Harry Carey, Sr. (1878-1947)

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...

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)

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...

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

Lee Marvin on John Wayne and John Ford

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)

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...

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...

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

On this Day in 1957...

The Deerslayer premiered, starring Lex Barker and Rita Moreno.

On this Day in 1955...

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...

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

On this Day in 1923...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

High Noon began production.

Francis Ford (1881-1953)

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)

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...

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...

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)

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...

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...

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...

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...

... Until Tuesday, September 1.

On this day in 1924...

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

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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)

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

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)