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re: What are you favorite Westerns?
Posted on 11/10/26 at 10:07 pm to Aeolian Vocalion
Posted on 11/10/26 at 10:07 pm to Aeolian Vocalion
quote:was a regular reader yrs ago, but stopped for some reason. Recently went back for the 1st time in years - had some very interesting entries on oaters. I may link them sometime.
Greenbriar Picture Show blog
quote:There is a Hoppy c. 1937 that co-stars 26 yr old Lee J. Cobb (!!)
The best Hopalong, however, might very well be "Hopalong Cassidy Returns" (1936), due to Evelyn Brent's bad-girl villain, and Morris Ankrum playing a practically psycho gunman in her employ.
He was fresh from the Group Theater... Watching his scenes is a weird experience. It's like Eli Wallach took a time machine to 1931 to appear in a George Arliss film.
Posted on 11/10/26 at 10:52 pm to Kafka
Yes, I remember Lee J. Cobb in the Hoppy film! I've watched all 66 Hoppy films. Also recall seeing Cobb in a tiny bit role in the serial "The Vanishing Shadow" (1934), as a worker on a road crew. He's so easily recognizable. Fun serial that has a robot go berserk in one of the episodes.
One thing my list was rather neglectful about was including any 1910s westerns. There were some good William S. Hart features, though. The Tom Mix stuff for Selig in the mid-1910s is primitive and pretty bad. It wasn't until Mix joined Fox in 1917 and started making slick, exciting features. Unfortunately, all the 1917-18-19 features seem to be lost, other than an isolated reel or two. There were a few oddities that have long bounced around in the collectors circuit, like "Six Foot Four" (1919) with Willaim Russell and "Sandy Burke of the U-Bar-U" (1916) with Louis Bennison. But not much. Probably everything 'western' from this period is about 97% lost, even a few important Hart titles.
I do tend to somewhat like one of Texas Guinan's features, "The Gun Woman" (1918), directed by top-notch director Frank Borzage. Guinan mostly starred in short films, but she did do a few features. This one survives, but in a rather lousy print. It's got quite a narrative. Guinan is a rough, tough gal who owns a saloon in a gritty mining town, and has no use for the menfolk around her. One day, a handsome gent (played by the marvelous Francis McDonald, who later had a busy career as a familiar character actor well into 1960s-era tv), arrives in town. Might even be a notorious road agent. Guinan falls for him hard, and he gives her a ring and the whole orange-blossom bit. She gives him some money to buy a 'home' for them to settle down, in a distant, nicer vicinity. But, instead he uses it to purchase a dance-hall in a newly booming mining town. He returns to her, but only to offer her a position to handle the girls in his vibrant new saloon. Nothing about marriage. She ain't amused. She gives him a month to return her money to her. When the time is up, she rides off to the new boom town, enters the saloon, and blows the guy away, and sets the place on fire, leaving chaos in her wake. She rides off, with enough smoke blowing behind her to make it appear she torched the whole town. The end. You don't quite see tales like this in later westerns. One of the reasons I love digging into all this ancient western esoterica.
One thing my list was rather neglectful about was including any 1910s westerns. There were some good William S. Hart features, though. The Tom Mix stuff for Selig in the mid-1910s is primitive and pretty bad. It wasn't until Mix joined Fox in 1917 and started making slick, exciting features. Unfortunately, all the 1917-18-19 features seem to be lost, other than an isolated reel or two. There were a few oddities that have long bounced around in the collectors circuit, like "Six Foot Four" (1919) with Willaim Russell and "Sandy Burke of the U-Bar-U" (1916) with Louis Bennison. But not much. Probably everything 'western' from this period is about 97% lost, even a few important Hart titles.
I do tend to somewhat like one of Texas Guinan's features, "The Gun Woman" (1918), directed by top-notch director Frank Borzage. Guinan mostly starred in short films, but she did do a few features. This one survives, but in a rather lousy print. It's got quite a narrative. Guinan is a rough, tough gal who owns a saloon in a gritty mining town, and has no use for the menfolk around her. One day, a handsome gent (played by the marvelous Francis McDonald, who later had a busy career as a familiar character actor well into 1960s-era tv), arrives in town. Might even be a notorious road agent. Guinan falls for him hard, and he gives her a ring and the whole orange-blossom bit. She gives him some money to buy a 'home' for them to settle down, in a distant, nicer vicinity. But, instead he uses it to purchase a dance-hall in a newly booming mining town. He returns to her, but only to offer her a position to handle the girls in his vibrant new saloon. Nothing about marriage. She ain't amused. She gives him a month to return her money to her. When the time is up, she rides off to the new boom town, enters the saloon, and blows the guy away, and sets the place on fire, leaving chaos in her wake. She rides off, with enough smoke blowing behind her to make it appear she torched the whole town. The end. You don't quite see tales like this in later westerns. One of the reasons I love digging into all this ancient western esoterica.
Posted on 11/11/26 at 12:12 am to Aeolian Vocalion
quote:Hmmm... I had no idea she was in movies before becoming a celebrity in prohibition New York
one of Texas Guinan's features
quote:I know practically nothing about pre-'40s westerns.
One thing my list was rather neglectful about was including any 1910s westerns.
One of the reasons I never read Tuska's aforementioned book when I had the chance (library had a copy) was he devoted so much space to silent westerns, which I had no interest in. I was an idiot teenager...
Have you seen the westerns episode from Brownlow's Hollywood series? Features clips from a '50s interview w/Broncho Billy Anderson (who is also the subject of a recent Greenbriar Blog entry).
As I'm sure you know, BB did a cameo in the 1965 programmer The Bounty Killer. But did you know one of the visitors to the set was a certain Elvis Presley? El was reportedly very excited to meet BB, who wasn't his boyhood idol, or even his father's -- BB was the idol of his grandfather's generation.
Supposedly a photo exists of their meeting, but I've never seen it online.
Broncho Billy Anderson w/Gary Clarke of The Virginian TV series, 1963
Posted on 11/11/26 at 5:33 am to Kafka
Since its been bumped -
Jeremiah Johnson - my favorite movie ever
Rio Bravo
McClintok
Big Jake
Jeremiah Johnson - my favorite movie ever
Rio Bravo
McClintok
Big Jake
Posted on 11/11/26 at 9:18 am to Kafka
Yeah, "The Bounty Killer" (1965) is one of producer Alex Gordon's efforts, and he adored old westerns and went out of his way to employ a lot of old-time veterans of the genre. Gordon was an assistant to Gene Autry for many years. He was a pudgy British guy who came over her after the war, and did produce a lot of cheapie films. He got into a bit of hot water when Fox hired him to organize and rescue a batch of their early-talkie library. The Fox Archives had a big fire in 1937 and they lost not just all their negatives, but virtually their entire silent-era output. But on the East Coast, the did have a warehouse containing batches of 35mm prints of those 1930-35 Fox films, of varying print quality. Gordon did salvage this library, but he made a few personal copies on the side, which later started filtering out to the collectors world. Hence, some rarities like "Mystery Ranch" (1932-Fox) got out into the wild (thank goodness). But there are still to this day a lot of early Fox films that exist, but have never been on tv, or shown at festivals, anywhere. Films that basically haven't been seen since their original release, nearly 100 years ago!
There was that thread a week ago about the repertory-company nature of old tv-shows, with the same actors constantly rotating around. The westerns were even more so. You had actors like Tom London, Bud Osbourne, Frank Lackteen, etc., spanning decade after decade, going from silents all the way to 1960s-tv. And whenever watching western featurs or tv-shows of the 50s/60s, you can almost always spot in the ranks of extras and bit-players guys like Rex Lease, Franklyn Farnum, Kermit Maynard, Bob Reeves, and such, who had all been western 'stars' in their early days. One of my favorites has always been Edmund Cobb, who was a third-tier cowboy star in the silents, but by the talkies, played a constant variety of roles from farmers, outlaws, sheriffs, townsmen, and even a sidekick or two. These guys just seemed to go on forever. Charles Stevens, the Indian, also had a great, long run. He had a memorably grim death scene in "The Good Bad Man" (1917) with Douglas Fairbanks. A decent little 1910s western, available on blu-ray, which I failed to mention. Once one gets to know and recognize all those many dozens of players, old westerns get to be like a cozy 'old home week.' And, I haven't even touched on the subject of the lovely gals who would populate the leading lady roles in picture after picture.
There was that thread a week ago about the repertory-company nature of old tv-shows, with the same actors constantly rotating around. The westerns were even more so. You had actors like Tom London, Bud Osbourne, Frank Lackteen, etc., spanning decade after decade, going from silents all the way to 1960s-tv. And whenever watching western featurs or tv-shows of the 50s/60s, you can almost always spot in the ranks of extras and bit-players guys like Rex Lease, Franklyn Farnum, Kermit Maynard, Bob Reeves, and such, who had all been western 'stars' in their early days. One of my favorites has always been Edmund Cobb, who was a third-tier cowboy star in the silents, but by the talkies, played a constant variety of roles from farmers, outlaws, sheriffs, townsmen, and even a sidekick or two. These guys just seemed to go on forever. Charles Stevens, the Indian, also had a great, long run. He had a memorably grim death scene in "The Good Bad Man" (1917) with Douglas Fairbanks. A decent little 1910s western, available on blu-ray, which I failed to mention. Once one gets to know and recognize all those many dozens of players, old westerns get to be like a cozy 'old home week.' And, I haven't even touched on the subject of the lovely gals who would populate the leading lady roles in picture after picture.
Posted on 11/11/26 at 6:40 pm to Kafka
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