Film Review: BAD BLOOD: THE HATFIELDS & MCCOYS
Starting in the midst of a nameless Civil War battle, where
we meet our first McCoy, Fred Olen Ray’s BAD BLOOD: THE HATFIELDS & MCCOYS
establishes a cold ‘blue’ look that could have come from Ingmar Bergman’s
cinematographer, Sven Nyquist (actually it’s the work of Ray’s frequent
collaborator Theo Angell). It’s a blue,
cold, sad world we enter, and when the smoke clears we see the humanity of
Union soldier Asa McCoy (Scott Thomas Reynolds), who knows his friend can’t
survive his wounds, but stays with him, speaking encouragement until his friend
passes. When Asa leaves the sea of
battlefield corpses for home, you have some hope that he’ll make a new
life.
But the territories of the Hatfields and the McCoys flank
Tug Fork, part of Big Sandy River,
with the McCoys on the Kentucky side and the
Hatfields in West Virginia. When Asa McCoy cuts through the West Virginia side in a
hurry to get home, he runs into a group of Hatfields. They’re members of the Logan Wildcats, a
Confederate splinter group lead by Uncle Jim Vance (Tim Abell), and they hate
both the Union and the McCoys. Asa’s fate is sealed.
From there the story unfolds, with aspects of both
Shakespearean tragedy and an impending car crash you can’t steer away
from. As the patriarchs who dread what
is coming but can see no other way, Perry King as Ran’l McCoy and Jeff Fahey as
Devil Anse Hatfield posses the gravitas
to hold the screen with a quiet, unblinking stare. As the deadly feud accelerates, their wives,
Lisa Rotondi as Sarah McCoy and Priscilla Barnes as Vicey Hatfield, in a world
where women have respect but not power, must look on helplessly as their
menfolk dwindle. The pain in Priscilla
Barnes’ face is so deep and raw that it hurts to see it.
And because it wouldn’t be a truly Shakespearean tragedy
without star-crossed lovers, there is the forbidden romance of Johnse Hatfield
and Rosanna McCoy, played by Errol Flynn’s grandson Sean Flynn, and Australian
beauty Kassandra Clementi.
BAD BLOOD: THE HATFIELDS & MCCOYS draws you in with a
fascinating, largely true story, solid direction, and plenty of realistic,
motivated gunplay.
While the almost gothic feud captured world attention, and
has frequently been portrayed on film, incredibly, it has usually been played
for laughs, by Abbott and Costello, the Bowery Boys, or in cartoons, with
barefoot, bearded hillbillies taking potshots at each other. Writer-director Fred Olen Ray’s script treats
them as rural folks, but not as backwoods trash. They are people of humanity and dignity, and
you care what happens to them. It would
be easy to make Uncle Jim Vance a goggle-eyed caricature of a homicidal
redneck, but though he is the instigator and catalyst for all of the trouble,
Tim Abell, in one of my favorite performances, plays with a restraint that
makes you believe otherwise reasonable men would follow him.
Perry King
Also turning in strong performances are Christian Slater as
Kentucky Governor Thomas Bramlette who is trying settle the feud; Ted Monte as
the tremendously undersupplied and outgunned government agent whom Bramlette
sends into the field; and Jerry Lacy as Union General Burbridge, who would like
nothing better than to use the feud as an excuse to declare martial law and
take control of the state. It’s a
particular treat to watch Lacy, who first made his mark on Broadway in 1969,
playing the spirit of Humphrey Bogart in Woody Allen’s PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM. He reprised the role in the film, and in the
1970s was the priest on DARK SHADOWS. He
makes a perfect Civil War general, and is soon to be starring in the title role
of the sinister DOCTOR MABUSE.
Finding no convincing California
locations, director Ray took his cast and crew to the place where the events
took place, Kentucky,
in the dead of winter, and the authenticity is as palpable as the cold. Among the period structures used in the film
were the Stephen Foster house, and the childhood home of Abraham Lincoln. It’s not a surprise that Ray would go to that
trouble, in spite of the limited budget, because this is clearly a heartfelt project, first to Ray, then to the cast and
crew. Ray’s script and direction drew
poignant and moving performances from a cast made up of fine actors who have
turned in many fine performances before, but who have, in many cases, not had
such powerful material to work with in a long time. They did the Hatfields and the McCoys, and
themselves, proud.
INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR FRED OLEN RAY
Fred Olen Ray
In the interim, Fred has directed sixteen more movies
(!). Among them are SUPER SHARK,
toplining John Schneider, and TURBULENT SKIES, starring Casper Van Dien, Brad
Dourif and Nicole Eggert. Many of the
rest have the word ‘bikini’ somewhere in their title – BIKINI FRANKENSTEIN,
BIKINI JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF EROS – and are made for late-night screenings on
Showtime. He’s also produced JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK (the trailer looks hysterical),
which will be premiering on Syfy this summer.
I spoke to him the Monday after the BAD BLOOD: THE HATFIELDS &
MCCOYS screening, and he was deep into a rewrite of a Christmas movie for TV. It’s not his first
Christmas movie; “I like Christmas as much as the next guy.” I asked him if he was aware of the Hatfield
& McCoy feud as a kid.
FRED: Oh, sure. They
were the basis of so many cartoons and gags.
Abbott and Costello did SHE’LL BE COMIN’ ‘ROUND THE MOUNTAIN. And the Bowery Boys did FEUDIN’ FOOLS, which
laid into that territory for comic relief.
And I’m from West Virginia;
I looked really hard to see if I was in that Hatfield McCoy family tree, but I
did not fall into that territory.
HENRY: How did this
project come about?
FRED: They came to
me. I’d made AMERICAN BANDITS for the
same company, Aro Entertainment, and they came to me and said there was a lot
of interest right now in the Hatfields and McCoys, and could I write and make a
picture, for a price, that dealt with that subject matter. And that’s kind of all they said. I went back and I looked up the history, and
what surprised me was how many years this feud went on, and how years would go
by between incidents. There would be
years, sometimes between any troubles between these people. So I looked at it, and all of the incidents
were different, so the trick was to see if I could squeeze (the timeline) down
to where one of them triggered the next one and triggered the next one. And make a story out of it. And that’s what I did.
HENRY: This film seems to carry a sense of urgency. How long was it from the beginning of the
project to rolling camera?
FRED: I can’t exactly remember. I wrote the script while we were preparing to
shoot JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK. The
production was going on, and I was sitting in the room where all the people
were making telephone calls, and all these meetings were going on all around
me, and I’m standing there, trying to write.
I kind of wondered if anybody realized that I was trying to do creative
writing. Not that they didn’t have their
own jobs to do; they did. My problem is
that I don’t work well on a laptop, and I had to use the bigger computer that
was in that room. But it was funny that
that script came out of a room where just all kinds of noise and racket were
going on all the time. That was probably
back in September last year.
HENRY: You’ve
assembled a very impressive cast. How
did you go about casting this picture?
FRED: Well, we knew
we were going to go to Kentucky. Initially it was meant to be here (in Southern California), but I just could not see how we
could do that and want to put my name on it.
So I convinced them to let me go to Kentucky, which was a stretch, because we
normally don’t do things like that. And
one of the things we agreed we would do is fill out the cast with people we
already knew. People we knew that could
go there in the middle of December, in the freezing cold, that could stand
there and not lose it. Who wouldn’t pull
the old, ‘I’m not coming out.’ We
grabbed a handful of the actors that we liked, that we knew were good
horsemen. Dylan Vox and Scott Reynolds,
Tim Abell, Ted Monte. And Ted’s married
to Priscilla (Barnes), so we approached Priscilla, figured we could put them
both in the same hotel room.
(laughs) And Perry King came to
mind for McCoy. I hadn’t worked with
Perry before, but I knew him because he was a friend of Ted and Priscilla, and
we’d had dinners together. So I sent him
the script; when I sent people the script, I got a lot of good responses. Actors liked the script. Perry really loved it, and he was an
excellent horseman as well. So that all
worked out pretty good. Jeff Fahey was
brought in by (producers) Jeff Schenck and Barry Barnholtz – they’re normally
involved in casting at the very top tier.
They basically tell me who the leads are going to be; it’s not something that I normally have a lot
to say in. He was an excellent choice,
to my mind. I thought he was just
great. There was so much going on, with
him seemingly doing so little. He could just
sit in a scene and not say anything, and it would just speak volumes.
HENRY: I thought Jeff
Fahey and Perry King as the two patriarchs brought the film such gravitas.
FRED: Each one of
them approached their role so differently.
That’s what I liked, is that the two families were not cookie-cutter
copies of each other. We didn’t play
them off as ignorant, slouching hillbillies.
And we were lucky. We landed a
wardrobe lady in Kentucky
who specialized in that period, and we were able to get the wardrobe together
that was very authentic. Because a lot
of times I would look at a color or a pattern of a paisley vest, and I would
say, are you sure this is authentic? And
she would say yes, this is just right.
And we found a guy there for the art department. These were not really film people, they were
re-enactor type people, but they had
everything we needed, and we had to work with them, so they could understand
how films were made, and what was expected of people on a day-to-day
basis. They weren’t really knowledgeable
about that, but they knew everything else, they knew historically what should
be there and what shouldn’t be there.
Ted Monte
HENRY: Speaking of
re-enactors, you open with a Civil War sequence, which was very exciting. How did you like filming a Civil War battle?
FRED: Well, I’ve
always wanted to do that. I’m a member
of Sons of Confederate Veterans, and I’m a member of Sons of Union Veterans of
the Civil War. So I had a lot of family
involved, mostly Confederate, though. My
great, great grandfather was a Reb, and three of my uncles, one of them’s
buried in Arlington
National Cemetery;
he was killed in the Battle of Williamsburg.
So I’ve always been very interested in that, and I went to
re-enactments. And there is
(re-enactment) footage available, but the problem with that is the cameras are
where the audience is, and that’s a long, long way away.
HENRY: I go to
re-enactments, and you’re mostly facing the soldiers’ backs.
FRED: Yeah. You can’t get close to them; you can’t
control the background, the telephone lines and all that stuff. So I said, you know, we need to do a sequence
where we actually get right in the middle, right up front, and have them
stop. And that was the thing we had to
do, we had to tell these kids, listen, when this starts, you’ve got to be ready
to move, and when I yell ‘Cut’, you’ve got to stop. You can’t just go at it for twenty or thirty
minutes; we have to get it. So we worked
with those guys, and a fellow named Doug Key. He was the King of the Re-enactors,
organizing them, and he had a big farm, with no telephone poles, no power lines
– no nothing. They had horses, they had
cannons, they had everything you could possibly imagine. And it couldn’t have been done without those
people. And a lot of the re-enactors,
that was their clothes that the re-enactors were wearing. Our woman rented the re-enactors clothes
and organized them to the different actors.
It was a fun thing to do; it was a fun sequence. I know when they first open the script and it
says, ‘bodies fly and men die, they thought, ‘What are you thinking?’ (laughs) Well, I got a plan.
Jeff Fahey
HENRY: Is it a lot
better to do that kind of scene with re-enactors, rather than regular extras,
where you give them a gun and tell them what to do?
FRED: I would think
so, because I didn’t have to say too much.
I’d say, what’s going to happen here?
And they’d say, we all march up in line, we stop, this guy calls it out,
and we fire. Then they all reload – and
we just said okay, great! And we just
kind of filmed everybody. And then we
said we’ve got to get people off the horses, get them on the ground. Get the horses circling around, have
hand-to-hand (fighting) here, and Scott, of course, had to take a shot to the
head. And of course we did the scenes
where everybody’s kind of laying around the battlefield; had to keep moving
them around to keep the bodies in the shot.
I was like a kid in a candy-store, a candy-store that just happened to
be 14 degrees! (laughs)
HENRY: You picked a
mighty cold time to do it, and I’ve got to say it was very effective, just
seeing the soldiers on the battlefield, talking, and just seeing the steam from
their breath.
FRED: That’s how I
kind of sold it to the actors, that we knew it was going to be pretty
miserable, but just think what it’s going to look like. And in real life, the big shoot-out
house-burning came on New Years Eve. So
it really worked out great, beyond the fact that we didn’t acknowledge
Christmas at any point in the story. It
worked out great that we actually did film it at about the same time (of year)
that, all of these events happened.
HENRY: It must have
felt very real to people.
FRED: It did, and it was very cold. And unfortunately I was wearing a lot more
than the actors could at times, but then again I had to stand out there at five
a.m., before they had to. The other
thing that should be noted here. All
those guns were black-powder guns. There
were no blanks used in this movie. Every
one of those guns was loaded just the way it was, (laughs) in the same timely
fashion – and it wasn’t easy in 1865.
That’s why, when the fight happened, Perry King got one rifle shot, and
the other kid got one rifle shot, and then they had to go to their sidearms
because there was no time for anyone to reload.
That’s why they had so many guns on them, because all of these guns had
to be loaded by hand, one chamber at a time.
They’ve got them modified now, for blanks, for movies, but none of these
were modified. These were the real deal,
and you had to load each one of them with black powder by hand. And there were a lot of misfires. There’s one in the film; I don’t think
anybody sees it, but the kid, after he throws the torch at the roof, he fires
one shot, and as he steps back, the other cylinders in the gun ignite, and it
just becomes a Roman candle in his hand, shoots out flames and sparks as he
runs out of the scene – the whole gun exploded in his hand. Nobody got hurt.
HENRY: I understand
you used some historical locations.
FRED: Yes, that was
the big thing in going to Kentucky. We location scouted, and we found the Lincoln
Homestead, which was several cabins, and Mordecai Lincoln’s house was just down
the road from it. The park was closed
for the winter months, and they were so friendly, they really just kind of
handed us the keys to the door and said, here you go. We said we would leave it in better condition
than we found it, which I believe we did.
And right across from the hotel where we were staying was the Stephen
Foster home, which was a big mansion that was completely tricked out with all
the furnishings. We went over there, and
same thing: they actually came up to us during the shoot and thanked us for
filming there; no, we’d like to thank you!
It was great, and they had two ladies who lead tours, who were dressed
(in period), and we said, would you like to be in the movie? They said sure, so we had them open the door
and let Ted in. We shot between 4th
grade elementary school tours. That was
our last day in Kentucky.
HENRY: I noticed
there were credits for a Los Angeles crew, so
you shot something in L.A. Was that the Christian Slater scenes?
FRED: The Christian
Slater – Jerry Lacy scenes were all shot here.
We were going to shoot at Stephen Foster, for the Governor, but at that
point, no one had been cast. So we’re
right across from the hotel, we’ve got the equipment, I said guys, we’ve got
this place, we’ve got to shoot it. We
can’t leave here and not shoot this. So
we shot the exteriors, we shot Ted coming up the walk and inside. And then everything where Ted walks in with
Jerry Lacy and Christian Slater, was shot in Newbury Park.
HENRY: I hadn’t seen
Jerry Lacy in a few years.
FRED: He was in
SUPERSHARK for me. I had met him years
ago, back in the 80s, but we’d never worked together. Then I saw his picture when we were casting,
and I said call that guy up; see if he’ll take this part. And he did, and we sort of became
friendly. I loved Jerry Lacy on DARK
SHADOWS; he was a star. Having him in
my show was very exciting. He was
perfect, too. That first scene where he
comes in to Christian Slater and tells him that he’s taking over the military
operations of the state; that could have been in GETTYSBURG.
I don’t know of any of those big Civil War movies that would have shot
that any differently. I mean, not to be
talking about our own work, but when I look at that scene, it really looks like
it could have been from anybody’s movie.
And his face is great – he almost looked like Robert E. Lee. He could probably play Lee.
HENRY: I particularly
liked Tim Abell in this.
Tim Abell
FRED: Yes, Tim was in
my head all the time when I wrote it. I
was always thinking that he would play that role.
HENRY: What kind of
cameras did you shoot it with?
FRED: I shot it with
the SONY CineAlta. That’s the same
camera I used on AMERICAN BANDITS and SUPER SHARK, TURBULENT SKY and a bunch of
the others.
HENRY: Do you miss
35mm film?
FRED: You know, on
and off we still shoot in 35 occasionally.
It depends on the delivery requirements of the show. But to me, the 35 cameras have gotten so
sharp anyway, mastering them to HD tape; they were starting to pick up that
sharp-sharp-sharpness that people talk about with HD. So I’m really not sure if HD has come up to
the level of film, or film is up to the level of HD. I can hardly tell them apart now, when I
watch something on television. The HD
certainly makes the project go faster, gives you more time and more takes, and
you don’t have to call ‘cut!’ so quickly.
The whole process, I think, is improved, and I like the picture
quality. We’re way ahead of where we
were in film. If you want to make
something look colder or warmer, it’s instantaneous now. Color-timing that 35mm negative used to be a
real chore. Now you can just sit there
and adjust it while you watch it. You
can sign off in minutes now, instead of months.
Lisa Rotondi
HENRY: Speaking of
cool and warm images, it’s a really cold looking film; you’ve got a chill
through the whole thing.
FRED: Theo Angell,
and I have been working together for a long time. That whole business where Tim Abell is
chasing the kids, and they’re hiding behind the old, abandoned fireplace. There was a lack of color, and Theo, the D.P.
said, you know, if you’re not wearing red or yellow, it’s almost monochromatic
out here. Everything is grey; it’s
almost like a black and white movie. And
I went with the cool look because it was so cold, and I wanted to try to
transmit that.
HENRY: What’s next
for you?
FRED: Well, I just
finished another airplane-crash type movie with Tia Carrere. And I’m doing the Christmas show for
television. It’s kind of like a
Christmas movie mixed with GROUNDHOG DAY, where a girl has to keep reliving her
girlfriend’s wedding over and over and over again until she works out some
personal problems. I’m re-writing it
right now.
HENRY: Are there any
other Westerns on the horizon?
FRED: I had mapped
out another one for somebody, but then everyone moved on to another project,
but there’s a good chance that may come back.
Perry King tells me he has this incredible spread up north near Donner Pass, they have all these horses; everything’s as
it was in the 1800s. Maybe I’ll fly up
there and take a look. There doesn’t
appear to be a huge market overseas for Westerns; I don’t know why. So you have really to be able to make your
money here domestically.
HENRY: Does the
proliferation of Redbox machines at supermarkets make much of a difference in
the home video market?
FRED: Well, with the
brick and mortar type stores like Blockbuster and Tower Records going by the
by, I think it’s very difficult other than Netflix for people to actually rent
a DVD. So anything that makes renting a
DVD more accessible to the average guy is probably a good thing for the
business. What’s eventually going to
happen – what’s happening now – is the same day that the DVD comes out, you can
also go on Amazon.com and pay a lesser price, and download and watch it on your
television that very day. I think that’s
going to continue to grow.
HENRY: Anything I
should have known to ask but didn’t?
FRED: Well, the main
thing for me is I was glad to be able to write my own script, because I keep
getting scripts, like this Christmas one I’m rewriting. People keep telling me, I want to do this, I
want to make this kind of film, and at the end of the day I understand what
you’re selling. But it has to be about something. And most of the scripts that we work with,
with our budgets, we’re really not able to invest a lot of money into huge
action pieces. The stories have to be
about people and their problems, and what they want. I think people gets more involved in a story,
because it’s about people, than they do in a film where there’s just gigantic
eruptions in the street, things are bursting from the ground… You get these big actions scenes, and they’re
very impressive, but at the same time you start to hear people talking during
the movie. You know, you could hear a
pin drop in that theater yesterday. And
I think it’s because people were really following what was going on. It wasn’t just gigantic visual stimulus,
where you sit there and you’re in awe of how much is exploding. Not that those aren’t the big blockbuster
movies – they are. But when you have a
limited budget, I think you’d better have a good story.
TO SAVE ‘NATIONAL DAY OF THE COWBOY’ ACT TONIGHT!
The California State Assembly will be voting on SCR 70, the
bill to make the National Day of the Cowboy a permanent day of celebration in California, on Thursday
morning, May 17th. To the
great surprise of everyone involved, there is an organized assault against the
bill by one Eric Mills, an anti-rodeo activist.
He has proposed re-writing the language of the bill to remove all
references to the word ‘cowboy’, equating the meaning of the word ‘cowboy’ with
cruelty to animals. He actually
suggested changing it to ‘The National Day of the Rancher.’
Certainly Mr. Mills has the right to oppose rodeos if he
thinks they are cruel, but rodeos are not what the National Day of the Cowboy
is about. In Executive Director Bethany
Braley’s words, “This resolution has always been
about ALL who are part of heritage preservation and cowboy culture. It's about
the music, the art, the artisans, the literature, the cowboys, the cowgirls,
poetry, ranching, land and animal stewardship, historic events, cowboy
organizations, the cowboy's horse, landmarks, family stories, ferriers,
saddlemakers, those who simply 'love' cowboys, and our mythical cowboy too.”
“What we need is for folks to
write to the Assembly Rules committee chair and copy all the Rules Committee
members. Their letters should state that they want the NDOC Resolution passed
and why they support the NDOC resolution as it stands and just as it passed in
the CA Senate in March. They should say they do not support any of Mr.
Mills changes.”
The hearing on Mr. Mills’
proposals will be Tuesday, tomorrow morning.
If you’d like to voice your support for preserving SCR 70 as-is, please
fax or email Assembly Rules Committee Chair Nancy Skinner and cc
the other members of the committee, Jim Silva -- Vice Chair, Luis A. Alejo,
Betsy Butler, Mike Davis, Tom Donnelly, Curt Hagman, Ben Huseo, Steve Knight,
Das Williams, Tony Mendoza – Democrat Alternate, Jim Neilson – Republican
Alternate.
As Anna McCabe will be doing
the analysis, she said you can send the letters directly to her at
anna.mccabe@asm.ca.gov,
or fax: 916-319-2800.
'YELLOW ROCK' TO
BE DISTRIBUTED BY SCREEN MEDIA FILMS!
The Michael
Biehn, James Russo, Lenore Andriel starrer the Round-up has been championing
since they day they rolled camera, has been acquired for distribution by SCREEN
MEDIA for an August release. Suzanne Blech, president of Screen Media Films
said, “We are thrilled to work with Director Nick Vallelonga, and Producers
Lenore Andriel and Steve Doucette, to bring this prestigious independent
Western to the marketplace. Winning the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding
Theatrical Motion Picture, Screenplay, Director, and Lead Actors is a wonderful
endorsement telling the world what a fantastic film this is.”
Screen Media acquires the rights to high quality,
independent feature films for the US
and Canada.
Recent releases include “La Mission,” starring Benjamin Bratt; “The City of
Your Final Destination,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney; “Lymelife,”
starring Alec Baldwin, Emma Roberts and Cynthia Nixon and “The Private Lives of
Pippa Lee” starring Robin Wright and Keanu Reeves.
DIRECTV ADDS
ME-TV TO SCHEDULE!
Until recently
only available by antenna, ME-TV, at CH. 20, features a great TV western
line-up, including THE REBEL; BRANDED; GUNS OF WILL SONNET; GUNSMOKE, BONANZA;
BIG VALLEY; WILD, WILD WEST and THE RIFLEMAN!
Having recently
interviewed A.J. Fenady (part one HERE ,
part two HERE),
who created and produced THE REBEL, and produced BRANDED, I called him and
asked how he felt about his series running again, and back-to-back. He was happy to have them on, but, “Those
(insert expletive) took the REBEL theme off and play some generic music over
the credits! The words in the song tell
the story, but they don’t want to pay for the rights to use it!”
TV WESTERNS
ALL OVER THE DIAL!
More and more,
classic TV Westerns are available all over the TV universe, but they tend to be
on small networks that are easy to miss. Of course, ENCORE WESTERNS
is the best continuous source of such programming, and has been for years.
Currently they run LAWMAN, WAGON TRAIN, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, LAREDO, RAWHIDE,
GUNSMOKE, THE REBEL, and MARSHALL
DILLON, which is the
syndication title for the original half-hour GUNSMOKE.
RFD-TV is currently showing THE
ROY ROGERS SHOW, first at
9:30 a.m. Sunday, Pacific Time, then repeated several times a
week. They show a Roy
feature every Tuesday as well, with repeats -- check your local listings.
INSP-TVshows THE BIG VALLEY Monday through Saturday,LITTLE HOUSE ON THE
PRAIRIE seven days a week, DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMANon
weekdays, and BONANZA on Saturdays.
WHT runs DANIEL BOONE on weekdays from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.,
Pacific Time, but they’ve just stopped showing BAT MASTERSON.
They often show western films on the weekend, but the schedule is sporadic.
TVLAND has dropped GUNSMOKE
after all these years, but still shows four episodes of BONANZA
every weekday.
For those of you
who watch TV with an antenna, there are at least a couple of channels that
exist between the standard numbers – largely unavailable on cable or satellite
systems – that provide Western fare. ANTENNA TV is currently
running RIN TIN TIN, HERE COME THE BRIDES, and IRON
HORSE.
THE AUTRY NATIONAL
CENTER
Built by cowboy actor, singer,
baseball and TV entrepeneur Gene Autry, and designed by the
Disney Imagineering team, the Autry is a world-class museum housing a
fascinating collection of items related to the fact, fiction, film, history and
art of the American West. In addition to their permenant galleries (to which
new items are frequently added), they have temporary shows. The Autry has many
special programs every week -- sometimes several in a day. To check their daily
calendar, CLICK HERE. And they always have gold panning for kids
every weekend. For directions, hours, admission prices, and all other
information, CLICK
HERE.
HOLLYWOOD HERITAGEMUSEUM
Across the street from the Hollywood
Bowl, this building, once the headquarters of Lasky-Famous
Players (later Paramount Pictures) was the original DeMille
Barn, where Cecil B. DeMille made the first Hollywood western, The Squaw Man. They
have a permanent display of movie props, documents and other items related to
early, especially silent, film production. They also have occasional special
programs. 2100 Highland Ave.,L.A. CA 323-874-2276.
Thursday – Sunday 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. $5 for adults, $3 for senior, $1 for
children.
WELLS FARGO HISTORY MUSEUM
This small but entertaining
museum gives a detailed history of Wells Fargo when the name suggested
stage-coaches rather than ATMS. There’s a historically accurate reproduction of
an agent’s office, an original Concord Coach, and other historical displays.
Open Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. Admission is free.
213-253-7166. 333 S. Grand Street,
L.A. CA.
That's all for now, folks. There's some trouble about the National Day of the Cowboy bill in the California Legislature, and if I find out more on Monday, I'll update the Round-up.
For now, Happy Trails!
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright May 2012 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved
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