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 POSTERS
1/Wagon Train
2/Wyoming
3/1st one for Mancunian Serenade
4/1st one for Kit Carson
5/1st one for Brigham Young. Dean Jagger who plays the title role is on repeat TV over Christmas in Bing’s White Christmas.
6/Arizona
7/2 for Santa Fe
8/ALL for Virginia City
9/1st and foreign language poster versions for NWMP
10/2 for Dark Command
11/great Set for Go West
12/2 good foreign language ones for Frank James
13/1st one for The Westerner
14/the set for My Little Chickadee – “I demand a private car on this train with bar and restaurant!” – Cuthbert J Twillie.
I have seen 6 of the 20 movies in Steve’s 1940 westerns video and my fave among the 6 was Randy’s When the Daltons Rode. The 6 also include My Little Chickadee but I don’t consider it or Marx Bros Go West as westerns but rather as comedies.
Even then I did not find Mae West particularly funny or even generally appealing as a star -over the topm and as a “legendary” performer a bit overblown like Garbo and if her boasts on the matter are correct “discovering” Al Leach might have been the best thing Mae ever did.
I DID find W C funny but went off him a bit when I discovered that he complained and made a nuisance of himself because Deanna Durbin his Hollywood next-door neighbor [and my own Little Chickadee!] practiced her singing within his hearing.
Generally I found the Marx Bros funny but I have never seen Go West. According to Bruce’s figures it was one of the Brothers’ least commercially successful movies and actually lost money.
Overall Steve has in my estimation provided a glut of magical vintage visuals in the 1940 westerns video so I consider it worth a high 99% rating despite its relative brevity . Good things can often come in small packages as the saying goes! Only small fly in the ointment: one of the posters spells Miriam Hopkins’ name wrong – sorry Steve there goes a 100% rating again!! Miriam’s final mainstream movie was 1966’s The Chase starring co-starring the Brando siblings
HI STEVE: Thanks for the feedback. As I have said your 1930s video is very even in high quality throughout the whole 40 entries. But what has particularly pleased me is the relatively extensive coverage you give to Wayne’s career as a B movie cowboy whereas because he made so many movies most profiles of him tend to concentrate on his later top-star days with special attention being paid to his classics.
Whilst as you say Stagecoach brought A-list stardom to the The Duke he was nevertheless for a while afterwards regarded as merely a “leading Man” and was billed second to the likes of Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich and Claire Trevor among the actresses and Randy Scott [twice] Robert Montgomery and Ray Milland among the actors.
Historians therefore insist that it was 1948’s Red River that finally placed The Duke in the mega-icon Legends bracket alongside such Greats as Gable, Tracy, Cooper and Al Leach. Indeed I must also concede that it was not until the 1950s which Stewart virtually “owned” that my Jimmy although popular since the 1930s can be considered to have joined that very-select company.
Some historians also appear to think that in those early B movies Wayne has a real claim to being the screen’s first singing cowboy. Certainly he seems to be sure to have been one of them because as you selections show he was churning them out from the earliest years of the talkies and in fact your notes on 1933’s Riders of Destiny say that his role in that one was as ‘Singin’ Sandy Saunders”. Also it’s safe to say there weren’t many singing cowboys around in the silent movies!!
I can’t recall The Duke of later years ever dwelling on the early days so I have long had the impression that when he became the iconic figure that we learned to love in all those “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” roles – the REAL Captain America! -he was rather embarrassed by the fact that he once rode around singing ‘soppy’ songs to young heroines in westerns attractive though the young ladies were.
Still full marks to you for highlighting those early cheap westerns of his as historically that part of his career is important to anyone wanting a complete overview of his contribution to movies. As you know Bruce provides stats for some of them.
Anyway glad to have you back and I look forward to Friday’s video – indeed I’ll probably wake up then thinking “Thank God it’s Friday!”
BEST 20 STILLS/SETS OF STILLS IN STEVE’s 1930s WESTERNS VIDEO
Although I have settled for lists of just 20 I could easily have listed another dozen or so favourites as the standard of the selections was so even throughout and in my book easily worth a 98.5% rating.
1/Riders of Destiny
2/Fighting Caravans
3/West of the Divide
4/Tumbling Tumbleweeds
5/Cisco Kid
6/Arizona Kid
7/1st & 3rd for The Texans
8/2 for Billy the kid
9/ALL for Cimarron
10/ALL for Cowboy and the Lady
11/Set for Last of the Mohicans
12Wells Fargo
13/Oklahoma Kid
14/3 Godfathers
15/ALL for Frontier Marshall
16/2 for Annie Oakley
17The Plainsman
18/ALL for Destry Rides Again
19/SET for Stagecoach.
20/The SET for Viva Villa!
My pick of the TOP 20 POSTERS/POSTER SETS in Steve’s 1930s video is as follows:
1/Blue Steel and most of the others in the magnificent opening run of Wayne early B westerns. A fine collection of posters all told.
2/Two for Fighting Caravans
3/Tumbling Tumbleweeds
4/Two for The Arizonan
5/Squaw Man
6/The Spoilers 1930. As Steve mentions The Duke and Randy remade this one in 1942 as did Jeff Chandler and Rory Calhoun in the Wayne/Scott roles respectively in 1955 with Anne Baxter in the Dietrich 1942 role.
7/Billy the Kid
8/Cimarron
9/1st one for Last of the Mohicans
10/2nd one for Wells Fargo
11/ALL for Oklahoma Kid – both Cag and Bogie [“I’m Whip McCord from the Panhandle!”] miscast.
12/foreign language one for Frontier Marshall
13/1st one for Viva Villa!
14/1st one for The Plainsman
15/ALL for Barbary Coast. On the set of this Miriam Hopkins taunted Edward G so much over politics that Eddie viciously punched her in the face and fled to his dressing room in a rage.
16/ALL for Jesse James
17/The Big Trail
18/2nd one for Drums Along the Mohawk
19/The set for Union Pacific
20/ALL for Dodge City. For me Flynn’s westerns have dated very badly today and much as I enjoyed them in 1950s reruns I find them unwatchable today
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating and info, much appreciated. Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Back to the beginning, well almost, there were hundreds of silent westerns but most of them are now lost. The Big Trail (1930) is a good starting point, a big scale western and starring John Wayne too, but it was a flop and superstardom for Wayne had to wait until the success of Stagecoach (1939), though top billed was Claire Trevor.
Wayne kept himself busy by appearing in dozens of B-movies, most of them westerns, roughly an hour each. Many of them available on youtube, colorized too.
Three films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Way Out West, Destry Rides Again and Stagecoach. Three scored 9 – Dodge City, Drums along the Mohawk and Barbary Coast.
My Video Top 6 –
Stagecoach 9.25
Destry Rides Again 8.6
Way Out West 8.25
Dodge City 7.7
Drums along the Mohawk 7.5
The Big Trail 7.5
The UMR Critics Top 6 –
Destry Rides Again 8.4
Stagecoach 8.3
Way Out West 8.3
Dodge City 7.6
The Big Trail 7.5
Drums along the Mohawk 7.4
IMDB Trivia –
“The Big Trail was Marion Morrison’s first major movie role and the producers didn’t like his name. They told director Raoul Walsh that Morrison needed a new name. Several names were suggested, one of them from Walsh, who had just read about American Revolutionary War general ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne. The studio took the hint, added the first name John and the rest was history.”
John Ford liked to bully actors on the set, and Stagecoach (1939) was no exception. At one point, he said to Andy Devine, “You big tub of lard. I don’t know why the hell I’m using you in this picture.” Undaunted, Devine replied, “Because Ward Bond can’t drive six horses.”
Worst of all was Ford’s treatment of John Wayne. He called him a “big oaf” and a “dumb bastard” and continually criticized his line delivery and manner of walking, even how he washed his face on camera. However, at least part of this was to provoke the actor into giving a stronger performance. Claire Trevor recalls how Ford grabbed Duke by the chin and shook him. “Why are you moving your mouth so much?” he said. “Don’t you know you don’t act with your mouth in pictures? You act with your eyes.”
Wayne tolerated the rough treatment and rose to the challenge, reaching a new plateau as an actor. Ford helped cement the impression that Wayne makes in the film by giving him plenty of expressive reaction shots throughout the picture.”
Bob, next video on friday.