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

NEW FEATURE ‘BLOOD COUNTRY’AND NEW WEB-SERIES ‘C-BAR’ SHOOT UP THE SCREENS, PLUS GENE’S AUTRY’S B-DAY, NEW SHOWS ON INSP!

‘BLOOD COUNTRY’ REVIEW

Tough and elegant, set in Mississippi after the Civil War, and shot in a mix of eerie swamps and in many historical sites in that state, BLOOD COUNTRY is based on a real murder between brothers, and its spiraling aftermath for all those involved or in the vicinity. From the start, the filmmakers fill the screen with a quiet but troublingly intangible sense of menace. The troubles begin, incredibly, over the disputed possession of some cabbages, and soon a man is killed, a hearing is held, and a pair of black men who were unwilling witnesses find themselves in greater danger than the accused.

Written and directed by Ecuadorian-turned-Arizonan filmmaker Travis Mills, he and cinematographer Nicholas Fornwalt fill the screen with clever and often beautiful compositions and intriguing faces. Strong on mood, style and atmosphere, there are gaps in the story – why the cabbages? 

While the shots are beautifully composed, most scenes are shot in a single long set-up, meaning that the camera rarely gets close enough to the characters to sense what they’re thinking, and to identify with them. The only characters we are truly invested in are the two witnesses (Markeith Coleman and Aspen Kennedy Wilson), and a reluctant lawman (Cotton Yancey). Further, by having no cutaways to other angles, there is no way to pick up the pace within the scenes. There is a good deal of killing, but it is shown so obliquely that the hoped-for Western action doesn’t really start until an hour in. 

BLOOD COUNTRY, from Running Wild Films, will be in theatres October 7^th.  Here’s the trailer.

You can learn more at the official BLOOD COUNTRY site HERE.

C-BAR II – A TALE OF THE WILD WEB WEST

Mark Baugher, who’s been everything from a ferrier (horse-shoer) to a stock-broker, retired at 65 to pursue his life’s desire: move to Arizona, and write a Western novel. A college film student, Patrick Ball, liked what he read on his Kindle, and suggested they make a movie of it. After 38 days of shooting over eight months (when you’re not paying anyone, you’re at the mercy of everyone’s schedule), the movie C-BAR arrived in 2015. Baugher himself starred as Dockie, an old lawman who must go back to his outlaw roots to see justice done. (You can read my ROUND-UP review and interview with Baugher HERE. You can read my TRUE WEST B article on Indy Westerns including C-Bar HERE)

Mark and Patrick are back in action, continuing the saga, now as a web-series, and the first chapter of the new adventures is online.  Badman John Doe (Charlie LeSueur), either by bribe or muscle, has escaped en route to Yuma Prison, and Dockie and company must track him down.  Here’s the link to chapter one. 

Below is the trailer for the original C-BAR feature.

You can learn more and see more, and get Mark’s novels, at the official C-BAR site, HERE.

‘HIGH CHAPARRAL’ 50^TH ANNIVERSARY AT THE BURBANK MARRIOTT

On Friday and Saturday, September 15^th and 16^th, cast, crew, and about 150 dedicated fans of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, the beloved family Western series of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, gathered, perhaps for the last time, to honor the series, and the folks who made it. While in recent years, gatherings have celebrated anniversaries of BONANZA, THE VIRGINIAN and GUNSMOKE, the dedication of HIGH CHAPARRAL fans is unique – hundreds of them have been gathering annually for several years now in Arizona at Old Tucson, the Western movie town where the series was shot, and where the Cannon family home still stands.

Camille Mitchell, Henry Darrow, Cameron Mitchell Jr.

The hosts for the two days of fun and nostalgia and stories were the delightful couple, Kent McCray and Susan McCray. He was the production manager of the series – and for BONANZA before it – and as Michael Landon’s partner went on to produce LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN. She was the daughter of series composer Harry Sukman; she started on CHAPARRAL as a receptionist and worked her way up to casting not only the series, but HAWAII 5-0 and the Michael Landon shows.

Kent & Susan McCray at the banquet

The McCrays pulled out all the stops, not only providing the promised two elegant banquets, but hosting elaborate breakfasts and lunches as well. Among the series regulars who attended were Henry Darrow, who starred as Manolito; Don Collier who played top hand Sam Butler; and Rudy Ramos, who played Wind, the half-breed teen adopted by the Cannons in the final season. Linda Cristal had intended to come, but suffering from vision problems, sent her son Jordan Wexler. Representing deceased cast members were relatives of Frank Silvera, Rudolpho Acosta, Robert Hoy, Ruberto Contreras, and Jerry Summers. Cameron Mitchell was represented by his daughter and son, Camille Mitchell and Cameron Mitchell Jr.

Don Collier

Also present was frequent series guest Marie Gomez, who played Manolito’s girlfriend Pearlita; Bo Svenson, who guessed in the well-remembered episode TRAIL TO NEVERMORE; and representing Yaphett Koto, who couldn’t get there from Manila in time, was his lovely daughter Mirabai Kotto. Yaphett’s episode, BUFFALO SOLDIERS, is the favorite of many, including Kent McCray.

Rudy Ramos

This was not a ‘stars only’ event, with plenty of attention paid to folks whose identities are hidden, like attending stuntmen Neil Summers and David Cass, who both went on to be important stunt coordinators – Cass has directed several Western and non-Western films.  I was personally delighted to meet Jackie Hummer Fuller, who doubled for Linda Cristal, and Steve DeFrance. I hadn’t seen either of them since 1978, when they worked on the first film I wrote, SPEEDTRAP, where Jackie doubled for Tyne Daley and Steve double for Richard Jaekal. It’s a small world!

There were many fascinating panel discussions, and I had the chance to interview all of the principals – I’ll have much more soon in The Round-up, and in TRUE WEST MAGAZINE. 

INSP ADDS ‘BRANDED’ AND ‘MEN OF SHILOH’ SAT. SEPT. 30^TH!

The INSP channel, which is currently presenting the remarkable reality series THE COWBOY WAY: ALABAMA, is adding two very interesting and rarely seen series to their weekend Western line-up, BRANDED and MEN FROM SHILOH.  

Chuck Connors has his buttons torn off.

BRANDED (1965-1966) starred Chuck Connors in his follow-up to the legendary THE RIFLEMAN. He plays Jason McCord, the only survivor of the Civil War Battle of Bitter Creek. Branded (like the title) a coward, court-martialed and kicked out of the Army, he travels the West trying to escape his infamy, and to learn what really happened.  Created by Larry Cohen, it looked likely to crash and burn until producer A. J. Fenady, who had created THE REBEL with Nick Adams, was brought in to take over, and fashion some logic into the story.  Fenady remembers meeting the famously volatile Chuck Connors. "And I said, ‘Look Chuck, I just want to ask you one question.  We go into production, who’s the boss?’  He said, ‘You are.’  I said, ‘Okay, just remember one thing: you came to see me; I didn’t go to see you.’  And you know what?  Chuck was, in many ways, crazy.  But he was also intelligent.  You could sit down and talk to him.  And if he had a point of view, and you had a point of view, and you’re point of view was better, he would acknowledge that.  He’d say, ‘Alright, we’ll do it.’  I loved working with him, and I loved him." (You can read my whole interview with Fenady about BRANDED HERE.) It’s a very entertaining series, probably better for audiences right now, with their fascination with conspiracies, than it was in the 1960s.

THE VIRGINIAN, at eight seasons, had outlived most of its competition, but it couldn’t go on forever. As television Westerns had become less and less violent, in response to government pressure, the series were losing their audience to movies, especially the action-filled Spaghetti Westerns. The decision was made to reboot THE VIRGINIAN in the Sergio Leone mold. From the original show, only James Drury and Doug McClure were retained, and their wardrobe and whiskers changed considerably.  Lee Majors, fresh from THE BIG VALLEY, was added. The title was switched to THE MEN FROM SHILOH, and a new theme was composed by Euro-Western maestro Ennio Morricone.  And in the wise old man role that had started as Lee J. Cobb was movie star Stewart Granger as a retired British military officer. 

As he revealed at the VIRGINIAN 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION, James Drury and others liked the changes at the time, but in hindsight, he didn’t. “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.  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.”

Granger’s casting was in one way a savvy move – though they were rarely released in the U.S., Granger had become a big Western star in Europe, starring in a series of German Westerns based on the novels of Karl May. His presence undoubtedly made the show more saleable overseas. The series actually holds up quite well, and what probably did it in was the title change: fans simply didn’t know that THE MEN FROM SHILOH actually was THE VIRGINIAN. The new title is more suggestive, at that time, of a spy series, like THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

If you’d like to know more, HERE is a link to my review of THE MEN FROM SHILOH from when it was brought out on home video.

HAPPY 110^TH BIRTHDAY GENE AUTRY!

Friday, September 29^th, is the 110^th anniversary of the great singing cowboy Gene Autry’s birth! Drop by the Autry Museum to celebrate, and if you’re among the first 110 visitors to enter, you’ll receive a free DVD of Gene is SIOUX CITY SUE.  Even if you’re 111 or after, you’ll get a slice of birthday cake!

BOYD MAGERS ‘GATHERING OF GUNS’ SIGNING AT THE AUTRY

Come to the Autry on Saturday, September 30^th at 9:30 a.m., and enjoy a Q&A with one of the most knowledgeable people in the world of Western film & TV, and author of Western Clippings, Boyd Magers. Maxine Hansen, Executive Assistant to Mrs. Gene Autry, will be interviewing Boyd about his new book, A GATHERING OF GUNS: A HALF CENTURY OF TV WESTERNS (1949-2001). After, he’ll be signing the book at the Autry Museum Store.

BEN TURPIN IN ‘YUKON JANE’

Grapevine Video, my primary source for high quality silent Westerns, posted this very funny silent (with music and sound effects) one-reeler starring the great cross-eyed comic Ben Turpin as a lawman trying to rescue a kidnapped damsel. Back around 1980, I met a fellow who grew up in Hollywood, and drove a beautiful 1956 T-Bird he’d bought new – I wish I could remember his name, but it’s been too long. A boyhood friend of his was future movie star Frankie Darrow, and when they were kids, they’d hitchhike to and from Malibu to surf. One time, heading back, Ben Turpin gave them a lift, and when he saw that they were nervous about his crossed eyes, he took pleasure is weaving all over the road.

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright 2017 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved