I thought I'd watch as many of my massive stock of Western DVDs as I could today. First up She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, a 1949 Western directed by John Ford and the screenplay is by Frank Nugent and Laurence Stallings. Ford is well know for his Westerns, they stand out among the rest. Frank wrote several films for Ford and John Wayne, Fort Apache, 3 Godfathers, The Quiet Man, Donovan's Reef and The Searchers. He also wrote the screenplay to Mister Roberts. I always liked that movie, I read the book before I saw the movie. Laurence's output isn't something I'm familiar with, I see he wrote this and 3 Godfathers with Frank but nothing else.
It's 1876 and it's a short time after the battle of Little Big Horn. The battle and the death of Custer have emboldened the young men of the local Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. They are off the reservation and attacking white men. John Wayne plays Captain Brittles, who's got a week to go before he retires. He gets an order to take a troop out and deliver the wife and daughter of his commander to the stagecoach line. They have Indian trouble along the way and find the station attacked and the stage burned. Brittles devises a plan to stop the braves from fighting and it works. He retires and rides off into the sunset.
Don't worry the Army isn't done with Captain Brittles. John was 41 at the time the movie was made and he plays a man in his 60s. He does a great job and it's one of the many movies that really show how good an actor he can be. It's one of John's favorite roles. There's a good cast; Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr, Victor McLaglen and Mildred Natwick were the ones I knew. There's plenty of gorgeous scenery in Monument Valley. It's a good entertaining story that's worth seeing.
Cast A Long Shadow is a 1959 Western with Audie Murphy as a man who inherits a big ranch when the man who might be his father died. It's directed by Thomas Carr and written by Martin Goldsmith and John McGreevey. Walter Mirisch is the producer for a company he owned with Audie Murphy.
John Denher is the foreman of the ranch and he'd been on Audie's trail for 5 weeks when he finds him gambling in a cantina. He brings Audie back to the big ranch so the men that worked there can buy him out and he can go on drinking. Audie meets up with his old girlfriend, played by Terry Moore, and he changes his mind about selling the ranch. Trouble is, they need to get 3000 head of cattle to Santa Fe in a week to make enough money to keep the bank from foreclosing. There's a lot of tension and hard feelings as Audie acts the big cold hearted boss on the trail. It all works itself out in the end, though the third act is like a summary of what happened, Audie regains his humanity in a stampede, literally and figuratively. It was still an OK movie but you sure wasn't as good as the first movie I watched today.
The Alamo is John Wayne's movie, he directed and starred in this 1960 historical Western. I say historical, only in that it's based on something that happened in the past. I read on the Wikipedia that some say there's really nothing much that really happened depicted in the movie but I kind of expect that from a Hollywood historical drama. It was the first movie he directed, The Green Berets was the second, though he has some uncredited directing on three other movies. James Edward Grant wrote the script. It's a long film that used to be longer. The DVD I have is 162 minutes and the original release was 202 minutes, much of that longer time was musical overture, intermission and end music. I don't feel I'm missing anything by not seeing the longer version, even John Wayne said it was too long. It's a movie that only ends badly for everyone at the place. It's not going to be one of my favorites, that's for sure, but it's OK. I'll keep the DVD but I doubt I'll get around to watching it again.
The Proud Ones is a 1956 Robert Ryan Western. He's a sheriff in a small town and he's dating the lovely Virginia Mayo. It's nice to see him as a good guy. Jeffrey Hunter is the son of a man Robert killed in another town. Jeff's dad was a skunk gunfighter working for Robert Middleton, a gambler that run a dirty saloon. Ryan moved away and some time later Middleton has moved to the same town. Ryan's got problems, a scared deputy who quits and dizzy spells that blur his vision. Things get tense but Jeff sides with Ryan and takes a job in the sheriff's office. It's a good story, with a good shoot out in a barn at the end. The script was by Edmund H North and Joseph Petracca. They adapted the novel by Verne Athanas. Robert D Webb is the director.
Comments