Charles Martin Smith Part 2 – On Lee
Marvin, Sam Shepherd, James Garner, Never Cry Wolf, and Directing
Last month Charles Martin Smith
shared his memories of making The Culpepper Cattle Company and Pat
Garrett and Billy The Kid. Here he discusses his later Westerns, and later
career.
Henry Parke: Before you branched
out into writing and directing, you'd star in other Westerns, like the Spikes
Gang, the Streets of Laredo miniseries. You played Teddy Roosevelt
on Grizzly Adams.
Charles Martin Smith: Oh, God, yes.
Henry Parke: It was a little
sublime, a little ridiculous.
Charles Martin Smith: I don't
remember much about that at all. But The Spikes Gang was an interesting
experience, spending two months with Lee Marvin, a real legend.
Henry Parke: That was also with Ron
Howard, right?
Charles Martin Smith: Yeah, Ron was
in that too. And Gary Grimes who had been the kid in Culpepper. So we
all knew each other. Spikes Gang would've been about six months after Pat
Garrett. Because Ron and I were in Spain shooting that when American
Graffiti first came out, and the first reviews from American Graffiti.
Ron and I actually were rooming together -- we threw our per diems together,
and we got an apartment together in Madrid. And I remember him being on the
phone with his dad, and his dad reading the Variety review of American
Graffiti, saying it's an instant classic. We were so happy. On that film, I
finally really got the hang of riding a horse. That was a full-on fun Western
experience; that was great. A little bit surprising that we were in Spain.
Charles Martin Smith: And a lot of
the supporting parts were cast in that movie with American actors who lived in
Spain. These guys would work on those Westerns or the Spaghetti Westerns, you
know. There was always work for Americans; you didn't want all the supporting
characters to be speaking with Spanish accents. So it was a whole industry of
making Westerns in Spain. There were standing sets, which we used. There were a
number of Western villages and everything. It was a great look. I remember one
time sitting, waiting as a shot was being set up, rolling hills with all these
oak trees and everything. And Lee Marvin’s sitting in his chair looking around
saying, very dryly, “There must be a Thousand Oaks around here.” <laugh>.
(Note: Thousand Oaks is now an overbuilt residential part of the San Fernando
Valley. But for decades it was a popular location for shooting Westerns.) What
he was getting at is, this looks just like Thousand Oaks, and what the hell are
we doing in Spain? Why didn't we do this a Thousand Oaks? We all could have
stayed home.
He was a character. He was very
protective of the three boys, too. He had been in World War II and had seen
some very, very serious action. And it really scarred him. It really affected
him for life. He kept talking about, that they were kids. They were all
19-year-old kids who were over there fighting the war. And now he was working
with these 19-year-old kids and teaching us how to shoot and how to rob banks
and everything. And it was a little hard on him, I think, emotionally.
Henry Parke: I see.
Charles Martin Smith: But he was a
great guy, very protective of us, making sure that we had everything we needed.
It was good.
Henry Parke: So you did Westerns in
Mexico and Spain. With Streets of Laredo, did you finally get to the
United States?
Charles Martin Smith: We shot some
of that in Texas, but we were right by the Mexican border for a lot of it.
There's an area down there, it also shoots a lot of Westerns. My buddy, Rod
Hardy directed a bunch of things with Kenny Rogers and stuff down there.
Lajitas is the town, there again there's a lot of Western standing sets. We
shot a lot of it down there. I don't think we actually shot anything in Mexico
on that show. We were in Del Rio, Texas for a while. We moved around. I really
enjoyed that. (James) Garner and I got to be good friends. I think Jim and I
did three or four movies together, (Note: Smith and Garner co-starred in the
1997 hostage thriller Dead Silence) and I directed him once, which was
great (Note: Smith directed Garner as Mark Twain in 2002’s Roughing It,
based on Twain’s memoir.) And he was a lovely guy. He was warm and funny and
great to work with, and I really enjoyed the Streets of Laredo. I had a
great time on that. The other guy that I got to hang out with on that was
George Carlin.
Henry Parke: I did not remember he
was in that.
Charles Martin Smith: Everybody
forgets he was in there, but he had a good part. We hung around. Boy, there was
a great guy to sit and have lunch with, and tell stories, <laugh> and
jokes. The other guy that was a joy to work with on that was Sam Shepard. I had
a bunch of scenes with Sam, and he was such a good actor, and such a brilliant
guy. Very quiet, kind of did his own thing. He had his own little place that he
went every day for breakfast, and he got his pancakes. He was very studious in
his way, but a great fun actor to work with. And the other guy that I got to be
friends with on that too, and ended up directing him not that long ago, was Wes
Studi. (Note: Smith directed Wes Studi in 2019’s A Dog’s Way Home.)
Henry Parke: Oh, very cool!
Charles Martin Smith: Yeah. Wes is
a very cool guy. I had a really good time on that. Plus, you know, Larry
McMurtry's writing was so good. (Note: In addition to writing the novel Streets
of Laredo, Larry McMurtry also co-wrote the teleplay.) I had these
wonderful long speeches, these monologues that McMurtry wrote that, for an
actor, it's just so fun to do such good writing. There's one long section where
I'm just saying, I'm so cold. I’m so sick of being cold. I'd rather just be
shot. I can't stand it here anymore. This long, wonderful monologue. I did the
scene with Sam. Good experience. Joe Sergeant directed that, and I thought, did
a really good job. It was a really good show.
Henry Parke: Tell me about making Never
Cry Wolf.
Charles Martin Smith: It’s
certainly a huge highlight of my career. That was an amazing experience. It
changed my life, as people say. It really did. I went up to Canada for the
first time. We were up in the Yukon, and we filmed on and off for a year and a
half, which is unheard of. We spent a lot of time, up in the Arctic with the
Inuit. And living up there for that long and working on that thing was really
eye-opening. It was an amazing experience. And I think it's a brilliant movie.
I think Carroll Ballard is one of the great unsung heroes, between Never Cry
Wolf and Black Stallion alone. He's one of the greats. Well, again,
he suffered a little bit from the same thing that Sam Peckinpah did. He didn't
get along with the executives in the film business. He was an artist and a bit
of a maverick.
Henry Parke: As a writer and
director, while you haven’t made a Western per se, you've certainly specialized
in stories with themes that Western fans relate to: ‘man against the elements’
stories, man's relationship with wild animals. Do you feel a special interest
in those kinds of tales?
Charles Martin Smith: I like them.
I certainly like them, and probably the influence there is largely Never Cry
Wolf. But I did The Snow Walker, which was another man against the
elements film, also written by the great Farley Mowat, the Canadian writer that
wrote Never Cry Wolf. And that was one of the main themes in all of
Farley's writings, man against the elements and our place in the world which, I
think you're right, is a big part of the Western. And it's something that I've
always really been interested in as well. I didn't want to make horror movies
or slasher films. That's not my sensibility, you know? And somehow, once you do
an animal movie or two, boy, that's all you ever hear about. And I'm happy
about it. That's okay. I enjoyed doing all those things. I particularly loved
writing and directing the Dolphin Tail movies. But they do kind of
pigeonhole you in the film business.
Henry Parke: It's true. A lot of
what you have done has been, I won't say it's kid films, but things that are of
interest children, that are appropriate for children.
Charles Martin Smith: I've enjoyed
doing that. I think of all the films that I've done, there's been a lot of
children characters (played by) non-actors. I somehow got drawn to a lot,
working with kids, or teenagers and inexperienced actors. Like in Buffy (The
Vampire Slayer), where there were a couple of people on there who had never
really done anything. And working with native people as I’ve been in Snow
Walker, and working with kids as I so often did in Air Bud and Dolphin
Tail and all those things. And the idea of working with animals has always
interested me too. They're very pure, you know? Animals will never give you a
fake, a bad reading or a <laugh> a fake delivery. It's interesting to
look at them and their faces, and their thoughts, and try to understand the
world from that perspective. Whether it's a wolf or a dog, or a cat or a
dolphin. Something about having them as characters in a film has always
appealed to me.
Henry Parke: Which is very
interesting, because of course, you're always told, don't work with animals or
children
Charles Martin Smith:
<laugh>. I know. And I've built a career doing both.
Henry Parke: Do you have pets?
Charles Martin Smith: No. Never
really have had pets. It's funny, I've done these various dog movies; I never
had dogs growing up. We always had cats. I always liked cats better than dogs.
I think I was always more of a cat guy, but no, I don't have cats. I travel a
lot, which I like doing, which is hard to do when you've got pets at home.
Henry Parke: That very true. I wish you’d make a Western for kids, because
I want the genre to keep going, and you've got to bring a new generation into
it. And there are so few Westerns that are either of interest or appropriate
for kids.
Charles Martin Smith: That would be
very cool to make. I had a project based on a true story of some teenage kids
in Canada, actually the youngest Canadian ever hanged. This would’ve been in
the 1800s. They were three kids, they were mixed heritage, they were not really
accepted by the indigenous people, or the white community. One of the kids had
some serious emotional problems, got involved in some dispute, ended up in
jail, and escaping, and trying to cause an uprising of the tribes against the
settlers. And it's called The McLean Boys. Their father was Scottish,
and their mother was -- I'm not sure which tribe -- but it's kind of a dark,
grim story because they end up actually all getting hanged. They were 15,
16-year-old kids. I really wanted to make that movie, and a producer and I were
trying to get the financing together, but it never happened. I would've loved
to have done that because it is a genre that I love in all of its forms.
Henry Parke: After not having been
in front of the camera for about a decade, you're now starring in the film This
Time.
Charles Martin Smith:
<laugh>. Yeah, I did This Time. That’s (for) a dear old friend of mine,
Rob Vaughn; I've known him for 25 years. We worked on a bunch of shows
together, and we've just been really good friends. He was trying to develop it
for himself to direct, and he asked me to play this alcoholic Vietnam veteran
hearse driver. I said sure, why not? We put it together; Rob did a great job
directing it. It was a lot of fun. I haven't acted like that in a long time,
where I didn't have one part of my brain trying to think about the directing,
and playing a leading role. So that was fun. It's a really good film. But you
know, I'm largely retiring, I think. I’m not really pursuing work anymore. I've
had enough of that. It's tough making films and it's tough getting them going.
You spend a lot of time in meetings and then trying to get the films green lit
and get it started. I find that kind of wearying, so I moved to Palm Springs
where I am now. It’s very nice living here and doing a little bit of writing,
but I'm not really doing much except when a friend of mine asks, like Rob
Vaughn did. And that's been fun, going around to film festivals with that.
HOME VIDEO REVIEW
THE SEARCHERS – 1956 – Warner
Brothers
Warner Archive Collection – 4K HD +
Blu-Ray -- $32.99, Blu-Ray-- $23.99
SPOILER ALERT – I assume you know
the plot of The Searchers. If not, watch it before you read this.
“Hey, what happened to your Johnny
Reb coat? You lose it?” Martin Pawley asks.
“Must have. I’m not goin’ back for
it,” Ethan Edwards replies, distractedly.
Not quite 40 minutes into The
Searchers, John Wayne, as Ethan Edwards, Harry Carey Jr. as Brad Jorgenson,
and Jeffrey Hunter as Martin Pawley, ride through the desert, searching for
Ethan’s two captive nieces. They’re sisters to Martin, though not by blood, and
the older one is Brad’s intended. They stop at a desert pass between two hills;
four from the Comanche band they’ve been tracking have split off into the pass.
Ethan tells the lads to follow the main body; he’ll track the four. When Ethan
returns, the lads are still waiting. He drops from his saddle to the ground on
his knees, draws his knife and stabs it into the sand, in a gesture of futile
rage. After the above exchange, they ride off after the main pack. The first
time you see The Searchers, you don’t ‘get it’ any more than the lads
do. But from then on, every time you see that scene, and you know that Ethan
found the eldest girl raped and slaughtered, Ethan’s controlled pain hits you
almost like a death in your own family.
In a world – sadly, this one –
where made-for-streaming movies routinely restate plot points because so many
viewers are distracted by a second screen, this newest edition of The
Searchers is a movie to own, and a powerful argument for physical media.
You’ll enjoy and appreciate it the first time, but you’ll understand so much
more the second viewing, because so much of the story is not said, but implied.
Arguably it’s Ford’s most brutal Western, but it’s also his most subtle: nearly
all of the violence takes place off-screen.
Another argument for physical media
is the selection of special features you won’t get on streaming. They include
an introduction by Patrick Wayne, who was a very tall 15 when he was in the
film, and documentaries, one including analysis by directors Curtis Hanson,
Martin Scorcese and John Milius. There
are also silent outtakes, a premiere newsreel clip, and contemporary TV promos
with Hunter and Natalie Wood.
The Searchers is directed by John Ford, written
by Frank S. Nugent from a novel by Alan Le May, photographed in Technicolor and
Vistavision by Winton C. Hoch. It is edited by Jack Murray, with a score by Max
Steiner. The supporting cast includes Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Jack Qualen, Olice
Carey, Ken Curtis, Hank Worden, Lana Wood, and Henry Brandon as Scar.
If you’d like to read more about The Searchers, here are links to my INSP interview with Lana Wood , my True West interview with Patrick Wayne – also found in my book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made and the People WhoMade Them , and my INSP article about John Wayne’s favorite role, Ethan Edwards.
HOME VIDEO REVIEW
CHEYENNE -- THE COMPLETE SERIES – Warner
Archive Collection -- Blu-Ray -- $139.99
7 seasons – 107 episodes
In the 1950s, when the other major
Hollywood movie studios were shunning television and hoping it would go away,
Jack L. Warner of Warner Brothers decided to give it a try. Working with
son-in-law William T. Orr, they created Cheyenne, which would be the
prototype for many TV Westerns for years to come.
Cheyenne Bodie was a big, handsome,
easygoing, likable drifter with a strict moral code. As an infant, his settler family
had been killed in a raid by a Cheyenne war party, but they raised him as one
of their own, and in his teens, he decided to try white society. Clint Walker,
who played him, had been a bit of a drifter himself, with no life plans,
certainly no intention of becoming an actor. He was working as a security guard
at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas when Van Johnson offered to introduce him to
an agent. Walker was cast first as a Sardinian Captain in DeMille’s The Ten
Commandments, but before the film even came out, Warner had this actor with
no credits and no experience carrying a new series entirely on his own broad
shoulders. It’s astonishing how good Walker was: he truly seemed born to play
Cheyenne Bodie.
If the Cheyenne shows look a
little more polished and movie-like than many of the other Westerns of the era,
there were several good reasons why. For one thing, while other series were
weekly, Cheyenne rotated with several other shows each month, thus
having more time for production. Starting in the 1950s, Gunsmoke averaged
49 episodes a season, Wagon Train did 39, but Cheyenne averaged
13 to 18. Also, Warner Brothers had been making Westerns since 1923, and had a
tremendous backlog of action footage that they could build stories around. They
remade at least a half-dozen movies as episodes in their first season. For the
first episode, Mountain Forest, Walker’s clothes had to match Errol
Flynn’s wardrobe in his best Western, Rocky Mountain, because so much
footage from the film is seamlessly incorporated. The amount of money saved
this way was prodigious. Orr bragged to movie producer Saul David that the
shows were so inexpensive that they were in profit after the first rerun.
Color television rang the death
knell for Warner Brothers Western television. While Bonanza started in
color, and other long-run hits like Gunsmoke and Wagon Train
eventually went to color, the Warner Westerns couldn’t. Just like Cheyenne did,
Maverick, Bronco, Sugarfoot and the rest relied on that stock footage.
There simply wasn’t the backlog of color Western movies to build the TV shows
on, so they were all eventually cancelled.
The Cheyenne shows hold up
very well, often seeming more like small movies than their contemporaries, and
their guest casts are full of stars, some at the end of their careers, and
others at the start. The Blu-Ray transfers look terrific.
HERE’S MY OCTOBER APPEARANCE ON ‘RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER'
With hosts Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim
Bell, and Scott F. Smith, author of the Corrigan Brothers book series,
featuring the newest volume, Play For Blood. HERE is the link.
It features my article, Citizen James,
where I take a look at some of the more unusual film portrayals of Jesse James
and his friend and killer, Bob Ford!
And please keep your eyes out for
my first piece for the Tombstone Epitaph in their November issue! It about the
new Western, Last Train To Fortune, starring Malcolm McDowall and James Paxton,
son of Bill Paxton. You can imagine how excited I am to be writing for the publication
that the Earps and McLaurys read with their breakfast!
And that’s a wrap!
All Original Contents Copyright
October 2026 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
Not to be used for A.I. training!
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