10 thoughts on “Broderick Crawford Movies”

1. I’ve seen 6 of the 52 films on the chart, less than I thought. Favorites are Beau Geste and The Fastest Gun Alive. I’ve also seen Seven Sinners, The Black Cat, Larceny inc and Born Yesterday.

   I want to see All the Kings Men but it rarely pops up on TV.

   When I can’t sleep I don’t count sheep I silently name Best picture Oscar winners in chronological order, as many as I can remember and than, when I get to the present, in reverse order. The 1949 and 1950 Oscar Winners both begin with the word ‘All’ which makes it easier for me to remember.

   The 1940s Oscar Winners are the hardest for me to remember. From 1950 to 1989 the easiest.

   Good stuff Bruce. Vote Up!

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   1. HI STEVE: I’m gld you too liked Fastest Gun Alive. I first saw it when it came out in 1956 on a double bill with Cagney’s These Wilder Years. I remember distinctly having to join a long queue on a Friday night and when I got to the top of the queue the attendant came out with a House Full sign so I had to return another night.

      I always thought highly ironic was one scene in The Fastest Gun Alive given Charlie Bill Stuart’s real life strong belief in reincarnation. After the George Temple [Charlie Bill] Vinnie Harold [Brodie] gunfight the townspeople are standing beside a grave marked ‘George Temple’ and a passer-by asks

      “Who was he?”
      “He was the fastest gun alive.” replies a citizen.
      “If that’s so why is he dead?” asks the stranger.
      “He wanted it that way.” Replies the citizen [meaning that Temple didn’t want to go through life proving how fast he was].

      The camera then pans to other grave bystanders and we see George Temple and his wife looking down at the grave ‘containing George Temple’.

      I often wonder if Charlie Bill the actor and influential star at that time engineered that scene as homage to his own real life spiritual beliefs. According to Leslie Towns Hope a neighbour of Charlie Bill at one time Charlie told Leslie that in his present life he also got visits from spaceships from other planets. I think you once said you do not completely dismiss the concept of life on other planets?

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2. COPIED
   The Phantom aside I think that after their 1949/50 peak I most remember Brodie as the gun-duelling fanatic Vinnie Harold in Charlie Bill’s 1956 Fastest Gun Alive and John Ireland as Chuck’s sidekick in the 1963 55 Days at Peking and for Kirk’s 1960 Spartacus. John’s role was not great in that one but the timing of one of his key lines of dialogue ensured I remembered him from the movie.

   In those days when a long “epic” was shown there was always an interval half-way through the movie probably as much to highlight the importance of the film as to defer to the necessity of b**s on seats to get a leg-stretch. Astride his horse and with bony knees protruding from underneath his ye olden time skirt Ireland brandishes his sword and commands “Tell Spartacus we ride to the sea!” and with a swish the curtain came down and we were off to the foyer for 15 mins to have our ice creams and for nearly all of my group to proclaim how wonderful Kirk was.

   I can recall arguing though that Brando or Wayne might have been better in the role. However even though still teenagers in 1960 we were analytical little devils about movies and a pal pointed out to me that The Duke may not have wanted to play a rebel against ANY body of authority and may well have seen Spartacus as a “leftie”.

   It shows you how astute my pal was when one considers how Kirk had resisted pressure from the Hollywood “right” and hired the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo for Spartacus so that Big John maybe saw the whole thing as a “leftie” project anyway. Previously he had clashed with Kirk for playing Van Gogh in Lust for Life and castigated Cooper for showing up Small Town America as “cowards” in High Noon.

   To paraphrase Son o Bob “I may not have seen as many films as have The Work Horse and Steve and Flora but in my youth I saw everything that COUNTED.” Anyway every cloud has a silver lining because I mean who unless they were screwballs themselves would want to have to own up to watching all those awful Al Leach screwball comedies?

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3. COPIED
   Moving on to 1949 Brodie had great back to back success with All the King’s Men and Born Yesterday in 1949/50 and John Ireland and he had consecutive teamings in All the King’s Men and Cargo to Capetown. The duo were together again quarter of a century later in 1974’s TV horror film The Phantom of Hollywood. That was not as you might think a movie about Joel Hirschhorn but involved a slasher who ran amok on Tinseltown movie sets.

   The heyday of Crawford and Ireland was of course long gone by then and in fact both men hadn’t aged too well. The male lead was Jack Cassidy who was the husband of Shirley Jones and father [not by Shirley] of TV star and pop singer David Cassidy.

   Jack and Shirley divorced the year Phantom was made and Jack sadly died tragically 2 years later in 1976 in a fire accident after playing the guest villain in 3 Columbo TV episodes. Jack’s final role in fact was on the big screen as Damon Runyon in the Private Files of J Edgar Hoover which reunited Jack with Brodie in the title role and this time of course Crawford was the top-billed lead actor. I found Jack’s strong presence as the 3 Columbo villains highly entertaining.

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4. I usually give The Best of Cogerson and Lensman a second viewing the day after each comes out. Perusing again your Brodie Crawford page this morning it occurred to me that another great duo that you missed on this page was Crawford/Ireland.

   The boys probably had their peak heyday in the 1948/50 period. That began for John with his role as Cherry Valance in Red River. Almost as much as The Duke’s Thomas Dunson Cherry Valance stuck in my mind over the years because of the unusual sound of it. Indeed it could have been contrived to ensure you remembered it much as say Cogerson and Lensman Hirschhorn may well have been.

   Also Cherry had a key scene near the end of the film that ensured his legacy as one of the characters who was put down by The Duke in a major western. As Big John moves forward for his confrontation with Monty’s Matthew Garth Cherry pulls a gun on Wayne to try to stop him but The Duke typically shoots Cherry in the arm without even looking at him and proceeds uninterrupted for his fight with Clift.

   Classic Duke! And of course there is a Dan like link in that Wayne 14 years later appeared in The Man who Shot Liberty Valance. Red River and Wayne and Cherry may well have been respectively the first western and among the first I actors that I ever saw. I think that the difference could well have been that in Cherry’s case the surname was pronounced as VA- lance whereas with Liberty the name was spoken as an even seamless Valance. Anyway the 1948 movie was “The story of a boy and a man and the Red River D!”

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