Sitting Bull (UA, 1954)
. Dale’s the goody, Custer the baddy A mid-50s pro-Indian picture starring a pre-Wells Fargo Dale Robertson, Sitting Bull gives us a semi-revisionist portrayal of Little Bighorn and it has certain merits, not least its Mexican locations shot in CinemaScope color. Robertson as an army major, demoted to captain, is not altogether […]
Warpath (Paramount, 1951)
. Nice little Nat Holt Western Producer Nat Holt had a good line in Westerns. We remember him for the likes of Tales of Wells Fargo, Shotgun Slade and The Tall Men on TV but he also put together sixteen big-screen oaters, notably seven with Randolph Scott but also a couple with Charlton Heston […]
They Died with Their Boots On (Warner Bros, 1941)
. Rip-roaring It’s curious in a way how few actual biopics there have been of George Armstrong Custer, who is, after all, a major figure of American history and myth – certainly far fewer than films about other greats of Old West fact and folklore such as Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, […]
Santa Fe Trail (Warner Bros, 1940)
. Not top drawer The next screen Custer (see here for the silent ones and here for the early talkie Custers) emerged in 1940. Errol Flynn graduated from West Point twice at that time, for he would soon be Custer in the biopic They Died With Their Boots On – click here for our […]
Talkie Custers
He speaks The first talkie Custer to appear was in an RKO serial, The Last Frontier (1932), starring Lon Chaney Jr, as Tom Kirby, aka The Black Ghost. As you might imagine, it was not quite great art, and it was one of those shows in which Custer, this time played by […]
With General Custer at Little Big Horn (Aywon Film, 1926)
. Silent Custer After Francis Ford’s Custer’s Last Fight in 1912 (click the link for our review), there was a comedy two years later, Colonel Custard’s Last Stand, from the St Louis Motion Picture Company, with Lloyd Hamilton as Custard, of which The Moving Picture World of the day said, “the whole picture, while […]
Custerology
Your turn, Autie Which painting, or its reproduction anyway, has been viewed, commented on and discussed heatedly by more people in the US than any other artwork? This was a question posed by Robert Taft in a 1946 article for the Kansas Historical Society Quarterly (Vol. 14 No. 4, pages 361 to […]
Ride with the Devil (Universal, 1999)
The best film about Jesse James didn’t feature Jesse James Today we’re going to transition out of our Jesse James obsession (JAW has become quite Jesseholic of late) by looking at a ‘sort-of’ James boys picture, although as Johnny Boggs said, the best film about Jesse James didn’t feature Jesse James. That’s alright. […]
Jesse James: the myth
All-American hero In his excellent 2002 biography Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, TJ Stiles gives his last chapter, in which he describes the legacy of the Missouri outlaw, the title The Apotheosis of Jesse James. Webster’s defines apotheosis as elevation to divine status, deification, and that’s about right, for […]
Two late Jesses
There are just a couple more Jesse James movies to review (until another comes along). It won’t take long, because they were both pretty poor. And neither was about the real Jesse James. They both nominally starred Peter Fonda. American Bandits: Frank and Jesse James (Aro/Tesera, 2010) Like its almost namesake […]