. The Barry Sullivan Show . . Clair Huffaker wrote Western novels and screenplays, sometimes screenplays from his own novels, as in this case. They

. Heroic . . Producer Ron Howard and director/co-writer John Lee Hancock (replacing Howard who had been slated to direct but apparently fell out with

. So-so leads but good supporting cast . . The Yellow Mountain is a mid-50s mid-budget Western from Universal. Starring as it does Lex Barker

. Duke learns his craft . . In 1933, after the six B but not-at-all-bad Westerns the young John Wayne did for Warners, he embarked

. Duke takes on the British Empire – and wins . . Republic boss Herbert Yates had no sooner signed his only A-picture star, John

. John Wayne’s Three Mesquiteers pictures, 4: . . Red River Range was the fourth of the eight Three Mesquiteers movies that John Wayne starred

. John Wayne’s Three Mesquiteers pictures, 2: . . Overland Stage Raiders was the second of the eight Three Mesquiteers pictures that John Wayne starred

. John Wayne’s Three Mesquiteers pictures, 1: . . In 1938 John Wayne signed a new contract with Republic. The salary wasn’t bad, eight Westerns

. Hokum, but that’s OK . . Many Hollywood Westerns, especially in the 1920s and 30s, concentrated on themes of nation-building, cross-continental expansion. There were

. Randolph Scott’s first Western . . In the 1920s Paramount made a series of silent Westerns based on Zane Grey stories, to which Jesse Lasky

. Reconstruction? All bad. . . The Texans was the last film Randolph Scott made under his Paramount contract. The studio finally gave him an

. A travesty of Annie Oakley . . I dislike Annie Get Your Gun not because it’s an bad film (though it is), nor because

. A minor Western of quality . . Bands of outlaws were meat and drink to the Hollywood Western, and if they contained brothers and

. The real Jesse . . PBS has put out many documentaries on semi-mythical figures of the old West, such as Billy the Kid and

. Contemporary Western noir . . At first sight this movie looks like a late-1940s black & white cops & robbers drama, and purists won’t

. Next . . The comedy Western is a notoriously difficult genre to get right. Humor is such a personal thing and trial audiences or

. The not so Wild West . . Recently re-aired by PBS and also available on DVD, The West is an eight-part documentary produced and

. De Toth’s sixth Western, Randy’s 45th . . 1953 was a great vintage for Westerns and as well as some truly superb examples of

. Splice a couple of episodes together and call it a movie . . Tales of Wells Fargo was a successful TV Western series for

. Another documentary . . There have been many films entitled Custer’s Last Fight or Custer’s Last Stand, from 1910 onwards. . . Early celluloid

. The end of resistance . . Another in the excellent American Experience series of documentaries shown on PBS was Geronimo and the Apache Resistance,

.   . This is the last episode of a three-part post on the TV Western. To read part 1, about the early days of

. Yesterday, in The TV Western Part 1, we looked at the birth of the TV Western. Today we’re going to ponder the glory days,

. The visit to the theater is replaced by the small screen . .   . In most ways big-screen Hollywood movies are the best

. Randy is Bat . . By 1949 Randolph Scott was not only starring in Westerns; he was also producing them. He produced two in

. Painfully bad but I suppose audiences then were easier to please . . We sometimes forget, or I do anyway, just how bad many of

. Western must-haves (but can’t-affords) . . Ryan Stills from Invaluable.com has been busy asking bloggers to name their most-wanted movie props. Perhaps in the

. Dern good badman . . Bruce MacLeish Dern, born in Chicago in 1938, is one of the great Western actors. He has been Oscar-nominated,

. The great showman . . Another in the American Experience series aired on PBS was Buffalo Bill, a one-hour documentary written and directed by

. Little Sure Shot . . Annie Oakley is one of the great icons of American history, culture and myth. She was an early ‘celebrity’

. Done with gusto . . Go West, Young Lady is a lovely, silly little black & white 69-minute comic/musical Western directed by comedy vet

. 52 minutes of fun . . I think of John Wayne’s Western career in various phases. The first phase was the three pictures he

. Readin’ the West . . 1. A somnolent audience   In 1893, a year of crash and economic depression, The World’s Columbian Exposition was

. Bearable . . Roughing It by Mark Twain (see our review) is one of the most entertaining books on the West you could imagine.

. How the West Was Filmed . . Directors were clearly key people in the production of Western movies, as they have always been in

. A mid-Western . . Glendon Swathout’s novel The Homesman was in my view his best Western work. It deserved a high-quality film treatment (in

. A fine Western novel . . The Homesman is a splendid Western novel. Glendon Swarthout wrote four Western tales (that I know of), all

. Dire . . Irving Allen was a producer best known for disagreeing with his partner Albert Broccoli on the commercial viability of James Bond

. . Coop . . We have reviewed separately all Gary Cooper Westerns that still exist and you can find those articles in the index.

. Coop’s first really good Western after High Noon . . After High Noon and Springfield Rifle (both 1952), Gary Cooper (the newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth had just had the

. Poor Coop, another Warners plodder . . What an anti-climax Springfield Rifle was, which Gary Cooper did, under his contract with for Warners, after

. Pretty bad, I fear . . I don’t know what it was about early 1950s Warners Westerns but they never quite seemed to get

. Light and low-budget, but entertaining . . We think of Gary Cooper as the quintessential Western star. Yet in the 1930s he only did

. Turgid DeMille meller, saved by Coop . . In 1940 Gary Cooper made a fine film, The Westerner, with an outstanding Walter Brennan as Judge

. Coop scouts for the wagon train . . Gary Cooper starred in only three Westerns in the 1930s, The Texan (1930), Fighting Caravans (1931) and The

. The Westerns of Katy Jurado . . The Western career of María Cristina Estela Marcela Jurado García, known as Katy Jurado (1924 – 2002),

. Fine film. A Western? Probably not. . . The Hi-Lo Country is a good movie, even if it’s not really a Western. Let’s call

. They went for the big picture . . Fox’s Broken Lance in 1954 was a big Western. It was big-budget and released amid much

. Rather good . . 1953 was, as we know, one of the great years in the whole history of the Western movie. Among the

. Pretty bad . . I won’t take up much of your time on Kentucky Rifle because it’s so bad.   OK, we all like

. Quite fun . . 1867. The territory of Nebraska has just become a state. The eponymous resident of the film’s title is the 6’4”

. Colorful rogue . . . Judge Roy Bean, unknown date . Screen Beans   Judge Roy Bean is a favorite character of the old

. Run-of-the mill Columbia oater . . Columbia, like all the big studios, was happy in the 1950s to cater to the demand from audiences

. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Valiente of Las Truchas . . Everyone knows that the American Southwest is the most beautiful part of the whole world,

. Popular outlaws . . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid   . Few figures of the old West have exercised such a fascination on

. Butch and Sundance again . . Such was the enormity of the box-office hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969, sequels and prequels

. Butch and Sundance ride (yet) again . . The story of Robert Parker and Harry Longabaugh (known to most as Butch Cassidy and the

. One of the great Western lawmen . . Patrick Floyd Garrett (1850 – 1908) was a member of that select club of Western lawmen

. Al Sieber on the page and on the screen   . . We’ve already looked at the factual, historical life of Al Sieber (click

. A fine film . . In 1993 there were two films about Geronimo. One was a TV movie screened by TNT, Geronimo, and it