VOTE FOR MOTHER(S) OF ALL WESTERNS, PLUS TARANTINO DROPS SUIT, ‘SOME GAVE ALL’ REVIEWED, ‘LONG RIDERS’ INSIGHTS!

VOTE FOR THE MOTHER(S) OF ALL WESTERNS!

Karen Grassle in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

The Round-up wants to honor the Best Moms’ of Western film and TV.  Please post your choices under comments or send an email -- and your suggestions for great ladies I’ve left out.  And please SHARE this, so we can get more voters!

FOR BEST MOTHER IN A WESTERN MOVIE, the nominees are: Maureen O’Hara in RIO GRANDE, Jean Arthur in SHANE, Jane Darwell in JESS JAMES, Katie Jurado in BROKEN LANCE, Dorothy McGuire in OLD YELLER, Cate Blanchett in THE MISSING.

Dorothy McGuire in OLD YELLER

FOR BEST MOTHER IN A WESTERN SERIES, the nominees are: Barbara Stanwyck in THE BIG VALLEY, Linda Cristal in THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, Karen Grassle in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, and Jane Seymour in DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN. 

Granted, we’d have a lot more to choose from if we were going for ‘Best Saloon Girls,’ but after all, today isn’t Miss Kitty’s birthday, it’s Mother’s Day.  And here are the Honorary Mothers Day awards:

BEST MOTHER IN A MOVIE IF SHE’D LIVED – Mildred Natwick in THE THREE GODFATHERS. 

BEST MOTHER WHO NEVER TOLD THE FATHER THAT THEY HAD A CHILD – Miss Michael Learned, who was impregnated by amnesiac Matt Dillon (not the actor Matt Dillon, but James Arness), in GUNSMOKE – THE LAST APACHE.

BEST MOTHER YOU HEARD ABOUT BUT NEVER SAW – Mark McCain’s mother in THE RIFLEMAN. 

BEST STEPMOTHER EVER, IF THE KIDS HAD LIVED – Claudia Cardinale in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

TARANTINO DROPS ‘HATEFUL 8’ LAWSUIT AGAINST GAWKER

According to Deadline: Hollywood, writer-director Quentin Tarantino has dropped his copyright infringement suit against the website Gawker, for posting his Western work-in-progress screenplay THE HATEFUL EIGHT online.  He has withdrawn his suit ‘without prejudice,’ which is legalese for saying he reserves the right to refile at a later date.

For those who haven’t been following the case, Tarantino, frustrated at how quickly his scripts have been leaked, went to great lengths to make sure this one would not be.  When one of the only three copies to leave his hand turned up on the internet, he cancelled the project, and filed suit.  As the case moved along on the docket, Tarantino decided, as a fund-raiser for the L.A. County Museum of Art, to hold an on-stage script reading of the script, which was held on April1 9^th.  You can read Andrew Ferrell’s review of the event for the Round-up HERE .

As had been hoped by many of us, the days of rehearsal reignited Tarantino’s enthusiasm for the project, and he is now engaged in writing another draft.  Apparently the largest legal hurdle Tarantino’s lawyer’s would have faced would be the fact that Gawker did not post the purloined script on their site, but rather posted a link to where it could be found on someone else’s site.  In a way it is disappointing that the case is not going forward, as it would be useful to have the law clarified.  While I cannot deny having downloaded scripts from the internet, posted by people who often had no authority to put them there, the difference is that they were scripts from completed and released movies: there were no secrets exposed.  But it’s clearly good news that Tarantino is focusing on the re-write rather than problems encountered with the first draft.

AUDIO INSIGHTS FROM ‘THE LONG RIDERS’ AT THE AUTRY

I hadn’t seen this Walter Hill-directed film on a screen since its 1980 release, and it holds up wonderfully.  The trick to this one was casting actor brothers as outlaw brothers: the Youngers are played by David, Keith and Robert Carradine; Frank and Jesse James are Stacy and James Keach; the Miller brothers are Dennis and Randy Quaid; and the dirty little coward Fords are Christopher and Nicholas Guest.  Also of note in the cast are Pamela Reed as Belle Starr, a very young James Remar as Sam Starr, and a great cameo by Harry Carey Jr. as a stagecoach driver held up by the Youngers.

As always, Curator Jeffrey Richardson’s introduction was full of information I’d never heard before.  For instance, the genesis of the project was a 1971 PBS docu-drama about the Wright brothers, which starred the Keach brothers as Orville and Wilbur.  They had such fun working together that they started looking for another project to do together.  Reasoning that they’d enjoyed the ‘Right’ brothers, they decided to play the ‘Wrong’ brothers, Frank and Jesse.  This led to the stage musical, THE BANDIT KINGS, and they decided to try and make it into a film.

The film musical never happened, but they kept trying, and came up with the idea of casting all brothers.  Potential director George Roy Hill blew it off as too gimmicky.  Then in 1975, James Keach was playing Jim McCoy in a TV movie, THE HATFIELDS AND THE MCCOYS, starring Jack Palance as Devil Anse Hatfield.  Robert Carradine was playing Bob Hatfield, and wanted to know from Keach about the project.  Pretty soon it started looking real, and Beau and Jeff Bridges were soon onboard, though schedule conflicts would cause them to be replaced by the Quaids. 

Randy Quaid, Keith Carradine, Stacy Keach

Jeffrey had a surprise guest in LONG RIDER supervising sound editor Gordon Ecker.  The work of a sound editor is much more covert than that of a film editor, and he revealed some fascinating details about how the soundtracks were built.  At Walter Hill’s direction, a slightly different gun-sound was developed for each star – they may all have been firing Winchester rifles, for instance, but no two sounded quite alike.

Hill liked to underplay the audio volume in the non-action scenes, so the LOUD action would really jump out at you.  Foley sound is the recording of live effects synchronized to picture, and to make the horse foot-falls sharper than the usual cocoa-nut shell method, they attached a Lavalier (clip-on) microphone onto a boot’s instep and stamped it in the dirt.

My favorite revelation was about the use of gunshots as a premonition.  There were many shots fired for every hit.  For the gunshots where characters actually got hit, a ricochet effect was used.  Now, as Ecker pointed out, normally a ricochet sound would only be used if the bullet bounced off of something, as opposed to hitting someone.  But what they did instead was play the ricochet sound in reverse before the shot, then the shot, followed by the ricochet played forward.  The unconscious psychological effect is that, amidst all the others shots, you begin to anticipate, like a premonition, the bullets that will hit a victim, a fraction of a second before it happens.  It’s an unnerving effect.  I hope to have a full interview with Mr. Ecker in the near future.

If I were booking film programs, I would love to run THE LONG RIDERS and TOMBSTONE as a double-feature – the two great Westerns about brothers, on each side of the law.   

SOME GAVE ALL by J.R. SANDERS – A Book Review

SOME GAVE ALL – Forgotten Old West Lawmen Who Died With Their Boots On, is a remarkable piece of research and writing by J.R. Sanders, who has previously penned two books, and many articles for WILD WEST magazine.  His fascination with the wild west goes back to his youth, growing up in the once lawless cattle town of Newton, Kansas, and childhood vacation visits to Abilene, Dodge City, and the Dalton Gang’s hideout.

As a former Southern California Police Officer, he takes the subject of his newest book seriously and personally.  He sifted through many possible lawmen to focus on, and selected ten to report on in depth.  In all likelihood, not even one will be familiar to the reader.  And that’s part of the point: plenty has been written about the Earps and the Mastersons, and these ten heroic men have been too quickly forgotten, some seemingly before their bodies had gone cold.  The fate of some of their families is tragic.

Some of the histories are startling for what a different world they seem to take place in.  Others are just as startling for how little has changed.  On the one hand, a U.S. Marshall in Western District, Texas, died because, being a well-raised Victorian gentleman, he assumed a woman would not lie.  On the other hand, a police officer in the mining town of Gold Hill, Nevada, died as a result of what is, to this day, the most dangerous situation for a lawman to get involved in: a domestic dispute.   Some of the cases have unexpected elements that would never occur to a fiction writer, such as the pair of hold-up men who made their getaways on bicycles.

While many non-fiction books of the old west end their tale when the lawman dies, this is often just the midway point in Sanders’ telling.  He writes about the pursuit, capture, trial, and punishment of the killers, and the reader will likely be amazed at how little has changed.  We think of the wild old days as a time when someone uttering, “Get a rope!” was time for the story to end.  In fact, just like today, legal maneuverings often made these court battles go one for years.  Lawyers endlessly debated points such as the difference between ‘stooped’ and ‘round-shouldered’ in the description of a suspect.  And also like today, the longer it took to bring the miscreant to justice, the more frequently the press would start to admire and fawn over the killer, the victims quickly forgotten. 

Some of the whims of justice would be laughable if they weren’t so infuriating.  A convicted murderer and train-robber serving a life sentence turns artist, and sculpts a bust of the governor, who soon after paroles the killer!

Author J.R. Sanders

Sanders’ subjects are meticulously researched with primary sources; his bibliography lists numerous newspapers, periodicals, census and other public records, court transcripts, and books.  His style of story-telling is engaging and accessible, and never dumbed down: hooray for the writer with the courage to use ‘pettifogging’ when no other word will quite do.   

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the every-day heroics of the lawmen of the old west.

 

On Thursday, May 15^th, from 7 to 10 p.m. at William S. Hart Park in Newhall, California, J.R. Sanders will be taking part in The National Peace Officers Memorial Day.  This is a free and open-to-the-public event, and Sanders will be one of a number of speakers, as well as signing his book.  To learn more, please contact the William S. Hart Museum office at (661) 254-4584 or Bobbi Jean Bell, OutWest, (661) 255-7087.

You can learn more about J.R. Sanders by visiting his website HERE. You can purchase SOME GAVE ALL from OutWest Boutique HERE 

THAT’S A WRAP!

And that’s all for this week’s Round-up!  Have a great Mother's Day!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright May 2014 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

CLASSIC MOMS AT ‘THE CABLE SHOW’ PLUS ‘WITH BUFFALO BILL’ REVIEWED!

MEETING CLASSIC MOMS – AND MORE – AT ‘THE CABLE SHOW’

From Tuesday, April 29^th through Thursday, May 1^st, thousands of people in all aspects of the cable television industry converged on the Los Angeles Convention Center for The Cable Show.  Over 200 exhibitors filled the exhibit hall promoting their channels, services, hardware, software and other products.  I was the guest of INSP, the channel famous for their daily TV westerns and Saddle-Up Saturday block, and their exclusive airings of THE VIRGINIAN and HIGH CHAPARRAL. 

INSP had arranged to have a pair of stars from two of their most popular series, two of America’s favorite moms, Karen Grassle from LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, and Michael Learned from THE WALTONS, present to meet-and-greet and pose for pictures.  Knowing how long it had been since they’d starred in their series – LITTLE HOUSE had their last season in 1983, and THE WALTONS in 1981 – I was delighted to find how charming and vivacious both ladies were.  When I took my turn posing with them, I commented that I was excited to meet them because I’d enjoyed their shows so much, and also because they’d both starred in episodes of GUNSMOKE, something neither one knew about the other.  “I played a whore!” Karen blurted out.

“I played a whore, too!” Michael Learned added with a laugh.  I was delighted to be able to discuss their experiences in Dodge City. 

Karen Grassle in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

KAREN GRASSLE:  Well, I came at the very tail end of GUNSMOKE, right after we did the pilot for LITTLE HOUSE.  Victor French, who played Mr. Edwards (on LITTLE HOUSE) was going to direct his first television episode ever (THE WIVING, 1974).  And so he wanted me to come on, and I went on, and I was one of a number of saloon girls.  And at that time I was a big feminist, and I had hair under my arms!  (Laughs)  And so they had to come very politely to me and say, ‘Miss Grassle, do you mind?’  I said of course – that was pretty funny.  We did a show where these boys, who were kind of…missing a few batteries, they were told by their dad, ‘Go find wives, or you’re not going to get any inheritance!’  So they went to town and kidnapped a few saloon girls; brought us out to the farm.  It turned out that the farm where we shot became the location for THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. 

MICHAEL LEARNED:  That’s a really great story.

HENRY:  Now Miss Learned, you did two GUNSMOKE episodes and a movie. 

MICHAEL LEARNED:  Well, in the first one (A GAME OF DEATH…AN ACT OF LOVE, part 2 1973) I played a lady of ill repute in a court scene.  I was a witness, and I only remember because I saw it recently on Youtube.  It was very early (in THE WALTONS run), and they had to clear me; there’s a morals clause when you sign a contract to do a series – I don’t know if you had to sign one, Karen, but I did.  So they had to get clearance from (WALTON’S creator) Earl Hamner and (producer) Lee Rich and Lorimar, and they let me do it.  Then I did something called FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE (later retitled MATT’S LOVE STORY 1973).  Matt’s had a concussion, and he’s lost his memory.  We fall in love, and I’m the only woman that Matt Dillon ever kissed.  And out of that kiss…came a little baby!  (laughs) 

HENRY:  It must have been a great kiss.

MICHAEL LEARNED:  It was, actually.  He called me up and asked me out for a date.  I thought he was a really great guy, and I like him a lot.  Very self-effacing and kind.  I was kind of nervous; (to Karen) like you, I was just starting out.  Then they did follow that up with a move-of-the-week (GUNSMOKE: THE LAST APACHE – 1990), where he doesn’t know he has a child, because he gets his memory back, and he goes back to Miss Kitty, where he should have been in the first place.

HENRY: And he never kissed her.

MICHAEL LEARNED:  He never kissed her – not on screen anyway.  So in the movie-of-the-week, our child is abducted.  And I call on him to find her, to bring her back.  And he discovers that he has a child that he didn’t know he had.  And that’s my history with GUNSMOKE.  And the funny thing is that I never told him, but when I was a child, I used to watch GUNSMOKE with my dad.  And so the first time I did the show with him, I couldn’t speak, I was so shy.  I just sat there looking at him.  But he warmed me up; he was a very nice guy. 

HENRY:  Now Karen, you also did WYATT EARP with Kevin Costner.  What was that experience like?

Karen Grassle relaxing

KAREN GRASSLE:  That was a lot of fun.  I was living in New Mexico at the time, and they came there to shoot.  They had done some casting in L.A.  Then they tried to fill out some of the roles in Santa Fe.  I was teaching at the time, at the College of Santa Fe, teaching acting for the camera.  There was a great studio there; that’s why they were there.  And so I got to do this little part, as the mother of Kevin Costner’s bride.  And I worked with some great people: Gene Hackman, Kevin of course – he was amazing.  Gene Hackman was so terrific.  And then the camera would cut, and he was, ‘Well, that wasn’t any good.’  You know, we’re so self-critical, actors.  It was a lot of fun.

HENRY:  What is WALTONS creator Earl Hamner like?

MICHAEL LEARNED:  He’s just one of the greatest guys in the world.  Sweet, kind, and everything you think he would be.  He’s got a raunchy sense of humor, which saves the day; otherwise you’d get diabetes.  He likes to drink; he’s just a great all-around guy. He and his wife have been together for I don’t know how many years; theirs is a real love story.  I think somebody’s trying to do a documentary on him, but somebody should do a story about their love story.  Recently I talked to him, and he said, “My wife is at the beach for the weekend, and I’m just sitting around crying, I miss her so much.”  So sweet, after all those years – sixty, I think. 

Incidentally, Ralph Waite, who played John Walton Sr. opposite Michael Learned, died this past February at the age of 85.  Active until the end, in 2013 he was playing continuing characters in BONES, NCIS, and between 2009 and 2013, he did 94 episodes of DAYS OF OUR LIVES.  One of his last performances was in a dramatic short for INSP called OLD HENRY.  You can see the entire 21-minute film HERE.  

Visiting exhibits of other channels, I learned what is on the horizon for Western fans, and discerning viewers in general.  The STARZ/ENCORE folks told me that the highest viewership of any of their many channels, right after STARZ, is ENCORE WESTERNS.  At present they don’t have plans to create any original Western programming. 

At HALLMARK CHANNEL and HALLMARK MOVIE CHANNEL, WHEN CALLS THE HEART, the Western Canadian romance series, has ended its first season, and cameras have already rolled on season two.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the two HALLMARK channels have announced a slate of about thirty TV movies, and not one is a Western.  This would not be a surprise with any other network, but HALLMARK has staunchly supported the genre when no one else did, and averaged at least two Westerns per year.  The popular GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE franchise produced three features starring and co-produced by Luke Perry, and last year’s QUEEN OF HEARTS is by far the best of the group.  As of now, there are no plans to make more.  HALLMARK has decided to shift its focus to mysteries, and in fact, the HALLMARK MOVIE CHANNEL will be re-branded THE HALLMARK MYSTERY CHANNEL in October.

For those of us who worry that younger viewers aren’t discovering classic films, some heartening news: according to TCM, two thirds of their 62 million viewers are between the ages of 18 and 49.   

AMC is in the middle of its first season of TURN, the Revolutionary War spy series, and this summer will be bringing back HELL ON WHEELS for its fourth season.

THE HISTORY CHANNEL will soon be presenting its own Revolutionary War series, SONS OF LIBERTY, focusing on such characters as John Adams, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Benedict Arnold. 

A&E will deliver a new season of LONGMIRE starting on June 2^nd, and FX will bring us one more season of JUSTIFIED, but then they’re pulling the plug.  Over the last couple of years, the Round-up has been following a number of proposed series at all the major networks, and some pilots have been shot, but not one, Disney’s BIG THUNDER prominent among them, has gotten a go-ahead.

At the seminars that I attended, and in talking to many of the exhibitors, the main topic of conversation, of concern, was making TV content easily and instantly available on all possible devices.  This is absolutely sensible; this is their livelihood.  And yet, as an outsider, it seems to me that such content is too available already.  Just a few years ago, any group of people standing around waiting, at a post office or bank or about to board a plane, would feature a substantial number of people reading newspapers or books, or doing crossword puzzles, or talking to each other.  The reading and conversation was gradually replaced by people talking loudly in their cell phones, and kids with annoying loud portable video games – the same kids who have wheels on the bottom of their sneakers.  Now nobody reads or talks at all; they text, or they stare at videos on their iPhone and check Tweets – reading Tweets is not actual reading.  At a high school last week, I observed a class waiting for a late teacher : I counted sixteen kids sitting on the floor, side by side, none talking, none acknowledging each other, all staring at their smartphones.  They were waiting for a drama class to begin, and not one was communicating with another.  And for all the constant updating, if you can pry a minute or two of conversation out of them, you will find only a tiny percentage has any idea of what is going on in the world.  They don’t need to have watching TV any easier.  They need to watch less, read more, listen more, and then talk more.    

WITH BUFFALO BILL ON THE U.P. TRAIL – A Video Review

This newest silent Western release from Grapevine Video was made in 1926 by Sunset Productions, just a year before sound would turn the movie industry upside down.  One of the particularly appealing aspects of the film is that paralleling the coming changes to the movie industry are the progress-borne changes in the lives of Buffalo Bill Cody and other characters.  The U. P. in the title is the Union Pacific Railroad, and the film concerns a time when the Pony Express, once Cody’s employer, is disappearing, and the wagon train is soon to be replaced by the transcontinental railroad. 

Just as the specificity of the time is unusual, so are many of the characters and plot elements.  In a surprisingly plot-heavy opening, we are quickly introduced to Cody, an Indian whom Cody rescues and befriends (played by actual Indian Felix Whitefeather), a wagon train whose passengers include a runaway wife and her paramour, and a runaway slave (played by apparent white guy Eddie Harris).  They are pursued by a lawman, and a parson, who happens to be the abandoned husband of the runaway wife. 

The wagon train reaches the fort, and soon Cody and a friend, seeing the coming of the rails as inevitable, become land speculators.   Reasoning that the rails must go through a certain pass, Cody and company commence to build a town along the route, but are soon up against the railroad’s corrupt head surveyor, who says he will either be made an equal partner in the town, or he’ll find another route, regardless of what it costs the railroad. 

There’s a good deal of action here, much of it involving the Indians, and a purposely stampeded herd of buffalo.  There are even more subplots – the Major, his daughter and her suitor; the crooked gambler devoted to his beautiful little daughter – and all of them are paid by the end: surprising in a 53 minute film.  One of the curious effects of so much happening is that Cody is only nominally the lead – much time is devoted to other characters.

Portraying Buffalo Bill Cody, star Roy Stewart is not a familiar name today, but he was a big star in silent films, co-starring with Mary Pickford in SPARROWS that same year.  Most of his roles were in Westerns, and when sound came in, he was gradually relegated to bit parts, often unbilled, but he managed to compile nearly 140 film appearances.  He’s big and likable and good with the camera.  He makes an acceptable Buffalo Bill Cody, especially once he starts wearing the familiar fringed buckskin jacket.  The one odd choice was keeping the long brown hair, but not the mustache and goatee.  To look right as Cody, you have to go full hair-and-whiskers, ala Joel McCrea, or abandon the fuzz entirely, ala Charlton Heston.  The hair alone triggers distracting comparisons to Barrymore’s MR. HYDE, and Tiny Tim. 

The movie is well-acted and entertaining, and some elements of the story are very progressive for their time.  The first sighting of Indians is preceded by this title-card: ‘The scouts of the original Americans kept watchful eyes on all white invaders.’  Contrast this with the words from the original poster: ‘DO YOU LIKE ACTION AND HAIR-RAISING THRILLS? You will see Indians attacking the whites --- Indian warfare in all its horrors - action - fights - and the most thrilling suspense you have ever witnessed!’  Obviously not the same writer.

Also progressive, in spite of the white actor portrayal, and some standard-for-the-time toadying, is the runaway slave.  When he is discovered, not even the lowest characters in the story ever consider returning him to his owners.  The film is well directed, handsomely shot and generally well-edited – though a herd-of-buffalo shot that does not match the action is featured much too often – and the print, though scratchy in places, is quite crisp and clear, with sharp lines, dark blacks, and a wide range of grays.  Priced at $12.99, with a piano score by David Knudston, it is available from Grapevine Video, which has about 600 films currently available, and frequently brings out more.  THIS LINK will take you to the WITH BUFFALO BILL page. 

CATCH ‘THE LONG RIDERS’ SAT. MAY 10 AT THE AUTRY!

Walter Hill’s 1980 film about outlaw families has an irresistible gimmick: brother outlaws were played by actual brothers.  Thus the Youngers are portrayed by David, Keith and Robert Carradine (their father John had scenes, sadly deleted), the Millers by Dennis and Randy Quaid,  the miserable Ford brothers by Christopher and Nicholas Guest, and the James boys by James and Stacy Keach, who also co-wrote the script with Bill Bryden and Steven Smith.  I haven’t seen it in years, but I remember it as very entertaining, with memorable action scenes. 

Presented as part of the Autry’s ongoing monthly ‘What is a Western?’ series, it will be preceded by a discussion lead by Jeffrey Richardson, Gamble Curator of Western History, Popular Culture, and Firearms.

EFREM ZIMBALIST JR. DIES AT 95

The Round-up is sorry to note the passing of actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr.  The son of concert violinist Efrem Zimbalist Sr. and opera star Alma Gluck, he was awarded a Purple Heart for his military service, and first garnered wide attention playing private eye Stu Bailey on the Warner Brothers 1960s detective series 77 SUNSET STRIP.  He later starred in about 250 episodes of THE F.B.I.  Though not particularly known for Western roles – his easy sophistication made him more natural in big city stories – he did appear early in his career in the Civil War drama BAND OF ANGELS, with Clark Gable.  And in his SUNSET STRIP days he did all of the WB westerns series: five MAVERICKS, and one each of BRONCO, SUGARFOOT, plus a RAWHIDE, and in 1982 played Michael Horse’s father in the impressive and often overlooked THE AVENGING.  In the frst season of the 1990s ZORRO series he played Zorro’s father Don Alejandro de la Vega, before handing the role over to Henry Darrow.  A busy voice actor late in his career, Zimbalist was the voice of Batman’s butler, Alfred, in a half dozen series.  Among his finest work was playing L.A. Police Sgt. Harry Hansen in the only good movie on the subject, WHO IS THE BLACK DAHLIA? starring Lucie Arnaz. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANN-MARGRET

Norman Rockwell's portrait of Ann-Margret

for STAGECOACH 

I’m a little late, but happy birthday to Ann-Margret, whose birthday was April 28^th.  In 1966 she starred in the remake of STAGECOACH, playing Claire Trevor’s role of Dallas, opposite Alex Cord in John Wayne’s role of The Ringo Kid.  Seven years later she was starring opposite the real Duke in Burt Kennedy’s THE TRAIN ROBBERS.  Then in 1994 she played Belle Watling in the miniseries sequel to GONE WITH THE WIND, SCARLETT.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIE NELSON

\\

Willie in BARABOSA

Born on April 30^th, 1933, Willie has continued the tradition of the singing cowboy started by Gene Autry, but has done it in his own way.  Starting in THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN in 1979, Willie has appeared in many westerns, often as the lead, sometimes as a cameo.  Among them are BARABOSA, THE LAST DAYS OF FRANK AND JESSE JAMES, STAGECOACH, REDHEADED STRANGER, ONCE UPON A TEXAS TRAIN, WHERE THE HELL’S THAT GOLD?, and several DR. QUINN episodes.  And though it’s been often said that, with his chinful of whiskers, he could save studios money by being his own sidekick, there’s something about him, perhaps his voice, that makes ladies respond in a way that few ever did for Al St. John, or even Gabby Hayes.  

THAT’S A WRAP!

Next week I’ll definitely finish up my coverage of the TCM Festival, and either the WILD BUNCH LUNCH at the Autry, or THE SANTA CLARITA COWBOY FESTIVAL at Gene’s Melody Ranch.  

Have a great week!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Material Copyright May 2014 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved