Young Jeff rather endearing   Hearts of the West belongs to that little sub-genre of movies which are not so much Westerns as about

. “Little Jo, you are the unfriendliest fella I ever met, and frankly quite peculiar.” . The Ballad of Little Jo showed that as the

  An excellent picture   Cliff Robertson’s personal project JW Coop is one of the batch of 1970s Westerns (or semi-Westerns) which use the rodeo

  Not a nice man   The First Fast Draw was a Louis L’Amour novel that was published in 1959, coming between Radigan and Taggart.

  What a voice! What a mustache!   John Dehner was one of the very best character actors in Westerns. He only led in one

  No matter how fast you are, there’s always somebody faster   A movie that was in many ways the apogee (or the nadir if

  Another go-round   Rodeo was enjoying a boom in popularity after World War II and movies cashed in. 1952 was a landmark year in

  Timber! (yet again)       Good little Western novel (rather a ho-hum movie though)   Jaguar was a company founded by Alan Ladd

  A good Western yarn   Guns of the Timberlands is an earlyish novel from Louis L’Amour, published in 1955, by Dell. In many ways

  Ride ‘em, cowboy!     There’s a big sub-genre of rodeo Westerns. From The Pendleton, Oregon Round-Up (1913) to Rodeo and Juliet (2015), from

  Western farce   Today, another consonant-rich alliterative title, The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend. Writer Earl Felton’s original screen story was titled The Lady

  Noir comes to the Western – along with Freud . What is a noir, and can a Western be one? Webster’s describes noir as

  Creepy   When I saw the title Brimstone in the TV listings as a Western, I hoped it would be a cinematic version of

  Revenge at all costs     Henry King started as an actor in silent movies, for example topping the (limited) cast list in The

  Be a crooked saloon owner or mayor – for real   The Guardian in Britain reports that a Wild West town is for sale

  Now listen to me: somebody steps on your rights, go after him. Never give up – never. Just be smarter than I was. . .

  WANTED – DEAD OR ALIVE!   The Western is the only genre to have its own typeface. Its distinctive characteristic is that the serifs

  In a scene early in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) who has come back as

  Not bad     On June 20 INSP (for Europeans who don’t know, a Hallmarkish Conservative TV channel) will screen a new Western, The

  Fonda still had it .         .   . Burt Kennedy (above) had two Westerns he directed released in May 1967, The

  Too long and slow   Clark Gable didn’t really do Westerns, rather surprisingly. He starred in several semi-Westerns or Westernish movies, notably Across the Wide

  “They come from beyond maps”   It’s a funny thing about Clark Gable’s Westerns: they weren’t. .           . You’d

  “A poignant, mournful, dying fall”   Like many people, I am not a huge fan of John Ford’s late Westerns. The Searchers was the

. Old scoundrel mentors young boys – badly .   By the early 70s Lee Marvin, that great Western actor, was doing grizzled old-timer roles.

  Lay them rails     Ever since The Great Train Robbery of 1903, considered by many to be the first Western movie, railroads have

  A premake of The Ten Commandments . At the end of the 1930s big A-picture Westerns came back into fashion and Fox’s contribution was

  A grave matter   Given that death was ever-present in the Western – you’ll hardly ever see one in which one person or another

  Atonement . On one level just a one-reel short, and a melodramatic morality tale, The Last Drop of Water is also a little landmark

  Howdy, Reverend   We might say that the Western generally is a secular form. Cowboy heroes may (or may not) be believers in a

  Jacques’s last Western. Stack’s too. . .             . . Great Day in the Morning was Jacques Tourneur’s last

  Squeeze, don’t pull     A common scene in Westerns was a shooting lesson. Often it is the hero who teaches a young neophyte

What did you do in the lockdown, Daddy? Lockdown is ending, here in France where I live – or at least being relaxed. I have

  Title: the distinguishing name of a written, printed, or filmed production (Webster’s)     Funny how you can tell right away from a title

  $$$   We sometimes talk about a low-budget Western or a big-budget one, or even a mid-budget oater. What did it mean?   I

  Yawn   Despite its big budget and the ballyhoo that attended it, HBO’s series Westworld is very disappointing. I was looking forward to it.

  Bank gets robbed: serves the crooked banker right   Bank robberies are an essential ingredient of the Western movie genre. They might be large

  She’s only half-Apache though     Apache Woman was a low-budget oater by Roger Corman.   Corman (born 1926 and still going strong, as

  Jane finally got a gun     It is sometimes said that in Westerns women were only either saintly schoolteacher types who redeemed the

  Jim Bridger rides again   What was the gun that won the West? Many people would say the Colt .45, and judging by its

  Quite a trip . . Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man arouses perplexity, scorn and admiration in equal measure from Westernistas, I find. I’m on the

  You can keep your hat on   In 1919 there came a major turning point in the development of the motion picture. Yup, you’ve

  Red Ryder rides again . . Red Ryder started as a very popular cartoon character in newspapers in 1938, created by writer/merchandising wizard Stephen

  Watchable twaddle . . Jay Silverheels wasn’t only Tonto. In different movies from 1937 to 1973 he was Geronimo (three times), Satanta and Red

On location   From the earliest times landscape has been a key element of the Western movie. There are successful, even great ‘town Westerns’, yes,

  Joe Kane             . . Next in our occasional series of Western movie directors is Republic’s Joe Kane.  Jasper

  A good read   Leo Gordon, that classic heavy in Western movies also wrote screenplays and novels. Under the name Leo V Gordon (which

  I thought you might like to see this picture of Jeff with his old sidekick Matt Dillon in Monument Valley. I unearthed it while tidying

. The thrill of the weekly serial   It is difficult for us now to comprehend the sheer excitement that the weekly movie serial or

. 007 and BB home on the range . People have not been kind to Shalako. It got pretty bad reviews at the time and

. Red Ryder on the small screen?   Red Ryder, who had started as a comic book hero and been though radio, serial and feature

  George dons the coonskin cap . As we are on a bit of a George Montgomery jag at the moment I thought I’d continue

  Great title   No great epic maybe but still a whole heap of fun is a late-50s George Montgomery outing, one of five movies

  Mormon history 1990s style   In a comment on a post the other day about a movie starring Tom Berenger, reader Barry Lane took

  Bob Steele stars in Lippert’s debut as producer . On one level just another 40s low-budget one-hour Bob Steele Western, with unremarkable production values,

  The San Patricios   Rather intrigued by the part that the St Patrick’s Battalion and its leader John Riley played in James Carlos Blake’s

  Black and bleak   In the Rogue Blood is a novel of the 1840s West. The story is of two brothers, John and Edward

  Too long and dreary . . Continuing with our season of iffy 70s Westerns, this one, with a faux-poetic title, was certainly one of

The arch-heavy   We all love the Western heavy. If you were casting a movie in the 1950s and wanted a smarmy town boss you’d

  Bronson does comedy   Continuing our theme of not-very-good (or sometimes downright bad) 1970s Westerns, let’s look at From Noon Till Three, a Charles

  Good bad guys . . Since we’re on a bit of a George Montgomery kick at the moment, here’s another one. It was quite