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.
As I’ve mentioned before the 1950s’ was for me THE decade for westerns. I mostly remember the ones that I am acquainted with from the 1930s as often drab affairs particularly as they were for the most part in black-and-white.
Not that overall I have seen too many of them – for example just 7 of the 40 movies that Steve has listed in his video:
1/Dodge City
2/Last of the Mohicans [aka Last of the Mancunians]
3/The Oklahoma Kid
4/Destry Rides Again – ah, the Boys in the Back Room!
5/Barbary Coast
6/The Plainsman – one the very 1st films I ever saw. My aunt took me to a cinematic rerun of it in 1951.
7/Union Pacific. Of all of this 7, Union Pacific is most remembered by me because by a great coincidence I had just finished watching a TV rerun of it on 20 October 1990 when I switched on the television news to learn that Joel McCrea had just died aged 84.
HI STEVE: Thanks for the comprehensive and informative feedback which is as is your wont rounded off with some for me interesting and intriguing quotes particularly in this case the chronology associated with the True Grit characters.
In Dorothy M Johnson’s short story The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance the lead characters of Tom Doniphan and Ransom Stoddart are much younger than John Wayne and James Stewart were when they respectively played those two characters in the 1962 movie.
John Ford later said that he therefore made the movie in black- and-white so that the wrinkles of his two stars would not be so cruelly-exposed as would have happened had the movie been in colour.
Down the years whilst Hollywood’s leading females have in fact been told to “act your age” in movies as they grew older, Tinsel Town went to great lengths to create the illusion on screen that its male superstars [cynically named The Peter Pans of Hollywood by one historian] were much young than they obviously were in real life.
One of the practices that the studios used to that end was to drape guys like Al Leach/Gable/Astaire/Randy Scott with a wall-to-wall string of leading ladies much younger than those men. Another ploy was to get supporting characters in the story to brazenly treat the ageing big male stars as ‘young men’.
NIGHT CLUB MANAGER “Why are you asking me? Go and speak to that young fellow over by the stage. HE is organising the floor-show,”
As he speaks the manager points to the 44-year-old balding Fred Astaire whose love interest in the movie, The Sky’s the Limit, was Joan Leslie then just 18 in real life.
Those male Hollywood Chosen Ones were sure allowed to reach deep down into the cradle on screen with no question of statutory rape ever arising in the plots!
BEST STILLS STEVE’s 2010-2019 VIDEO
1/Diablo
2/The Ridiculous 6
3/2 Wow! entries for Jonah Hex. – cripes Steve just because I am not one of Jace’s biggest fans you don’t have to give me a heart attack!
4/ALL for A Million Ways to Die——-
5/1st one for Forsaken
6/ALL for Cowboys and Aliens
7/Set for Lone Ranger
8/The Magnificent Seven
9/2 for Slow West
10/2 for Rango – I saw this one with my grandchildren as part of family bonding. But is it a western?
11/ALL for Bone Tomahawk
12/2nd and 3rd ones for Buster Scruggs
13/Deadwood
14/2 for Hell OR High Water – good to see Steve rating this one highly
15/1st one for Hateful 8 – magnificent!
16/ALL for Revenant
17/ALL for Django.
18/True Grit. “An entertaining movie and one where for once you can clearly hear what the characters are saying.” – Peter Hitchens political columnist The Mail on Sunday [GB]
BEST POSTERS IN STEVE’s 2010-2019 VIDEO
1/Montage for Million Ways to Die——-
2/2 for Jane Got a Gun
3/1st one for The Kid
4/1st one for Cowboys and Aliens – it would probably be stored in the Sci-fi section in any self-respecting video library
5/ALL for Lone Ranger – great montage
6/The entire SET for The Salvation.
7/ALL for Magnificent Seven – I don’t think my Denzel suits western roles.
8/2 for Homesman
9/2 for Slow West
10/2nd one for Brimstone
11/2nd one for Hostiles
12/ALL for Bone Tomahawk
13/1st one for Driftwood
14/1st one for Hell OR High Water
15/The Hateful 8
16/Both for The Revenant
17/2 for Django – say who the heck is this Django guy anyway?
18/Diablo
BEST POSTERS IN STEVE’s 2010-2019 VIDEO
1/Montage for Million Ways to Die——-
2/2 for Jane Got a Gun
3/1st one for The Kid
4/1st one for Cowboys and Aliens – it would probably be stored in the Sci-fi section in any self-respecting video library
5/ALL for Lone Ranger – great montage
6/The entire SET for The Salvation.
7/ALL for Magnificent Seven – I don’t think my Denzel suits western roles.
8/2 for Homesman
9/2 for Slow West
10/2nd one for Brimstone
11/2nd one for Hostiles
12/ALL for Bone Tomahawk
13/1st one for Driftwood
14/1st one for Hell OR High Water
15/The Hateful 8
16/Both for The Revenant
17/2 for Django – say who the heck is this Django guy anyway?
18/Diablo
Hi Bob, apologies again for my late reply, and thanks as always for reviewing all these videos, the generous rating (ooh), info and trivia is much appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Well we’re up to date, there have been a couple of westerns since 2019 but nothing major. Clint’s new movie ‘Cry Macho’ is labeled a ‘Neo-Western’ by Wikipedia.
I’m planning to go back to the first ‘talkie’ westerns for my next video cycle. Year by year or decade, haven’t decided yet. But the 1950’s were the best decade for westerns and I’ve covered that.
From 1950 to 2019 I’ve ranked and rated 748 westerns, some of them modern. 300 of them from the 1950s. 70 years of guys in cowboy hats pointing guns at the bad guys.
One of the 25 films on the video scored 10 out of 10 from one of my sources – The Revenant. One scored 9 – Hell or High Water. Both are not traditional westerns.
My Video Top 5 –
Django Unchained 8.5
The Revenant 8.2
The Hateful Eight 7.8
Hell or High Water 7.8
True Grit 7.6
The UMR Critics Top 5
Hell or High Water 9.1
Django Unchained 8.8
True Grit 8.5
The Revenant 8.3
Rango 8.3
IMDB Trivia
“They tell me you’re a man with true grit.” Jeff Bridges said that the first piece of direction the Coens gave him was to forget about the John Wayne version. Their movie would be a return to the 1968 source material by the original author Charles Portis.
The character of Rooster Cogburn is supposed to be around 40, both John Wayne and Jeff Bridges were in their early 60’s when they portrayed their roles. John Wayne was 62, Jeff Bridges was 60.
True Grit (2010) was nominated for ten Academy Awards failing to win any and going down in film history as one of the most nominated films to not win a single Oscar. Costing $38m to produce it was the first Coen Brothers film to gross over $100 million in the United States, and $252m worldwide.
Bob, I’m taking a break from youtube videos for a week or so but I shall return!