Next   After big-screen appearances in the 1960s in The Great Sioux Massacre, The Plainsman and Custer of the West, click links for

. Dreary and fake   All livelinks take you to this blog’s reviews of those pictures.   George Armstrong Custer, as we have seen recently

. Don takes Coop’s part   1966 was a bit of a year for Western remakes. A version of Stagecoach and another remake of Smoky

. Custer plods ponderously over the Plains   The year after Warpath (click the link for our review of that one) a film came out

. A Mature Crazy Horse   You might expect a mid-50s Universal movie about Crazy Horse to center on Little Bighorn but in fact Custer

. 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

. Nice little Nat Holt Western   Producer Nat Holt had a good line in Westerns. We remember him for the likes of Tales of

. 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

. Not top drawer   The next screen Custer (see here for the silent ones and here for the early talkie Custers) emerged in 1940.

    He speaks   The first talkie Custer to appear was in an RKO serial, The Last Frontier (1932), starring Lon Chaney Jr, as

. 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,

    Your turn, Autie   Which painting, or its reproduction anyway, has been viewed, commented on and discussed heatedly by more people in the

  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

    All-American hero   In his excellent 2002 biography Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, TJ Stiles gives his last chapter, in

    There are just a couple more Jesse James movies to review (until another comes along). It won’t take long, because they were both

. The Western as art film   After no big-screen Westerns about Jesse James at all in the 1990s, we have already had three in

. Jim: Is that bad? Frank: Very.   In the last quarter of the twentieth century big-screen Westerns featuring Jesse James, which had been so

. We played a rough game… and we lost.   I’ve always been a fan of director, screenwriter, and producer Walter Hill. After all, he

. Cole’s the boss   It was inevitable, once the 1970s dawned, that revisionism would have a go at Jesse James. After all, pictures like

  Tarantino isn’t just walking down memory lane; he’s strutting (Barbara Scharres)   Although, having said that, he was only six in 1969.   The

    Made-for-TV Jesse   We’ve looked at Jesse James on the big screen and Jesse on the small one. But in addition to appearances

    Jesse now rides across the small screen   As we have seen, the Missouri outlaw Jesse James, sometimes with and sometimes without his

. “While you finish preparing, I shall activate the artificial brain.”   When you hear Dr Maria Frankenstein say that, you will probably want to

. Jesse not a saint for once   In 1960 Fox was back yet again with a Jesse James movie. This one was not a

  Watch it for Tommy Lee   A brief pause from Jesse James (phew, I hear you exclaim) to look at a recent offering.  

. Jesse is a two-gun womanizing rogue   The first quarter of an hour of this one shows us Milton Farnsworth (Bob Hope) in NYC

. Not bad   After a spate of early- and mid-1950s Westerns about the James brothers, over which we have recently mused on this blog,

. Weirdly enjoyable for a bad movie   The next Jesse James of the long series (the early 1950s B-Western sure took Jesse to its

. Probably better to skip this one   I’ve hardly got the energy to review this one, it’s so bad. I suppose I better, though,

. All the outlaws you want   In the 1940s Universal had done well by cramming as many monsters into a movie as possible. Pictures

. Corey ‘n’ Carey are Frank & Jesse   The next installment of the Jesse-on-the-silver-screen drama came in 1951, and was a little more up-market

. Jesse rides (yet) again   It was an irritation for Hollywood that Billy the Kid and Jesse James were killed. Most thoughtless of them.

  Jesse in the 1950s   Jesse James remained through the 1950s, or at least until 1957, in the realm of the low-budget Western. Universal’s

. Dale Robertson as Jesse James   Back last April and May we were looking at Jesse James on the big screen, and how the

. Billy the Kid rides yet again   We’ve nearly reached the end of our long and winding trail to find Billy the Kid. We’ll

. Brat-pack Billy   Every generation has to have a crack at the Billy the Kid legend, and in the late 1980s it was time

. One of the better Billies   After a flurry of Billy the Kid movies in the early 1970s (Chisum, Dirty Little Billy and Pat

    Kids   Just how old William Bonney was at the time of his activities and demise in New Mexico in July 1881 is

. Magnificent, moody, monumental   Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (interesting that the characters were mentioned that way round) was probably, despite certain shortcomings,

. Deconstructing the Western hero   The next screen Billy the Kid was as unlike its predecessor as it was possible to get. Dirty Little

. How a cattle baron won the Lincoln County War   In 1965 John Wayne was recovering from quite drastic cancer surgery. The Western-loving public

. Billy the Kid gets the art film treatment   The (rather typical) Warner Brothers trailer for The Left Handed Gun trumpets that viewers will

. Billy rides again   There had been two ‘A-picture’ Billy the Kid movies from MGM, in 1930 and 1941, and the B-Western had also

. Not the greatest start for Audie’s Western career; still fun though   You know the story, I’m sure, how America’s most decorated WWII soldier

. The worst ever Billy the Kid film   While MGM was making Billy the Kid, in late 1940 and early 1941, another crew was

. Another so-so Billy from Metro   As we have seen, MGM made the first talkie Billy the Kid movie, in 1930. It wasn’t very

. For devotees only   We have seen how good old Bob Steele was Billy the Kid for PRC in six B-Westerns in 1940 and

. Billy wears a star   MGM made a big-budget Billy the Kid picture in 1930, and would do another in 1941, but between these

. Roy is Billy   It was inevitable that once Billy the Kid became a national character, which Walter Noble Burns’s 1920s bestseller The Saga

. The first talkie Billy   As we were saying yesterday, in our post on Billy the Kid as legend (click the link for that)

    The Legend   As happened with Jesse James, Billy’s contemporary, the legend began immediately. The press hysteria over Bonney was quickly taken up

    The Kid is taken   In the election of November 1880, sitting Sheriff George Kimball received 170 votes but his challenger, Pat Garrett,

    They say that Pat Garrett’s got your number So sleep with one eye open when you slumber Every little sound just might be

    Wanted outlaw   As so often, Billy now went to Fort Sumner. It was over a hundred miles from the county seat of

    Billy betrayed   With Alexander McSween dead and James Dolan bankrupt, there was nothing left to fight over, and the Lincoln County War

    Conflagration   The fullest portrait we get of Billy Bonney, as he now was, at this time is from his Regulator friend Frank

    Shoot-out in Lincoln County   The murder of Sheriff William Brady in broad daylight in the street at Lincoln on April 1, 1878

    War breaks out   At the end of 1877 Billy Bonney got to know rancher Tunstall’s foreman Dick Brewer, “a big, handsome man

    From boy to outlaw   After the killing of Windy Cahill, Henry McCarty, aka Kid Antrim, later to be known as Billy the

    The Kid as kid   Well, we’ve delved on this blog into quite a bit of Earpiana recently. Later, we may try some