Hoss   Next stop on our current Bonanzarama is Hoss. Like all the lead actors on the show, Dan Blocker is almost entirely identified

  Adam Cartwright     Since we are on a Bonanza-binge at the moment, and have examined under the microscope the career of Lorne Greene

  Pa     Lyon Chaim Green, better known to Westernistas, especially Bonanza fans, as Lorne Greene, was pretty Canadian. There were quite a few

  Vin   Steve McQueen is often thought of as a Western actor and was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in April

  The Lone Ranger rides again – in 1938   Francis Hamilton Striker (1903 – 1962), known to one and all as Fran, deserves glory,

  A formulaic Mohicans-style ‘Western’     Eighteenth-century tales of conflict with Indians are in many ways not really Westerns at all, or not as

  An entertaining yarn   Clifford Irving (1930 – 2017) became especially famous in the early 1970s when he was about to publish a life

  Mediocre   Nevada Smith was a Joseph Levine production for Embassy (director Henry Hathaway and star Steve McQueen also got producer credits) and was

  Casting pearls   Yesterday we put together our Hollywood project for a great Western – click here for that. It’s going to be written

  Jeff’s ideal Western     When I was writing about smoothie bad guy Lyle Bettger the other day, I concluded by saying that I

  Best as crooked saloon man in a frock coat   We were talking the other day about Western blond badman David Brian and how

  Not riveting     The White Squaw was another Western produced by Wallace MacDonald. MacDonald started as an actor and had first appeared in

  Solid, but…     Producer partners Howard W Koch and Aubrey Schenck worked together on 35 feature films, starting with the Anthony Mann-directed noir

  Vin ordinaire   Gunfire at Indian Gap was a Western made in Republic’s widescreen process Naturama, introduced in 1956, which the studio hoped would

  RG   Robert Golden Armstrong, usually known by his initials, was at his best in our genre as a violent character. He once said,

  Monogram goes upmarket   Walter Mirisch and his brothers became hotshot Hollywood producers in the 1960s. The Mirisch Company won the Academy Award for

  Stuntmeister   Of all the many stuntmen whose contribution was invaluable to the Western, Yakima Canutt is probably the most famous. The amazing under-the-coach

  Another in our occasional series of articles on Western cinematographers       Master of light and shade     The visual, how a

  Really quite bad   Back in 2014 I reviewed a dismally bad 1956 Johnny Carpenter movie I Killed Wild Bill Hickok (click the link

  Hard work     I wrote a bit about John or Johnny Carpenter (1914 – 2003) back in 2014 when reviewing his dismally bad

  Paint it black     What is noir?   What noir really is can be difficult to pin down. You kind of know a

  Good cast     Vaughn Monroe was a successful band leader, trumpeter and vocalist with an RCA Victor recording contract who was a major

  Swashbuckling in old California     We were saying the other day, in our review of one such picture, that there was a little

  Howdy, blog-pards   You might be interested to know the most popular posts on Jeff Arnold’s West at the moment:   Indians don’t attack

  Carriages and crinolines     There’s a whole little sub-genre of Westerns set in the Deep South, often with an antebellum setting and with

  Not bad   A nice little 77-minute black & white Bel-Air B-Western, shot in six days on a minimal budget with an unstellar cast,

  In front of the lens and behind it   It might seem strange to do an article in our The Westerns of… series on

  Nice noirish B-Western     After his success in High Noon, as the 1950s progressed, Lloyd Bridges, about whom we were taking the other

  A good Short story   Producer producerNat Holt (1893 – 1971) was best known for making Westerns, first under contract at RKO, then freelancing

  Just about a Western   Most of the Westerns Clark Gable did weren’t really Westerns at all. The Call of the Wild, Boom Town,

  Underrated 60s Western   Taggart is a rather overlooked Western. For example, Brian Garfield, in his fine 1980s guide Western Films, dismisses it in

  One of our favorite bad guys     The bad guys are a key part of the Western genre and a good bad guy

  Sam’s favorite     Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece was The Wild Bunch in 1969, though some might prefer his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

  A really good Western actor   For me, Lloyd Bridges meant Sea Hunt, a series to which I was addicted as a boy, back

  An early Coop Western resurfaces     I have always been a huge admirer of Gary Cooper. In fact I think he was the

  Top heavy     One of my favorite Western heavies of all was Robert J Wilke (1914 – 1989). As henchman he ranks right

  Peck Invincible     In Only the Valiant, also known by its working title Fort Invincible, Gregory Peck plays Captain Richard Lance, Dick to

  Another in our occasional series on Western cinematographers   Edward Cronjager ASC (1904 –1960) was in my view one of the most talented of

  Definitely worth a look   Redskin is a most interesting film and it certainly repays a watch.     One reason for this is

  Flesh tones     It is sometimes said that The Wizard of Oz was the first color film. It wasn’t, of course. Early ‘pre-cinematographic’

  As you may have noticed, Jeff Arnold’s West has undergone a bit of a revamp.     On the home page, and without having

  Solid, but uninspired and uninspiring   This version of Law and Order was a color remake of the fine 1932 film of the same

  Flynn said he was “a rich man’s Roy Rogers”     All Errol Flynn’s feature Westerns have been reviewed on this blog individually, so

  Errol Flynn bids adieu to our noble genre     Rocky Mountain was Errol Flynn’s last Western feature. Flynn was one of the most

  Range war     Errol Flynn, who had first reluctantly donned a Stetson and gunbelt in Dodge City in 1939, not at all sure

  Ho-hum     Border Shootout, also known as Law at Randado, was a TV Western of moderate interest because it was based on a

  Late Glenn Ford     Day of the Evil Gun is a tough but essentially poor late-60s Western. Thank goodness it had Glenn Ford

  Dated but not bad   Paramount’s Zane Grey’s ‘The Light of Western Stars’ came out in 1940. It’s in the public domain, by the

  Love me tender, Love me true, All my dreams fulfill     The other day we reviewed RKO’s Rage at Dawn (click the link

INDEX   Film titles that begin with numbers, like 3 Godfathers, 4 for Texas or 5 Card Stud, are listed in numerical order at the

  Edgar takes the lead     The Silver Star is, on one level, just another short black & white oater produced on a very

  Randy foils the Reno gang   Rage at Dawn was one of four Westerns Randolph Scott made in 1955 (the others were Ten Wanted

  Absurd as biopic but a lot of fun     Kit Carson (1809 – 1868) – click here for our essay on him –

  Not a dud but it never sparks   Red Canyon was a Universal Western of the late 1940s. It had some plus points. It

  One of the greatest     Robert Ryan was one the very best Western actors.     He appeared in eighteen features, between 1940

  Ryan on the small screen   That fine actor Robert Ryan appeared in 18 feature Westerns, between 1940 and 1971, and we’ll soon be

  Fine Western noir   At the end of the 1940s, noir Westerns were all the rage. Raoul Walsh had directed various hard-edged non-Western pictures

  Probably the worst Texas Rangers movie   Hollywood had always been inspired by the Texas Rangers. They were the American Mounties, valiant heroes who

  McIntire   Many people will remember the great Western character actor John McIntire from TV. When Ward Bond died, McIntire took over command of

  Deeply silly but a lot of fun   The black & white Universal Westerns of the 1940s were often pretty silly, but they usually