MY INTERVIEW WITH JAMES DRURY, PLUS DVD REVIEWS AND ON-LINE SCREENINGS!

MY INTERVIEW WITH JAMES DRURY 

By Henry C. Parke

Conducted Wednesday, January 6^th, 2016

“People say, are you retired?  I tell them no, I’m not retired; I just can’t get a job.  That’s really the truth.  I would go to work tomorrow if somebody had a job for me. “

We lost James Drury on April 6^th. He was 85. His wife of forty years, Carl Ann Head, had died this past August. Drury so epitomized the character of The Virginian, the decent, savvy, supremely competent, private man, that it’s hard to compare him to anyone on television except -for James Arness as Matt Dillon.  If you can play someone that well for 249 90-minute episodes, you’re doing something right.

Over the years I’d been to a number of events that he’d attended, and had tried to set up an interview. Finally, in January of 2016, I succeeded. We both had gone to New York University, which was interesting in his case because James Drury didn’t actually graduate from high school.

JAMES DRURY: I had been expelled from high school on the last day of the year, in fact, the day before graduation.  I hollered in an assembly – that was the extent of my crime.  They had the guys come and get me out of the assembly and take me outside, and they told me I was never going to graduate from University High School; they were going to keep my diploma in a safe, and I might be able to get it in ten years or something.  My father did go back and get it a long time later; we had a ceremony when we got it out. 

HENRY PARKE: From there you went to New York University. I guess it helped that your father was a Professor there.

JAMES DRURY: Of Marketing and Advertising.  My dad said, well, you can go to NYU. 

HENRY PARKE: Where you didn’t study Marketing and Advertising, but Drama.

JAMES DRURY:  They were teaching the classics – Shakespeare and Shaw and Barrie; all the great playwrights. I worked in the classics for three years.  I had been working in summer stock for two years, and at the end of my junior year I took a vacation, out to California to see my mother for a couple of weeks. I had done an audition for a talent scout at Loew’s Incorporated, which was M.G.M., in New York, for a man named Dudley Wilkinson.  And I didn’t think he was very interested, because he was having his shoes shined throughout the entire audition.  But apparently, he called M.G.M. on the coast, and they called me when I got to my mother’s house, and said come in, we want to meet with you.  That next day they signed me to a contract for seven years: I thought this was just great.  Of course, after the first year they dropped me.  (laughs) Then I signed a seven-year contract with 20^th Century Fox, and at the end of two years they dropped me.  At M.G.M. I did seven pictures, and I had about twelve lines altogether, just tiny little bit parts.  When I got to Fox, I played Elvis Presley’s brother in LOVE ME TENDER, Pat Boone’s brother in BERNADINE.  Then I got a good role as a cavalry lieutenant in THE LAST WAGON, with Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr and Nick Adams.  It was really a classic Western, and did very well.  (Writer/Director) Delmer Daves was particularly great with cavalry stuff, because he knew all about how the cavalry was supposed to work and form, so we truly looked like the American cavalry of that time.  I was just thrilled with that, but then they dropped me. 

So I was on the open market. I did three or four RAWHIDES, I did five of the GUNSMOKES, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, I did TRACKDOWN with Robert Culp, THE REBEL, MAN WITHOUT A GUN, with Rex Reason.

HENRY PARKE: That’s a lot of Westerns.

JAMES DRURY: I got cast in a lot of Westerns because I had a western background.  I had my own horse from the time I was about twelve years old, and been raised around horses and cattle, so I had skills that a lot of other guys didn’t have.  And when I moved to Texas, I really became a horseman.  I had a lot of great professional trainers who were delighted to work with me, and let me ride their million-dollar horses, and I got to the point where I consider myself a horseman now.  And I went through the dressage and all the other disciplines, and started winning cutting horse competitions and reining horse competitions and playing polo and jumping.

HENRY PARKE: When did you move to Texas?

JAMES DRURY: I met a lady, and about two days later I said, where do you want to live?  And she said I live in Houston.  That was the end of that discussion, and we’re still on our honeymoon.

HENRY PARKE: What year was that?

JAMES DRURY: We married in 1979; actually we were together for about four years before that, so around 1975.  We’re just together like two halves of a pair of scissors.  And we’re still together and very happy. 

HENRY PARKE: Back when you were doing episodic TV, before THE VIRGINIAN, you played a lot of villains.  Which is more fun?  Playing a hero like The Virginian, or bad guys?

JAMES DRURY: Well, the villains in a piece are usually the more complex characters, and they’re usually more fun to put together, because you don’t have any restrictions on your social behavior – a villain can do anything he wants to do.  So I had a lot of fun playing those characters.  But it’s two sides of the same coin; because you have to have a villain, and you have a protagonist who can counterpunch the villains.   That’s what makes the drama, and I just love playing both sides of the coin.  I had a lot of fun playing the villains, and when they started getting me to play heroes, they wouldn’t let me play villains anymore.  Until many years later, I got to play a couple of villains for David Carradine, on KUNG FU – THE LEGEND CONTINUES.  I went to Canada and did a couple of those, and played some really bad guys, and had fun with those.  That was great.  I’m still anxious to play either heroes or villains, whatever people will give me a job for. 

HENRY PARKE: You’ve played a lot of George Bernard Shaw.  What were your favorite Shaw roles?

JAMES DRURY: Probably Marchbanks in Candida.  And I loved playing Don Juan in Don Juan in Hell.  I was able to do a full production of that in Dallas, right after I moved to Texas.  I’ve had lot of fun with Shaw, and I admire him so much.  It’s amazing how he had a definite socialist political agenda, but he was able write plays that appealed to everybody.  Anybody who reads Shaw will see the definite political leaning, but his characters were all everyman and everywoman, and that’s what sets him apart.  I think Shaw and Shakespeare are the greatest playwrights in the English language that have ever come along. 

HENRY PARKE: I was recently watching a movie you did before THE VIRGINIAN, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY. 

JAMES DRURY: Wonderful movie – and that was when Sam Peckinpah was just getting started.  He was just marvelous in everything he did.  And inventive – we’d sit around when we weren’t working, and watch him direct, because he came up with such great ideas for everybody.  He was a visionary.  Then he got into the vodka I guess, after a while, and became real mean and unpredictable, and I heard some bad stories about him later. But he was wonderful to work with when I worked with him, and I’d been working with him for years.  In fact, when I did that TRACKDOWN with Robert Culp, Peckinpah had written that (RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY) script, so we met at that time, and got to be friends from then on.  Originally, he had wanted Robert Culp for my part.  And Robert Culp’s agent said no, we don’t want Robert playing a bad guy, so he got me, and I was able to play the part with great gusto, and I surely did enjoy that. We got into a snow-storm up in the mountains, and then they had to use artificial snow down in the mine camp. They had fire-hoses full of soap-suds sprayed up on the side of the hill to give the illusion of snow.  That’s the definition of acting, to create the not reality, but the illusion of reality.  And that’s what’s so wonderful about the profession of acting: you have a chance to create those illusions.   If people believe you, then you have done your job.  And that’s what we all strive for.  Spencer Tracy said, “Acting is a great profession if you don’t get caught at it.”    And every time you see a performance by a man or woman, on the screen or in the theatre, where you become aware of the fact that they’re acting, they got caught acting.  And we all get caught, but you try to minimize that as much as possible.  That’s the main challenge to being an actor, but it’s a worthwhile challenge, one that good actors relish, and one that I certainly enjoy.

HENRY PARKE: You also starred in a string of films for Walt Disney. 

JAMES DRURY: I enjoyed POLLYANA, and I enjoyed the one about the circus, TOBY TYLER.  I shot that chimpanzee out of the tree, and I’ll never live that down.  People come up to me right now and say, why did you shoot that chimp?  It was a big mistake, folks; I’m real sorry about that.  I also did a couple of ELFAGO BACAs with Robert Loggia, who we just lost (in 2015).

HENRY PARKE:  Shortly before you did THE VIRGINIAN, you starred in an excellent pilot, THE YANK, which was going to be the companion show for THE REBEL.  I was surprised that it didn’t go. 

JAMES DRURY: That was the year that the networks all went from half-hour western shows to hour western shows.  And we were a half an hour.  We could have expanded it to an hour easily, but they just didn’t buy it.  And it was a little jewel of a show – it was beautifully written and directed.  I also made a half-an-hour pilot for THE VIRGINIAN, playing the Virginian, for Screen Gems, Columbia Studios.  That had been about three years before, in ’58 or ’59.  We had a good little half hour show.  The Virginian was treated far differently than he was in the show we finally wound up doing, but the characters was basically the same.  The costumes were all different – they made a southern dandy out of him.  He had a shirt with frilly cuffs and a frilly front, and was very much the southern gentleman.  Way back then in the fifties, they were afraid of too much emphasis on guns.  So they had me wear a little bitty gun.  It was a six-shooter, but it probably shot a .22 or .25 caliber slug, and I wore it on my belt, very unobtrusively.  But we still used it the same way, and I would have gone to a .45 if we had (been picked up).  But again, that didn’t sell, and we were able to do the 90-minute version.

HENRY PARKE: How did you get the role of The Virginian?

JAMES DRURY:  I had signed one more seven-year contract, with Universal Studios, and I had no assignment; they just signed me to a contract as a stock player.  And then they told me about a month later to come in and test for the role of The Virginian.  I’m sure they had that in mind all along.  But I didn’t know that when I signed the contract, or I would have asked for a lot more money.  (laughs) Anyway, they tested me for the role, and their only comment was, you’re too fat: go lose some weight.  So, I lost about ten pounds and tested again.  They said, you’re too fat: go lose some weight.  So I lost thirty pounds in thirty days.  I ate a head of lettuce every other day, I ran it off on the Los Angeles River; worked out twice a day, really concentrated on it, and I got way, way down.  I had to test three times. The third test they didn’t really make a comment at all.  They just didn’t tell me to lose any more weight.  And so I figured well, I got that part done.  And then on the Friday night before the Monday morning that we started to shoot, they informed me and Doug McClure that we had the parts of the Virginian and Trampas.  They didn’t give us any real warning at all, but of course we’d been thinking about it for quite a while – Doug had been testing, too.  We started then, and nine years later we were done.  We never got the memo.  You couldn’t do THE VIRGINIAN: it was logistically impossible.  It’s still logistically impossible, but we did it anyway.  It really did require a lot of concentration and dedication to get the thing right.  We just worked on it with everything we had, and never worried about what time it was, and we got it done.

HENRY PARKE: What was an average work-week like for you and Doug?

JAMES DRURY: You’d get there at 6:30 or seven o’clock in the morning, and usually get out of the studio by about eight or nine o’clock at night.  You’d do that five days a week. We used to work Saturdays, but it had just changed, so you had Saturday and Sunday off to recuperate and learn the next week’s script.  And I had the gift of being able to do that with great facility.  You had multiple units working all the time, to meet the air-dates.  We took eight days to make one, and we used one up every five days.   One memorable day I worked on five different episodes of THE VIRGINIAN.  I went from soundstage to soundstage to the backlot to soundstage to the backlot again.  That will really test your memory and your mettle, to try and make sure you doing the right thing at the right time in the right episode without making any mistakes.  I was able to do that, so I think I’m justifiably proud of that record, and I don’t think it will ever be matched.

HENRY PARKE: No, not when a TV season now consists of, like, nine episodes. 

JAMES DRURY: That’s right.  First couple of years I think we made thirty-three shows a year, then we made thirty, then we made twenty-six. But I don’t think we ever made less than twenty-six in all the years we were on the air, which was nine seasons, including the final season, where they changed the name to THE MEN FROM SHILOH.  Which seemed like a good idea at the time, but everybody was looking for THE VIRGINIAN, and they couldn’t find it.  And they never heard of THE MEN FROM SHILOH, so it went off the air.  It was a good idea that didn’t work.  But I was in favor of it at the time, so I have no one to blame but myself.  I don’t blame anybody; everything runs its course.

HENRY PARKE: Nine seasons is a pretty terrific run.

JAMES DRURY: Well, it was the third-longest-running western.  GUNSMOKE and BONANZA ran longer than we did, so I think that’s a pretty good record, and we’re happy with that. 

HENRY PARKE: Who were your favorite guest stars?

JAMES DRURY: That would be hard to say because every week I knew I was going down the hill and going to work with somebody wonderful.  And we had Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, George C. Scott, Robert Redford.  Harrison Ford actually played a small role in THE VIRGINIAN. Vera Miles did several of the shows.  Ralph Bellamy – the list goes on and on and on.  Suffice it to say that there were 249 guest stars, and they all had a chance to do a great, complex role, and I think that’s what people respond to.  Because we literally made a movie every week. 79 minutes and thirty seconds worth of film, which is as long as a lot of feature films today.  That’s really the key to our success then, and the fact that people have responded so well to it in reruns. 

HENRY PARKE: During the run of the show, more than one man owned Shiloh.  You’ve said that Lee J. Cobb was your favorite, but what did you think of Charles Bickford, John McIntire, and Stewart Granger?

JAMES DRURY: After Cobb we got John Dehner – which everybody forgets.  He was a great actor, I got along wonderfully with him.  He told me to quit drinking, and I told him to mind his own business.  He proved to be right; I finally did quit drinking later.  In fact I’ve been sober 35 years; but that’s the work of my wife, Carl Ann.  She told me she loved me but if I didn’t quit she was going to leave me.   And by God, that got my attention, so I was finally able to quit.  But I drank an awful lot during the show.  You never would see it in the show that I know of, but people were concerned, and then people were complaining.  You get enough complaints, you take some action.  I thought John Dehner was great, and then one day he was gone, and I think that’s when Bickford came in.  And of course, Bickford couldn’t be better – he was perfect for the role, and perfect for that position.  And he loved doing it, and died on the show.  He finished the show on a Friday night, went home, and died on Sunday morning.  He had pneumonia, and we didn’t know it.  We knew he was sick.  He insisted on staying on a cold night and finishing out his work on that show, and then he never came back.  Then we got the McIntires.  Jeanette Nolan, John McIntyre’s wife, had been one of the leading characters in the half-hour version of THE VIRGINIAN that I’d done for Screen Gems, and we’d worked in other shows, too; I’d done an ALFRED HITCHCOCK with her, so we were good friends.  And John McIntire was a big part of THE YANK, that Andy Fenady did as a spin-off of THE REBEL.  He was the old doctor.  So I was very close friends with both of them, and when they came on, it was wonderful.  We had a great run with them, and would continue with them for a long time.  Then they changed the show, and brought on Stewart Granger.  And since I have nothing nice to say about him, I won’t say anything.  Okay? 

HENRY PARKE: Okay! Do you have any favorite episodes? 

JAMES DRURY: I liked an awful lot of them; we watched one the other night that I hadn’t seen in a long time.  It was called LAST GRAVE AT SOCORRO CREEK.   It was with Kevin Coughlin, and the guy who played the villain was a good friend of mine, Steve Inhat.  But the ones that stand out, there’s two that were great little stories.  One was FELICITY’S SPRING, with Katherine Crawford.  Because of the nature of the show, I always had to have my fiancé or loved one go off and die in the 89^th minute, just before the end of the show, so I could have another girlfriend the next week.  She died of an unknown, strange disease, just before I married her.   That one, and THE MOUNTAIN OF THE SUN.

HENRY PARKE: For much of the series you had Clu Gulager as a co-star.  What was he like to work with?

JAMES DRURY: He’s wonderful.  Clu is always interesting.  He always does things that surprise you.  Every time I had a scene with him, we had sparks fly, and we created the illusion of reality.   It just pays to sit down and watch Clu and see what he’s going to do next.  And of course, Doug McClure and I became very close friends, and got closer and closer as the show went on. You do form some great friendships on shows like that, because you’ve been through the fire together.

HENRY PARKE: Was there much concern about sticking close to the novel THE VIRGINIAN?

JAMES DRURY: We went far afield from the story of THE VIRGINIAN.  The book published in 1902 by Owen Wister was the first literary western.  Before that, western stories had mostly been dime novels like.  He was truly a literary author, and a highly educated man; I think he was from Philadelphia.  Of course, he became friends with Teddy Roosevelt, and went out to Wyoming with Roosevelt on a major hunting trip, and I guess that’s when he stayed and decided to write about the Wyoming cowboy.   I always thought that elements of THE VIRGINIAN have been influential in many, many westerns.  For example, you look at the Spaghetti Westerns that Clint Eastwood did in the early days, in Italy and Spain. ‘The man with no name’ and PALE RIDER all bears a debt to THE VIRGINIAN, because that’s where the idea of the no-name cowboy came from.  I always thought that was a wonderful device, because it gives you an air of mystery that you don’t have to do anything to achieve:  it’s built into the part.  If you walk into a room and someone says behind their hand, there’s the Virginian over there, well, all of a sudden you’re mysterious.  And if you’re mysterious, it becomes interesting.  I think that’s one of the reasons Clu is so interesting is he’s mysterious.  I mean that as a compliment.  Because you don’t know what Clu’s going to do next, and that’s a mystery.  It creates definite interest.  I think that many, many westerns, THE PLAINSMAN, THE KENTUCKIAN, all of those great pictures bear a debt of gratitude to that original book by Owen Wister.  In the confines of a television show, we couldn’t really stay with the characters the way they were in the book.  Trampas and Steve would have died in the first episode.  So we made leading men out of them because no one man could do all the leading man roles.  Doug had to do his share, and Steve did his share because I couldn’t be everywhere every day.  There weren’t enough hours in the day to do it, so we just had to make it work. 

HENRY PARKE: Between all of the Western events and Veteran Charity events, I guess you spend a lot of your life on planes.

JAMES DRURY: I don’t fly; I drive everywhere.  I quit flying in ’78, simply because I don’t want to put up with people telling to take my boots off, or pat me down.   I don’t take kindly to that, and I’m likely to get into a big roaring fight, even today with anybody who tells me to do that.  It’s like touching my hat. So I stay out of airports. I just drive up the road, and nobody bothers me.  I can go anywhere I want and take my guns with me, and that’s the way it should be.

HENRY PARKE: I understand you’re a Navy veteran.

JAMES DRURY: Yes, I was given a direct commission in the Navy during the Vietnam War.   They made a Lieutenant Commander out of me, and I traveled for the Navy for public relations purposes all over the world.  It was a great experience, and I was very honored to be chosen.

HENRY PARKE: Was this after THE VIRGINIAN?

JAMES DRURY: It was during THE VIRGINIAN.  I went to Vietnam in 1966, took my own USO unit over there.  I had already been commissioned in the Navy, but I didn’t travel for the Navy, I was travelling for the USO at that time, just like a Bob Hope tour, but not as elaborate  But we played all over that country for 28 days.  From Huay in the north down to Fuqua Island off the southern tip of Vietnam.  We played for three guys in a fox-hole and fifteen thousand guys in an airbase.  I had two girl dancers, and they did two or three numbers, and I had a couple of western musicians, and we would tell some jokes, and then the girls would dance, we’d tell some more jokes, and they’d dance some more.  And we were a big hit everywhere we’d go, because most of those guys hadn’t seen an American girl in a long, long time.  That was a seminal experience as well, being over there, seeing that war up close and personal.   We traveled mainly in those de Havilland Doves, those short take-off and landing airplanes.  Those farmers would pick up their rifles and take a shot at us.  But none of them were duck-hunters, and they’d always hit us in the tail of the airplane.  We’d hear a bang, and there’d be a hole is the sheet-metal in the tail of the airplane.  But it never hurt the airplane any.  We got fired on a lot, but nothing that gave us any trouble.      

HENRY PARKE: It’s a little surprising that a New York boy should grow up to became famous as a Western icon.

JAMES DRURY: My dad was teaching at NYU, and my mother was running the family ranch in Oregon.  They’d get together in the summer time, and Christmas and Easter.  But her father, my grandfather, was the main male figure in my life growing up.  He had me shooting when I was six years old, and had me on the back of one of his Belgian plow-horses when I was two or three – that’s one of my earliest memories.  The horse’s back was so broad my legs stood straight out in both directions.  I loved the feel of it and the heat of it, and the dust, and the smell of the horse, and I wouldn’t come down all day.  He was an Oregon rancher and a dirt farmer, a great character, and a great example of a frontiersman and a pioneer.  The kind of man that won the west.  So I grew up with that, and that informed a lot of what I did, as The Virginian.  I tried to represent the working cowboy, and I’ve been told by working cowboys that I did good, so that’s also a big feather in my cap, coming from those guys.

HENRY PARKE: Growing up, were there any cowboy actors that you admired?

JAMES DRURY: Well, of course everyone admired John Wayne and Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.  I used to go to the Saturday afternoon serials and see them.  Loved them all. I admired Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott, and I got to work with them, so that was another milestone for me, in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY.  I’ve been extremely lucky.  I may be one of the luckiest men who ever lived – that’s what I take away from it.

THE VIRGINIAN airs seven days a week on INSP, and weekdays on STARZ ENCORE WESTERNS.

And here’s that pilot of THE YANK.

‘OUTLAWS’ AND ‘TRAPPED IN TIJUANA’ -- DVD REVIEWS

In 1960, NBC premiered an hour-long Western series, OUTLAWS, with the original premise of being a Western crime show that focused on the criminals, although the regulars were all lawmen. Featuring long-time Warner Brothers tough-guy Barton MacLane, of MALTESE FALCON and TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE; and Don Collier, who would become the foreman of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, and appear in a slew of feature Westerns, the show ran only two seasons, and produced only fifty episodes. Alpha Video has released a pair of episodes, and they are unusual dramas well worth watching.

In the grim but moving pilot, THIRTY A MONTH, the accidental death of a cowhand moves his fellow drovers to consider more promising lines of work, including robbery. But trail-boss Rance (Steve Forrest) has saved his wages for ten years, and is about to buy a piece of land. When his bank folds, his mind snaps, and he leads drovers Robert Culp, Warren Oates and Garry Walberg on an ill-fated train robbery.

In the series’ third episode, BEAT THE DRUM SLOWLY, drovers Vic Morrow and Dean Jones first lose their boss’ money to roulette wheel, then when they win it back, the place is robbed, their winnings are gone, and they are lured by slimy Ray Walston into a heist to get the money back. Even with just these two strong episodes, the weakness of the premise is obvious: if we’re going to spend an hour with criminals, we have to acre about them, hence the stories tend to be full of extenuating circumstances, and takes of otherwise good men forced into crime.  But these two episodes are quite good.

OUTLAWS lists for $7.98. Alpha Video/Oldies.com is currently shut down due to the Coronavirus, but when they reopen, it can be purchased HERE.

A movie which could only be embraced by Duncan Renaldo completists, TRAPPED IN TIJUANA (1932) opens with some promise. Early in the 20^th century, at a United States Fort near the Mexican border, the General’s tiny twin sons are playing when a Yaqui bandit, played exuberantly by Frank Lanning, swipes one of the boys, who is never heard from again. Jump ahead twenty years, and unless you’ve never seen any movie involving separated twins, you will be able to guess everything that happens to the two brothers, played by Duncan Renaldo, for an excruciating sixty minutes. Renaldo does as well as he can with what he’s given to work with, and there is some fun to seeing him play two roles. His co-star is lovely Edwina Booth, with whom he had starred the previous year in the M.G.M. hit TRADER HORN. It would be her last movie, after which she would be bed-ridden for five years as a result of illnesses contracted while filming TRADER HORN in Africa. It would be Renaldo's last film before being arrested and imprisoned for two years for entering the country illegally. This poverty row effort from Fanchon Royer, one of the few women to successfully produce movies in the 1930s, was based on a story idea from cowboy actor Rex Lease, who stuck to acting after this one. It’s available for $7.98 from Alpha Video/Oldies.com, once they reopen, HERE.

HAPPY EASTER!

…ONE MORE THING!

If you’re a fan of silent movies, and want to see then they way they should be seen, with a live musical accompaniment, here’s great news:  Retroformat Silent Films is joining forces with Flicker Alley, Lobster Films and Blackhawk Films to bring you a new weekly silent film simulcast, featuring live musical accompaniment by Retroformat Musical Director Cliff Retallick!  Join them by clicking the link below on Monday, April 13, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. PDT for two hilarious Charlie Chaplin short films: "The Masquerader" (1914) and "One A.M." (1916):   

https://www.facebook.com/events/150226829733946/

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Material Copyright April 2020 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

‘MEN FROM SHILOH’ REVIEW, PLUS ‘GENE AUTRY CHRISTMAS BOOK’, LONE PINE FEST!

THE MEN FROM SHILOH – A Home Video Review

The good folks at Shout Factory/Timeless Media Group have released a ‘special edition’ of THE MEN FROM SHILOH, the 9^th and final season of THE VIRGINIAN series.  The nine disk set includes all twenty-four episodes, as well as a disk of interviews.

The TV series THE VIRGINIAN was ground-breaking in many ways when it arrived on NBC in 1962.  It was the first Western series with a literary pedigree, being based, however loosely, on the Owen Wister book which many consider to be the birth of the serious Western novel.  It was the first TV series of any genre to star an actor with the stature of Lee J. Cobb, who’d created Willy Loman on Broadway in Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN, and was twice Oscar nominated for his work in ON THE WATERFRONT and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.  And while it was preceded by brilliant anthology series like PLAYHOUSE 90, which did live full-length plays on television, THE VIRGINIAN was the first series to do a feature-length, color film, single camera, largely outdoor action movie every week!  They did thirty of them that first year, and by the end of their 9^th and final season, they had produced 249 movies.  

The title character was played by James Drury, from the first to the final episode, and to a great degree the series rose and fell on his portrayal of the mysterious man who never revealed his name, or much else about himself outside of the state of his birth.  I’ve heard Drury comment that he was the original ‘man with no name,’ and it’s true; his and Eastwood’s subsequent, quietly confident, sardonic, mysterious characters have much in common.  The Virginian was the foreman of Judge Henry Garth’s (Lee J. Cobb) Shiloh Ranch, outside of Medicine Bow, Wyoming.  Doug McClure, like Drury, was there from the first episode to the last, playing the top hand after the Virginian and his best friend, Trampas – an ironic choice of name, considering that, in the novel, Trampas was the Virginian’s most despised enemy.

Many of the successful Western series up to that date had focused either on families, like BONANZA and THE RIFLEMAN, or groups of working men, like RAWHIDE.  THE VIRGINIAN wisely did both; there were plenty of men in the bunkhouse, and in the big house, Judge Garth, a widower (this is 1960s television after all), always had nieces and nephews to help raise and/or tame.  Among the ‘youngins’ who graced the series were Roberta Shore from 1962 to 1965, Diane Roter from 1965 to 1966, Sara Lane from 1966 to 1970, and Don Quine from 1966 to 1968.  There always needed to be a patriarch, and when Lee J. Cobb left after 120 episodes in 1966, he’d be replaced first by Charles Bickford, and then by WAGON TRAIN’s John McIntire.  Among the many fine actors who appeared as regulars for a few seasons as lawmen or drovers were Clu Gulager as Sheriff Emmet Ryker, Gary Clarke, Randy Boone, L.Q. Jones, and Tim Matheson. 

I had the pleasure of attending the 50^th Anniversary Celebration of THE VIRGINIAN series, and its move to the INSP Network, at the Gene Autry Center.  These links will bring you to my four-part coverage of the event, and several interviews:   PART ONE; PART TWO; PART THREE; PART FOUR.

Eight years was a terrific run, but by 1970, a lot of the world had changed.  The once-dominant Western genre was no longer TV’s favorite, at least in part as the result of an anti-violence policy at the networks that restricted how much action an episode was allowed.  WAGON TRAIN and RAWHIDE were gone for five years, THE BIG VALLEY had just ended, and HIGH CHAPARRAL would only last one more season.   GUNSMOKE, which had begun in 1955 and would run until 1975 (plus TV movies), had saved itself from extinction by refocusing its plot-lines around guest stars rather than regulars, and BONANZA had added semi-brothers David Canary and Mitch Vogel to perk things up.

(Here's the VIRGINIAN theme from season three by Percy Faith)

Plus, the freshness and youthful energy of the spaghetti westerns tended to make Western TV appear a bit staid and tired.  That’s when the powers-that-be at NBC decided to try and re-think THE VIRGINIAN (now they’d say re-brand or reinvent), and turned it into THE MEN FROM SHILOH.  Unlike any of the other Western series of the time, SHILOH took its revamping cues from Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah.  Gone was the sweeping heroic theme by Percy Faith, replaced by a new, beautiful theme by Leone’s signature composer, Ennio Morricone which was, by turns, wistful and relentless.  Gone was the familiar title sequence with each star riding on horseback towards camera. Instead there was a mix of sunrise footage, historical photos and high-contrast graphics that could have come straight out of the previous year’s THE WILD BUNCH. 

(Here's the MEN FROM SHILOH theme by Ennio Morricone)

Then there were the stars – a new patriarch in one-time big-time MGM leading man Stewart Granger; Lee Majors, fresh from THE BIG VALLEY, as Roy Tate, sporting a big, mean-looking mustache; Doug McClure, back as Trampas, sporting an even bigger mustache; and James Drury as the Virginian, sometimes sporting a gun the length of his leg!  McClure’s and Drury’s wardrobe, unchanged since 1962, were completely different.  Granger played a retired British colonel who had bought Shiloh Ranch, and was maintaining its personnel – but there would be no more nieces and nephews to clutter up the place: this was now a series strictly about men.

The bosses at NBC scored quite a coup in signing Granger.  Not only was he a talented and popular actor, although no longer a leading man, his presence would make the show more valuable in Europe.  Though the films were largely unseen in the United States, Stewart Granger had starred in two of the immensely popular German Westerns which gave birth to the spaghetti westerns.  Based on Karl May’s WINNETOU novels, Granger played the beloved character of Old Surehand.  With Granger, the series had a built-in European fan-base.

As had been the pattern of the series for some time, most episodes focused on one of the younger men, sometimes with and sometimes without Granger.  The first, THE WEST VS. COLONEL MACKENZIE, is noticeably influenced by the spaghetti western.  In the aftermath of the lynching of an accused rustler, the colonel is out to catch the culprits, and the town’s class division between the ranchers and the rabble, bordering on the divine right of kings, is distinctly European rather than American, and the filmmakers have fun with the fact that it’s an upper-class Brit who is trying to see justice done.  The second episode, THE BEST MAN, centers on Trampas, and his efforts to help a friend marry the senorita of his dreams.  As would become clear, in show after show the producers were willing to spend money for an exceptional guest cast; this one included James Farentino as the friend, and Desi Arnaz and HIGH NOON’S Katy Jurado as the bride’s parents. 

In GUN QUEST, a very well-written (by Robert Van Scoyk) and produced (by GUNSMOKE creator Norman MacDonnell) noir episode featuring the Virginian trying to prove himself innocent of murder, the cast is again staggering: CITIZEN KANE stars Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead are reunited (although, as in KANE, they have no scenes together), joined by Brandon DeWilde, Anne Francis, John Smith –late of LARAMIE, former Western leading-man Rod Cameron, and Neville Brand, whose LAREDO series was a spin-off of THE VIRGINIAN.  And when Monte Markham, as the man the Virginian has been misidentified as, shows up, he is wearing -- I kid you not -- the Virginian’s red shirt and black leather vest from the first eight seasons! 

Former VIRGINIAN regular L.Q. Jones and James

Drury in the SHILOH episode TOWN KILLER

LADY AT THE BAR, this time with Trampas accused of murder, stars Oscar winner (for MRS. MINIVER) Greer Garson as his lawyer, E.G. Marshall as the judge, twice Oscar-nominated James Whitmore as the judge’s marshal, along with Kenneth Tobey, RIFLEMAN’s Paul Fix, Ian Wolfe, and Oscar-nominated (for THE BIG SKY) Arthur Hunnicut as the assayer. 

Not that the producers never cut corners.  THE MYSTERIOUS MR. TATE, which introduced Lee Majors’ character, had a good cast, with Majors and Granger joined by Robert Webber, Dane Clark, and young and blossoming Annette O’Toole, but it takes place almost entirely on-board an interior train set.  Similarly, in WITH LOVE, BULLETS AND VALENTINES, Trampas ‘wins’ a riverboat in a poker game, and Universal must have pulled stock footage from every film they ever had with a paddle-wheel – some of the mix of different film-stocks in jarring.     

Among the many other fine actors that turn up in the series are Susan Strasberg, John Ireland, Jane Wyatt, Lew Ayres, Elizabeth Ashley, and many others. 

Lee Majors' character makes an

inauspicious entrance in

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. TATE

As with any series, some shows are better than others, but all of the MEN FROM SHILOH episodes I’ve seen are worth watching, and some are extremely good.  The changes were an attempt to invigorate the series, and not a matter of ‘jumping the shark,’ by any means.  Of course, that raises the question of why it was the last season of THE VIRGINIAN.  At least a partial explanation is suggested by James Drury in the interview disk: many fans of THE VIRGINIAN didn’t even realize that MEN FROM SHILOH was THE VIRGINIAN, so they didn’t watch it. 

Another theory also came from James Drury at the 50^th Anniversary Celebration.  When moderator Boyd Magers of Western Clippings  put the question to Drury, this was his reply:

“They gave the show a new look, and everybody kind of signed on to it.  I got myself a new horse and a longer gun.  (big laughs from the audience) From a 5 ½ inch barrel to a 7 ½ inch barrel.  Longer sideburns. Much bigger hat.  A sense of accomplishment or…a sense of entitlement – let’s put it that way.  I smoked cigars on the show.  And I just mowed down anybody with my firearms.  But the thing is, we all thought it was a good idea at the time; it was a terrible idea.  And the worst of the terrible ideas was putting Stewart Granger in the same position that Lee Cobb had occupied, that John McIntire had occupied, Charles Bickford had occupied; that John Dehner had occupied.  These were truly great western actors.  Stewart Granger came in and decided that he was going to be the big star of the show:  fired my crew, fired my Academy Award-winning cameraman, got all new people.  He pissed off everyone in the entire organization.  And he sunk the show.  So thank you, Stewart, wherever you are.”

Indeed, there is a smugness and pomposity to Granger’s character that grates on you at times.  My feeling is that after 249 movies, there wasn’t a whole lot left to say.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the shows, and one of the high points of this collection is the disk of interviews, featuring James Drury, Clu Gulager, L.Q. Jones and Roberta Shore.  They run from 20 minutes for Shore to 45 for Drury.  Each interview covers the subject’s life and career in general, and THE VIRGINIAN in particular, and the insights are often fascinating.  They’re all good, but James Drury’s is the best; in fact, it’s one of the very finest career interviews that I’ve ever watched.      

You can learn more about, or purchase, THE MEN FROM SHILOH, or many other Westerns series and movies, from Shout Factory, HERE. 

THE GENE AUTRY CHRISTMAS BOOK – Just in time for Christmas!

If you’re not a fan of Gene Autry’s Christmas music, then you either (a) hate Christmas, or (b) don’t realize how many of the best Christmas songs can be traced back to Gene.  Gathered together for the first time are twenty-five Christmas classics that Gene performed and helped popularize, each with sheet-music arranged for piano, vocal and guitar. 

Gene was inspired to write the lyrics to HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS in 1946, when he was Grand Marshal of the Santa Claus Lane Parade in Hollywood, and heard children chanting for their other favorite, just a couple of floats behind.   He had one of his greatest hits with RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER, when he sought the song out after everyone had passed on it.  Some of the most amusing songs are not that well remembered – can you sing HARDROCK, COCO AND JOE (the three little dwarfs) without checking the sheet music?  How about SANTA’S COMING IN A WHIRLYBIRD? 

Some of the included songs are available in sheet music for the first time – eight of them, including WHIRLYBIRD and THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (IN TEXAS, THAT IS) were transcribed from Gene’s recorded performances.  Published by Hal Leonard, with an introduction by Gene Autry Entertainment President Karla Buhlman, and featuring photos, including some of Gene’s own Christmas cards, this book is sure to give the musically inclined something new to play and sing around the piano at that special time of year when we all like to think we can carry a tune.  You can buy it wherever you buy your sheet music, or direct from Gene Autry Entertainment HERE.  

And even if it’s a few months early, it’s never the wrong time to hear Gene sing HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS!

25^TH ANNUAL LONE PINE FILM FESTIVAL OCT. 10-12!

Come join the stars and other fans at one of the world’s prime Western movie locations, Lone Pine, this coming weekend.  Since the 1920s, hundreds of Western movies and TV shows have been shot in and around the famed Alabama Hills.  Stars from Tom Mix to William Boyd to Gene Autry to Roy Rogers to John Wayne – the list goes on and on! 

Among the guests who will be attending are Bruce Boxleitner, stuntman and author Dean Smith, stuntman Diamond Farnsworth, Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt, THE RIFLEMAN star Johnny Crawford, Republic Western stars Peggy Stewart and Donna Martell, seven-time John Wayne co-star Ed Faulkner, THE SHOOTIST screenwriter Miles Swarthout, plus Clayton Moore’s daughter Dawn Moore, Roy and Dale’s daughter Cheryl Rogers Barnett, Randolph Scott’s daughter Sandra Tyler, and many more.

To learn about all the events and all of the movies to be screened – from THE MACCAHANS to GUNGA DIN – visit the official website HERE

And if you've never been to Lone Pine, here's an excellent featurette to show you why you shouldn't miss it!

THAT’S A WRAP!

As we near 200,000…

This weekend The Round-up surpassed 190,000 hits!  Thank you to all of you folks who keep visiting the site week after week.  We’re read in well over 90 countries these days, and we added two this week, Luxemburg and Bahrain.  And this week’s new Facebook followers are from L.A.; Running Springs, CA.; New York City; and Moscow.  It’s great to know the appeal of Western stories is still international!  Have a great week!

Much obliged,

Henry

All Original Content Copyright October 2014 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved