‘THE VIRGINIAN’ RETURNS
TO INSP NEW YEAR’S DAY!
While throughout 2018, Western
fans have enjoyed the rare opportunity to watch THE MEN FROM SHILOH, the scarcely-seen
revamped final season on THE VIRGINIAN on INSP, the excellent news is that the original
series returns today, January 1st, New Year’s Day, at noon EST and 3
p.m. PST, with an 9-hour marathon. It starts with the very first two episodes, THE
EXECUTIONERS and THE WOMAN FROM WHITE WING. The marathon will continue with
big-name star episodes, including THE GOLDEN DOOR with Robert Duvall; THE EVIL
THAT MEN DO, with Robert Redford, THE INTRUDERS, with David Carradine; and THE
MODOC KID, with Harrison Ford. Starting noon Wednesday EST, 3 p.m. PST, the
series will continue in its original sequence with THROW A LONG ROPE, episode 3
of season one.
The story of THE VIRGINIAN
goes back to Owen Wister’s tremendously successful 1902 novel of the same name,
which helped make the cowboy into a folk-hero, and elevated the pulp genre to
legitimate literature. Wister created in his title character the original ‘man
with no name’, for he was only identified by where he came from. Beginning in
1962 and running for nine seasons and 249 episodes, the series revolved around
the Shiloh Ranch, the Garth family, headed originally by Judge Garth (Lee J.
Cobb), and James Drury as the Virginian. Also in the cast were Doug McClure,
Clu Gulager, Roberta Shore, Randy Boone, and over the seasons, many others.
As INSP Senior V.P. Doug
Butts pointed out in his announcement, “The series was groundbreaking because
it was the only 90-minute Western on television. This allowed writers and
actors to give viewers a well-developed story arc, which is why it continues to
hold an audience today. Not surprising, THE VIRGINIAN is one of our
highest rated programs. What a great way to kick off 2019!” Back in 2012 I
attended The Virginian 50th Anniversary celebration at The Autry,
and was able to interview several of the series’ stars for a multi-part
article. Here are the links: PART ONE.
STEVE MCQUEEN’S ‘WANTED:
DEAD OR ALIVE’ JOINS INSP LINE-UP!
Michael Landon guests on 1st episode of Wanted:
Dead or Alive, with Thomas Carr directing
Along with the return of
THE VIRGINIAN, the series that made Steve McQueen a star, WANTED: DEAD OR
ALIVE, will begin airing with episode one on New Year’s Day at 7 a.m. EST, 10
a.m. PST. This excellent half-hour series began in 1958 and ran for three
seasons and 94 episodes, featuring McQueen as thoughtful, decent bounty hunter
Josh Randall, who toted a cut down Winchester model 1892 carbine, caught
miscreants but, as often as not, gave the reward money to someone who needed it
more than himself. The series was very
popular, and when McQueen was cast in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, but the series’
producers wouldn’t let him out of his contract to do the movie, he staged a car
wreck to shut the series down!
INSP WELCOMES SEASON FIVE
OF ‘COWBOY WAY’ SUNDAY, JAN. 6TH
Bubba, Booger and Cody,
and their wives and kids, are back for a 5th helping of the realities
of cowboy life in THE COWBOY WAY. The reality
series that breaks the rules by actually seeming real follows the three friends
who are partnered in the Faith Cattle Company, showing the nature of their
day-to-day work. When the series began, only one cowboy was married. Now all
three are, and have kids besides. This season the trio, who have largely
concentrated on raising cattle, will be more involved in the buying and selling
of the critters, and will venture from their Alabama homes to Texas. Here’s a LINK
to my True West article about the show, as well as my interviews with Bubba
Thompson and Booger Brown from the Round-up.
AMC’S ‘THE SON’ RETURNS
IN APRIL 2019!
The ten-episode second
season is ‘in the can’! Returning to the series that examines a Texas cattle
and oil baron in two distinct eras, 1849 and 1915, are series stars Pierce Brosnan
and Jacob Lofland, who together play the older and younger Eli McCullough. Also
returning are Zahn McClarnon, Henry Garrett, Sydney Lucas, Paola Núñez, David Wilson Barnes, Jess Weixler, and
Elizabeth Frances. Joining the cast will be Jeremy Bobb from GODLESS, Duke
Davis Roberts from JUSTIFIED, Glenn
Stanton, and David Sullivan. If you’d like to read my True West article on THE
SON, featuring interviews with author Philip Meyer, producers Henry Bronchtein
and Kevin Murphy, and stars Jacob Lofland, Zahn McClarnon and Carlos Bardem, go
HERE.
THE SOUTHERNER – a video
review
In 1945, the brilliant
writer and filmmaker Jean Renoir ventured into John Steinbeck territory with The Southerner, for which he would
receive a Best Director Oscar nomination.
Having already written and directed the classics Grand Illusion (1937), Le
Bete Humaine (1938), and The Rules of
The Game (1939) in his native France, in 1941 he fled for America following
the Nazi invasion of his homeland – he would become a naturalized U.S. citizen
– and directed a few films before hitting his stride with The Southerner. Adapted from the novel by George Sessions Perry, The Southerner is the Great Depression story
of Sam and Nona Tucker, impoverished Texas cotton-pickers who are determined
against tremendous odds to own their own farm and raise a family. It is at
times a harsh and bleak tale, the characters’ lives filled with suffering and
indignities, but it’s never hopeless.
Renoir assembled a
remarkable cast, sometimes using actors in their most familiar personas, other
times going radically against type and letting the players spread their wings
to wonderful effect. For Sam Tucker, the all-American driven farmer that would
normally have been a Gary Cooper or James Stewart or Joel McCrea – and McCrea
and wife Frances Dee were briefly attached – he instead used the hissable cad
from Mildred Pierce, Zachary Scott.
For his hard-struggling, honorable wife he chose the trollop from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Betty Field. To play
the albatross of a Granny, who self-centeredly rails about their lack of
concern for her, Renoir cast Beulah Bondi, who’d played the perfect mom for
Frank Capra in Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington and It’s A Wonderful Life.
The usually lovable J. Carrol Naish played
the most spiteful character in the story, a neighbor farmer with a little
success who does everything he can to sabotage the Tuckers, willing even to let
their ailing child go without milk. On the other hand his son, played by Norman
Lloyd, the title character from Hitchcock’s Saboteur,
is right in character, and Percy Kilbride is Pa Kettle, only in nicer clothes.
The film is not heavily
plotted; this is not a traditional story so much as it is a chance to watch the
trials and triumphs of its characters against the land, the weather, and
sometimes other people. It also has two wonderful knock-down drag-out brawls,
one light-hearted but fraught with danger, the other deadly. These are not the
thrillingly choreographed Yakima Canutt-inspired displays we’ve come to love,
but rather the kind of fights real angry non-athletes have, with everything
they ca lay their hands on included.
Despite three Oscar
nominations – Best Director, Best Sound Recording: Jack Whitney, Best Musical
Score: Werner Janssen – this indie, originally released by United Artists, had become something of an orphan film, and
difficult to see. Fortunately, Alpha
Video has released the DVD for only $7.98. Order it HERE.
A NEW PLAY PUBLISHED BY
MICHAEL B. DRUXMAN – BRODERICK CRAWFORD: A PLAY IN TWO ACTS
As far as The Round-up is
concerned, Michael Druxman’s most important accomplishment is writing the
screenplay for 1994’s CHEYENNE WARRIOR, one of the very best independent
Westerns of the past quarter century. The publicist, journalist, screenwriter,
director, and playwright has published a series of plays, frequently
one-character plays, in his Hollywood Legends series, focusing on the lives of such
stars as Al Joslon, Orson Welles, Carole Lombard, and Clara Bow. His most
recent entry is about a hugely talented but decidedly less glamorous star,
Broderick Crawford. This two act play features three characters: Brod, his
mother Helen Broderick, and father Lester Crawford.
Brod’s parents were important
vaudeville stars – they played the Palace in New York, the pinnacle of success.
Lester had some success in Hollywood, and Helen had a major film career, an
attractive comedienne who appeared in numerous chic RKO comedies and musicals, typically
as Ginger Rogers’s friend or Edward Everett Horton’s romantic interest. The play’s thesis is that although their son
had a great career – a Best Actor Oscar for ALL THE KING’S MEN, his tremendous success in
BORN YESTERDAY, a long string of movies, and two successful TV series, HIGHWAY
PATROL and THE INTERNS, it was never enough to satisfy his parents. Their
disappointment and disapproval haunt him literally in the play – the two acts
are set in dressing rooms in 1971 and 1977, long after both parents have died,
but that doesn’t even slow down their bedeviling of their alcoholic son.
Along the way you’ll
learn quite a bit about the actor’s slow and steady decline. Humorous but not
exactly uplifting, it’s a tremendous role for an actor of the right age and size.
You can buy it from Amazon, either as a paperback or download, and check out
Druxman’s many other plays, HERE.
…AND ONE MORE THING…
As I begin my tenth year
writing Henry’s Western Round-up, I am immensely grateful to all of my readers
for their interest and encouragement. If anyone had told me a decade ago that what
I had to say about Westerns would be read in over a hundred nations, with close
to a million-and-a-half page-views, I would never have believed it. Nor would I
have dreamt that I would be entering my fourth year as Western Film Editor for
True West Magazine.
Because of the increased –
and very welcome – steadily increasing work-load from True West, the past few years have seen a steady diminishing in the
number of Round-up posts, from weekly to monthly to less than that. I’ve never
been a big one for New Year’s resolutions, but it’s my intention to return to
weekly postings, or at least every-other-week postings. They may be shorter
than in the past, but I’ll do my best to keep my news service current. Best
wishes to you all for a successful and fulfilling 2019!
AND THAT’S A WRAP!
HAPPY TRAILS,
Henry
All
Original Material Copyright January 1st 2019 by Henry C. Parke – All
Rights Reserved
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