pushover (1954), which spent more time promoting the debut of its starlet Kim Novak as the new Marilyn Monroe. Overshadowed by James Cagney and Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955) and by Van Heflin, young Joanne Woodward (in her movie debut) and villain Raymond Burr in the western Count Three and Pray (1955), Phil turned more and more to TV in the late '50s. A man of action, he took on the role of Canadian-born Lt. Michael Rhodes on the series "Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers" (1956) alongside Warren Stevens. He eventually left Columbia studios to do a stint (albeit relatively short) playing Raymond Chandler's unflappable detective "Philip Marlowe" (1959). Most of the 60s and 70s, other than a few now-forgotten film adventures such as Black Gold (1962), The Great Sioux Massacre (1965) and Three Guns for Texas (1968), were spent either saddling up as a guest star on "The Rifleman" (1958), "Bronco" (1958), "The Virginian" (1962) and "Gunsmoke" (1955) or hard-nosing it on such crime series as "77 Sunset Strip" (1958), "Ironside" (1967), "McCloud" (1970), "Banacek" (1972) and "Felony Squad" (1966). He also played the regular role of a stern captain in the Texas Rangers western series "Laredo" (1965).Phil was a spokesperson for Granny Goose potato chips commercials, and his deep voice served him well for many seasons as narrator of the nature documentary series "Untamed World" (1967). One of his best-remembered TV guest appearances, however, was a change-of-pace role on the comedy "All in the Family" (1971) in which he played a vital, strapping blue-collar pal of Archie Bunker's whose manly man just happened to be a proud, astereotypical homosexual. His hilarious confrontational scene with a dumbfounded Archie in Kelsey's bar remains a classic.Phil's brief regular role in the daytime soap "Bright Promise" (1969) in 1972 was just a practice drill for the regular role he would play in 1979 as Texas oilman Asa Buchanan in "One Life to Live" (1968). His popularity soared as the moneybags manipulator you loved to hate. Residing in Manhattan for quite some time as a result of the New York-based show, he played the role for decades until diagnosed with lung cancer in January of 2006. Forced to undergo chemotherapy, he officially left the serial altogether in May of 2007, and his character "died" peacefully off-screen a few months later.Divorced from his first wife, Phil married a much younger lady, Colleen Welch, in 1976 and has two children by her, daughter Shannon (born 1980) and son Sean (born 1983). Phil lost his battle with cancer on February 6, 2009, at the age of 88.

Guy Madison (1922-1996)

2010-02-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

On this day actor Guy Madison died. Handsome American leading man who stumbled into a film career and became a television star and hero to the Baby Boom generation. As a young man, he worked as a telephone lineman, but entered the Coast Guard at the beginning of the Second World War. While on liberty one weekend in Hollywood, he attended a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast and was spotted in the audience by an assistant to Henry Willson, an executive for David O. Selznick . Selznick wanted an unknown sailor to play a small but prominent part in Since You Went Away (1944), and promptly signed Robert Moseley to a contract. Selznick and Willson concocted the screen name Guy Madison (the "guy" girls would like to meet, and Madison from a passing Dolly Madison cake wagon). Madison filmed his one scene on a weekend pass and returned to duty. The film's release brought thousands of fan letters for the film's lonely, strikingly handsome young sailor, and at war's end, Madison returned to find himself a star-in-the-making. Despite an initial amateurishness to his acting, Madison grew as a performer, studying and working in theatre. He played leads in a series of programmers before being cast as legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok in the TV series of the same name. He played Hickok on TV and radio for much of the 1950s, and many of the TV episodes were strung together and released as feature films. Madison managed to squeeze in some more adult-oriented roles during his off-time from the series, but much of this work was also in Westerns. After the Hickok series ended, Madison found work scarce in the U.S. and traveled to Europe where he became a popular star of Italian Westerns and German adventure films. In the 1970s, he returned to the U.S., but appeared mainly in cameo roles. Physical ailments limited his work in latter years, and he died from emphysema in 1996. His first wife was actress Gail Russell.

(From IMDB)

Dean Jagger (1903-1991)

2010-02-05T05:25:00.000-08:00

Today marks the death of character actor Dean Jagger, who appeared in several Westerns throughout his career. One of his prominent Western roles was as Brigham Young in the 1940 movie of the same name.

On this Day in 1989...

2010-02-05T05:20:00.000-08:00

The minseries Lonesome Dove premiered on television, based ion Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The series was nominated for twelve emmys and won seven.

Pete Morrison (1890-1973)

2010-02-05T05:17:00.000-08:00

On this day in 1973, acrtor Pete Morrison passed away. IMDB has this to say about him: American cowboy star of silent pictures. He studied science in school but dropped out to pursue a rodeo career. With some success, he was asked to appear in a number of film shorts, all before his eighteenth birthday. He worked for The American Film Manufacturing Company, but was soon signed by Universal Pictures and appeared in Western serials and short features there. He took some time away from movies to travel the country in a Wild West Show, then returned and did numerous Westerns for Triangle and Universal. He agreed to make a series of pictures in Central and South America, but eventually returned to Universal. With the arrival of sound pictures, he shifted into supporting roles before retiring from the screen in 1935, at the age of 45. He died in Los Angeles thirty-eight years later.

On this Day in 1943...

2010-02-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

The Outlaw was released, the movie that made Jane Russell a star. Wikipedia has this to say about the movie: Although the movie was completed in 1941, it was released to only a limited showing two years later. It did not see a general release until 1946. The delay was a result of Hughes defying the Hays Code, which set the standard of morally acceptable content in motion pictures. By showcasing Russell's breasts in both the movie and the poster artwork, The Outlaw became very controversial. In 1941, while filming The Outlaw, Hughes felt that the camera did not do justice to Jane Russell's large bust. He employed his engineering skills to design a new cantilevered underwire bra to emphasize her assets. Hughes added rods of curved structural steel that were sewn into the brassiere below each breast. The rods were connected to the bra's shoulder straps. The arrangement allowed the breasts to be pulled upward and made it possible to move the shoulder straps away from the neck. The design allowed for any amount of bosom to be freely exposed. The emphasis on her breasts proved too much for the Hollywood Production Code Administration, which ordered cuts to the film. To obtain the Boards' required Seal of Approval, Hughes reluctantly removed about 40 feet, or a half-minute, of footage that featured Russell's bosom. He still had problems getting the film distributed, so he schemed to create a public outcry for his film to be banned. The resulting controversy generated enough interest to get The Outlaw into the theaters for one week in 1943, before being withdrawn due to objections by the Code censors. When the film was finally released in 1946, it was a box office hit.

On this Day in 1955...

2010-02-04T04:52:00.000-08:00

Many Rivers to Cross, starring Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker, was released. Taylor plays a trapper in 1790's Kentucky. Victor McLaglen plays Parker's father, and Alan Hale, Jr., of Gilligan's Island fame, has a supporting role.

Jay C. Flippen (1899-1971)

2010-02-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

Today in 1871 marks the death of character actor Jay C. Flippen (seen above on the right), who appeared in numerous A-list Westerns throurout the 1950's. Here's what IMDB has to say about him: Jay C. Flippen could probably be characterized these days as one of those distinctive faces you know but whose name escapes you while viewing old 50s and 60s movies and TV. His distinctive bulldog mug, beetle brows, bulky features, and silver-white hair were ideally suited for crimers and rugged adventure, while his background in vaudeville and minstrel shows helped him obtain roles in occasional fluffy slapstick and light musical comedy. Flippen was already a veteran performer on radio and the Broadway stage by the time he focused on film. He could be counted on to provide his patented gruff and bluster in many an actioneer whether playing a sheriff, prison warden, military high-ranker, bartender, or farmer. Moreover, his characters supported James Stewart in several of his standard vehicles, including Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), Thunder Bay (1953), The Far Country (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), The Restless Breed (1957), Night Passage (1957), and Firecreek (1968). Dogged by illness but determined in later years, he continued his career in a wheelchair following a leg amputation. He was married for 25 years to screenwriter Ruth Brooks Flippen, whose work included a couple of Gidget movies. He died at age 72 of an aneurysm caused by a swollen artery.

On this Day in 1958...

2010-02-01T05:23:00.000-08:00

Fort Bowie was released starring Ben Johnson and Kent Taylor. Best known for his supporting roles, this was one of Johnson's few leading roles. Here he plays a cavalry officer sent on a suicide mission against the Apache by his commanding officer, who thinks Johnson is having an affair with his wife. It's a minor Western, but as Johnson did with so many roles, he brings a real dignity to this one.

Stuart Whitman (1928- )

2010-02-01T05:19:00.000-08:00

Today marks the birthday of character actor and occasional leading man Stuart Whitman. Western fans will recognize him from his roles in movies like The Comancheros (1961) and Rio Conchos (1964). He also starred as Marshal Jim Crown in the 1967-68 series Cimarron Strip.

On this Day in 1918...

2010-02-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

Blue Blazes Rawden was released, starring William S. Hart and Maude George. In the movie Hart plays a kumberjack who kills a man over a woman. Hart is usually associated with the cowboy role, but every once in a while he ventured into othe roles like that of policeman, gangster, Native American, and even Aztec prince.

On this Day in 1941...

2010-01-31T04:31:00.000-08:00

Western Union was released, directed by Fritz Lang. In a period replete with B-Westerns, the movie is an epic in the style of The Plainsman (1936) and Union Pacific (1939). Starring Robert Young and Randolph Scott, the story concerns the laying of the telegrapfh line. Young gets top billing, but it's good to see Scott here in one of his early Western roles. In the late 1950's, he and director Budd Boetticher would bring the B-Western to new heights with classics like Seven Men From Now (1956), Ride Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960).

On this Day in 1957...

2010-01-30T10:04:00.001-08:00

Gun for a Coward was released, starring Fred MacMurray, Jeffrey Hunter and Dean Stockwell.

John McIntire (1907-1991)

2010-01-30T09:56:00.000-08:00

On this day in 1991 passed one of the most recognizable faces (and voices) in the Western, character actor John McIntire. He took over the lead in TV's Wagon Train after Ward Bond died. One of my favorite McIntrire appearances is from Anthony Mann's 1950 classic Winchester 73, in which he played an Indian trader. (He comes in below at 4:3o):

Tim McCoy (1891-1978)

2010-01-29T05:20:00.000-08:00

One of the great stars of early American Westerns. McCoy was the son of an Irish soldier who later became police chief of Saginaw, Michigan, where McCoy was born. He attended St. Ignatius College in Chicago and after seeing a Wild West show there, left school and found work on a Wyoming ranch. He became an expert horseman and roper and developed a keen knowledge of the ways and languages of the Indian tribes in the area. He competed in numerous rodeos, then enlisted in the U.S. Army when America entered the First World War. He was commissioned and rose to the rank of colonel, eventually being posted as Adjutant General of Wyoming, a position he held until 1921. Resigning from the Army, he returned to ranching and concurrently served as territorial Indian agent. In 1922, he was asked by the head of Famous Players-Lasky, Jesse L. Lasky, to provide Indian extras for the Western extravaganza, The Covered Wagon (1923). He brought hundreds of Indians to Hollywood and served as technical advisor on the film. After touring the country and Europe with the Indians as publicity, McCoy returned to Hollywood and used his connections to obtain further work in the movies, both as a technical advisor and as an actor. MGM speedily signed him to a contract to star in a series of Westerns and McCoy rapidly rose to stardom, making scores of Westerns and occasional non-Westerns .. In 1935, he left Hollywood, first to tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus and then with his own Wild West show. He returned to films in 1940, in a series teaming him with Buck Jones and Raymond Hatton, but World War II and Jones's death in 1942 ended the project. McCoy returned to the Army for the war and served with the Army Air Corps in Europe, winning several decorations. He retired from the army and from films after the war, but emerged in the late 1940s for a few more films and some television work. He married Danish writer Inga Arvad and spent his later years as a retired gentleman rancher, occasionally touring with his own Wild West show. He died in 1978 at the age of 86.
(From IMDB)

Here's a trailer for his 1932 movie Two-Fisted Law, featuring a young John Wayne:

Alan Ladd (1913-1964)

2010-01-29T05:14:00.000-08:00

Today in 1964 marks the passing of Alan Ladd, who will be forever remembered by Western fans for his performance in George Stevens' 1953 classic Shane. Here's the ending, courtesy of Youtube:

On this Day in 1950...

2010-01-28T05:23:00.000-08:00

The movie Montana was released, starring Errol Flynn. For the first and only time in his career, Flynn plays an Australian, a sheepherder making his way in cattle country. This was Flynn's second to lat Western, and it's a bit sad to watch, because a lot of the magic and the charm from the earlier movies is gone. By this time, Flynn was also drinking more heavily, and the effect on his physique is evident. Nevertheless, I would say that any Errol Flynn is better than no Errol Flynn, and here's an excerpt from the movie:

John Davis Chandler (1937- )

2010-01-28T05:13:00.000-08:00

On this day in 1937, character actor John Davis Chandler was born. Western fans will recognize Chandler for his supporting roles in three of Sam Peckinpah's films: Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). IMDB says of Chandler: " Short and stocky, with fair hair, piercing blue eyes, a pale complexion and a nasal, whiny voice, Chandler specialized in portraying mean, neurotic and dangerous villains." He was particularly good in a brief scene in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) as a bounty hunter looking for Clint Eastwood (He's seen here at 7:51):

Claude Akins (1926-1994)

2010-01-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

Broad-shouldered and beefy Claude Akins had wavy black hair, a deep booming voice and was equally adept at playing sneering cowardly villains as he was at portraying hard-nosed cops. The son of a police officer, Akins never seemed short of work and appeared in nearly 100 films and 180+ TV episodes in a career spanning over 40 years. He originally attended Northwestern University, and went on to serve with the US Army Signal Corps in World War II in Burma and the Phillipines. Upon returning, he reignited his interest in art and drama and first appeared in front of the camera in 1953 in From Here to Eternity (1953). He quickly began notching up roles in such TV shows as "Dragnet" (1951), "My Friend Flicka" (1956), "Gunsmoke" (1955) and "Zane Grey Theater" (1956). He also turned in several strong cinematic performances, such as gunfighter Joe Burdette in the landmark western Rio Bravo (1959), Mack in the excellent The Defiant Ones (1958), Sgt. Kolwicz in Merrill's Marauders (1962) and Earl Sylvester in the gripping The Killers (1964). In the early 1970s Akins turned up in several supernatural TV films playing "no-nonsense" sheriffs in both The Night Stalker (1972) (TV) and The Norliss Tapes (1973) (TV), and was unrecognizable underneath his simian make-up as war-mongering Gen. Aldo in Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Akins continued starring in films and TV right up until the time of his death from cancer in 1994. By all reports a very gregarious, likable and friendly person off screen, Akins was married for over 40 years to Theresa "Pie" Fairfield, and had three children, Claude Marion Jr., Michele & Wendy.

(From IMDB)

Randolph Scott (1898-1987)

2010-01-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

Today is Randolph Scott's birthday, and the following is from IMDB:

Handsome leading man who developed into one of Hollywood's greatest and most popular western stars. Born to George and Lucy Crane Scott during a visit to Virginia, Scott was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He attended Georgia Institute of Technology but, after being injured playing football, transferred to the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated with a degree in textile engineering and manufacturing. He discovered acting and went to California, where he met Howard Hughes, who obtained an audition for him for Cecil B. DeMille's Dynamite (1929), a role which went instead to Joel McCrea. He was hired to coach Gary Cooper in a Virginia dialect for The Virginian (1929) and played a bit part in the film. Paramount scouts saw him in a play and offered him a contract. He moved rapidly into leading roles at Paramount, although his easy-going charm was not enough to indicate the tremendous success that would come to him later. He was a pleasant figure in comedies, dramas and the occasional adventure, but it was not until he began focusing on westerns in the late 1940s that he reached his greatest stardom. His screen persona altered into that of a stoic, craggy, and uncompromising figure, a tough, hard-bitten man seemingly unconnected to the light comedy lead he had been in the 1930s. He became one of the top box office stars of the 1950s and, in the westerns of Budd Boetticher especially, a critically important figure in the western as an art form. Following a critically acclaimed, less-heroic-than-usual role in one of the classics of the genre, Ride the High Country (1962), Scott retired from films. A multimillionaire as a result of canny investments, Scott spent his remaining years playing golf and avoiding film industry affairs. He died in 1987 survived by his second wife, Patricia, and his two children, Christopher and Sandra. He is buried in Charlotte, North Carolina. Here's a nice tribute from Youtube:

Alan Hale (1892-1950)

2010-01-22T06:08:00.000-08:00

Today marks the passing of one of the great character actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Alan Hale, Sr. (1892-1950). His Westerns include Dodge City (1939) and Santa Fe Trail (1940) with Errol Flynn. (He and Flynn made thrirteen films together.) Imdb has the following to say about him:

Alan Hale decided on a film career after his attempt at becoming an opera singer didn't pan out. He quickly became much in demand as a supporting actor, starred in several films for Cecil B. DeMille and directed others for him. With the advent of sound Hale played leads in a few films, but soon settled down into a career as one of the busiest character actors in the business. He was one of the featured members of what became known as the "Warner Brothers Stock Co.", a corps of character actors and actresses who appeared in scores of Warner Bros. films of the 1930s and 1940s. Hale's best known role is probably in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), one of several films he made with his friend Errol Flynn, in which he played Little John, a role he played in two other films - Robin Hood (1922) and Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950).

On this Day in 1928...

2010-01-22T06:05:00.001-08:00

On this day in 1928, Pioneer Scout, starring Fred Thomson, was released. IMDB has this to say about Thomson, who was one of the biggest Western stars of the 1920's:

All but forgotten today, Fred Thomson was a silent movie westerner who at one time rivaled 1920s heroes Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson in popularity. Unlike the early, myth-inducing demise of a Rudolph Valentino or Jean Harlow, Fred's untimely death of tetanus prevented the actor, who was at one time billed "The World's Greatest Western Star," from creating a durable Hollywood legacy. Christened Frederick Clifton Thomson, he was born in Pasadena, California, in 1890 and proved a natural athlete, playing football at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and then at Princeton Theological Seminary, and breaking all sorts of various records while a student. Initially interested in the ministry, he became a pastor in both Washington, DC, and in Los Angeles, and subsequently married his college sweetheart, Gail Jepson, in 1913. Following her tragic death of tuberculosis in 1916, he left his fellowship and enlisted in the military.During his duty as a serviceman, he served as a technical adviser for the film Johanna Enlists (1918), a Mary Pickford war feature. It was through Pickford that he met his second wife, pioneer screenwriter/director Frances Marion. They married in 1919 following his WWI overseas duty as an Army chaplain. Initially interested in directing, he ended up standing in front of the camera for one of Frances' films Just Around the Corner (1921) when an actor failed to show up for a shoot. The movie was a hit, and the handsome, highly appealing Fred was signed. Following a co-starring role in another Pickford movie, The Love Light (1921), which was also directed and written by Frances, Fred was off and running with his own action serial The Eagle's Talons (1923), in which he performed his own stunts. Over the years, he provided heroics in such oaters as The Dangerous Coward (1924), Ridin' the Wind (1925), The Lone Hand Texan (1924) and the title role in Lone Hand Saunders (1926). Towards the end of his career, he was seen playing the legendary Jesse James and Kit Carson. With his cowboy reputation solidified alongside faithful horse Silver King, Fred became the No. 2 box office star for 1926 and 1927.In 1928, the unthinkable happened. Fred, who was in his movie prime at age 38, was just making his the transition into talkies. He apparently broke the skin of his foot stepping on a nail while working at his stables. Contracting tetanus, which the doctors initially misdiagnosed, he died in Los Angeles on Christmas Day in 1928. His wife and two young sons survived him.

Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959)

2010-01-21T08:17:00.000-08:00

Today in 1959 marks the passing for director and producer Cecil B. DeMille. Among his Westerns are The Plainsman (1936), Union Pacific (1939), and Northwest Mounted Police (1940). Here’s an excerpt from his first Western, The Squaw Man (which he remade in 1918 and 1931):

Broncho Billy Anderson (1880-1971)

2010-01-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

“Broncho Billy” Anderson was the stage name of Gilbert Maxwell Aronson, America’s first cowboy movie star. Anderson pioneered the genre that eventually produced stars such as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers, Buck Jones, and Tom Mix. Anderson also worked behind the camera as a director and producer and developed production techniques still in use today. He was awarded a special Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1958.
Max Aronson was born in 1880 in Little Rock (Pulaski County). His parents were Henry, a traveling salesman, and Esther Aronson. The Aronsons had seven children. Most of the children were born in Texas, but Max was born in Arkansas. Aronson moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in the 1890s to work for his brother in law, Louis Roth, who had married Aronson’s sister, Gertrude, and who worked as a cotton broker. He left Arkansas around the turn of the century for New York, where he became involved with the old Vitagraph Company, a theatrical group. From 1900 until 1926, Aronson produced, directed, or appeared in more than 600 motion pictures—everything from the one reelers, movies that consisted of approximately 400 feet of film, to full-length motion pictures that consisted of approximately 2,000 feet of film, produced later in his career. By 1902, Aronson was in New York and, in 1903, was cast in Edwin S. Porter’s film, The Great Train Robbery,a classic silent western. In his early films, he played various roles under the name G. M. Anderson, as in the movie Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman for Vitagraph in 1904, the first film Anderson directed. In 1907, Anderson moved to Chicago to produce films. There, he developed the idea that the public would pay to see good western movies, and the era of “cowboy” films, that is, films based on marketing the name of the cowboy, began. For a short time, he produced films in Colorado, but William Selig, an early movie producer for whom Anderson was working, could not see the advantage of western scenery in their releases. Anderson’s contribution was to develop the western film and the techniques he devised, including the “long shot,” “medium shot,” “close up,” and “reestablishment scene,” have become standard techniques present even in modern westerns. Back in Chicago, Anderson partnered with George K. Spoor, a theatrical booking agent. The two of them established Essanay Studios in 1907, the name being derived from a phonetic spelling of their initials, S and A. Anderson married Molly Louise Schabbleman in 1908, and the couple had one child, Maxine.
From 1908 to 1915, Anderson made 375 westerns. The most famous of these was the Broncho Billy series. Anderson read a story in the Saturday Evening Post about a character called Broncho Billy. He liked the idea of a series character and developed Broncho Billy into a franchise of films which were extremely popular with the American public. Anderson established a studio at Niles, California, in 1912, where he turned out a two-reel Broncho Billy story approximately every two weeks. The films cost approximately $800 per movie to produce, and each grossed approximately $50,000. The Essanay Studios were in their heyday. Many legendary Hollywood stars worked at Essanay—Francis X. Bushman, one of the leading stars of his day, Gloria Swanson, and Charlie Chaplin. Anderson signed Chaplin for the unheard of salary of $1,250 per week, plus a bonus of $10,000, but neither Spoor nor Chaplin were happy with the arrangement. Spoor was shocked by the salary, and Chaplin was not happy with either the Chicago or Niles studios and their regimented way of mass-producing films. At Niles, Anderson and Chaplin appeared together in Chaplin’s thirty-eighth film, The Champion, released in March of 1915, the only film in which the two stars appeared together. The Bushman, Chaplin, and Anderson movies produced substantial profits for Essanay, but the studio began to experience problems. First, Chaplin was hired away by Mutual for $10,000 a week and a $150,000 signing bonus. Then, Anderson began to realize that the public was demanding more than simple two-reelers. He approached Spoor about producing longer, more involved features. Spoor did not want to incur more expense for longer productions, so Anderson eventually sold his interest in Essanay in 1916. The separation contract stipulated that Anderson could not engage in motion picture production for two years and that the Broncho Billy character would remain property of Essanay. For all practical purposes, Anderson retired. Essanay finally dropped out of the film production business. In 1918, Anderson attempted producing westerns again, but the public had new heroes on the silver screen, and the franchise ceased. In 1958, Anderson was awarded an honorary Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his contribution to the development of motion pictures as entertainment. He lived in quiet retirement for most of his remaining years but surfaced again in the publicity of receiving his honorary Oscar. He died in Pasadena, California, on January 20, 1971, of a heart attack.
(From the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History)

Harry Carey, Sr. (1878-1947)

2009-09-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

Harry Carey (January 16, 1878 – September 21, 1947) was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars. Carey was born Henry DeWitt Carey II in The Bronx, New York, the son of Ella J. Ludlum and Henry DeWitt Carey, a prominent lawyer and judge. He attended Hamilton Military Academy then studied law at New York University. After a boating accident which led to pneumonia, Carey wrote a play while recuperating and toured the country in it for three years, earning a great deal of money, all of which evaporated after his next play was a failure. In 1911, his friend Henry B. Walthall introduced him to director D.W. Griffith, for whom Carey was to make many films. Although Carey, one of Hollywood's finest character actors of the sound era, received an Oscar nomination for his role as the President of the Senate in the 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, he is best remembered as one of the first stars of the Western film genre. He married at least twice and perhaps a third time (census records for 1910 indicate he had a wife named Clare E. Carey, and some references state that he was also married to actress Fern Foster). His last marriage was to actress Olive Fuller Golden (1896-1988). They purchased a large ranch in Saugus, California, north of Los Angeles, which, in 2005, was turned into Tesoro Adobe Historic Park. Their son, Harry Carey, Jr., would become a character actor, most famous for his roles in Westerns. Father and son both appear (albeit in different scenes) in the 1948 film, Red River, and mother and son are both featured in 1956's The Searchers.
Carey made his Broadway stage debut in 1940. Harry Carey died in 1947 from a combination of lung cancer, emphysema and coronary thrombosis, at the age of 69. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the family mausoleum in The Bronx, New York. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Harry Carey has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1521 Vine Street. As an homage to him, John Wayne held his right elbow with his left hand in the closing shot of The Searchers, imitating a stance Carey himself often used in his films. According to Wayne, both he and Carey's widow Olive (who costarred in the film) wept when the scene was finished. In 1976, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (From Wikipedia)

Here's a nice tribute to Carey from Youtube:

On this Day in 1940...

2009-09-18T05:39:00.000-07:00

The Westerner was released, directed by William Wyler and starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Brennan won his third supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of Judge Roy Bean. Here's a clip from the movie:

Sheb Wooley (1921-2003)

2009-09-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Shelby F. "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was a character actor and singer, best known for his 1958 novelty hit "The Purple People Eater". Also for playing Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller arriving on the train at High Noon. Wooley was born in Erick, Oklahoma, and was reared on a farm. He learned how to ride horses at a young age, and was a working cowboy and rodeo rider. He also played in a country-western band. During World War II, Wooley was turned down for service because of his rodeo injuries. He worked in the oil industry and as a welder. In 1946, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas and became a country and western musician. Wooley appeared in dozens of western films from the 1950s through 1970s, most notably High Noon. In 1954, he played outlaw Jim Younger in the syndicated western series Stories of the Century. Wooley appeared five times as Carl in the syndicated western series geared to juvenile audiences, The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951-1955). He appeared in a similar series, The Cisco Kid in the role of Bill Bronson. He guest starred as Harry Runyon in the episode "The Unmasking" of the CBS western, My Friend Flicka. Wooley appeared too in the films The Outlaw Josey Wales and Giant. He co-starred as Pete Nolan in the CBS western Rawhide (1959-1966) with Eric Fleming, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Brinegar. In the late 1950s, he embarked on a recording career, and recorded the song that made him famous. Wooley followed up "People Eater" with a series of lesser-known novelty hits. Wooley also wrote the theme song for the long-running television show Hee Haw. Following his success with "The Purple People Eater," Wooley enjoyed a string of country hits, his most successful being "That's My Pa," which reached No. 1 of Billboard magazine's Hot C&W Sides chart in March 1962.
He was a regular on Hee Haw and The Muppet Show as the drunken country songwriter Ben Colder. The Colder persona became popular and he released music and performed under that name as well as his own. The Ben Colder persona was created after an incident in which Sheb Wooley was supposed to record the song "Don't Go Near The Indians", but was delayed due to an acting job. During the delay Rex Allen recorded the song and scored a hit, and so Sheb Wooley told people that he didn't mind - he would do the sequel. His version was "Don't Go Near the Eskimos", about a boy who lives in Alaska, and as an extra joke he used the name Ben Colder (as in living in Alaska means he had never "been colder"). The single was so successful he continued using the persona for another forty years, with one of his last recordings being "Shaky Breaky Car" (which parodies the song "Achy Breaky Heart"). He is considered by many to be the most likely voice actor for the Wilhelm scream, having appeared on a memo as a voice extra for Distant Drums. This particular recording of a scream has been used by sound effects teams in over 149 films. Wooley continued occasional television and film appearances through the 1990s, including a notable appearance as Cletus Summers, the principal of Hickory High School in the 1986 film Hoosiers. In 1996 he was diagnosed with leukemia, and died at the Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee in 2003. Wooley is buried in Hendersonville Memory Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

On this Day in 1949...

2009-09-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

The Fighting Kentuckian was released, starring John Wayne. Here's the trailer:

Lee Marvin on John Wayne and John Ford

2009-09-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

A year before his death, Lee Marvin talked about John Ford and John Wayne in an interview. You can check it out here:

Wiilliam Boyd (1895-1972)

2009-09-12T04:44:00.001-07:00

William Boyd (June 5, 1895 – September 12, 1972) was an American actor. Born William Lawrence Boyd in Hendrysburg, Ohio, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, Ohio, he was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1918 he went to Hollywood, where he became famous as a leading man in silent film romances with a yearly salary of $100,000. He was the lead actor in Cecil B. DeMille's The Volga Boatman (1926) and in D. W. Griffith's Lady of the Pavements (1929).
By the end of the 1920s, Boyd's career had begun to deteriorate, and he was without a contract and going broke. Then Boyd's picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor with a similar name (William "Stage" Boyd) on gambling and liquor charges, which further hurt his career. In 1935, he was offered the lead role in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy. He changed the original pulp-fiction character, written by Clarence E. Mulford, from a whisky-guzzling wrangler to a cowboy hero who did not smoke, drink, or swear and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Boyd would be indelibly associated with the Hopalong Cassidy character, and he gained lasting fame in the Western film genre because of it. Both Clark Gable and Robert Mitchum got their first big break in movies playing villains in westerns starring Boyd. Anticipating television's rise, Boyd purchased the rights to the character of Hopalong and the 66 Hopalong Cassidy movies.[1] In 1949 he released the movies to television, where they became extremely popular and began the long-running genre of westerns on television. Along with other cowboy figures, such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Boyd licensed merchandise, including such products as Hopalong Cassidy watches, cups and dishes, comic books and cowboy outfits.[1] Boyd identified with his character, often dressing as a cowboy in public,[1] and used his fame and his fortune to meet with children around the world, and underscore for them the fine qualities of the Hopalong Cassidy figure he portrayed. As a private individual and an actor, he was a hero to a generation of American children. The Hopalong Cassidy films remain available for broadcast and are on DVD in restored form. Boyd appeared as Hopalong Cassidy on the cover of numerous national magazines, such as the August 29, 1950, issue of Look [1], and the November 27, 1950 issue of Time. William Boyd died in 1972 in Laguna Beach, California, and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. He is survived by his fifth wife, actress Grace Bradley Boyd (born 21 September 1913). For his contribution to the motion picture industry, William Boyd has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1734 Vine Street. In 1995, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Since 1991, the Friends of Hoppy Fan Club has held the Hopalong Cassidy Festival in Cambridge, Ohio, near Boyd's home town.

(From Wikipedia)

Here’s a nice tribute to Boyd from Youtube:

On this Day in 1959...

2009-09-12T04:42:00.000-07:00

Bonanza was one of the longest running and most popular of all television Westerns. For 14 seasons, audiences enthusiastically tuned in to see the High-Sierra adventures of the Cartwright clan. Nestled above the shores of Lake Tahoe is the Ponderosa Ranch, home of Ben Cartwright and his sons Adam, Hoss and Joe (a.k.a. "Little Joe"). Each of the young men was born to a different deceased mother, making poor Ben a three-time widower. Strong characters and intriguing plots helped to set Bonanza apart from the usual gun-slinging formula shows of its heyday. One reason for Bonanza's success was the show's attention to script development. The characters were allowed to grow and evolve; story lines crossed into controversial topics, exploring racial tension, domestic violence and substance abuse. Each of the Cartwright men developed relationships with women on the show; although almost every woman that came into their lives died tragically.

When it premiered on NBC Sept. 12, 1959, Bonanza was not an immediate ratings winner, but the show remained on the air due to the fact that it was one of few shows filmed in color. After barely surviving its first two seasons on Saturday nights, the show moved to Sunday and became a hit: It was the No. 1 show four years in a row from 1964 to 1967. In 10 of its 14 years on the air, Bonanza was in the national Top 10 -- quite a comeback for those Cartwrights.

Here’s the theme from Youtube:

On this Day in 1922...

2009-09-11T05:39:00.001-07:00

In the Days of Buffalo Bill, starring Art Acord, was released.

On this Day in 1957...

2009-09-10T03:27:00.001-07:00

The Deerslayer premiered, starring Lex Barker and Rita Moreno.

On this Day in 1955...

2009-09-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

Gunsmoke premiered on television. It ran for twenty years, and is the longest running primetime drama on for a full hour in U.S. television history, with a total of 635 episodes. Here's John Wayne endorsing the new show:

On this Day in 1923...

2009-09-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

The Lone Star Ranger, based on the Zane Grey novel, was released, starring Tom Mix.

On this Day in 1923...

2009-09-08T04:48:00.000-07:00

The Covered Wagon, directed by James Cruze and starring J. Warren Kerrigan, was released. It proved one of the great epics of the silent Western. The following is from Wikipedia:

The Covered Wagon (1923 film) is a American silent short Western film released by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by James Cruze based on a novel by Emerson Hough about a group of pioneers traveling through the old West from Kansas to Oregon. J. Warren Kerrigan starred as Will Banion and Lois Wilson as Molly Wingate. The film premiered in New York City on 16 March 1923 and ran 98 minutes, but the feature film was edited down into 23 minutes and become a short film by viewers today. Some sources say that all or part of this film had talking sequnces and a music track recorded in the short-lived DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, but if so, was only shown this way at the premiere at the Rivoli Theater in NYC.

On this Day in 1918...

2009-09-08T04:45:00.000-07:00

Mr. Logan, U.S.A., was released, starring Tom Mix. The following is from answers.com:

During World War I, German spies were even capable of infiltrating a Tom Mix Western! The agent in this picture is going by the alias J. Alexander Gage (Val Paul), and he arrives in a New Mexico mining town about the same time as another mysterious stranger, Jim Logan (Mix). A mysterious chorus girl (Maude Emery) soon follows. Gage is in cahoots with the superintendent of the town's tungsten mine. They plan to encourage a strike, and when they blow up the mine, they can blame it on the striking workers. Logan, meanwhile, becomes involved with the mine owner's pretty niece Suzanne (Kathleen Connors). Gage manages to get Logan arrested and then kidnaps Suzanne. But the chorus girl helps Jim escape. He then breaks up the strike and rounds up Gage, who still has Suzanne in his clutches. Then it is revealed that Logan and the chorus girl are both members of the Secret Service. This wasn't one of Tom Mix's better efforts, although his horse did some great stunts -- as a matter of fact, the horse got even better notices than he did.

On this Day in 2006...

2009-09-07T05:54:00.001-07:00

Today in 2006, the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, directed by James Mangold and starring Russell Crowe. Here's the trailer:

And here's the trailer for the original 1957 movie:

On this Day in 1958...

2009-09-06T05:44:00.001-07:00

Steve McQueen first appeared in the television show Wanted: Dead or Alive on CBS. It ran for 94 episodes until March 1961. It first appeared on Saturdays from 8:30 to 9:00. In 1960 it switched to Wednesday nights from 8:30 to 9:00. The show was McQueen's breakthrough role. Here's the theme from the show:

On this Day in 1955...

2009-09-06T05:34:00.000-07:00

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was released on ABC. It consisted of 266 episodes through September 1961. It ran on Tuesdays from Tuesday from 8:30 to 9:00. Here's a clip from the show:

On this Day in 1940...

2009-09-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

Santa Fe Trail was released, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan. They play West Point graduates Jeb Stuart and George Custer (respectively) who have to deal with abolitionist firebrand John Brown (played by the great Raymon Massey). One of Flynn's weaker entries during this period, the film is riddled with historical inaccuracies galore, not the least of which is the fact that Custer and Stuart never even met. The movie is available for viewing on Youtube:

On this Day in 1951...

2009-09-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

Apache Drums was released. Starrin Stephen McNally and Colleen Gray, McNally plays a gambler thrown out of town who tries to convince the townspeople that the Apaches are really coming.

On this Day in 1951...

2009-09-05T04:50:00.000-07:00

High Noon began production.

Francis Ford (1881-1953)

2009-09-05T04:41:00.000-07:00

Francis Ford (August 14, 1881 – September 5, 1953) was a prolific film actor, writer, and director. He was the older brother of film director John Ford. He also appeared in many of John Ford's movies, including Young Mr. Lincoln and The Quiet Man . He starred in the 1912 two-reeler The Deserter by Thomas H. Ince and acted in over 400 films. He made his directorial debut alongside fellow Hollywood director Thomas H. Ince the same year with the Western dramatic short The Post Telegrapher, starring Ann Little and popular child actress Mildred Harris. Among his most memorable roles is that of the demented old man in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Francis Ford was born Francis Feeney in Portland, Maine. He was the son of John A. Feeney, who was born in the village of Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland, on June 15, 1854. By 1878 John had moved to Portland, Maine and opened a grocery store, at 42 Center Street, that posed as a front for a saloon. John opened four others in following years. His saloons became gathering places where John would greet new immigrants, help them settle, find jobs, and register them as citizens and voters. Francis's younger brother, John M. Feeney, was a successful fullback and defensive tackle on a Portland High state championship football team. He earned the nickname "Bull" because he would lower his leather helmet like a bull and charge through the line. Later Bull followed his older brother Francis to Hollywood, changed his name to John Ford and directed the classic Irish film, The Quiet Man among others (The Grapes of Wrath, Stagecoach, etc.). Francis's son, Philip Ford, would also become a film director and actor.

The above is from Wikipedia. Here's a great scene from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, where Ford plays the bartender:

George O'Brien (1899-1985)

2009-09-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

George O'Brien (April 19, 1899 – September 4, 1985) was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the talkie era of the 1930s, best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Born in San Francisco, California, O'Brien was the oldest son of Daniel J. and Margaret L. (Donahue) O'Brien; O'Brien's father later became the Chief of Police for the City of San Francisco (Dan O'Brien ordered the arrest of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in September 1921 at the scandalous Labor Day party held by Arbuckle). After his retirement from that office, Dan was the Director of Penology for the State of California.
In 1917 O'Brien enlisted in the United States Navy to fight in World War I, serving on a Submarine chaser. He volunteered to act as a stretcher bearer for wounded Marines and was decorated for bravery. Right after the war O'Brien became Light Heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet. O'Brien came to Hollywood in his early twenties hoping to become a cameraman and did work as an assistant cameraman for a while, for both Tom Mix and Buck Jones. He began his acting career in bit parts and as a stuntman. One of his earliest roles was in the 1922 George Melford-directed drama Moran of the Lady Letty, most notable for starring Rudolph Valentino. In 1924 O'Brien received his first starring role in the drama The Man Who Came Back opposite the English actress Dorothy Mackaill. That same year he was chosen by the famed movie director John Ford to star in The Iron Horse opposite actress Madge Bellamy. The film was an immense success at the box-office and O'Brien made nine more films for Ford. In 1927 he starred in the F. W. Murnau-directed Sunrise opposite Janet Gaynor, which won three Academy Awards. O'Brien would spend the remainder of the 1920s as an extremely popular leading man in films, often starring in action and adventure roles alongside such popular actresses of the era as Alma Rubens, Anita Stewart, Dolores Costello, Madge Bellamy, Olive Borden (with whom he was linked romantically during the 1920s) and Janet Gaynor. With the advent of sound, George O'Brien became a popular star of Westerns and rarely took parts outside of the Western film genre. Throughout the 1930s, O'Brien was a consistent Top Ten box-office draw appearing in scores of Westerns, often atop his horse named Mike. During World War II, O'Brien re-enlisted in the United States Navy where he served as a beachmaster in the Pacific and was decorated several times. He left service with the rank of commander. He later joined the United States Naval Reserve and retired with the rank of captain in 1962, having four times been recommended for the rank of admiral. Following his service in World War II, O'Brien would occasionally take feature parts in films directed by his old friend and mentor John Ford including Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Cheyenne Autumn. While serving in the Naval Reserve, O'Brien took on a project for the Department of Defense as part of President Eisenhower's "People to People" program. He was project officer for a series of orientation films on three Asian countries. One of these films, on Korea, was directed by his old friend, John Ford. The other two countries covered were Formosa (Taiwan) and the Philippines. O'Brien dated actress Olive Borden from 1926 until 1930. He married the actress Marguerite Churchill on July 15, 1933 and the couple had a son, Darcy O'Brien in 1939 who would become a successful writer and a daughter, Orin O'Brien who would become a double bassist with the New York Philharmonic. A third child, Brian, died in infancy. The couple divorced in 1948. O'Brien suffered a stroke in 1981 and was bedridden the last few years of his life. He died in 1985 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, George O'Brien was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6201 Hollywood Blvd., in Los Angeles, California.

(From Wikipedia)

On this Day in 1916...

2009-09-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

William S. Hart's The Patriot was released. It tells the story of Bob Wiley, a Spanish-American war veteran and New Mexico rancher whose gold-rich land is robbed by crooked politicians. The embittered Wiley decides to join the forces of Mexican bandit Pancho Zapilla (aka Pancho Villa) who is planning to attack the United States. At the last minute, however, he has a change of heart and ends up thwarting Zapilla's plans. Hence the title. The New York Tribune had this to say about the movie: "Next to the galloping horse there is nothing which brings a Western tang to a picture so successfully as the fine, long, melancholy face of William S. Hart. Mr. Hart can do things with his eyes and the corners of his mouth that almost make you hear the sweep of the wind, and see rolling country and hear hoof beats."

(Adapted from Diane Kaiser Koszarski, The Complete Films of William S. Hart)

On this Day in 1953...

2009-09-03T03:02:00.000-07:00

Escape from Fort Bravo was released, directed by John Sturges and starring William Holden. During the Civil War, Holden is the hardbitten cavalry officer in charge of a prison camp guarding Confederate POW's while also having to deal with Apaches on the warpath. Eleanor Parker is the love interest, and Dynasty fans will recognize John Forsythe as the Confederate officer planning the escape from Fort Bravo. The Encyclopedia of Western Movies describes this as a "modest and effective film." Sturges would go on to direct many fine Westerns such as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Law and Jake Wade (1958), and The Magnificent Seven (1960). Here's the trailer:

Mona Darkfeather (1883-1977)

2009-09-03T02:55:00.000-07:00

Mona Darkfeather (January 13, 1883 – September 3, 1977) was an American actress. During the silent era of motion pictures, from 1911 to 1917, she appeared in 102 movies. Playing Native American characters in a dignified way, her most-famous role was possibly as Prairie Flower in The Vanishing Tribe (1914). Her career began in 1909 when she replied to a local newspaper advertisement placed by producer/director Thomas Ince's Bison Motion Pictures. The movie studio was looking for someone with the physical attributes to portray an American Indian and who was physically capable of doing stunts and riding horses. While she had never acted before, Workman fit the appearance that Ince wanted. She apparently embellished her riding skills, as she did not have any, but nevertheless quickly learned horsemanship. Given the stage name Mona Darkfeather, she was cast in her first starring role as an Indian maiden named Owanee in the 1911 movie Owanee's Great Love. She was born Josephine M. Workman in Boyle Heights, California, and baptized at the Plaza Church, Los Angeles, when she was four months old. Her father was of English and Spanish ancestry, while her mother was of Scottish and Chilean. After replying in 1909 to a Bison Motion Pictures newspaper ad, which called for exotic-looking girls to play "Indian maidens," she soon became famous as Princess Mona Darkfeather, noted for leaping onto her pinto pony, "Comanche," and galloping away bareback. Darkfeather's early publicity claimed she was a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian. Though she freely admitted in interviews that she was not of Indian ancestry, she said she was an Indian Princess, that she had been made a blood member of the Blackfoot Nation and given the title of princess by Chief Big Thunder. So successful was the studio's promotion of Princess Mona Darkfeather that over the years, and even in 2005, she has been frequently referred to as an American Indian actress. She played Indian roles in one-reel western melodramas, such as A White Indian (1912) and A Blackfoot's Conspiracy (1912), as well as feature length movies. She was by then a major movie star. She also played leading roles as Spanish women in several historical dramas.
Darkfeather made movies for Bison starting in 1909, the Selig Polyscope Company between 1909 and 1913, Nestor Studios in 1912 and for Kalem Studios beginning in 1913. Many times the star worked under the direction of Frank Montgomery. He directed her in the Selig 14-reeler The Massacre of the Fourth Cavalry (1912), a sensational silent movie success. For Kalem their outstanding effort was The Woman Without a Soul. She and Frank Montgomery (whose birth name was Akley) were married in 1912. Other movies he directed her in include A Forest Romance, For the Peace of Bear Valley and Justice of the Wild, all released in 1913, in which she played opposite Harry von Meter. Darkfeather was Cecil B. DeMille's first choice to portray the Indian wife, Nat-u-ritch, in his famous western The Squaw Man (1914), but she was too busy, as she and Montgomery were producing their own movies independently for release through the Kalem Company, and she was unavailable to play the role. She and Montgomery joined the newly established Universal Studios, in 1914, and continued to collaborate on scores of westerns. Darkfeather appeared in her last movie, The Hidden Danger, in 1917, then retired from the screen. For a while after she retired as a screen actress, she performed on the stage and headlined as Princess Darkfeather. In late August 1918, she made a special appearance at the Liberty Theater in Tacoma, Washington, as actress, singer and lecturer. In her "rattlesnake" dress, she appeared after each showing of the feature movie, Eyes of the World (1917) starring Monroe Salisbury, to sing and give advice to all girls in the audience with ambition to enter show business. Mona Darkfeather died at age 94 from a stroke, due to cerebral atherosclerosis, at a convalescent center on South Crenshaw Boulevard, Los Angeles.

(Adapted from Wikipedia)

On this Day in 1994...

2009-09-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp was issued, starring Kevin Costner. The movie cost some $65 million, but only brought in about $25 million. (The previous year Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell, proved ffar more successful, bringing in a surprising $55 million). The following is the New York Times review of the Costner film:

WHENEVER Wyatt Earp experiences a dark night of the soul -- which happens more than once in Lawrence Kasdan's and Kevin Costner's 3-hour-and-10-minute epic -- you can bet it will be a dark and stormy night outside, too. At a turning point in the story that takes Wyatt from the Iowa cornfields of his boyhood to old age, he lies in a jail cell.

He is a sweaty, dirty, drunken young man who doesn't blink when a giant bug crawls across his chest. And to make sure no one misses the point, there is rain and thunder and lightning, not to mention some fancy movie lighting that allows Mr. Costner's All-American face to be seen clearly among the shadows. Visually and thematically, this version of Wyatt Earp's life may be the darkest ever put on screen.

The film's symbolic darkness is part of its vast, strong ambition. Mr. Costner's Wyatt Earp is a man tortured by the pull between two types of justice: the lawful kind that first made him a deputy sheriff and the frontier kind that turned him into a cold-blooded murderer seeking vengeance for his younger brother's death. His great and mordant friend Doc Holliday (spectacularly played by Dennis Quaid) describes him as "a marshal and an outlaw, the best of both worlds."

That is a great concept, but the film's literal-minded approach to the hero's dark soul is one of its terrible problems. "Wyatt Earp" labors to turn this mythic figure into a complex man; instead it makes him a cardboard cutout and his story a creepingly slow one.

In a typical scene, Wyatt disarms an out-of-control man and suddenly finds himself a deputy in Dodge City, Kan. A tin star is pinned on him; Mr. Costner touches it dramatically; James Newton Howard's overripe music swells. Time and again, watching "Wyatt Earp" is like being hit in the head with the butt of a rifle for no good reason at all.

Along the way, though, the film has episodes that almost live up to its ambition. They come from a parade of minor characters far more lifelike than Wyatt himself. The story, which is as much about family loyalty as it is about heroism and the Old West, gives Gene Hackman another chance to show he can do anything. As Nicholas Earp, the patriarch, he brings his grandiose lines down to earth. "Nothing counts so much as blood," he says with biblical certainty while sitting at the head of the dinner table. "The rest is just strangers."

Wyatt and his brothers will live by that code as Western lawmen. But before then Wyatt has to make it through his youth, first as a buffalo hunter and then as a married man. Much time is spent depicting his courtship and idyllic marriage to his first wife, Urilla (Annabeth Gish). But she exists here mostly so she can die of typhoid, in Wyatt's arms, providing him with his everlasting tortured soul.

After Urilla's death, Wyatt hits bottom, becoming a thief and landing in that jail. His father bails him out and talks some sense into him. Then he becomes a recovering alcoholic. Though the film never uses the anachronistic term, it is there in anachronistic spirit; Wyatt is forever walking into saloons and pointedly getting a cup of coffee.

Soon several Earp brothers have joined Wyatt in Dodge: the level-headed marshal, Virgil (Michael Madsen); the addled-by-drink bartender, James (David Andrews); the hot-headed deputy, Morgan (Linden Ashby).

As Doc Holliday, Mr. Quaid is the finest of Wyatt's cohorts, and not only because he has lost 40 pounds to achieve the gaunt look of a man dying of tuberculosis. He frowns and looks out at the world from under the brim of his black hat with a cool, sardonic gaze. When he meets the film's hero, he says in a slow voice dripping with the scent of magnolias, "Have you evuh been to Georgia, Wyatt Earp?" The former dentist, by then known as a notorious killer, describes himself deliciously as "a sporting man."

Yet a film that tries so hard to offer intelligent entertainment too often forgets to entertain. The famous showdown in Tombstone, Ariz., with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday facing the cattle-rustling Clanton gang, is staged with greater historical accuracy than usual. It is not set at the O.K. Corral, but on an open street. Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan and Doc walk in a row through the dusty town, and take part in a brief, bloody gunfight at close range. One of the most famous scenes in all of Western legend is anti-climactic.

As in the Earp brothers' lives, women are functional in this film. Mare Winningham is Wyatt's pathetic, prostitute common-law second wife, Mattie. Joanna Going is his appealing, stylish third wife, Josie. JoBeth Williams gives whores a good name as James's feisty, sharp-tongued wife, Bessie. But poor Catherine O'Hara, as Virgil's wife, Allie, is stuck with the unnecessary, audience-nudging line: "You're a cold man, Wyatt Earp."

The screenplay was written by Dan Gordon and rewritten by Mr. Kasdan. But there is little of Mr. Kasdan's deft style in the script or the direction, which is so unlike that of his other films: "The Big Chill," "Body Heat" and, most conspicuously, his smart, light-handed western, "Silverado."

This earnest film does have Kevin Costner's fingerprints all over it. (He is one of its producers.) "You're not a deliberate man, Ed," Wyatt says in a monotone to his reasonable deputy, Ed Masterson (Bill Pullman). "I don't sense that about you. You're too affable." Only a fool would underestimate Mr. Costner's popularity in a period epic, but there isn't much to redeem this film at such softheaded moments, when it threatens to become "Dances With Wyatt" or "Wyatt Earp: Prince of Marshals."

Here's the movie trailer:

On this Day in 1961...

2009-09-01T03:00:00.001-07:00

John Ford's Two Rode Together was released, starring Richard Widmark and James Stewart. Stewart plays a cynical marshal who repatriates Indian captives, and Widmark the cavalry officer who accompanies him on his journeys. This is altogether the weakest of Ford's later Westerns, which depicts "a nightmare vision of the frontier overrun by hysteria and hypocrisy, a frontier in which even the Indians are seen as primtive entrepeneurs" (Encyclopedia of Western Movies). But even the weakest Ford movie has a great scene. Here it's Widmark and Stewart having a conversation by the riverside about nothing in particular. It's a great human moment that only Ford could capture. (Lore has it that The Searchers was originally supposed to be named Two Rode Together.) Here's the trailer for the movie:

On this Day in 1950...

2009-09-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

Henry King's The Gunfighter was released, starring Gregory Peck. The Encyclopedia of Western Movies describes it as a "seminal Western" which introduced a new theme to the genre, that of an aging gunfighter trying to put aside his lifestyle and settle down. More than that I won't say except to recommend it if you haven't seen it. Here's the trailer for the movie from 1950:

The Moviegoer on Vacation...

2009-08-28T04:38:00.001-07:00

... Until Tuesday, September 1.

On this day in 1924...

2009-08-28T04:35:00.000-07:00

John Ford's The Iron Horse was released. A grand epic dealing with the building of the transcontinental railroad, this movie placed Ford in the first rank of American directors.

Harry Carey and the Western

2009-08-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice clip about Harry Carey and Straight Shooting. John Wayne talks about Carey's influence on him and other Western stars.

On this Day in 1917...

2009-08-27T02:30:00.000-07:00

John Ford's first full length movie, Straight Shooting, was released. Prior to these he had made several short films, but this ws his most ambitious project to date. Starring Harry Carey, with whom he would make some 25 Westerns over the next four years, this is the only film from that collaboration to survive. It was rediscovered in a Czechoslovakian film vault in 1966. Fernando Martín Peña has a nice essay on the film at Fipresci, the the International Federation of Film Critics website:

What makes a man to wander? Where does Ethan Edwards come from in The Searchers (1956)? Probably from Straight Shooting (1917), as many have already noticed. Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey) is a carefree outlaw hired by a cattleman to kill a farmer who does not want to leave his land. When he is about to do it, he's moved by the sight of the old man, mourning the death of his son, and decides to reform. The ending of the film is confusing — there are parts obviously missing or misplaced — and the titles are not reliable, because the print was found in Czechoslovakia and they had to be reconstructed from the Czech titles. However, it seems clear that Cheyenne Harry sets things right, feels unworthy of the farmer's offer to stay with him and replace his son (by becoming his son-in-law) and goes away. Fade out and some decades later we have Ethan Edwards.

But there are many more elements in Straight Shooting that prefigure future Ford films, which is quite bewildering given the fact that it actually was his first feature. How can a film be Fordian before Ford? Where does John Ford come from? Surely from David Wark Griffith and William S. Hart. The climax of Straight Shooting finds the ranchers besieged by the cattlemen in a cabin, much as in The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Ford always kept a direct link with the Master through the frequent casting of Mae Marsh (as Lindsay Anderson pointed out). The change that undergoes Carey's character is very close to the pattern set up by Hart in many films, and the austere, dusty western town in Straight Shooting is very close to Hart's imagery. But those obvious links don't explain it all because the film also contains at least three things that cannot be attributed either to Griffith or to Hart.

In the first place, the legendary "eye for composition," that natural gift that defined Ford's visual style, is already quite developed here, as Lindsay Anderson proved in his book.
In the second place, we already find here the somewhat tragic character who assumes the mediating role between the wild and the civilized and who will reappear over and over again in Ford's future westerns, notably in films like My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Like Fonda and Wayne in those films, Carey is not motivated only by virtue (like Hart). He's part of both worlds, but in fact, he's mostly wild: he rides with a band of outlaws, gets noisily drunk with the cattleman's main henchman, seems very happy at the prospect of killing for money and mainly survives by violence, unlike the civilized settlers who don't exactly know how to do that and therefore get killed. So Carey (like Fonda and Wayne) is the one who can exert violence against the violent and help wipe them out with the rest of the wild things, including himself, who feels out of place when the work is done.

And finally, Straight Shooting is devoid of the strong racism that permeates not only Griffith's work but also Hart's. In films like The Aryan (1916), Hart's hero degrades himself by joining an outlaw band exclusively formed by Indians and Mexicans (and quickly becomes their leader, which is presented as the natural thing that happens to a white man in that context). In Straight Shooting, Carey rides with — but does not lead — an outlaw band composed of Mexicans and Indians and afterwards gets their help to fight against the cattlemen and break the cabin siege. Everybody mixes happily in that climax, the outlaw band saves the day, and they even become equated with the settlers when Carey leaves them as well, probably in search of himself, as he finally rides away.

On this Day in 1948...

2009-08-26T02:44:00.001-07:00

Red River, starring John Wayne and directed by Howard Hawks, was released in the theaters. Hawks was a versatile director who had directed every type of movie genre except Westerns, and this was Wayne's first movie with him. Hailed by critics and fans as perhaps the greatest Western of the 1940's, the epic story tells the tale of the first cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail in 1866 and Thomas Dunson, the man who led it. Wayne's role as Dunson was diferent from anything he played before. For one thing, it was the first time he played an old man (he did so again in 1949's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon). It was also a different role for Wayne in that he played a ruthless, driven man bent on completing the drive no matter what (or who) it costs, in the process causing a mutiny. It was the closest he ever came to playing a bad guy in the movies, and it worked. Wayne showed he could really act. (A little trivia for hardcore Western fans: this is the only A-list Western where the Duke wore a holster string. Traditonally in the genre, this was considered the mark of a bad guy.) This is one of the alltime great Westerns, and shows up regularly on top ten lists (including mine).

William S. Hart's 1939 Farewell to the Screen

2009-08-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

In this 1939 clip, silent movie legend William S. Hart bids farewell to the screen. The last five minutes are worth it!

On this Day in 1949...

2009-08-25T03:08:00.000-07:00

Massacre River was released, featuring up and comers Guy Madison and Rory Calhoun. The Encyclopedia of Western Movies (1984) has this to day about the movie: "This inept actioner sees Madison and Calhoun as a pair of army officers in love with the same woman, Cathy Downs (of My darling Clementine fame). However, it is Steve Brodie, as the menacing gambler, who steals the film, epecially as the action scenes of the Indians going on the warpath are so weakly done."

On this Day in 1973...

2009-08-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Cahill, U.S. Marshal was released with John Wayne, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. This is a routine entry from Wayne's later years that never really gets off the ground. Part of the reason, I think, is that Wayne lost interest halfway through the picture when he learned that his old mentor, director John Ford, was dying of cancer. Indeed, Ford died a week after the movie's premiere. But another problem is that it all just seems old: the story, the one-liners, even the actors. By ythe 1970's, the Western was on a visible decline, and movies like this one didn't help turn things around.

Hoot Gibson (1892-1962)

2009-08-23T04:25:00.000-07:00

This day in 1962 marks the death of onetime star Hoot Gibson. Born Edmund Richard Gibson in Tekamah, Nebraska, he joined the circus at age thirteen before working as a cowboy in Wyoming and Colorado. After working in the rodeo he got into the movies as a stuntman in 1910, earning $2.50 a stunt. As he said later on: “I hired out to be an Indian in the morning then turned cowboy and chased myself all afternoon. They paid five dollars a day and two-fifty extra to fall off a horse.” For most of that decade he alternated between the rodeo and the movies, until he found regular with a young director named Jack Ford (who for a time was also Gibson’s roommate). Beginning with Straight Shooting in 1917 as a supporting actor, Gibson worked his way up to leading man. He wasn’t a handsome man and he rarely carried a gun onscreen, but by the mid-1920’s he was making $16,000 a week, and was one of the decade’s leading cowboy stars. His likeable personality and light comedic touch worked at the time, but by the 1930’s his career suffered as decline with the advent of the singing cowboy. By the end of the thirties he left the movie business and went back to the circus. He made a final appearance in Westerns with a small role in John Ford’s 1959 The Horse Soldiers.
(Adapted from IMDB.com)

Rio Bravo Still Popular at Fifty

2009-08-22T05:46:00.001-07:00

Back in March, Allan Barra wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal on the fiftieth anniversary of Rio Bravo and why the film continues to be popular:

It wasn't nominated for any Academy Awards. It was scarcely taken seriously by the critics on its release, and it's never made into the American Film Institute's top 100. But Howard Hawks's "Rio Bravo," which had its premiere half a century ago this month, may be the most popular cult film ever made.

The phrase "cult favorite" conjures up images of wobbly hand-held camera shots and little-known actors. But "Rio Bravo" was shot in glorious Technicolor and starred perhaps the most popular star in movie history. Most cult films are too hip to be popular, and most big hits are too popular to be hip. But "Rio Bravo" is that rarest of films -- both popular and hip.French director Jean-Luc Godard called "Rio Bravo" "a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception." British film critic Robin Wood wrote, "If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be 'Rio Bravo.'" Quentin Tarantino, whose "Pulp Fiction" was also both popular and hip, told an audience at a 2007 Cannes screening of "Rio Bravo" that he always tested a new girlfriend "by taking her to see 'Rio Bravo' -- and she'd better like it!"

Why has a simple western with an unremarkable plot become such an enduring favorite? The story is simplicity itself: A small-town sheriff, John T. Chance (played by John Wayne), holes up in his jail with just two highly questionable deputies, an old jail keeper named Stumpy (Walter Brennan) and an alcoholic gunfighter named Dude (Dean Martin), while waiting for the marshal to relieve him of a murderous prisoner who happens to be the brother of a powerful rancher (John Russell). That's about it -- there aren't really any side plots except for a slowly developing romance between Chance and Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a dance-hall girl at the local saloon (the role made Ms. Dickinson a star).

This hardly seems the stuff from which legendary films are made. In fact, it seems more like a hodgepodge of elements from many westerns, which is exactly what The New Yorker's Pauline Kael liked about it. "A semi-satiric Western," she called it in "5001 Nights at the Movies," "silly, but with zest."

Todd McCarthy, author of "Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood," says: "'Rio Bravo' isn't, as many people refer to it, a 'classic western' -- it's more like a Neo-classic. It came at the end of an era of great westerns at a time when both Wayne and Hawks needed a hit. They were both happy to recycle elements from earlier pictures, even their own." And they would do so again in 1967, when they remade "Rio Bravo" as "El Dorado," with Robert Mitchum as an alcoholic sheriff and Wayne as his deputy. (The confusion over who starred in which movie made for a very funny sequence in the John Travolta hit "Get Shorty.") In 1976, John Carpenter took the basic story line from both films and remade it as a crime thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13."

"Rio Bravo" was designed as an Alamo story in which the besieged Texans win. In case viewers don't get the message, the hotel Wayne's sheriff lives in is called "The Alamo," and the outlaw boss hires a Mexican trumpeter to play "El Deguello," supposedly the song that Santa Anna had played for the Alamo's garrison. (Actually, the piece was written by the film's composer, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Wayne liked it so much that he used it in his 1960 film called "The Alamo.")Tiomkin's music both heightens the tension and relieves it. While the film moves at its own leisurely pace -- at 140 minutes it was longer than most '40s and '50s westerns -- the suspense is sometimes broken for a song. In one sequence, the action stops -- literally -- while Martin and teen idol Ricky Nelson croon "My Rifle, My Pony and Me," a reworking by Tiomkin of his famous theme from Hawks's great 1948 film "Red River." No action movie today would risk anything so daring.

Well known to every "Rio Bravo" aficionado is that it was an intentional response to Fred Zinnemann's 1952 "High Noon," a film that Wayne loathed because it was written by Carl Foreman, who took the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee while "High Noon" was being shot. Foreman, who was later blacklisted, admitted that he wrote scenes in his film to make sure the audience knew he was protesting HUAC. Hawks later said in an interview, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help. . . . We did everything the exact opposite of what annoyed me in 'High Noon.'"

But as Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of True West magazine, notes, too much was made of the differences between "High Noon" and "Rio Bravo." Gary Cooper's sheriff confronts the four outlaws with no one but Grace Kelly to help, while Wayne takes on a couple of dozen with Brennan and Martin, the deputies he started out with, and Nelson, who's only there to get revenge after a friend of his is killed. The odds are about the same for the good guys in both films.

Mr. Bell also notes that the two films are similar in that they perpetuate the myth that a handful of gunmen could simply take over a town without resistance. "When Jesse James and his gang rode into Northfield, Minn., in 1876 to rob the bank, just about every citizen in town reached for a gun and opened fire. That was the case more often than not in the Old West."Still, two generations of fans have loved "Rio Bravo" without caring at all about its political implications. "Is there a film from the fifties so free from strain, or one in which the drift of song is there all the time," the film critic David Thomson asks rhetorically in his recent book "Have You Seen ...?"

Fifty years later, the melody lingers on.
(Drawing by Pat McNamara, 1987)

Errol Flynn's Westerns

2009-08-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last August, the New York Times carried an article about Errol Flynn's Westerns, which had just been reissued. The article (as well as the movies) are worth a look:

John Ford, the legend goes, rescued the adult western from the B-movie category into which it had fallen during the first years of the Depression, making it safe again for big budgets and big stars. But that is an honor rightfully shared with Errol Flynn. This unruly Australian-born star lent his immense popularity to three hugely successful westerns in a row, beginning with “Dodge City,” released in April 1939, a month after “Stagecoach,” and continuing in 1940 with “Virginia City” and “Santa Fe Trail.” (“Stagecoach” was itself preceded by Henry King’s Technicolor “Jesse James,” released in January 1939, starring Tyrone Power.)

These Flynn westerns paired him with his Warner Brothers screen sweetheart, Olivia de Havilland, and were directed by Michael Curtiz, a Hungarian immigrant. Curtiz’s minimal level of engagement with the genre is suggested by the command he is said to have issued during the shooting of “The Charge of the Light Brigade”: “Bring on the empty horses!” — meaning the riderless mounts.

Apparently it wouldn’t do to have a bunch of foreign interlopers behind the rebirth of this most American of American genres. So Flynn’s role in the history of the western has largely been forgotten, despite the fact that he went on to appear in five more, including Raoul Walsh’s 1941 classic “They Died With Their Boots On.” But now that Warner Home Video has brought together four superbly mastered Flynn westerns — “Montana,” “Rocky Mountain,” “San Antonio” and “Virginia City” — in “Errol Flynn: The Warner Brothers Western Collection,” the moment is ripe for reappraisal.

On one level Flynn’s transition from swashbucklers to westerns makes perfect sense: after “Captain Blood” (1935) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), his screen character had grown to such epic proportions that it required a correspondingly epic stage. And after he did his bit for the British Empire, the American West was just about the only other arena that could contain him.

But on another level, as Flynn is said to have observed, his accent and manner were too Continental to fit smoothly into the imaginary space of the American frontier. The screenplays for his westerns — many written by Robert Buckner — continually come up with ingenious explanations for the hero’s curious courtliness and exotic speech patterns: in “Dodge City” he’s an Irish soldier of fortune who finds himself herding cows in Kansas; “Montana” (1950) just throws in the towel and identifies Flynn as an Australian sheep farmer (among the many professions Flynn practiced) who dreams of bringing these white, woolly creatures to western cattle country.

But who could accept Flynn, with his pencil moustache and rakish smile, as a humble cowpoke in a 10-gallon hat? Warner Brothers got around this issue mainly through costuming, dressing Flynn in long frock coats that set him apart from the bandannas and bluejeans of the supporting players. With their slimmer profile, these costumes evoked the tailored three-piece suits of the 1930s far more than the mail-order dry goods of the 1880s. Wide-brimmed, flat-topped hats completed the ensemble, adding an ineffable touch of urbanity (and even a hint of zoot suit flair). This look established Flynn as a man apart, an aristocrat passing through the West without necessarily being a part of it.

The four films in the new set are interesting but of uneven quality. (Not included are “Dodge City” and “They Died With Their Boots On,” which were part of Warner Brothers’ “Errol Flynn Signature Collection: Volume 1”; “Santa Fe Trail,” which has fallen into the public domain and is available in several dubious versions; and “Silver River,” a fine Raoul Walsh film from 1948.)
“Virginia City” casts Flynn as a Union officer who escapes from a Confederate prison and is sent west on a secret mission to intercept a shipment of silver intended for the depleted coffers of the Confederacy. Its oddest element is Humphrey Bogart, pre-stardom, as an outlaw whose accent wavers unpredictably between French and Spanish. As a director, Curtiz never seemed happier than when he was staging elaborate tracking shots through crowded cafes (including a famous one, a couple of years later, under Bogart’s management). The gigantic saloon set of “Virginia City” gives Curtiz several opportunities to indulge himself, as Flynn and his opposite number, a Confederate officer played by Randolph Scott, compete for the affections of the star attraction, a singer played by Miriam Hopkins.

“San Antonio” (1945) repeats the formula, although this time in Technicolor and with the regal Alexis Smith as the singer. The director is David Butler, best known for his musical comedies (“Calamity Jane,” 1953); not surprisingly, he emphasizes the comedy (in the hands of S. Z. Sakall and Florence Bates) and musical elements. (Smith is a vision in white satin and rhinestones, performing “Some Sunday Morning.”)

With a brief running time of 76 minutes, “Montana” has the feel of a troubled production. Both Vincent Sherman and Raoul Walsh did some directing work on the project, which was ultimately signed by Ray Enright. Near the end of his Warner Brothers contract, Flynn was starting to show signs of his drug and alcohol addictions, and the film, despite some handsome Technicolor interiors photographed by Karl Freund, is choppy and lifeless.

But Flynn’s final western, the little-known “Rocky Mountain,” turns out to be a small discovery. Its black-and-white photography and restricted scale suggest the rapidly shrinking budgets that accompanied the late-’40s collapse of the studio system, yet both of these elements work to the benefit of this taut little tale of a Confederate raiding party, led by Flynn, pinned down on a mountaintop by Union troops and Shoshone Indians. The director, William Keighley, was Warner Brothers’ specialist in adapting Broadway stage comedies (“The Man Who Came to Dinner,” 1942), and he makes the most of the confined setting, drawing sharp characterizations from a supporting cast that includes Guinn Williams, Slim Pickens (in his first film) and Howard Petrie, as well as Patrice Wymore (soon to become the third and last Mrs. Flynn) as the troubling female presence.

Like several westerns of the period, “Rocky Mountain” is defined by a very unwestern sense of claustrophobia and entrapment. With the slightest push, the picture would be a film noir, and its climax is appropriately somber. Much of the credit must go to the cinematographer, Ted McCord, a great landscape artist (“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”) who was also fluent in the high-contrast style of studio noir (“Flamingo Road,” “Young Man With a Horn”). The western, in its infinite richness, continues to yield surprises. (Warner Home Video, $49.98, not rated)

A New Western Blog

2009-08-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

For almost a year now I have been writing a blog on Catholic History titled McNamara's Blog. It's been a great way to share my love of Church History with a wider audience than is possible elsewhere. In addition to this field, another lifelong love of mine has been the Western movie. So today I am launching The Moviegoer: A Western Lover's Blog. The title comes from Walker Percy's 1962 novel, and the quote I remember most is this:

Other people... treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books... What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach...