INTERVIEW WITH MATT CLARK
Character actor Matt Clark has died
at age 89, in Austin, Texas, after having broken his back some months ago. If
you don’t know his name, you’ll definitely recognize his face, from roles in The
Cowboys, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Culpepper
Cattle Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Jeremiah Johnson, and
if you’re younger, Back to the Future III and A Million Ways to Die
in the West. From 1964 to 2014, he played 120 different characters
onscreen: good guys, bad guys, losers and heroic types, all of them entirely
believable. I had the pleasure of interviewing him back in 2020, when I was
writing an article about Monte Walsh (1970) for True West.
Whenever I have the chance to
interview someone with the extensive credits of a man like Clark, I ask him
about as much of his career as I can, and I’m glad I did. I tried to follow up
later on, but between phone problems and health problems, it never happened
again. While editing this interview it
struck that, although not so long ago, everyone we discussed, whom I’d interviewed
for the Monte Walsh article – Bo Hopkins, Mitch Ryan, casting agent Lynn
Stalmaster, and of course Matt – is now gone. Here’s what Matt shared with me.
HENRY PARKE: I understand that
you're from Washington D.C. and you went to George Washington University.
MATT CLARK: I didn't go long. I
made it about a year. I had this G.I. Bill after Korea. That's when I went. But
I think I lasted a little over the first semester. I was in an economics lab
with 300 people in an auditorium. I just got so bored, and all I wanted to do
was be an actor. I said, I'm outta her,e and I up and left and never came back.
So all that going into the Army in order to get the GI Bill, a lot of good that
did me!
HENRY PARKE: You studied with
Herbert Bergoff, did a lot of off-Broadway theater in New York.
MATT CLARK: I got a half a dozen
shows, maybe all together. Only one that was The Living Theater. (Note: The Living Theatre, founded in New York
in 1947, is the United States’ oldest experimental theatre company) I was with
the Living Theater for about a year and I didn't do much there. I stage-managed
and I played tiny parts in a couple of things. And then I left to go into a
play, playing James Joyce in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
And that was a wonderful experience. I did that for eight months. Then I
understudied Martin Sheen in The Subject Was Roses. And then I got a
tiny part in a movie called Black Like Me, which was shooting in
Washington, D.C. So I drove down to Washington. I had one day's work playing
some nasty little Southern punk in an alley, who threatens (James) Whitmore. (Note:
It’s the true story of a White reporter who dyed his skin to pass for Black in
the 1960s South, to write articles about his treatment). I go down and I'm
doing that. Then they call lunch, one hour. The crew, they were all going into a
Ruth's Chris-type steak house. I said, that's a little over my pay grade. I was
used to Flame Steaks on 42nd Street. I got a steak and a baked potato for $1.70.
Remember that?
HENRY PARKE: I remember Flame Steak
there and on 8th Street in the Village.
MATT CLARK: Exactly. I went in with
(them) and I sat down and I just was so uncomfortable, ‘cause I was, a
hillbilly, I was a redneck. These guys were ordering prime rib, And I thought,
I like ribs. I'll take the prime rib too. And they brought me this uncooked
slab of meat. And I looked over and people were cutting into it with their
fork. And I cut into it and I never put anything like that in my mouth. I said,
and I don't pay for this? Whoo! I'm going to Hollywood! Up until that moment, the
idea of being in the movies was foreign to me as being an airline pilot. I had
a good time. Had a good life.
HENRY PARKE: With your background,
I wouldn’t have guessed you go into Westerns, but you certainly had an affinity
for them. Did you grow up with them?
MATT CLARK: No more than anybody
else. Cowboys and Indians as a kid, but it was certainly a hell of a lot more Westerns
available, even on TV. Now people won't watch the Western, young people, for some
crazy reason.
HENRY PARKE: Unless Quentin
Tarantino makes it. Your first Westerns were episodes of Dundee and the
Culhane, and then Will Penny, and then the episodes of Death
Valley Days and so on. What did you like in your early ones in particular?
What's memorable?
MATT CLARK: Nothing. The only one
was Will Penny. It was the only time I ever had a screen test in my
life, and I got all excited, doing this film with Charlton Heston. So I went
in, they said, thank you very much, then my agent says, yes: they want you. I
said, that's great. Well, it turns out I don't have any lines. I just played a
guy who gets shot by Charlton Heston, and I tumbled down the hill and into the
river. And then take two, get up there, put on some dry wardrobe, bang, down
the hill again. I did it three times. I thought, why were you getting a screen
test just to be shot and fall in the river and have no lines? I don't get it.
Then I began to realize I had saved them a bunch of money over having a stunt
man, if nothing else. And I was doing Rat Patrol when that picture
opened, with the same director, Tom Gries. I flew in (for the premiere), I
didn't even see myself ‘cause it was halfway over. So I've never seen the
movie.
HENRY PARKE: What an incredible
string of Westerns you made in the early seventies, Monte Walsh, The Beguiled,
The Grissom Gang -- sort of a Western, The Cowboys, Pocket Money, Culpepper
Cattle Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. From 1970 to ‘73, you
were in every Western worth seeing.
MATT CLARK: (laughs) I just got
lucky.
HENRY PARKE: You were directed by
every director worth remembering: Bill Fraker, Don Siegel, Robert Aldrich, Dick
Richards, Sydney Pollock, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah -- it’s just astonishing.
MATT CLARK: Well, there were a lot
of good ones. John Huston was my favorite. What a masterful person he was. And
you want a couple of stories?
HENRY PARKE: You bet!
MATT CLARK: Well, no, I'm not going
to give them to you, because I'm writing them in a memoir.
HENRY PARKE: I understand how that
is.
MATT CLARK: And you know who I
loved, and thought would make a great (subject for a) Western, and I've never
seen a good one about him? It was Quantrill. I don't know whether it would work
today. His was kind of a gentleman, you know. When he went into Northfield,
Minnesota, they didn't kill all the women. They shot a bunch of men up. I think
Bloody Bill was with him, wasn't he?
HENRY PARKE: Oh yes
MATT CLARK: I just thought he was a
genius and a good guy from everything I read. I must've read 10 books on him,
but nobody ever has made a decent movie about him. Another thing they have
never shown, which was part of the founding of the West, was the Mountain
Meadows Massacre.
[Matt Clark suddenly launched into
a 10-minute, detailed dissertation on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the
subject of the recent miniseries American Primeval. Although he hadn’t
studied it in years, he easily recalled a very complex timeline of events,
names of participants, distances between locales, outcomes and sentences.]
MATT CLARK: I thought that's an
interesting story.
HENRY PARKE: Absolutely! Let's talk
about Monte Walsh. Did you audition?
MATT CLARK: Yeah, I'm sure I
auditioned. It wasn't like it is today. I guess there must be a hundred casting
directors in LA. now. Back then there were like two or three that had any
majors (studios), and one of them was Lynn Stallmaster, who cast all that
stuff. When I first went out to California, I ran into Martin Sheen, who I had
understudied in New York. He was with a touring company of The Subject Was Roses.
And somebody wanted him to play a part in In the Heat of the Night.
(Note: Matt would play that part, of Packy Harrison, in the film). This is a
little sidebar; you don't have to print this. But for years I got residual
checks that I guess they didn't have enough room to write In the Heat of the
Night on. So it was In the Heat of the Nig. This went on for years. Good God! Is this the
way they printed checks that they send to Poitier? Anyway, that's when I met
Lynn Stalmaster and he cast me for years, and he was still casting not too long
ago.
HENRY PARKE: I met him a few years
ago --
MATT CLARK: He's 90, I think. He was such a gentleman, such a sweet guy, and he
got me started. I wouldn't have been an actor without him. And why he liked me,
I have no idea. I'm happy as I sit here in quarantine, and don't have a worry
in the world. I have my S.A.G. pension and my Social Security. (Note: Lynn
Stalmaster died in 2021 at 93.)
HENRY PARKE: Tell me why Monte Walsh was one of your favorites.
HENRY: I was just talking to your Monte
Walsh co-star, Mitch Ryan, yesterday, and he said to say hello to you.
(Note: Mitch Ryan died in March of 2022 at age 88.)
MATT CLARK: I talked to him three
or four days ago and asked him whether or not you had contacted him.
HENRY: Good; we're all on the same page.
What was Lee Marvin like to work with?
MATT CLARK: Lee Marvin became one
of my best friends. We did a few things together, but I remember the first time
I met him, he'd been always one of my favorite actors, in the classic sense of
an actor alcoholic. But we just hit it off. When I came up, he was in a chair, telling
a story and it was a funny story, kind of; not overly funny. But I was so
impressed that I was actually standing next to and talking to Lee Marvin, that
I kinda went, "Heh-heh-heh." And he stopped talking, he looked up at
me and he said, “Well, that's a pretty guilty laugh.” And I got kinda sheepish.
I said, “Yeah, I guess it was.” And I think we became friends right there ‘cause
I wasn't bullshitting him, you know? We became fairly close after that. Here's
something I'll tell you. Mitch (Ryan) and Billy Green Bush and I were all going
to be doing a scene, and we were riding to the set together from Tucson. It was
about an hour drive. So Lee Marvin gets in the car and he is drunker than
Cooter Brown. It's like eight o'clock in the morning, and we start to talk
about the scene that we're going to do. How should we do this? We're discussing
what the scene's about. And Lee had some really good ideas. We talked about it
for the hour. We finally get to the set, he steps out of the car, he's
completely sober. He had the most incredible metabolism of anybody I ever saw.
I've never seen anybody go drunk to sober so quick. And he turns to us and he
says, “All right, we've talked about it. Forget all that crap, just do the damn
scene.” And he walks away. And it was a real interesting lesson for an actor,
which is, you examine, investigate the scene, you decide what you're going to
do. And then once you've done all that, forget all that crap and just do the
scene. I thought it was really a great, great acting lesson. So that was one
thing I'll remember Lee for.
I don't know whether you remember
the scene that Billy Green Bush and I are standing at the bar, we're kind of
bad company. We're questionable, unlawful cowboys, if you will. We'd been
fired, too. And then Mitch was also fired, so he had joined up with us, and
we're in a bar. Leroy Johnson, the stunt man, comes in and he's playing the marshal.
He comes in to arrest us for bank robbing. And the scene is, we are supposed to
pull guns and shoot at him, but he's standing there with a gun on us. I said, “This
doesn't make any damn sense. I'm not going to pull a gun and shoot somebody who’s
got a pistol on me, and take a chance on being shot.” I wasn't going to do
anything like the script called for, because we're supposed to shoot at him,
dive, shoot at him, and then Mitch stands up and kills him. But I couldn't
figure out how in the hell can we do that? (Note: Lee Marvin is not in the
scene. He’s just giving advice.) So Lee said, “Matt, what if you have your
right arm on the bar. Billy is lighting a cigarette, with his left gun obvious.
But he reaches over and pulls his other gun out of his holster on the right-hand
side, flips it, turns it and drops it into your palm, and the marshal can see your
gun all the time. You're not going for your gun.” That's brilliant. That really
shows a couple of bad guys that work together, you know? And I must say, if Lee
did have alcohol problems, they never seemed to affect his work. Jesus, he got an
Academy Award for it.
HENRY: For playing a drunk in Cat
Ballou?
MATT CLARK: That's right. I never
saw him that he wasn't completely professional. Never saw him screw up a line
or come late to a shoot. I never saw him do anything like that. So that's one
of my Lee stories.
HENRY: That scene you were just
talking about is one of my absolute favorite scenes in the film. And you look
so terrified, and him slipping that gun to you is so unexpected. Then it's a
whole explosion of action. Your director on Monte Walsh was Bill Fraker,
a great cameraman directing for the first time. What was he like to work with?
MATT CLARK: I like Bill a lot. I
was a little disappointed that he didn't cover that transfer of the gun, ‘cause
you really don't see it. I thought it was so important to show these guys are two
really bad guys, but the film, as far as I'm concerned, it’s one of the most
beautiful Westerns ever made. Just cinematically, it's shot so beautifully.
HENRY: When you were doing it, did
you think it was going to become a classic?
MATT CLARK: I never thought of
anything except acting, I mean, what I was doing. Just like Pat Garrett and
Billy the Kid, I knew that if I'm working with Peckinpah and (Bob) Dylan
and all the rest of them that were in that film, I knew that I was headed for a
really special experience. Or when I did Judge Roy Bean and was going to
work with John Huston, I knew it was going to be extraordinary. Number one,
Mitch (Ryan) and I had known each other for a long time, we knew each other in
New York and we did a two-man scene at the Actor’s Studio once years ago. We
went back a long way, so I was looking forward to seeing him again. But I was
also looking forward to working with Lee who I guess still I think of as my
number one actor. And after that, solving that question of how do you pull a
gun on the sheriff who's got the drop on you, without it being just some crazy
movie bullshit, I thought his solution was just great. And I thought, if he'd
been interested in anything other than catching big blue Marlins and drinking,
he could have been one of the best directors going.
HENRY: How about Jack Palance?
MATT CLARK: Jack was a character. We
were in Bisbee, Arizona, which is a hard-rock mining town, and it's certainly
not the most beautiful place I've ever been. We're in this bar, we're drinking,
all these locals are saying, “Oh my God, Jack Palance!” These hard-rock miners are
tough fuckers, and they're all talking with Jack. And they would look out and
they'd say, “Jack, have you ever seen anything that beautiful?” And it's not
really great. And Jack said, “Jesus, how do you people live here? That is awful!
You think that's nice? Good God!” And they're getting ready to punch the shit
out of him. He was a tough guy, but those people were not gonna be demeaned
like that. And as soon as they started to get angry, he said, “I'm just joking
with you guys.” He said, “No, it really is beautiful!” And they would be all,
“Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack!” He would just spin them like that. He played with them
that way. And I thought, you are a character. That's my big Jack Palance
memory.
HENRY: Of course, director Bill Fraker you worked
with later in The Legend of the Lone Ranger.
MATT CLARK: Well, you know, that
was interesting, and I don't know whether you want to use this or not, but they
cast as The Lone Ranger, a guy that looked like a million dollars, Clinton
Spilsbury. But he was nervous, you know. He'd never really had a lot of acting
chops. And so he was scared. It was obvious that they didn't think much of him,
but they kind of all kind of ganged up on him, I thought. And I said to Fraker,
good God, this guy is already scared enough. You should be building his
confidence rather than taking his confidence away. And I think that was the big
problem with the picture, Clinton Spilsbury's performance as The Lone Ranger.
Otherwise I think it would have been a better film. And I agree with you, it
wasn't much of a movie.
HENRY: Is there anything else you
want to share about Monte Walsh?
MATT CLARK: You know, I ordered the
thing from Amazon. Sellick obviously redid it, but I made sure that I was
ordering the Lee Marvin version. And they still sent me the Tom Sellick. I
watched the opening of it, which wasn't bad; then I sent it back. I've done a
couple of things with Tom, Magnum P.I. He's a nice guy. But Monte Walsh was
a special film and looking at it and realizing, God, I remember how beautiful
this was, what fun it was.
HENRY: Was it a rough shoot
physically?
MATT CLARK: Not for me at all. Another
thing I remember was Bo Hopkins. Did you talk to Bo?
HENRY: I was thinking of it. His
part is so small. I wasn't sure what to ask. (Note: For the record, I did
subsequently interview Bo Hopkins about Monte Walsh.)
MATT CLARK: Oh, you should talk to
him anyway. He always loves to talk and he's still in show business. You know,
I think he did a movie last year. I'm so glad that I'm not one of those people
waiting for my agent to call, but you know, I've had other things in my life. And
I'm real happy to have had the joy and the luck that I had, to have done what I
did at the time I did it. I can't imagine having had a better life. You know,
we all enjoy being little boys and playing cowboys and Indians or let's pretend.
And to be able to do that into your sixties is a pretty, pretty remarkable
thing. Yes, indeed. At one point I directed a film in Ireland, Da.
(Note: Martin Sheen stars as a Broadway playwright who returns to Ireland when
his father, his ‘Da’, Bernard Hughes, dies, and encounters him as a spirit.) Did
you see it?
HENRY: I saw it when it originally
came out, but it's been a few years.
MATT CLARK: It only played for
several weeks in five theaters around the country, but I have had so many
people strangely enough to come up and tell me that it’s one of their favorite
films. And it's mainly because of Barney Hughes's performance, which is
extraordinary, and the script. And I was just given that as a great gift. But
there's a character in it, Drum, who I thought of Lee (Marvin) playing ‘cause
he could play any damn thing. And I asked him about it. I had done a movie, Pocket
Money, with Lee and Paul Newman, and the script was by Terrence Malick, the
guy that wrote and directed Badlands. Great filmmaker.
I just had a small part in that
movie, where I play a prisoner in a jail in Mexico, and they play these two
losers who go down to Mexico to bring back rodeo cattle. And they're stopped at
the border, because the cattle have a disease, like the clap, like syphilis for
cattle. But anyway, they played these two losers who bounce off of each other.
I thought they were closer to who I had seen them, as people, than anything
else I had seen them in. I thought it was a terrific movie. When I was playing
that guy in the jail, Lee came up to me one day, I had been in wardrobe, and I
had regular leather shoes, but I stepped on the back of the heels, to turn them
into what are called jailhouse flippers. You just have to slip your feet in them
to get around. And Lee looked down at me and he said, “You're a fucking rag
actor.” And I thought he was insulting me. And he says, “I'm gonna tell you a
secret. I do half of my performance in the wardrobe fitting.” So he meant it as
a big compliment, you know: choose what you're going to wear as this character.
Anyway, I went to ask him if he would play Drum, which would have been a real
stretch for him, to play this snob Irishman; but I thought he'd have been just
great. He said he would like to do it, it looked like it would be fun to do,
but he said, “I can't do it. Because I have learned that it would just be
counterproductive to the show, because people do not accept it. Once you're a
star and you've established your personality, your star character, that's what
people expect from you. And if they don't get that from you, they're pissed off
and think that you have screwed them.” He said, “I'm afraid I'm already Lee
Marvin. It’s who I am.” And unfortunately, when I was in Ireland is when he
died. It’s a great lesson about films and how they work. And you don't see many
people that have broken that rule. Daniel Day Lewis, they're very rare actors
who are movie stars and big stars who can (play) completely different people. It's
like Meryl Streep, these kinds of actor actors, who can get away with it,
and they've done it from the get-go. They start out and they never do the same
thing twice. So that's what's expected of them. Whoa, what are we going
to get from Daniel Day Lewis this time? What are we going to get from Meryl Streep?
And you can get anything from My Left Foot to There Will Be Blood.
You get characters that diverse. But you don't find many stars that can do
that. If you're looking at Paul Newman movies, he’s pretty much always Paul
Newman, you know? Everybody is who they're set to be, and that's who the public
expects them to be. That's why being a character actor was so much fun, because
you're playing different characters all the time. You're not playing the same
kind of thing each time.
HENRY: Speaking of which, I really
enjoyed you in The Outlaw Josey Wales, where you got to play a nice guy
for a change. There was a really interesting little world in that ghost town
with you and Royal Danno, Sheb Wooley and all those people. How did you like
working with Clint Eastwood?
MATT CLARK: I did three films with Eastwood.
The first one, I don't remember that much. That's The Beguiled, when he
was a prisoner in the Civil War. I do remember Josey Wales. And then I
played in Honkytonk Man. I played his brother, I think. And the thing
that I liked about him, because I thought that this is a profession, and you
should act professionally. So you should really at least know your lines and be
able to get through the scene. It's not that you have to do it the same way the
next time, but you should be able to get through it and say your lines, so you
have to be prepared enough to do that. And so many times you'll work with an
actor, and I'm not talking about stars necessarily, but just other actors in
the film. You'll be doing a scene and you’re all ready and you do your thing
and they're doing theirs. And then they fuck the take up, and they say, okay,
cut. Let's go again. And you have dumped; you've put it all out there. And you
do that maybe 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 or 14 times when they can't get it right. And
finally they get it where they get through, and they haven't absolutely stomped
on their dick in the scene. The director said, that's it; move on. Meanwhile,
you have just blown your wad 14 times in a row. So the thing I loved about
Clint is that he doesn't mess around. I'm telling you, I think that if the
camera doesn't fall over, you shoot it, that's a print, that's it. So you know
that you’d better be ready to work, or he'll cut around you, cut you out of the
Goddamn thing. So that's who he is as a director, and I really enjoy that about
him. And while politically we're not maybe on the same page, I liked him as a
person a lot. I think he's a good man.
HENRY: I've never gotten to speak
to him, but he’s a great talent.
MATT CLARK: You better get moving,
‘cause he's gotta be ninety. (Note: at this writing, Clint Eastwood is 96.) Here's
the thing I couldn't believe about him. He's a big guy, but he looks put
together, not like a big fat guy. But in the scene (in Honkytonk Man) he
was drunk, passed out, and we had to pick him up and carry him in the house. I
remember trying to lift him, and it was like trying to lift 500 pounds. He was
the heaviest, because he's so dense, I guess. And so he’s a strong guy,
mentally, physically, artistically. So that's my Clint Eastwood. Give Bo
Hopkins a call. Tell him Matt said that you should call him.
HENRY: I sure will. He actually,he
gave me a good interview about a year and a half ago about making The Wild Bunch.
(Note: Bo Hopkins died about 2 years after this interview. In 2020 he came out
of retirement to play his last role, Pawpaw, for Ron Howard in Hillbilly
Elegy.)
MATT CLARK: It's tough to be at
that age. He doesn't work much, and he wants to. His drive for show business,
his drive to be a star is so much stronger than mine ever was. I never had
frankly much interest in it. I had a great life doing what I did. You know, the
stars have to work all the time, and I could go to Europe for three months and
work two weeks. A lot of people would like to have done it, I'm sure. Now there's
so many, I don't know how you could keep track of all the actors today, with
all these streaming services, you know? It’s overwhelming. Just so much shit
being done all the time. When you either made feature films or you did
television series for the three networks when I started, that was it, you know?
There were damn few jobs. I know movie stars that can't quit and you've seen
them do other things. You've seen them do commercials; they will do anything.
You'll see a movie and you go, Holy Christ, this guy was a big star. What the
hell? Why is he doing something like this? The reason I quit acting when I did,
said “enough,” and walked away, and I wouldn't even let my ex-agent know when I
was in town out of fear that they would send me out to act again. I had had it,
because the only thing I was getting, the last few jobs, the parts were so not
fun. Insignificant, either television crap or what movies I would get, there
wouldn't be any significance to the characters. I’d play a judge, and that kind
of shit. And all the parts for people over 60, that used to go to us character
actors, that we would compete for, now they were being taken by stars who were
too old to be leads in movies, but they can't give it up. They'll do
commercials and they do things that you think, why would somebody like that
do that? And I think it's just the nature of being an actor. There's
something so addictive about it, and so different from anything else. Maybe
it's like politicians: most of them don't know when to quit and can't quit. And
I know one guy that I joke that he would do a Kotex commercial if he didn't
have anything else going on.
HENRY: I remember when Ray Milland
was doing The Thing with Two Heads, and an interviewer asked him, why? And
he said, well, I did Love Story. That was the last one where I had a
real acting part, and I proved I can still do it. And I just like to work, and
I'll frankly do anything they will pay me to do.
MATT CLARK: Exactly. Fortunately I
never had that disease. And I've worked all over the country and all over the world,
and met so many wonderful people. And all I did was play cops and robbers and
cowboys and Indians. And what a way to make a living, huh?
COWBOY – HISTORY AND HOLLYWOOD AT THE
REAGAN!
Here’s a True West article
that hasn’t run on the page yet! We tried to squeeze this piece, about a
terrific show at the Reagan Presidential Library, into the March/April
issue, but that issue was just too packed! It’s running in the upcoming
May/June issue, but the show is only going to be at the Reagan is only
running until April 19th! From there it’s moving to the Mulva
Cultural Center in De Pere, Wisconsin. To give West-coasters the best chance
to see it, True West took the unusual step of posting the article ahead of
time, at their website. Here’s the link: https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/cowboys-history-hollywood-at-the-reagan/
HAPPY PASSOVER!
Because this site obviously leans
kinda Western, it’s worth noting at Passover that the very first Western movie
star – actually the first movie star of any genre – was Jewish! Broncho Billy
Anderson, born Maxwell Henry Aronson, was in The Great Train Robbery (1903),
the first movie with a plot, and would produce and star in 148 silent Westerns.
His studio, Essanay, was the phonetic spelling of S.N.A., and the A stood for
Anderson. The link below is for Broncho Billy’s Sentence, and you may be
surprised to find that Broncho Billy is definitely not a good guy at the story’s
start. Enjoy!
RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER!
On the show coming up this Thursday, April 2nd, Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell and I will be joined by Peter Sherayko, author of Prove it Safe: Gun Safety For the Movies, and Manuela Schneider, author of Dr. Goodfellow: Bullets, Blood, and the Gunfighters’ Famous Surgeon. Here’s the link to follow the show, which airs at 6pm Western time.
TRUE WEST – MARCH/APRIL 2026
As you can tell from the cover, the
heart of this issue “The Mother Road”, aka Route 66. Please enjoy my article, T.R.’s
Return, about premiering season 2 of INSP’s Teddy Roosevelt series,
ELKHORN, in the actual town in North Dakota where the story takes place. And
check out my review of Classic Flix’s Blu-Ray of 1958’s The Proud Rebel.
MORE COMMENTARIES ON THE WAY!
Once again, filmmaker/novelist/film
historian C. Courtney Joyner and I have tag-teamed on a couple of new Blu-Ray
commentaries. 1971’s Red Sun is directed by Terence Young, and stars
Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress. 1959’s Last
Train from Gun Hill is directed by John Sturges, and stars Kirk Douglas,
Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones and Earl Holliman. I’ll update you when I find out
when they will be available.
…AND THAT’S A WRAP!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright
March 2026 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
Not to be used for training A.I.
