We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
(Visited 1,785 times)
We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
There is a really splendid selection of vintage visuals in Steve’s 1941 westerns video which I enjoyed to the tune of 99%. Best POSTERS in my opinion:
1/1st one for In Old Cheyenne
2/1st one for West of Cimarron
3/1st one for Gauchos of El Dorado
4/2 for Wide Open Town
5/White Eagle
6/1st for Down Manchester Way
7/1st for Riders of the Purple Sage
8/2 for Back in the Saddle
9/1st one for The Bad Man
10/ALL for Belle Star
11/1st one for Billy the Kid
12/Texas
13/1st and foreign language ones for Honky Tonk
14/1st one for Shepherd of the Hills
15/ALL for Western Union-one of the few movies in which Randy is a baddish guy. Top-billed Robert Young was the hero
16/ALL for Died with Boots On
Hollywood has been criticised for – especially in its Classic Era –a chauvinistic modus operandi whereby it virtually discarded or demoted actresses as they aged but went to great lengths to portray the male stars as a lot younger than they actually were.
They did that by (1) having other characters in the plots refer to, and treat, the male leads as “young men” (2) having the males play characters who were much younger in the source material (3) consistently teaming the males with much younger and fresher female romantic leads.
A prime example of the latter is that in his final 13 movies Archibald Alec Leach [aka Cary Grant] was showered with 11 romantic leading ladies whose average age was around 23 years YOUNGER than Archie whilst his former screen romantic partners who were roughly the same age as he had to settle for ‘unglamorous’ roles such as aunts, mothers and grandmothers of the leading stars of the movies concerned.
Myrna Loy for example in 1960 was the aunt of Doris Day in Midnight Lace and the alcoholic mother of Paul Newman in From the Terrace whereas at the same time her former screen beau Archibald was reaching deep down into the cradle to woo in his movies youngsters like Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron .
The movie Billy the Kid which is depicted in Steve’s cover poster reproduction is another case in point: The Kid was 21 when he died and Robert Taylor was 30 when he played him in the movie!
PARTS 2 and 3 to FOLLOW LATER
TRIVIA FOR STAGECOACH 1939
Before production, John Ford shopped the project around to several Hollywood studios, all of which turned him down because big budget Westerns were out of vogue, and because Ford insisted on using John Wayne in the key role in the film.
Independent producer David O. Selznick finally agreed to produce it, but was frustrated by Ford’s indecision about when shooting would begin, and O. Selznick had his own doubts over the casting.
Ford withdrew the film from Selznick’s company and approached independent producer Walter Wanger about the project. Wanger had the same reservations about producing an “A” western and even more about one starring John Wayne whom he regarded as a routine B movie cowboy. Wanger said he would not risk his money unless Ford replaced John Wayne with Gary Cooper and brought in Marlene Dietrich to play Dallas.
Ford refused to budge; it would be Wayne or no one. Eventually they compromised, with Wanger putting up $250,000, a little more than half of what Ford had been seeking and equivalent to just around $5 million today.
For his part Ford would compromise by giving top billing to Claire Trevor, better known than John Wayne at the time though initially it had been Ford’s intention that Wayne would top the bill.
In fact after Stagecoach Wayne continued to receive 2nd billing to Claire in a couple of follow-up projects as he would to a number of other stars, Wayne being allocated even 3rd billing to Dietrich and Randolph Scott in both The Spoilers and Pittsburgh both in 1942. That was despite the fact that John was the hero in The Spoilers whereas Scott was the villain; and Wayne actually had the flamboyant title role of Charles “Pittsburgh” Markham. NOTE: The Spoilers was the only time Randolph ever played an out-and-out villain in movies as fans preferred him in tough heroic roles.
In fact it was not until he became – overnight in 1948 – a screen monolith via the now-classic Red River that John Wayne on was able to demand top billing as a right; but always modest about his own screen achievements [publicly insisting for example that as an actor he was inferior to his friend William Holden and as said in Part One downplaying his Rooster Cogburn performance] Wayne has repeatedly insisted that none of his great success would have happened had Ford not backed him years earlier for the role or the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach.
Hi Bob, late again sorry about that, thanks for the review, generous rating (ooh), observation, evaluation, opinion, quote and info, much appreciated.
Glad you enjoyed the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Into the 40s we go, but not as busy as the 50s on the ‘western’ front. There are years where there were less than 10 noteworthy westerns so I’ll probably lump a few years together and make a chunkier video.
Miriam was spelt Mirriam on one of the foreign posters, didn’t notice that before, good catch. At least they got the billing correct. Oh wait they’ve spelt Randolph Scott’s name wrong too, Randolf. I’m surprised they got Humphrey Bogart’s name correct, not Hum Free Bog Art? 😉
No film scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, not even Zorro, which surprised me.
Two films on the list were selected for preservation by the National Film Registry – The Mark of Zorro and Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch.
My Video Top 5 –
The Mark of Zorro 8.25
The Westerner 8.1
Northwest Passage 7.4
My Little Chickadee 7
Return of Frank James 7
The UMR Critics top 5 –
Northwest Passage 8.5
The Mark of Zorro 8.2
The Westerner 8.1
My Little Chickadee 8.0
Return of Frank James 7.3
IMDB Trivia –
Walter Brennan was somewhat embarrassed as to how he won three Oscars. In the early years of the Academy Awards, extras were given the right to vote. Brennan was popular with the Union of Film Extras, and since their numbers were overwhelming, he won every time he was nominated. His third win for ‘The Westerner (1940)’ led to the disenfranchisement of the union from Oscar voting.
With his Best Supporting Actor Oscar win for his role in ‘The Westerner’, Walter Brennan became the first and only actor to go 3 for 3 in winning every time he was nominated, but he would lose the next year he was nominated, for Sergeant York.
Gary Cooper never liked ‘The Westerner’ and said “You can’t make a western without a gunfight” He walked off the film and refused to start work on it. It was only after long battles with Goldwyn that he started work on it but always said that he wished he’d never made it.
Next video on wednesday.
HI STEVE: Thanks for the comprehensive reply especially the – to me – absorbing trivia about The Westerner, Walter Brennan and Cooper. I always though that Brennan though solid as a supporting actor was overrated and I put the rave attention that he got down to the fact that in the Hollywood of those days performers who played priests, nuns, alcoholics, drug addicts, people with mental disorders and in Walter’s case “folksy old coots” were apparently given licences to mint their own Oscars;
whereas straightforward good guys like The Duke and Randy were not considered “Oscar material”. Indeed when the Duke finally was finally recognised by the Academy it was for the over-the top- character of Rooster Cogburn and Wayne himself is on record as saying that there were better performances that year.
Still even today historians recommend newcomers who wish to become character actors in movies to closely study the films of Walter Brennan. Regarding Cooper you may recall that I used to enrage your pal John by telling him that I thought that his idol Gary was exceptionally wooden and uninteresting as a young actor but that he improved with age. I still find the younger Cooper so stilted that he is unwatchable.
I too am sorry that it has taken me longer than usual to comment on your video because I hope that my opinions may be of some value to you and certainly are likely to be better than anything Hirsch could have offered you had he been around.
The reason for the delay is that my son came home for the weekend and after 5 hours of ferocious argument and debate about Ladd I was mentally-exhausted and I chilled out night on Friday by simply sitting back and enjoying the visuals in the video and I therefore left detailed analysis until Saturday morning.
As I said in my earlier comments the relative brevity of the video didn’t detract from its overall high quality and entertainment value so I really enjoyed the fine range of pictorials from yesteryear that you provided.
That you were able to select as many as 20 entries from just one year’s releases certainly made the entire exercise worthwhile so good work. In part 2 of this post I briefly return to one of the entries in your 1930s westerns video.
BEST STILLS
1/Manchester City Kid
2/Melody Ranch
3/3 for Brigham Young.
4/3 for Arizona. Poor ole Golden Holden didn’t get EVEN equal billing to stars like Jean Arthur in those days. I guess everybody has to start somewhere though: Hirsch started out as first a rock singer and then a nighclub stand-up comic. Ironically by all accounts if he had been a flim critic first and audiences later heard his ‘singing’ and ‘jokes’ they might well have concluded “He should have stuck to film reviews.” – and THAT is saying something!
5/All for Santa Fe
6/When the Lensmen Rode – vintage Randy.
7/ALL for Virginia City
8/ALL for NWMP
9/ALL for Frank James – good to see the Infamous One’s brother getting some attention
10/2 for My Little Chickadee
11/ALL for The Westerner
12/Two crackers for Go West.
13/Dark Command. From today’s vantage point it seems somewhat surreal that Claire Trevor ever got billed above the Mega Duke which she did on several occasions in the early days but -heck- Myrna Loy might even have gotten billed above him back then and she NEVER received top-billing.
However in 1954 The Duke and Claire made together the High and the Mighty [a role for which they initially had Alan Ladd in mind] and with Wayne now a Monster Star on the heels of Red River – guess whose name came first on this occasion? Another clue is in the fact that The Duke financed the movie.