The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans

“Each man has a song and this is my song.” (Leonard Cohen)

Cowboy (Columbia, 1958)

. . Lemmon becomes Ford . . Based (loosely) on Frank Harris’s My Reminiscences as a Cowboy, Glenn Ford’s fourteenth Western, and Delmer Daves’s eighth

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The Americano (RKO, 1955)

. . Cowboys brasileiros . . This movie, which we must probably count as Glenn Ford’s ninth Western, commits two cardinal sins against the genre

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Texas (Columbia, 1941)

. . The young Glenn Ford . . Glenn Ford’s Western career started auspiciously with an excellent little picture for Columbia – he and young

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Alan Sharp

  . Alan Sharp died on February 8th after a long illness, aged 79.   A Scot, Sharp nevertheless had a notable feel for the

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Sam Peckinpah

. . The Westerns of Sam Peckinpah . . . Most Western fans would agree that David Samuel Peckinpah (1925 – 1984) was one of

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James Stewart

. . One of the great Western actors . . I don’t want to get into top tens and all that. A league table of

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Hombre (Fox, 1967)

. One of the best Westerns of the 1960s . . John Ford’s Stagecoach in 1939 is a very famous Western and was hugely influential,

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Slim Pickens

. A great Western actor  .   . What a great Western actor Slim Pickens was.   Mr Louis Burton Lindley Jr (slim pickings were

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Jesse James: the songs

. . The Song of Jesse . . Jesse James passed into folk song almost immediately. The Ballad of Jesse James, supposedly written by a

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Jesse James: the books

. . The Book of Jesse . . There have been hundreds, if not thousands of books written about Jesse James, from scholarly analysis to

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Jesse James: Ma James

. . Jesse’s mother . . Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James Simms Samuel (let’s call her Ma James; we can’t go on giving her that full

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Lucien Ballard

Another in the occasional series on Western cinematographers . A Western master . . Another of the great Western cinematographers was Lucien Ballard ASC (1908

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Silverado (Columbia, 1985)

. A Western-lover’s Western . . In a post-Heaven’s Gate period of drought when A-Westerns weren’t being made (Cimino had almost sunk the genre single-handed),

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High Noon (UA, 1952)

. The high noon of the Western motion picture . . Right, here’s the situation: you are on a sinking ship with a full cargo

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James Wong Howe

. Next in an occasional series on Western cinematographers . .         . Master of light and shadow . . James Wong

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Visiting the West

. . It gives you that buzz . . One huge benefit of modern times has been that we can travel. Only the other day,

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Shoot Out (Universal, 1971)

. A rare thing – a mediocre Gregory Peck . . After the considerable and deserved success of True Grit (Paramount, 1969), Universal must have wanted

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Gregory Peck

. . A fine Western actor . . Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) came from a Roman Catholic San Diego family

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