The Sacketts (NBC TV, 1979)
. . Louis L’Amour on the small screen . . At the end of the 1970s, the great Glenn Ford was back in the saddle
The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans
“Each man has a song and this is my song.” (Leonard Cohen)
. . Louis L’Amour on the small screen . . At the end of the 1970s, the great Glenn Ford was back in the saddle
. . The ride downhill . . In 1969, the great Western actor Glenn Ford starred in his twenty-second, Smith! . . . This
. . A bit of a plodder on the whole . . The Last Challenge, Glenn Ford’s twentieth Western (he was probably getting the hang
. . The Civil War again . . Another Glenn Ford Civil War picture, A Time for Killing, aka The Long Ride Home, could not
. . Glenn Ford in the 1960s . . Glenn Ford got back together with George Marshall in 1964 for the fourth time (they had
. . Lemmon becomes Ford . . Based (loosely) on Frank Harris’s My Reminiscences as a Cowboy, Glenn Ford’s fourteenth Western, and Delmer Daves’s eighth
. . A proper Western . . On the surface a melodramatic tale of range war, passion and lust, Glenn Ford’s tenth Western, The Violent
. . Cowboys brasileiros . . This movie, which we must probably count as Glenn Ford’s ninth Western, commits two cardinal sins against the genre
. . Redhead Rhonda and Cowboy Glenn . . After the high-quality The Man from Colorado and Lust for Gold at the end of the 1940s, that
. . Superb, gripping Western . . Lust for Gold, Glenn Ford’s fifth oater, is a Western sandwich. It starts and ends with modern times,
. . The young Glenn Ford . . Glenn Ford’s Western career started auspiciously with an excellent little picture for Columbia – he and young
. . Need a judge? . Judge character . . One of my all-time favorite character actors in Westerns was Edgar Buchanan. He was
. Alan Sharp died on February 8th after a long illness, aged 79. A Scot, Sharp nevertheless had a notable feel for the
. . “Good or bad, like it or not, that was my film.” . . In 1973 came what many people regard (and they could
. . A lovely, sad, elegiac film . . . This lovely, sad, elegiac film reminds us of The Ballad of Cable Hogue, or even Ride the High
. Peckinpah looks around for work . . After Major Dundee bombed, Sam Peckinpah was in a difficult place. He participated in The Glory Guys later in
. . A decent enough low-budget Western . . Sam Peckinpah’s first feature film was on a small scale and is reminiscent of The Westerner
. . The Westerns of Sam Peckinpah . . . Most Western fans would agree that David Samuel Peckinpah (1925 – 1984) was one of
. . The nearest movies got to the truth about the Daltons (though it still wasn’t near) . . The Dalton brothers, who had been
. . A whole lotta fun . . Now it’s the turn of the Dalton brothers to be glamorous criminals. A classic, straight-down-the-line early 40s
. Bob, Grat and Emmett . Bob Dalton . Grat Dalton . Emmett Dalton . The Daltons are famous outlaws of the old West, and
. . Rather charming . . James Stewart made two Westerns in the 1970s, The Cheyenne Social Club in 1970, when he was 62, and
. . A real clunker . . The Rare Breed ought certainly to have had a parental guidance warning (to stop parents going). Oh,
. . A family saga . . Shenandoah was more a Western than Gone with the Wind is but it’s still really only a family
. . One of the great Western actors . . I don’t want to get into top tens and all that. A league table of
. One of the best Westerns of the 1960s . . John Ford’s Stagecoach in 1939 is a very famous Western and was hugely influential,
. Tarantino makes a Western . . Well, it’s spectacular, I’ll give it that. And long. Actually, at 2 hours 45 minutes, it’s too
. I knew a fella once… . . . This celebrated film, very loosely based on the Max Brand novella Twelve Peers, was the first
. . It has its admirers . . High Plains Drifter was the fourth Western that Clint Eastwood starred in after the Dollars European ones
. . Frontier woman . . . This film, directed by Ron Howard and starring Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones, has a lot
. . Homage to Shane . And I looked, and behold a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell
. Huge fun . . The comedy Western is hard to get right but when it does hit the right notes, it can be a
. A great Western actor . . What a great Western actor Slim Pickens was. Mr Louis Burton Lindley Jr (slim pickings were
. Did he or didn’t he? . . Thomas Horn Jr (1860 – 1903) is a very interesting figure to anyone who reads about the
. . The Song of Jesse . . Jesse James passed into folk song almost immediately. The Ballad of Jesse James, supposedly written by a
. . The Book of Jesse . . There have been hundreds, if not thousands of books written about Jesse James, from scholarly analysis to
. . Jesse’s mother . . Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James Simms Samuel (let’s call her Ma James; we can’t go on giving her that full
Another in the occasional series on Western cinematographers . A Western master . . Another of the great Western cinematographers was Lucien Ballard ASC (1908
. . I wouldn’t have it any other way . . We can’t do justice to this great movie in a short blogpost. It would
. 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),
. . Clint’s masterpiece . . Only the third Western to win an Oscar for Best Picture – Cimarron (RKO, 1931) and Dances with Wolves
. The high noon of the Western motion picture . . Right, here’s the situation: you are on a sinking ship with a full cargo
. Next in an occasional series on Western cinematographers . . . Master of light and shadow . . James Wong
. Rooster Cogburn, no grit? Not much! . . The 1969 filming of the great Charles Portis novel True Grit was a perfectly splendid Western.
. . It gives you that buzz . . One huge benefit of modern times has been that we can travel. Only the other day,
. . First in a series of posts on Western cinematographers . . The eye behind the lens . . Robert Surtees (1906 –
. If it weren’t for the acting, direction and writing, September Dawn might be alright . . Films which deal with Mormons and Mormonism have,
. . Attack that fort! . . Last night there was a pretty average but quite enjoyable Western on French TV, Fort Yuma. It stars
. . Howdy, everyone. . . I’m back. . Sorry to have been away for so long. . But in the next few days I’ll
. His name was Somebody . . 1973. Henry Fonda is 68. He accepts a part in what turns out to be his last Western.
. . Pretty awful . . Sadly, Henry Fonda’s last two Westerns were pretty awful and that was very unfortunate after such a fine career.
. . A big hand for Firecreek . . Although the direction and editing of Firecreek could have been tighter and the pace of this
. . A favorite of aficionados . . This is a delightful light Western in which Henry Fonda (Howdy) and Glenn Ford (Ben) shine as
The mysterious stanger Although far from my favorite Western and flawed in many ways, Shane still stands as an iconic example of the genre. Every
. . More shepherd’s pie . . Once you get over the bemusement of an entire 1950s Mexican village speaking with British accents (and, shockingly,
. Well worth it . . What a great Western actor Gregory Peck was. In some ways, perhaps, he was the wrong choice for
. . Gobble, gobble . . This picture reminds me a bit of the turkey How the West Was Won with its bloated budget, its
. A rare thing – a mediocre Gregory Peck . . After the considerable and deserved success of True Grit (Paramount, 1969), Universal must have wanted
. . A fine Western actor . . Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) came from a Roman Catholic San Diego family
. . Commercial Batjac – but that’s OK . . The War Wagon was another 60s Western in which Wayne, in exactly the same costume