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.
HI STEVE: You say in your post to WH “I’ve seen all the X-Men movies, multiple times. Favorites? I enjoyed them all, well maybe The New Mutants not so much.” A boast – or the beginning of feelings of guilt and regret?
“You never had a boyhood. Clark Gable and Errol Flynn took it all away from you!” – literary quote from a satirical book about the alleged negative influence and impact of Hollywood on young lives.
By coincidence while you were away I came across a bit of interesting trivia which was new to me at least. You will recall how you have often sneered at me for watching Douggie Sirk’s 1955’s “mushy” All that Heaven Allows.
Well it transpires that in that movie there is a house which the audience can see that is beside the one where Jane Wyman’s character lives in the small town where that movie is set; and the façade of that next-door neighbor’s house was later detached and used by Hitch for the front of the Mother Bates house in Psycho.
Just think: if you and I had ever watched Heaven Allows together and you were aware of what horrific things would ultimately go on behind that façade you could have trembled in terror while I wept into my hankies!
In short: a weepie with something for everybody!
HI STEVE: Thanks for the thoughtful response. Good trivia about The Duke and showing him for once to be modest and self-depreciating. I read that Robert Duvall and Big John didn’t get along when they were making True Grit.
The 1950’s/1960s: those were the days-a cinema on virtually street corner over here. Accordingly for the most part back then endless reruns were plentiful so that I thought for a long time that I was watching all the LATEST films from my fave cowboys and other stars.
Accordingly in 1957 I wrote a letter to Photoplay magazine to suggest that my Deanna and Brando should team up for a movie not realising that Deanna had retired in 1948.
I suppose that if I dropped such a comment on this site today some unassuming viewers might respond that it was a good idea.
And some guy like you might suggest the DD and MB team-up be in a horror movie: how about The She Creature from the Opera House meets Marlon Brando’s Count Alucard?
WH might review the film with a 30% rating even though it didn’t exist. If you look at his ratings for those unbelievably unfunny Al Leach ‘comedies’ surely WH simply can’t have seen some of them, can he?
Hirsch would have been 20 when I wrote that letter and did he ever see it? He was heavily into rock n roll singing then though. That was the time when he thought he was Elvis.
Anyway Photoplay wisely ignored my letter; and that got me practice for later times too when many communications from me were to go unanswered! AND all’s well that ends well.
BECAUSE The Great Warbler and The Great Mumbler DID actually form a team – by jointly signing autographs at a dinner party thrown for them by Henry Koster.
Henry was directing Marlon’s Nappy in Desiree and directed Deanna in some of her acclaimed classic musicals including Brit Sir Winston Churchill’s fave: A Hundred Men & a Girl.
AND Elvis in due course recorded a number of songs written by Ak Kasha who was assisted by Joel Hirschhorn – wow! Could even Dan tie it all up that neatly?
The only fly in the ointment is how the co-stars link column continues to confuse and misinform – but that’s been a sore point with me for some time.
Anyway enjoy your well-earned break and I look forward to whatever you offer on your return.
Steve has now provided westerns videos for the 1950 and 1960 decades in their entirety and his 1969 video is of the same consistently-high standard as all that went before and richly deserves a 98.5% rating in my book. So “Voted Up” – high! For me it has been a wonderfully-nostalgic video trip through those two decades and the entire series [so far?] has been a winner. Take a bow Steve! Best STILLS:
1/Boot Hill
2/Guns of Magnificent 7
3/3 for Sam Whiskey
4/2 for Young Billy Young
5/The King in Charro
6/A Time for Dying
7/ALL for the Good Guys and the Joel Guys
8/Manchester with a Gun
9/100 Rifles – wow!
10/2 for Sabata – wow again. Lee Van for obvious reasons got the nickname “Mr Ugly” but he loved the beautiful things in life leaving behind him a fine legacy of sophisticated artworks.
11/2 for The Valley of Gwangi
12/2 for The Undefeated
13/2 for Support Your Local Sheriff. Ah no – not another movie with more of that tomfoolery out west!
14/ALL for True Grit
15/ALL for The Wild Bunch-the glamorous Golden Boy of the 1940s/50s was now a “light of former days” in the lead role.
With the exception of Widmark’s Death of a Gunfighter and The Duke’s True Grit I didn’t like even ONE western in 1969 including retrospectively Butch and Sundance. The buddy-buddy trend that it set off with such saturation became so boring, repetitive and childish that I eventually longed for the dry seriousness and maturity of a good continental film and today I find Butch and Sundance and its like unwatchable. BEST WESTERNS IN STEVE’s 1969 WESTERNS VIDEO.
1/Desperados
2/Boot Hill
3/Guns of Magnificent 7
4/1st one for Young Billy Young
5/2 foreign language one for Charro – The King out West!
6/A Time for Dying
7/1st one for The Good Guys and the Joel Guys
8/foreign language one for Manchester with a Gun
9/2 great foreign language ones
10/1st one for Valley of Gwangi
11/1st one for Death of a Gunfighter – “Dickie”‘s career running out of box office steam
12/1st and foreign language ones for The Undefeated – poor Duke effort for once
13/ALL for Paint Your Wagon – awful film for my money!
14/1st one for Tepepa
15/ALL for True Grit
16/1st one for Wild Bunch – overblown film which I found unpleasant and not entertaining.
No 9 of Part 2 of my posts about 1969 westerns should read “2 great foreign language ones for 100 Rifles”. Apologies for the original omission.
My previous correction post relates of course to 1969 westerns and not 1968 ones. Please accept my humble pie again.
I mentioned that A Time for Dying made in 1969 was Audie Murphy’s final film but never got a release by the major studios and although Steve does include it in his 1969 westerns video WH ignores it because it wouldn’t have lifted money worth mentioning.
It was a sad end to Audie’s career as one of the great B movie cowboy heroes and a real-life hero too – Jason who?. So the final Murphy movie to get a mainstream release was 1967’s 40 Guns to Apache Pass which was in Steve’s 1967 video and although Steve’s visual(s) were fine the movie itself wasn’t up to much.
Overall Audie’s span of mainstream releases lasted 20 years 1948-1967 inclusive and that was relatively short compared with many other prominent stars. It’s true his life was cut short but he had run out of steam anyway long before his tragic death in 1971 aged just 45.
It is doubly quite ironic that he survived serious military conflict only to die young in a plane crash and his final movie was prophetically called A Time for Dying.
Hi Bob, apologies again for my late reply. Thank for the review, generous rating and info, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
So Bob, generally you do like comedies but not if they’re set in the wild west? The Middle-Ages a better setting? The Roman Empire? 😉
“Infamy infamy they all have it in for me!” Kenneth Williams, Carry On Cleo.
We’ve come to the end of the sixties and Paul Newman almost achieved a third chart topper for the decade, damn that Bill Holden and his wild outlaw gang! 🙂
Best Picture of the year at the Oscars was Midnight Cowboy, the first X rated film to win and directed by a Brit too. But I couldn’t include it in the video, no horses. 😉
Two films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch.
My Video Top 5 –
The Wild Bunch 8.9
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 8.7
True Grit 7.6
Support Your Local Sheriff 7.5
Mackenna’s Gold 6.8
The UMR Critics Top 5
The Wild Bunch 8.9
True Grit 8.1
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 7.9
Support Your Local Sheriff 7.0
Death of a Gunfighter 6.5
IMDB Trivia – “Despite its commercial success, John Wayne was not pleased with True Grit. He greatly disliked Kim Darby’s performance, and while promoting the film for its US release in June 1969, told interviewers that he had starred in much better films, citing Stagecoach (1939) as an example. At the Oscar ceremony on April 9, 1970, Wayne personally told Richard Burton that he felt Burton should have won the Oscar for his portrayal of King Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969).
“The character of Rooster Cogburn was supposed to be around 40. John Wayne was 61 when the film was made. Jeff Bridges was also 61 when he played Rooster Cogburn in the remake, True Grit (2010). ”
“When accepting his Best Actor Oscar for True Grit, John Wayne said, “Wow. If I’d have known that, I’d have put that patch on 35 years earlier.”
Bob, I’m taking another youtube break and will probably be back with more videos the following week. Take care amigo.