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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Ranking Movies Since 2011
We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
HI STEVE: I mentioned in Part One in response to a query from you that the Work Horse had blanked me out when I requested a page on Timothy Francis McCown [original stage name Frank McCown].
However as Reginald Perrin’s boss C J used to say in the famous series from 1976 until 1979 “I didn’t get where I am today” by taking things completely lying down.
Accordingly I have collected in my data base adjusted domestic grosses for 33 of Frankie’s films and the Top 21 of these are listed in Part 3. And just look at the mega grosses of some of Frankie’s earlier films.
Wow! – if Bruce Willis and The Thin Woman had been merely holding hands in a queue for those movies and then they had been turned away from full-houses, the earnings figures for the movies concerned would have been plastered all over their Cogerson pages.
Two horror movies at the bottom of schedule of grosses and therefore not included in the Part 3 table would be right up your street-
1980 Motel Hell – adjusted domestic gross $22.3 million
1972 Night of the Lepus co-starring the shower girl herself Janet Leigh – adjusted domestic gross 4.1 million. Move aside Hitch: A C Lyles turns his hand to horror and still wanted Frankie as his star – provided he didn’t want a a pay rise of course!
Good work Bob. That might be useful to Bruce when he does a page on him.
Btw most of your readers won’t have a clue who you’re writing about in those two posts, I didn’t know until I saw some of the movie titles. It’s Rory Calhoun, no need to google, people!
I remember way back one actor you were constantly referring to by an alias that wasn’t even on google, exasperated I finally asked you who that was. I think it was Glenn Ford. 🙂
Just trying to be helpful BR.
SL
HI STEVE
HI STEVE: Thanks for the feedback. You are right about (1) Glenn Ford alias Charlie Bill did give you trouble in making that connection (2) I should probably use acting names from now on or at least do an aka.
I have been mulling over your revelation to me about Wayne criticizing JFK’s presidency. I hadn’t known that before and it surprised me because, regardless of political affiliations, just like most Brits admire Churchill it has always seemed to me that the majority of American have the same reverence for JFK or at least hold back from criticizing him too strongly; and he was listed as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Greatest People of the 20th Century.
For example Clint Eastwood like The Duke was is considered a great “man of The Right” but in 1993’s In the Line of Fire Clint made it clear that he would willingly have “taken a bullet” for JFK. “HE was different,” Clint’s FBI agent character respectfully says of Kennedy.
Strange person The Duke: he seems to have believed that he was put on this earth not just to make great movies but also to keep America safe from “the Commies” and any other power or individual whom he didn’t consider to be “Real Americans”.
I can’t help wondering what his attitude would be if he were around today and witnessed The Donald a Republican and Sleepy Joe a Democrat both making concessions to the Taliban!
You say about the Rory grosses list that I have compiled “That might be useful to Bruce when he does a page on him.”. Actually all the grosses but one of the 33 in my database Bruce already has spread across this site with Rory not being given credit for many of them; I merely pulled them all together as my own collection.
But when The Work Horse “does a page” on Rory – now, tell me the one about The Three Bears!
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HI STEVE: Thanks for being able to make a quick feedback and for the additional information especially the Duke trivia which is much appreciated. I just hope that those Women’s Rights females in W o C’s work don’t come after your scalp for showing those spanking scenes in your video.
It was for such considerations that I initially held back from saying that Rory was reputed to be a wife beater and womanizer. In her divorce petition his wife of 22 years the Spanish-born American actress Lita Baron made one of the grounds for divorce his alleged affairs with 73 women including the legendry Betty Grable. An unrepentant Rory responded to the proceedings by complaining “Heck she has listed only half of them!”
Though a great Wayne fan I have always thought that in matters of politics and his own perceptions of patriotism he took too personally and too much to heart the opinions and the actions of others that he disagreed with.
He certainly doesn’t seem to have been a fan of the famous saying “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it!” It comes from a 1906 biography of the great French philosopher Voltaire by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in which she uses the quote to summarise her own perception of Voltaire’s thinking but it is often wrongly attributed to Voltaire himself.
Yes: I DID some time ago request a Rory page from The Work Horse but to quote one of the characters in Thomas Hardy’s Far from The Madding Crowd who is considered inferior to another who completely ignores him “He looked through me as if I were a leafless tree!”
Please keep safe and enjoy your weekend. Meanwhile I hope that Monday brings 1964.
The only 4 westerns that I have ever liked among the ones that Steve has selected are Cattle King, Rory’s Gun Hawk, Audie’s Showdown and The Duke’s McLintock. I also liked Hud but see my comments below. However I liked and admired most of Steve’s visuals regardless of the movie itself. Here is my personal choice of the best STILLS which are probably most of them:
1/ 2 for The Raiders
2/Gunfight at McCarthy Sands
3/Cattle King/Guns of Wyoming – The Cowboy of the Century a “has been” at this point. Reduced to making low-grossing B movies
4/Savage Sam
5/Gunfight at Comanche Creek
6/Showdown
7/2 for Apache Gold
8/ALL for McLintock – “Give her hell John!”
9/Hud
10/ALL for 4 for Texas – with one a “Wow!”
ADDITIONAL TRIVIA:
1/Both IMDB and Wikipedia agree with Steve that Hud is a western but my own jury is still out on that one and Steve’s visual of Paul behind a wheel don’t help resolve the issue. Certainly I have never thought of it as the traditional western of the kind The Duke and Laddie have given us down the years.
2/ Sinatra was known for being extrovert and a narcissus so it surprised me that by my calculations Dino had the marginally larger part in 4 for Texas despite Frankie’s top billing; and I feel that if someone like the Duke had been in the Dino role it would have been perceived as the lead.
With just 12 entries Steve’s 1963 westerns video is numerically the shortest one that I can recall seeing from him on ANY subject. But I can recall that 1963 was a lean year for westerns per se so if I ignore the brevity aspect and mark solely on quality I could not give the video less than 97% rating. The best POSTERS for me are:
1/Foreign Language one for The Raiders
2/2 for Rory’s The Gun Hawk.
I’ve already said that I liked this one which Steve rates at just 55%. However, with a 60% rating IMDB leans in my direction which would regard 68% as justified.
3/Gunfight at Red Sands. Sounds like one of Laddie’s “wink/wink” anti-Commie titles of the McCarthy era.
4/Cattle King aka Guns of Wyoming
5/1st one for Audie’s Gunfight at Comanche Creek
6/ALL for Showdown – Audie’s pal Charles Drake was given roles in several Murphy vehicles.
7/ALL for Apache Gold
8/ALL for 4 for Texas
9/ALL for McLintock – I wonder what feminists thought of THOSE posters and stills which show a woman being humiliatingly dominated by a man whilst at the same time exploiting her sexy image!
10/for Hud -some really exceptional
The Gun Hawk Steve covered in Steve’s new video was in my opinion the last satisfactory movie Rory Calhoun ever made; and indeed ironically the first one in which he ever impressed me with his acting as I was always more into heroics in those days.
Atter that Rory was consigned to the A C Lyles “Graveyard” or “Old Geezer” westerns so-called because Lyles stocked them with droves of ageing “has-been” stars he could get on the cheap.
Lyles made 13 of them between 1964 and 1968 and the 9 of them that I have been able to readily identify in The Work Horse’s charts earned s total adjusted domestic gross of around $110 million, an average of approx $12.5 million per movie; and an average artistic rating of 53.3%
A C who looked to me like one of those benevolent and avuncular middle-class father-figures who were fashionable in many Old Hollywood movies -especially the “Mush” ones that Steve loves – died in 2013 aged 95 so obviously he had a good life.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, always appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Sorry one of your favorites didn’t do well on this chart. Gun Hawk did badly from a couple of sources, one gave it 4.6 out of 10, and other just 3.4. Bruce has yet to chart Rory Calhoun’s movies, have you suggested it to him? I can’t remember if I included Gun Hawk in my Rory Top 30 video.
I know what you mean about Hud. If this was a ‘Top 50 Westerns of the 1960s’ video I probably wouldn’t have included it, or Lonely are the Brave for that matter. But the alternative is to have ‘John Wayne spanking Maureen O’Hara’ as the top rated western of 1963 (Flora winces).
One film scored 10 out of 10 from my sources and that was Hud. And one scored 8 out of 10 – McLintock.
My Video Top 5 –
Hud 7.8
McLintock 7.1
Winnetou – Apache Gold 6.8
Showdown 6.3
Gunfight at Comanche Creek 6.2
The UMR Critics top 5 –
Hud 7.9
McLintock 7.7
Gunfight at Comanche Creek 6.4
Showdown 5.2
Savage Sam 5.1
According to IMDB trivia – “John Wayne was annoyed when promotional events for McLintock were postponed for a week following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Wayne strongly disliked Kennedy and blamed him for losing the Bay of Pigs invasion and for giving in to Soviet demands during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“Maureen O’Hara wrote in her autobiography that the famous climactic spanking scene was completely authentic and that John Wayne carried it out with such gusto that she had bruises for a week. “