We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
BEST STILLS/LOBBY CARDS IN STEVE’s 1948 WESTERNS VIDEO
1/Arizona Ranger
2/The Dude Goes West
3/2 for Silver River
4/ALL for Man from Colorado
5/Strawberry Roan
6/2 for Blood on the Moon
7/4 Faces West
8/Myrna and the Stranger
9/1st one for The Paleface – WOW!
10/The Great Royal Dano in Yellow Sky
11/Yellow Sky with the Great Dickie Widmark– a lifelong teetotaler despite socializing with Boozer Brando
12/ALL for Red River “The story of a man, a boy and the Red River D.”
13/ALL for Treasure of Sierra Madre. “Fred C Dobbs don’t lie!”
14/Gay Ranchero
15/ Fury at Furnace Creek
16/Under California Stars starring Roy Rogers and Trigger. The average Rogers oater lasted around 1hr 10 mins.
17/Roy and Trigger again this time in Night Time in Manchester. Trigger a REAL work horse!
18/“The night is still and you feel you are all alone. Then you think you hear a slight sound behind you and you half-turn around and suddenly he’s there in front of you – THAT’s Whispering Smith!” – 2 excellent crisp stills for that movie.
19/2 for Station West. Bob Mitchum could be somewhat of a vulgarian being a guy who, even unprovoked, as often as not bad-mouthed other stars, referring to Ladd for example as “that skinny little runt whom I saw crawling out of a swimming pool and therefore not suitable for tough-guy roles!”. However Mitch sang the praises of Jane Greer to the high heavens. When he was jailed in disgrace for drugs usage all the prestigious Hollywood leading ladies [according to him] shunned working with him – except Jane who put herself out there by co-starring with him in the 1949 minor classic noir The Big Steal
There is a glut of great vintage pictorials in Steve’s 1948 westerns video which I rate 99% for personal pleasure – despite Leslie Townes Hope’s Paleface being included as a western! Best POSTERS for my money are as follows [FL = Foreign Language version of poster]:
1/1st one for Albuquerque
2/1st one for Coroner Creek
3/1st one for Strawberry Roan
4/1st one for Blood on the Moon
5/Arizona Ranger
6/FL for 4 Faces West
7/1st one for The Paleface
8/1st one for 3 Brandos – not a Duke favorite with me.
9/1st one for Yellow Sky-despite colorful title a very bleak Dano western
10/ALL for Fort Apache – stunning visuals from Steve in fact
11/1st one for Station West
12/Superb FL one for Whispering Smith
13/Guns of Hate
14/2 for Fury at Furnace Creek
15/ Indian Agent
16/1st one for Loaded Pistols
17/ALL for Return of the Badmen – truly splendid visuals from Steve here
18/1st one for Silver River-Errol seemed to rapidly age after this one.
19/Treasure of Sierra Madre – I regard this as an adventure film rather than as a western but most sources disagree with me.
20/ALL for The Man from Colorado. William Holden and Glenn Ford [called Charles William Stuart in a previous life] became firm friends throughout their careers. Ford’s own favorite actor overall was Alec Guinness but despite that and Alec’s Oscar for Bridge on the River Kwai, in a TV interview Glenn opined that Golden Holden’s performance in Kwai “Is the most perfect performance I have ever seen on film.”
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating (ooh), info and quotes, much appreciated. Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
We’re nearly at the end Bob, one more video and I’ve completed my journey through the cinematic old west. And than it’s a Xmas break! 🙂
Like you I’ve never regarded Sierra Madre as a western, but it turns up on many web lists as one of the great westerns of the 1940s. I had to include it. The sad part is knocking one of the great traditional westerns, Red River, to the no.2 spot. Both films are big favorites of mine so I shouldn’t complain.
“The Great Royal Dano in Yellow Sky” made me laugh. I watched the real Royal Dano play Judas in King of Kings recently. 🙂
Four films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Paleface, Fort Apache, Red River and Treasure of Sierra Madre.
My Video Top 6 –
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 9.15
Red River 8.85
Fort Apache 8.25
Yellow Sky 7.5
3 Godfathers 7.2
The Paleface 7.2
The UMR critics top 6 –
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 9.0
Red River 8.3
Fort Apache 8.1
Yellow Sky 7.5
3 Godfathers 7.5
The Paleface 7.4
Bruce and I have the same top 6, in the same order! Doesn’t happen often.
Red River IMDB trivia –
“Montgomery Clift was nervous about standing up to John Wayne but gained confidence when Howard Hawks told him to play his scenes like David against Goliath. He also urged the young actor to underplay in his scenes with Wayne, particularly the scene in which his character challenges Dunson for the first time. Wayne was also not sure Clift could be convincing as a rugged cowboy, but after that first confrontation scene he told Hawks his doubts were gone and “he’s going to be okay.”
After seeing John Wayne’s performance in Red River, directed by Howard Hawks, John Ford is quoted as saying, “I never knew the big son of a bitch could act.” This led to Ford casting Wayne in more complex, multi-layered, and dramatic roles in films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Howard Hawks had great respect for John Wayne, even though many people didn’t consider him a great actor. “He’s a damn good actor. He does everything, and he makes you believe it,” Hawks later commented.
Red River was 1948’s third highest grossing film at $4,150,000. Only Road to Rio (1947) ($4,500,000) and Easter Parade (1948) ($4,200,000) made more.
HI STEVE: Thanks for your usual comprehensive reply, additional information and thoughtful and relevant quotes. Interesting about Royal Dano and Judas. Are you sure you are not confusing that role with Royal as David in David and Bathsheba? – but certainly I know who Judas is on this site!!
Yesterday I attended a Christmas carol service at a local church and as part of his sermon the Minister mentioned that once again in the festive season we were experiencing a rerun of some of the standard popular features and topics from Christmases past.
He touched briefly on a number of such ‘regulars’ and then he said “And turning to entertainment once again you no doubt will be asked too to consider if Die Hard IS a Christmas movie and you will have your own views on that.”
He went on “We here feel though that a true Christmas movie should reflect the ethos and dignity of our Lord and His Son Jesus Christ and what has traditionally been regarded as the feelgood spirit of Christmas.
By that measure, whatever commercial outlets might bestow on them we in this Church do NOT recognize as a Xmas movie films such as Die Hard with their titillating bouts of heavy violence and un-Biblical strong language.”
Anyway Steve I look fiorward to the final westerns video – it has been a highly worthwhile trail that you have blazed with the series.
HI STEVE: Thanks for the comprehensive feedback and additional information. One of your revelations which was of much interest to me was that Walter Brennan considerably disliked John Ford who I thought would have been right up Walter’s street.
I, as I am sure you too have done, have met workmates down the years whom I didn’t like but saw it as par for the course and therefore thought nothing of rolling with the punches. However important stars seem to take their likes and dislikes to extremes.
Apparently after making two movies with him Kathryn Grayson decided that Mario Lanza was so unbearable that she insisted she would never work with him again. Brando for some reason detested Dennis Hopper and refused to film alongside him on the set of Apocalypse Now.
Therefore the scene or two in which they appeared together on the screen were filmed with each of the two actors performing his part at a separate location from the other and the finished products were spliced toigether later.
Brando and Burt Reynolds never worked together but Brando developed such a personal hatred of Burt that for years Marlon publicly bad-mouthed him at every opportunity to the point where Reynolds seemingly nearly in tears ultimately admitted in a TV interview that it all got too much for him.
Anyway I look forward to Monday’s video and in the meantime keep safe and enjoy the forthcoming weekend as much as you can.
I was previously unaware that Larry Buster Crabbe had made so many westerns and always primarily thought of him as big-screen serials’ adventure heroes Flash Gordon [1936-38] and Captain Silver of the 1947 seafaring yarn The Sea Hound. Whatever – HE was the one that the likes of Spencer Tracy wouldn’t sit beside in studio canteens because of Larry’s B movie status or so Crabbe claimed in a television interview. Anyway my own pick of Steve’s selection of wonderful vintage STILLS/LOBBY CARDS is-
1/Outlaw of the Plains
2/The Marauders
3/Bells of San Angelo
4/The Last Roundup
5/My Pal Asta
6/Trail Street
7/California
8/Cheyenne
9/The Virginian: Hi there pardner- long time no see!
10/1st one for Bad Bascombe
11/2 for The Sea of Grass
12/Badman’s Territory
13/2 for Ramrod-A historian recently opined that compared with the likes of mega-icons Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Eastwood, Joel McCrea never quite made-super stardom in the westerns genre.
14/ALL for Unconquered
15/ALL for Pursued
16/Both for Duel in the Sun
17/ALL for Clementine.
18/Under the Tonto Rim
19/2 for Under Nevada Skies
Whilst Steve’s 1946/47’s westerns video is very even in quality throughout [and rated 98.5% by me] I think my prize for the very-most classy set of posters in the video must go to Judy Garland’s The Harvey Girl though some sources [Wikipedia for example] do not regard it as a western. Most pleasing POSTERS overall in my opinion:
1/1st one for Saddle Pals
2/Both for Thunder Mountain
3/1st one for The Marauders
4/Heldorado
5/1st one for Abilene Town
6/Foreign Language version for My Pal Asta
7/1st 2 for Trail Street – one of my own fave Randy westerns
8/2nd one for California – wow!
9/Foreign Language version for Cheyenne
10/ALL for The Sea of Grass
11//Badman’s Territory
12/1st one for Canyon Passage-one of Dana’s prestige films before his descent into 1950s B movies/double bill entries.
13/ALL for Angel and the Badman
14/ALL for The Harvey Girls
15/1st one Unconquered –“Why have the Indians come for you?”
16/Foreign language one for Pursued. Historians have remarked that in this movie Mitchum played arguably the most victimized hero ever to appear on the screen up until that time.
17/Under the Tonto Rim
18/Thunder Mountain
19/Foreign Language one for Duel in the Sun
20/1st 2 for My Darling Clementine-good to see that as Steve’s No 1
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and song lyrics, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
There are 14 westerns from 1946 and 16 from 1947 on the video. I knew My Darling Clementine was going to be hard to beat. Duel in the Sun was a much bigger crowd puller though.
Duel in the Sun was rereleased in the mid 50s with the top and bottom of the picture cropped and presented as a widescreen film. They did the same thing with Gone With the Wind in the 60s, to the horror of film fans worldwide. On the plus side it did result in one of the most iconic film posters ever for GWTW.
One film scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – My Darling Clementine.
My Video Top 5 –
My Darling Clementine 9.05
Duel in the Sun 7.5
Pursued 7.4
The Harvey Girls 7.2
Unconquered 7.2
The UMR Critics Top 5 –
My Darling Clementine 8.5
The Harvey Girls 7.8
Pursued 7.7
Duel in the Sun 7.0
Canyon Passage 6.8
My Darling Clementine trivia –
John Ford was asked by a film historian why he changed the historical details of the famous gunfight if, as he claimed, the real Wyatt Earp had told him all about it on a movie set back in the 1920s. “Did you like the film?” Ford asked, to which the scholar replied it was one of his favorites. “What more do you want?” Ford snapped. Henry Fonda was John Ford’s first and only choice to play Wyatt Earp. Vincent Price was considered for the role of Doc Holliday. John Ireland (Billy Clanton) played Johnny Ringo in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Walter Brennan disliked John Ford so much that he never worked with him again. Tombstone, Arizona, is not located in Monument Valley. John Ford “placed” it there because Monument Valley is where he liked to film his Westerns. It was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991.
Bob, next video on Monday.