The Desperado (AA, 1954)
Wayne Morris good as hard-bitten gunfighter A short time ago I reviewed a big color widescreen picture Allied Artists put out in 1958, Cole Younger, Gunfighter, directed by RG Springsteen. I said then that it was a remake of the studio’s earlier movie, The Desperado, starring Wayne Morris. Well, I’ve just watched The […]
The Younger brothers in fact and fiction
Believe it or not ‘The Younger brothers in fact and fiction’. In the case of the Youngers, as with Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid and many other famous figures of the Old West, outlaws or lawmen, the fiction certainly outweighs the fact. So many lurid blood-and-thunder dime novels, stage […]
Cole Younger, by Himself
Cole as goody In 1903, at the age of 58, Cole Younger published an autobiography. He said in his preface: Many may wonder why and ‘old guerrilla’ should feel called upon at this late day to rehearse the story of his life. On the eve of sixty, I come out into […]
Deadwood: The Movie (HBO, 2019)
“All bleeding stops eventually.” (Doc Cochran) The series Deadwood (three seasons, starting 2004) was the best TV of its decade. The combination of writing, acting, direction and setting was never equaled – in any show, in any genre. I certainly have never seen better TV in my (now quite lengthy) lifetime. So it […]
The Intruders (NBC TV, 1970)
Cole is the boss We were on the trail of director RG Springsteen, and following him quite closely too, until we got to his 1958 picture Cole Younger, Gunfighter, when we kind of got onto a side-trail, a Younger one, and we stopped to look at the 1949 Warners offering The Younger Brothers. Maybe we’ll […]
The Younger Brothers (Warner Bros, 1949)
Preposterous twaddle Hollywood Westerns liked the Younger brothers, especially Cole. Harry Hoffman played Cole as bold Confederate fighter in an early silent Jesse James movie of 1921, and in 1941 Dennis Morgan was Cole in Bad Men of Missouri (with Wayne Morris as younger Younger Bob). In 1949 Morris was promoted to […]
Cole Younger, Gunfighter (AA, 1958)
Those evil carpetbaggers . In the late 1950s director RG Springsteen, known as Bud, who had spent the late 40s and early 50s churning out formulaic second-feature Westerns for Republic starring the likes of Allan Lane, Bill Elliott and Monte Hale, started to move a little up-market. He directed George Montgomery in Allied Artists’ […]
Homesteaders of Paradise Valley (Republic, 1947)
Cowboy philosopher Today, another of the RG Springsteen-directed Red Ryder Westerns starring Allan ‘Rocky’ Lane as Red, after Stagecoach to Denver, which we looked at the other day. Two will probably be enough: they are a bit on the samey side, to be brutally frank. Once you’ve seen one, … . . Rocky is […]
Stagecoach to Denver (Republic, 1946)
Red and Beaver save the day We’ve kind of overlooked Allan ‘Rocky’ Lane on this blog till now. I’ve mentioned him from time to time but not reviewed one of his oaters, as I recall. It’s time to put that right because RG Springsteen directed quite a few of them and we’re having […]
He Rides Tall (Universal, 1964)
He’s a tall man riding . . We’ve been talking recently about 1960s feature Westerns, pictures that were made for die-hard fans of the genre in a time when TV was taking over in a big way, yet there still seemed to be at least some kind of market in folks who went out […]