Cattle
Git ‘em up! Move ‘em out! Movie titles with livelinks can be clicked on to go to our reviews of those pictures.
The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans
“Each man has a song and this is my song.” (Leonard Cohen)
Git ‘em up! Move ‘em out! Movie titles with livelinks can be clicked on to go to our reviews of those pictures.
The B-Western at its best The longhorn is a descendant of the cattle brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadores in the days
A good yarn I knew Texan author Joe R Lansdale from his enjoyable Hap and Leonard stories but was reminded by reading Kim
Wanted: Dead or Alive The whole notion of allowing or even encouraging people who are not sworn officers of the law to apprehend
Billy lives to fight another day One of the (very) many movies about the (entirely mythical) Billy the Kid was a B-Western of
Taken by Indians The so-called captivity narrative, a story about a person of one tribe or race or religion taken and held by
Best as charming rogue Comments by readers Jean-Marie and RR have made me rethink and reassess the Western career of Arthur Kennedy. So
Blowing my own trumpet again I crave your indulgence dear e-reader, for another mention of my recent novel Stay and Die. But I
My principal sources for this article were the 2015 biography Wild Bill Wellman, Hollywood Rebel by Wellman’s son, William Wellman Jr, and the 1995
An early Bill Hart oater On the Night Stage was an early Western that William S Hart made with producer Thomas H Ince,
Jeff Chandler does his Gary Cooper act Some of the Hollywood greats steered clear of the Western, the poor deluded fools. Perhaps they
Pretty nifty I followed up Jean-Marie’s comment on Helena’s three-barrel pistol in the 2013 The Lone Ranger. You know me and derringers.
Git ’em up! Head ’em out! The Quest, you may remember, was a Columbia Television Western series created by Tracy Keenan Wynn (Keenan
Interesting story though not a very good film Although it is not a Western, I watched Glory on Netflix the other day. It’s
A Hart feature become a short A late feature (it was a 50-minute 5-reeler) that William S Hart made for Thomas H Ince
Faintly distasteful Jed Buell was a publicist for Mack Sennett and Keystone who founded his own company, Spectrum Pictures, to make ultra-low-budget exploitation
Wagons roll! I have been prompted by reading Kim Newman’s book Wild West Movies (review of that when I have finished it) to
Then what? Today’s little essay concerns an aspect of the Western which I have noticed and maybe you have too. It kind of
Two Ince/Hart shorts Although William S Hart was anxious to do ‘serious’ multi-reel feature Westerns when he started making films with Thomas H
Are cowboys right-wing or left? After recent discussion on this blog by readers about a book, Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State
Drive ‘em north Well, I have some very good news for Western lovers. Readers of this blog may remember an article I posted
Forgive me for blowing my own (rather beat-up) trumpet again, but I hope you might want to scan this review of my new
Disney, but still just about watchable Of course it depends on your definition of a Western but Disney’s 1958 film version of Conrad
Tough cattleman finds love We’ve been looking at the Westerns Thomas H Ince made, especially those with William S Hart, and one that
Father of the Western Film titles with livelinks can be clicked for our reviews of the pictures. Tragically in a way, the
New Western Surrounded is a beautiful-looking film, shot in New Mexico (that wonderful pink light) by Max Goldman, better known for rock videos
Reading the West On Jeff Arnold’s West we have reviewed or discussed various Western books – mostly biographies, novels, history and film
Pretty darn good By 1960, the B-Western, in the sense of a one-hour second feature, was all but dead, but producer/director Maury Dexter,
Hoss off the Ponderosa In the fall of 1968, NBC’s TV show Bonanza was already beginning its tenth season, and although Adam Cartwright
Winter Wyoming We’ve reviewed some of Taylor Sheridan’s Western or semi-Western films on this blog, the likes of 1883 and 1923. Wind River
A brief guide Howard Hughes’s book on Western movies Stagecoach to Tombstone: The Filmgoers Guide to the Great Westerns (IB Tauris) came out
American Indians in early Westerns Today, something a bit different: two Westerns for the price of one. The two greatest pioneer artists
New Western novel This is a red-letter day for your Jeff, because today Stay and Die is published, his new Western novel, and
Independent 70s Western Shoot the Sun Down was a small independent film which seems to have got a limited theatrical release in the
A cracking good oater Wyoming Renegades is just the kind of Western I go for, a fast-paced 73-minute actioner with a strong cast,
“Times are bad and gettin’ worse. That’s when the show business flourishes, when times are bad.” (Burt Lancaster as Ned Buntline) I don’t
A dark tale of the Arkansas woods Bastard’s Crossing (the title is explained in the final scene) is another of the ‘twelve Westerns
What in the old days we would have called a B-Western Counting Bullets is a recent cavalry Western with a pretty traditional ‘siege’
Spooky, man And we’ll finish our current mini-season of three horror-westerns, pictures which deliberately crossed between the genres, with a classic of the
Weirdly watchable Since we are on a roll of horror-westerns, today one of the cheapest. Jacques Marquette (not the Jesuit missionary) was
Fangs for the memory I’m like a dog with a bone as far as Jesse James and Billy the Kid are concerned. Any
Kirk’s last Western Draw! was Kirk Douglas’s last Western. It was a TV movie made by Douglas’s own Bryna Productions (named for his
Another old post I have revised! Hats off to the Stetson There are three main ways to distinguish a cowboy: his horse,
The finest Western Peck ever made I reviewed The Gunfighter back in 2016 but having just seen it again and also listened to
Worthy, if a tad dull Continuing our current thread of ‘important’ 1920s Westerns, today we’ll look at a big Paramount picture from a
Coop’s first big role It is often said that Samuel Goldwyn’s The Winning of Barbara Worth is not a Western, and indeed it
Coop’s first sound Western – though not really Wolf Song, released in March 1929, dates from the period of transition between silent and
Indian Charlie Charles Stevens was colorful character actor of the Western. For most of his professional life he claimed to be Geronimo’s grandson,
L’Alliance brisée: Le Western des anneés 1920 by Jean-Louis Leutrat The Western movie certainly took enormous strides forward in the 1920s, even before
The only surviving footage of Tom Mix directed by John Ford In 1920 John Ford moved from Universal to Fox, where he was
A guksu western Lovers of spaghetti westerns will probably like this nine-part Netflix show. It is set in Jiandao, known in Korean as
A woman’s lot Heartland is a drama which in a way harks right back to the early days of silent movies. There is
Readers in the US might be interested in this e-mail I received from INSP: Hi Jeff, I hope you’ve been
DVD, please I’m writing about a film today but not reviewing it, as such. That’s because I haven’t seen it, and indeed my
Divided opinions There’s a whole sub-genre of capture-the-wild-horse Westerns. Many cowboy stars felt they had to do one. Joel McCrea did two. These
That’s enough Mohicans Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans has sold millions of copies, has been filmed very many times and
The B-Western in its death throes By the early 1960s, the second-feature just-over-an-hour black & white Western movie was a rider on a
Yet another go-round of the Mohicans yarn Made as Last of the Redskins but finally released as the marginally more PC Last of
Notes from the prairie How important music can be to a Western! It must have been even more so in the early
Siegel and Fonda, not bad! In the mid-1960s Don Siegel was ‘reduced’ to working in TV. He produced the series The Legend of