Take Me to Town (Universal, 1953)
Folksy Americana Take Me to Town was directed by Douglas Sirk, and though on one level an overly bucolic rural story (hardly a Western at all) it does have some of typical Sirk themes, showing up bourgeois hypocrisy and suggesting that over-restrictive convention can stifle authenticity and goodness. It also showcases Sirk’s love […]
Gunfire (Lippert, 1950)
Don ‘Red’ Barry is Frank When minor movie studio Lippert had a (for them) big hit in 1949 with I Shot Jesse James, starring John Ireland as Bob Ford, they of course wanted to milk it for all they were worth, and the year after they came out with I Shot Billy the Kid, […]
The Westerns of Audie Murphy
The Kid from Texas The Kid from Texas, the title of Audie Murphy’s first Western movie, will do very well also to head up this look at his Western career because he was very much a Texan and his youthful appearance was, throughout, a key element of his appeal. From […]
Return of the Frontiersman (Warner Bros, 1950)
Early Rory A very early Rory Calhoun Western is Return of the Frontiersman, a Warners effort of 1950. Well, it wasn’t really a Calhoun Western: he only had the third-billed part, as the bad guy. It was a Gordon McCrae vehicle. McCrae, as I am sure you know, was a singer, best known […]
Oklahoma Annie (Republic, 1952)
Corny . . Judy Canova (1913 to 1983), pictured left, was an exponent of so-called cornpone humor. Her shtick was to make herself as ugly as possible, by twisting her face into grimaces, wearing pigtails, accentuating her already huge posterior and so on, doing a country-bumpkin act that doubtless had them rolling the aisles. […]
The Westerns of Richard Widmark
Dick Richard Widmark was one of the principal Western actors. He appeared in 19 examples of our noble genre from 1948 to 1988. Of slight build, with blond hair, and at well under six foot, he didn’t have the obvious physique for a Western lead, and he wasn’t the sort of matinée idol […]
Ramona
Sentimental California romance Ramona is one of the most durable and long-lasting examples of the Western genre. It started life as a novel by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830 to 1885), first published in 1884. Helen Jackson was an American poet and writer who became an activist on behalf of improved […]
The Deadly Trackers (Warner Bros, 1973)
It’s trashy enough to be Samuel Fuller but isn’t really by him The Deadly Trackers was Samuel Fuller’s last Western. Well, it was and it wasn’t. Fuller (left) wrote a story, Riata, and then worked it up into a screenplay. He sold the project to Warner Brothers and shooting began in Spain, with […]
Al Jennings of Oklahoma (Columbia, 1951)
Twaddle, but harmless twaddle . . The other day we were talking about Al Jennings (left), looking at the silent Western he made in 1908, The Bank Robbery. I said then that he was a very colorful character, a highly-skilled self-publicist and what today would be called a celebrity, and like many modern celebs, his […]
The Last Posse (Columbia, 1953)
Brod’s best 1953 was a remarkably good year for the Western movie, and The Last Posse was by no means the worst example. . . It did star Broderick Crawford, which a priori was a bit of a handicap. Crawford’s quick-fire Eastern lingo (he was born in Philadelphia, went to school in […]