NEW WESTERNS WITH KEVIN COSTNER AND LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS THIS SUMMER, PLUS ‘HIGH CHAPARRAL’ PRODUCTION MANAGER SPEAKS, BOOK & VIDEO REVIEWS AND MORE!

‘YELLOWSTONE’ GETS JUNE PREMIERE DATE!

YELLOWSTONE, the new contemporary Western series starring Kevin Costner, will premiere on the new Paramount Network on June 20^th. The creation of writer and director Taylor Sheridan, Costner stars as the head of the Dutton family, who own the largest private ranch in the country. It’s right on the doorstep our nations’ oldest National Park, and under siege by developers and an Indian reservation. Will the Duttons, and their ranch, survive?

Taylor Sheridan has accomplished a remarkable hat trick: in three years he has given us three remarkable contemporary Western crime films: SICORIO (2015), HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016), and WIND RIVER (2017) – he wrote all three, and WIND RIVER is his directorial debut.  Check out the teaser trailer:

LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS & JASON PATRIC STAR IN ‘BIG KILL’ THIS SUMMER!

BIG KILL, the new Western from writer-director Scott Martin and Archstone, was recently lensed in Old Tucson. It tells the story of a tenderfoot from Philadelphia, a pair of gamblers on the run, a deadly preacher (Patric), and his colorful gunslinger Johnny Kane (Phillips). They all have a date with destiny in a boomtown gone bust called Big Kill.

Here’s the first peek, featuring Lou in a role so different from his usual.

KENT McCRAY ON TV’S PIONEER DAYS

Kent McCray over Bob Hope's shoulder

Kent McCray has had a remarkable career in television from its earliest days.  His association with Westerns began when he became Production Manager on David Dortort’s BONANZA. When Dortort followed that hit with HIGH CHAPARRAL, McCray became Production Manager on both series, and on the latter met future wife Susan Sukman, who was involved in casting, and was daughter of the show’s composer, Oscar-winner Harry Sukman.

When both series folded, McCray would partner with BONANZA star Michael Landon, and together would produce LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, FATHER MURPHY, and other series and TV movies.  With Marianne Ritter-Holmes, Kent has written his autobiography, KENT MCCRAY – THE MAN BEHIND THE MOST BELOVED TELEVISION SHOWS, and will be speaking and signing his book this Saturday, March 17^th, St. Patrick’s Day, at The Autry. The event will begin at 9 a.m., and the Q&A will be hosted by one of McCray’s LITTLE HOUSE stars, Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder. Also attending will be other LITTLE HOUSE stars, including Matt Labyorteaux, Stan Ivar, Pam Roylance, Katherine Cannon from FATHER MURPHY, and Michael Landon’s daughter, Leslie Landon Matthews.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kent and Susan McCray at the HIGH CHAPARRAL 50^th Anniversary Celebration, and got to speak with Kent at length about his career. At such length, in fact, that below I present Part One of my interview with Kent, which focuses on his years in live television, prior to his Western work.  Are Part Two and possibly a Three are on their way!

Henry Parke:      First I’ve got to tell you how much I enjoyed the High Chaparral 50^th Anniversary.   Thank you so much for including me; it was just terrific.

Kent McCray:     The response we've gotten from most of fans is that they really enjoyed themselves. I think it's the last one that will ever take place, so we wanted to make it special.

Henry Parke:      Well, you certainly succeeded.  You were one of the pioneers of early TV, live TV, and your father was a pioneer early radio.

Kent McCray:     That's correct.

Henry Parke: Did his career have a large effect on your career choices?

Kent McCray:     Well, in some ways, yes. During the early '30s, when I was ten years old, he was program manager for WGIC, the radio station of Travelers [Insurance] in Hartford, Connecticut. Every night he listened to the radio, to make sure everything was done properly, so I just laid down on the floor and just listened to radio. And radio is in your mind; you have to envision where they are and what they're doing. And so I kind of got that into my head at a very early age.  He was behind me 100% in whatever I wanted to do. Except the one thing he didn't want me to do was work for NBC. (laughs)

Henry Parke:      Which, of course, you did end up doing.

Kent McCray:     That's right. It all blew over after he realized I was on my own, and he was not part of it. But he helped me with the initial letters and calls to a TV station in Hollywood, not NBC. And that was the initial call that got me into thinking about television

Henry Parke:      Before that, as a young man you wanted to act on stage and study at Yale, but a special opportunity introduced you to a very different part of the theater.

Kent McCray:     That's correct.   What happened, the Julius Hart College of Music, which is now part of the University of Hartford was a separate music college, and my dad used a lot of their professors and string quartets on the radio. So the head of the art school and his family became very close to my family through the years. I was acting in a play in prep school up in New Hampshire, and my dad asked me if I liked that end of it. I said I liked I like being an actor, but I liked the backstage work best. I thought that Yale was the best opportunity for theater art. And my dad suggested that I talk to Dr. Nagy, because he had taught at Yale and might have some pointers. I was on a spring break, working in a flower shop, and went down and talked to Dr. Nagy one afternoon. I had a very nice chat with him. I liked him, and he suggested some books. I went back to work. I got a call a few days later. He said, I need to talk to you again. I have a deal for you you won't refuse. Well that kind sparked my interest.  I got off work early, went down and talked to him, and he said, I will teach you the course I taught at Yale, all your other courses at the college will be free. But, you have to work for me as many hours as I want you. In a sense you are my slave.   I said I can't ask for a better deal than that. So that's how I went to the art school and music. And I was there four years. I couldn't get a degree in theater arts because that's not one of the credited courses that the school had at the time; I was the only person that ever did that, and they didn't have one after I left.

Henry Parke:      You were there at the right time.

Kent McCray:     Yeah. He was a very clever, clever man, very artistic, very precise. He wanted everything done in his way of thinking. He didn't turn on the light with a switch, he turned it on with a dimmer, very slowly, and kept tempo with the music. I learned everything about stage from him.

Henry Parke:      And how did the things you learned from him prepare you for your future career in live and filmed TV? 

Kent McCray:     Stage work is stage work, and whether it be live or now television, it's pretty much the same. You need scenery, you need lighting: all those things I learned to do on a stage with opera. My final year with Dr. Nagy, we were doing an opera. He turned to me and he said, “You light it.” I said, “What?” He said, “I'm not going to tell you where to put up lights. You put them where you think they should be.” I did and he critiqued that, he changed things, but he let me learn. I never had a class with him. We'd be in the car and he'd start asking me questions. He'd say give me 200 or 300 words about that. That's how I got my education. I couldn't ask for anything better.

Henry Parke:      When you moved on to live television, you were working on the Colgate Comedy Hour, which is just something I'm crazy about. And you worked with great stars. Martin and Lewis, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, and Abbott and Costello.

Kent McCray:     Yeah, there were two shows.  The All-Star Revue was on Saturday night, and Colgate Comedy Hour was on Sunday.  Most of the stars in those days were great. Now television was being done in New York. The stars had to fly to New York, stay there for a few weeks, disrupt their family life. Then with the advent of the coaxial cable, which was put in place in 1951, you were broadcasting on a phone line from here (California) to New York. So, if we went on out here at six, they could see the show at 9:00 in New York, live. Of course, the recording we could get out of it was called a kinescope, an electronic copy of the show which quality-wise was very poor.

Henry Parke:      Don't stand up much to rebroadcast.

Kent McCray:     When my dad was on radio, he was asked to go to Florida by an agent to look at this comedy (act) routine, which was Martin and Lewis. He put them on NBC radio and they were doing fairly well, but they're ratings started to drop off. So, he put through a memo to the lawyers to cancel their contract. But in their initial contract, if they weren't notified of cancelation by a certain date, they were automatically picked up for another year. Well, the lawyers goofed up somewhere along the line, and Martin and Lewis were on the radio two more years, and then made the move to television.

Henry Parke:      They probably did better work on television in the movies.

Kent McCray:     Ah, well, it's a different format. They loved live television. Jerry Lewis was great. If they had a gag that didn't work, he'd walk off the stage and bring the prop man onstage to fix it live on the air.  It was a great time. I loved live television -- other than the fact that you were bound by the clock. If you had an hour show, and you went on at 6 o'clock, you were automatically cut at seven.  We had to do what we called back timing on a lot of things that were in the show, and the credits were always the first things to go, to be cut.  Once on the Red Skelton Show, he opened with the closing credits. He said, "These are the people who were cut. Their names were never seen last week because I ran too long.”

Henry Parke:      What sort of work were you doing on these shows? 

Kent McCray:     I was hired by a gentleman named Earl Reddick, who was head of production for NBC Television. He said we like what we see on paper, but we know nothing about you. We'll put you on, on a week to week basis. I said okay. I can't ask for anything better. I never got a day off until May! NBC only had one theatre big enough to do a variety show, and that was the Palace Theatre, then called the El Capitan, which they rented. It was right across the street from Capital Records Building on Vine Street.

For both shows to air, one on Saturday, one on Sunday, they rehearsed at the rehearsal hall during the week. On Wednesday and Thursday, I did all the sets for the All-Star Revue in the Palace, so on Friday morning they could rehearse on camera. Friday night all those sets were taken out in big trucks, and we would bring in the sets for the Colgate Comedy Hour. They would rehearse on Friday, we’d take out the sets that night, on Saturday bring in the All-Star Revue sets, and go on the air with that, and the sets would go down to the scene dock, and we'd bring back the Colgate Comedy Hour, so they could be there on Sunday night. That was one of my first assignments, juggling these sets going in and going out. They only had one engineering crew that did both shows.

Henry Parke:      What was it like working with Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life?

Kent McCray:     Well, Groucho Marx's company had been shooting the show for a number of years and they weren't happy. They wanted a different studio, closer to Vine Street because that's where all the people congregated, around Hollywood and Vine, to get onto TV shows. NBC had converted an old radio studio into a television studio, and I was in charge of following through with the design. We had to take seats for the band, had to put in a grid above for the lights, all the equipment had to come in. Groucho Marx was one of the funniest men I've ever worked with, and I've worked a lot of talents. (For You Bet Your Life), the writers and the director would interview a contestant.  There were no teleprompters in those days, but you remember in the old days, in bowling alleys, when you would write your score, and it would be projected above? Well, the director would put a one-line thing up there for Groucho to ask the contestant. He would ask the contestant the one line, and he would take off, and it was all ad-lib -- there was no script. I thought he was very clever.

Henry Parke:      You went on to be associated with Bob Hope for quite a while and did big Christmas shows at military bases all over the world. How did you link up with Bob and what was he like to work with?

Kent McCray:     Well, I had just finished up a show on film called Matinee Theatre, and I was told that Bob wanted to film a show in Alaska. He asked if I could put a show together, and I said, Hell yes! I went up on a survey to see what the facilities were like. Put a crew together, we took off. We did five or six shows in Alaska between Anchorage and Fairbanks. It was quite an experience because of the weather -- it was colder than Hell, and always dark. Bob decided he wanted to enter stage pulled by a sled dog.  So, I had to go find somebody who had a sled-dog who could pull Bob through the (saloon) batwing doors. After that, the gentleman who had been associate producer with Bob Hope for a number of years wanted to make a change. Bob hired me.  Well I can't say enough about him. He was a wonderful, caring person. We had a few cross words, but very rarely. He was always very pleasant. One night we were going over things at his office. It was dinner time. "Come on over and have dinner with us." I sat down at the table with his family and he was just like a father. "What did you do today? What did you learn in school?" He was a completely different character. He wasn't telling jokes, he wasn't trying to be funny, he wanted to know, truly, how his kids were doing.  He had a friend, Charlie Cooley, who was with him in vaudeville, When Bob moved to California he brought Charlie Coooley out here, bought him a house. And then Charlie got quite ill. Lots of times Bob would walk over to his house, and he didn't like to walk alone. I would walk over with him. The association with him was wonderful.

Henry Parke:      He sure cared about our soldiers and sailors around the world.  

Kent McCray:     Did he ever. It all started in the '40s, during the war, when one of his writers had a buddy posted at March Air Force Base in Southern California.  He says, why don't we take the show and do it up there? They're dying for entertainment. Well that sounded terrific.  He started doing the radio shows at different camps, and then took them overseas. When he did the radio shows, it was just he, a piano player and a drummer and a singer. It wasn't a big crew. When we sat down to plan the first Christmas show to the Orient, we ended up having 76 people in the crew.

Henry Parke: That’s quite a jump!

Kent McCray:     This was all very sudden: I got a passport in one day, because it was Bob.  Anyway, from Travis Air Force base we flew out, and after an hour we lost a motor and had to turn back, and then we lost the second motor, and slid into Travis Air Force Base. 

Bob Hope was just wonderful. All the comedians were different. They learned radio, but their background was vaudeville, so they understood timing. They knew how to tell a joke, and their jokes weren't dirty. They were double entendres, a couple of them, but very rarely was there ever a dirty joke out of one of the comics at that time.  Bob couldn't sleep at night. He never slept a full night. He would call, say I think we should do this or do that. I'd had a pad of paper by my bed to write down what he was saying. He called me one time, told me a joke, then said how did you like that joke? I said, I'll be honest with you. I don't think it's very funny. And all he said is, 'wait.' I wait. We did the show, and with his timing, with his pauses, with his look, it brought down the house.  And all he did was look at me, and point his finger, like, 'I told you.'

When I left to go overseas, there were two other gentlemen who went with me. We left the day after Thanksgiving, we went to all the bases we were going to perform at.  The choices came out of Washington, the USO, we had nothing to say in the matter. 

We loaded into 21 different bases, Okinawa, Korea. We had to have transportation, food for people, lodging for people, the stage set up, the platforms for the cameras, platforms for the lights – it was quite a chore to get everything organized. For that one month, when I was in the military, my civilian rank was one-star general. They told me, when you’ve got to get a good place to sleep, you’ll get the best. If you started getting in trouble with anybody, flash them your orders. If some sergeant doesn’t want to do something for you, flash him your orders: it’ll get done. I only had to use them a few times, but I always had that piece of paper in my pocket.  What we basically did was a two-hour stage show, and I had to get everybody on with the right cue – that was just a side job I did. We did 21 shows in fourteen days, including travel. All the generals, of course, always wanted Bob Hope to come out to their house for dinner. I think it was to show off. But Bob told me going in, “I don’t go to any house for dinner. If they want to throw a party for the 76 of us, that’s fine. But no one in this group works any harder than the boy who puts out the music for the band. We’re all working our tails off to get it done. And I will not go to anybody’s house by myself.” He really loved performing. The writers would hit every base, they were making fun of this General or that Colonel, drop somebody’s name, and the troops went nuts. One of the other things I had to do was to make sure at every base where we had a refueling stop, that Mr. Hope had a car and driver waiting, to go to the base hospital, to see the men who couldn’t get to the show. And he would walk through the wards – I went with him a couple of times, but it was too heart-wrenching. I couldn’t take it. These guys – it was after the Korean War. And all these guys with lost legs, busted arms, all kinds of things, all laying in bed, with scowls on their face. But by the time Bob left, they were all laughing. I always respected him for that. He was gentle.

Henry Parke:  Nicer than Dinah Shore?

Kent McCray: (laughs) You can say it, but I won’t. We referred to her as the chocolate-covered black widow spider. That kinda gives you a clue, doesn’t it?

Kent McCray Part Two, The Western Years, coming soon!

BOOK REVIEWS:

SMALL MOVING PARTS – A NOVEL BY D.B. JACKSON

In Bufort, Texas, in the summer of 1958, two men who feel they have nothing to lose, meet by chance. Harland Cain is an aging small-time rancher with a medical death sentence and nothing to look forward to. Dodger is a cripple-legged teenager living with a useless, drunken mother and her violent boyfriend, and sees no hope. They meet up while trying to end it all, and when Harland takes the boy under his wing, they each start having something to live for. But when their horses are rustled during an overnight campout, trailing the stolen animals into Mexico sets dramatic wheels into uncontrollable motion that will leave you breathless to finish the adventure. 

D.B. Jackson, whose previous novels include the fine UNBROKE HORSES and THEY RODE GOOD HORSES, has created strikingly real characters whose personalities and problems draw you in. Dodger is the adolescent who’s smart enough to think things through, but whose youthful impatience leads him to deadly mistakes. Harland is a man whose pride and sense of honor won’t let him walk away and cut his losses even when it’s the far safer path.  

With a publication date of May 15^th, from Turner Publishing, it will retail for $17.99.  You can order it HERE.  

CLASSIC MOVIE FIGHTS – 75 YEARS OF BARE KNUCKLE BRAWLS, 1914-1989 – By Gene Freese  

About eight years ago, when I first started writing the Round-up, a woman took issue with a positive review I gave a movie, commenting, “I don’t consider a movie a Western if there isn’t even one saloon fight.” She has a point – there’s nothing like the vicarious thrill of a knock-down, drag-out fight to bring a smile to one’s face.  If you like on-screen fighting, you’ll love Gene Freese’s new book, CLASSIC MOVIE FIGHTS – 75 YEARS OF BARE KNUCKLE BRAWLS, 1914-1989.  Arranged chronologically, whether your taste runs to John Payne vs. Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand in KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL, Alan Ladd vs. Ben Johnson in SHANE, Ronald Reagan vs. Preston Foster in LAW AND ORDER, or The Filling Station Brawl in IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD, they’ve got you covered, with plenty of biographic and filmographic details about the on-screen participants, fight choreographers, stunt doubles, and production notes. The more I read, the longer my list of movies to rewatch grows. The amount of detail Freese imparts in his breezy style is astonishing.

The reason he chose to start with 1914 was for that year’s THE SPOILERS, and the first great movie fight – there was no such thing as stunt fighting, and stars William Farnum and Tom Santschi just beat the living hell out of each other on-camera. Why does he stop in 1989? Because by 1990, the rise of CGI, flashy cutting and purposely shaky cameras made it hard to even watch a fight on-screen. CLASSIC MOVIE FIGHTS is published by McFarland, costs $45, and can be ordered HERE  or ordered by calling 800-253-2187.

WESTERN 20 MOVIE COLLECTION

When a set of movies has such a generic title, and at $24.98, such a reasonable price, there’s a tendency to assume it’s a bunch of public domain, hard-to-watch cheapies. Nothing could be further from, the truth. This is a remarkable selection of Columbia Pictures Westerns on six discs, and the quality is first-rate. Included are many Randolph Scott films, including all of the fabled Ranown/Scott Budd Boetticher films with the exception of 7 MEN FROM NOW, which was a Batjac, Warner Brothers picture.  There are several titles starring Glenn Ford and William Holden, including ARIZONA, the movie they built Old Tucson Studios for. If your taste runs to Bs, there are Charles Starrett DURANGO KID films, and even two Tim McCoys and a Buck Jones that all feature a young John Wayne. To get the complete list, and to order collection, go HERE.

...AND THAT'S A WRAP! 

In the next Round-up I'll have details about a TOMBSTONE 25th reunion that'll take place June 30th and July 1st in the actual town of Tombstone, Arizona!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Material Copyright March 2018 by Henry C. Parke - All Rights Reserved

LONGMIRE, LINCOLN VS. ZOMBIES REVIEWED

TV Series Review – LONGMIRE

With the success of TRUE GRIT and HELL ON WHEELS, and the anticipation for Quentin Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED, every network, and many cable outlets, announced pilots for Western series.  In the recently posted TV schedules, however, these new Westerns are conspicuously absent with one exception, and that is LONGMIRE, a present-day Western which premieres on Sunday, June 3rd, for a ten episode first season on the A&E Network. 

Craig Johnson has written eight Walt Longmire mystery novels since he began with the critically acclaimed THE COLD DISH in 2004, and he set the stories in modern-day Wyoming.  This is a familiar world to Johnson, whose ranch borders both Crow and Cheyenne reservations.  The TV series is likewise set in Absaroka County, Wyoming, where Walt Longmire is sheriff.  Australian actor Robert Taylor plays Longmire, and he’s fine casting as the easy-going-until-you-cross-him sheriff.  He seems like an amalgam of all the young guys who populated 1960s Warner Brothers Western series – CHEYENNE, BRONCO, LAWMAN, LARAMIE – but now he’s in his late forties, with joys and sorrows in his past.   His wife died a year ago, and he still has her outgoing message on the answer-machine.  His daughter Cady (Cassidy Freeman) can’t even get him to give up her mom’s ashes so they can be buried.  She worries about him.  Everyone worries about him, especially after a car wreck: is he drinking too much?  Is he cracking up?

Longmire is assisted by three deputies.  Blonde Katee Sackhoff, lately of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, plays Vic Moretti, who is doing her best, but would be much more comfortable back in a big city police department.   Adam Bartley plays ‘the Ferg,’ young and soft and inexperienced, and looking for a chance to work in the field.  Handsome and ripped Bailey Chase, whose career got kick-started by BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, plays Branch Connally, the kind of co-worker you’d only learn was gunning for your job if you spotted a campaign poster.

The pilot episode centers on a sheep-killing that leads to a man-killing, prostitution on the res, a runaway Indian girl, and an old Sharps rifle.  It’s a tight and logical mystery, and populated with the kind of rural characters not found in cop shows.  It’s not a cop show, after all, but a sheriff show, even more so than JUSTIFIED is. 

Lou Diamond Phillips

Among the people Longmire turns to for help is friend and saloon owner Henry Standing Bear, played by YOUNG GUNS’ Lou Diamond Phillips.  Happily, he’s a continuing character.  The guest cast includes the lovely Irene Bedard from SMOKE SIGNALS, and Zahn McClarnon as Mathias, a res cop who has no patience when Longmire steps onto the res and out of his jurisdiction. 

If the pilot is a fair indication, LONGMIRE successfully balances having satisfying and thought-provoking mysteries, and characters worth thinking about after the end-titles have rolled.  I’m setting my DVR for the series now.

Movie Review – ABRAHAM LINCOLN VS. ZOMBIES

Before you try to correct me, no, I don’t mean ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER.  That Tim Burton-produced movie, which opens on June 22^nd, is reportedly budgeted at $85 million.  ABRAHAM LINCOLN VS. ZOMBIES, which will be available on video May 29^th, reportedly cost $150,000.  I watched it last night, and found it morbidly delightful.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN VS. ZOMBIES is a production of The Asylum Film Company, which is currently celebrating its 15^th year and 100^th movie.  If you are not familiar with The Asylum, they’ve created a kind of movie called ‘The Mockbuster,’ a movie that follows on the publicity coattails of big budget movies, either making fun of them, or frankly trying to confuse the consumer into renting the wrong one.  Their ALMIGHTY THOR is based on the Norse myth rather than the comic books; their SHERLOCK HOLMES, while lacking Robert Downey Jr., was shot in Ireland and featured a tyrannosaurus rampaging through London; their JOHN CARTER OF MARS is based on the same public domain Edgar Rice Burroughs novel as JOHN CARTER; and yes, they produced TITANIC 2.  They’ve also made 6 GUNS, a very low-budget but very watchable western starring Barry Van Dyke.

I cannot say how close the ZOMBIES version is to Seth Grahame-Smith’s best-selling novel, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, because I haven’t read it, and my impression (possibly wrong) is that few people have.  It’s the sort of book you buy not to read, but to give to your history teacher to amuse or upset her.  But the story in this one is by Karl T. Hirsch and J. Lauren Proctor, and it’s scripted and directed by Richard Schenkman, who first made a splash when he wrote and directed THE POMPATUS OF LOVE.  As someone says in the ‘making of’ featurette, it’s not historically accurate so much as an alternative to historical accuracy.

As the movie begins, we first see the future Great Emancipator killing a zombie as a child.  Then later, now president, in the midst of Civil War, while calming Mary Todd Lincoln’s fears about his safety as he prepares his Gettysburg Address, what stuns the viewer is the absolute seriousness with which the filmmakers attack their story.  While the premise is obviously nutty, this movie is a comedy with not one spoken joke, with not a wink to the audience in the entire film.  Bill Oberst Jr., who plays Lincoln, is not a familiar actor to me – no one in the entire cast is – and yet he brings a seriousness, dignity and heart to his performance that moves you, and compares well with Royal Dano (Disneyland’s GREAT MOMENTS WITH MR. LINCOLN) or any of the hundreds of previous Lincoln portrayals.    

A group of soldiers have been sent by the White House on a secret mission down south.  Only one comes back, and he has become a zombie.  The president, fearing a zombie outbreak could decimate the country’s population, assembles a dozen of his best men and, as the only one with first-hand zombie-fighting experience, leads them into the deep South, to the fort where the outbreak began, and there he must fight not only zombies but Confederate General Stonewall Jackson (Don McGraw).  The fort is where most of the film occurs, and it was shot in Savannah, Georgia, at Ft. Pulaski National Monument, the site of an early battle of the Civil War, and the first post of Robert E. Lee after he left West Point. 

From this point on, the story resembles Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, except that the small group being attacked by zombies is the president and his team in a fort, rather than a group of random people in a Pittsburgh farmhouse.  If your suspension of disbelief lets you accept that people can be menaced by zombies in the first place, it’s no more of a stretch to have the president in that situation than anyone else.  And the cast members, while not familiar, are uniformly convincing in their performances. 

Cinematographer Tim Gill makes excellent use of the Georgia locations, and the color has been adjusted to frequently make the images nearly black and white, which lends a nice subconscious Matthew Brady effect.  The art direction, costumes and props all feel correct for the period, and the make-up, zombie as well as normal, is convincing.  My only criticism of the look of the film is that, while two of the female leads, played by Baby Norman and Hannah Bryan, are quite beautiful, their hair is much too modern for the period.

While you don’t need to be an expert on Lincoln to enjoy the movie, the writers have utilized enough of his words to give the savvy viewer a wry grin, especially in the speech by another character that inspires what will become the Gettysburg Address.  There are also some great cameos by real historical figures,  some that are funny for their logic and some for their arbitrariness. 

While I doubt it will replace our memories of Henry Fonda in YOUNG MR. LINCOLN or Raymond Massey in ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, it’s entertaining in its silly earnestness, and certainly worth what Redbox will charge you.  Mr. Oberst’s performance of the Gettysburg Address near the end is beautiful in its delivery and simplicity.  And the audacity of the very end of the movie – once you get it – will make your jaw drop.

‘LEGEND ON HELL’S GATE’ FINDS A DISTRIBUTOR!

Back in February, I reviewed THE LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE (you can see it HERE ), and offered readers a discounted on-line screening of the movie.  I’m very happy to report that HELL’S GATE has been picked up by for distribution by LIGHTNING ENTERTAINMENT, and will be released on DVD on June 19^th.  I’ll be featuring my interview with writer/director/costar Tanner Beard here in the Round-up within the next couple of weeks!

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 WESTERNSis 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 Royfeature 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 GUNSMOKEafter all these years, but still shows four episodes of BONANZAevery 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 HERITAGE MUSEUM

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 it for now, pardners!  Next week I'll have my review of the HATFIELDS & MCCOYS miniseries, and all about the Spaghetti Western Festival at FILM FORUM in New York.

Happy Trails!

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright May 2012 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved

LUKE PERRY DOES ‘JUSTICE’ TO ‘THE MEASURE OF A MAN’ – EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Next Saturday night, January 28^th, at 8:00 p.m., GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE: THE MEASURE OF A MAN, will premiere on the Hallmark Movie Channel.  It’s the second entry in the Western movie series – the original GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE premiered in 2011, and more are already in the works. 

They’re the adventures of John Goodnight, who, as a child, was riding in a stagecoach with his parents, and a judge and his wife, when the stage is attacked by outlaws.   His parents, and the judge, are killed.  John and the judge’s widow survive, and she raises John as her own.   He grows to be lawyer with no love of the law or of lawyers, and little ambition beyond drinking and carousing.  His adoptive mother, a woman with political connections, in an unorthodox but effect use of ‘tough love,’ arranges to have him appointed a circuit judge in frontier Wyoming, and his adventures evolve as he travels from town to town, literally holding court.

Luke Perry not only stars as Goodnight, he also created the character, and executive-produces the movies.  Perry is best known for starring for a decade – that’s 199 episodes – in BEVERLY HILLS 90210, but his heart has long belonged to the west.  When I spoke to him on Friday afternoon, I told him that I’d seen and enjoyed the first two GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE films.

LUKE: Well, I enjoyed them too.  It’s the first time that I sat down, thought something up, and took it all the way. 

HENRY: When you were a kid there weren’t very many westerns being made for the big screen or TV.  How did you discover westerns?

L:  You know, I felt like I was fortunate to come up at that time, when (the world of) ‘TOY STORY’ was happening, when they were going from cowboys to spacemen on TV.  The year I was born, STAR TREK went on the air.  And so I got to see all the great westerns I loved as a kid: MAVERICK and THE WILD, WILD WEST, RIFLEMAN, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, BIG VALLEY, GUNSMOKE, BONANZA, THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, RAWHIDE.  I got ‘em all in re-runs, and when you’re a kid you don’t care that they’re re-runs.  You just love them.  And I did, and I always promised myself that I was going to do ‘em.  And it was not a popular choice when I got here, you know?  When I was making movies at Fox, I signed a two-picture deal.  I wanted to make 8 SECONDS as my first movie there.  They said, ‘No, do the vampire movie, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.’  Wasn’t my idea.

H: But then you did play bull-riding champ Lane Frost in 8 SECONDS. 

L: Yuh, I ultimately got 8 SECONDS done, and so glad to have done it. 

H: Did you have any prior on-bull experience?

L: Nope.  You know it’s one bull at a time.  The only way you can acquire that experience. 

H: John Avildsen directed you in that.  With JOE and the ROCKY and KARATE KID films he’d become a famous star-maker. 

Luke Perry with Stefanie Von Pfetten

L: Because John is just a master of his craft.  He knows every way there is to get the shot he wants to have, and he has a great story-telling sensibility.  He knows that a lot of the choices he makes, people say, ‘Oh, that’s corny.’  But when you watch ROCKY, you’re brought to tears by it.  When you watch KARATE KID, most people are brought to tears by it.  And those moments are important to him, those are integral hero-making moments.  You’ve got to see these people when they’re down.  You’ve got to see where they come from.  I learned so much from him; he’s such a gracious man, and we’re still good friends to this day.  And I suppose that’s one of the things that I’m proudest of, that I got a call from him, must have been a month ago. 

H: I was surprised to learn how much animation you’ve done.

L: Yeah, love ‘em, love the cartoons.  

H: How does acting for a mike differ from acting for a camera?

L:  It’s great, because your physical appearance has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on it.  There’s no hair and make-up trailer and lighting.  You’ve just got to come from that place in your  mind where you can hear all those great crazy voices and be able to access them.  And I’ve enjoyed pretty-much all my experiences in animation. 

H: Do you think if you were coming up in the 1930s and ‘40s you’d have been a busy radio actor?

L: (deeply) Well, I’d like to think so.  I certainly would have loved being part of the Mercury Theatre Company, with Orson Welles and those guys doing all those radio plays, including the big (WAR OF THE WORLDS) hoax – I would love to have been in on that!

H: What are your favorite films?

L: Oh boy, I have so many, and I just added one to the list the other night.  THE ARTIST, it’s magnificent, such a compelling score, and I take my hat off to that guy for doing it. 

H: What are your favorite westerns?

L: Favorite westerns, well, THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.  THE LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL is one of my faves.

H: GUN HILL’s a great film.  Earl Holliman is a good friend of mine.

L: What a great guy – I was fortunate enough to have met Earl on the set of 90210 one time, and how great is he in that movie?  You look at what LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL is about – about the rights of women, and rape, and racism, and all kinds of great, heavy themes that are not all just horses and cows.  Westerns can be about really interesting, complicated subject matter.  As a template, I feel I can tell any story I need to (tell) out of the saddle. 

H: I believe your first period western was 2002’s JOHNSON COUNTY WAR miniseries.

L: Yes, which was where I found these guys at Hallmark.  I walked away from that experience thinking, wow, this was a big show.  And there were a lot of things that I would have done different about it, and a lot of things that I thought could have been done better, although I loved the director of that movie, David Cass.  Dave Cass is a true, legitimate cowboy, and he’s equally a true legitimate filmmaker; his marriage of the two was fantastic.  The producers on that film really didn’t do him any favors.  I got to work with Burt, and that was something I always wanted to do.  He was everything I wanted him to be.   When I grew up, Burt Reynolds was the biggest movie star in the world, and for good reason.  It was really great, on the day, getting to do these scenes where he’s chasing me on a horse, and I’m shooting him, and he hangs me.  We spent a lot of time together.  He’s very gracious, and Burt had time for everybody.  That was a great experience. 

H: How about Tom Berenger, who played your brother?

L: Tom and I had a couple of rough days on that movie but ultimately we got everything going, and Tom and I did another movie two years ago.  It doesn’t always start out easy, but you get where you’re going. 

H:  Now that script was done by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

L: And it’s an honor, of course, to be in one of Larry’s shows.  Not just because he wrote LONESOME DOVE, but he is committed to telling stories in this period in a way that has a lot of integrity, and are very true, and that’s why people are drawn to the stories.  Not just that they’re great stories, but it’s the way that Larry tells them. 

H: Any big differences doing a miniseries rather than an hour series or a movie?

L: No.  The great thing about acting, irrespective of how the technology, my job will not change.  It’s always the same thing: to find that truth in the scene that you want to talk to people about, and make it about that.  And when we’re on stage, and there is no technology at all – it’s just us and the audience – that’s pure.  It never really changes, even when you’re doing big green-screen shots.  In the third movie we’re chasing down a stagecoach, shooting guys off of it, and even when you’re doing things like that, it’s still the same basic thing for me: make this look as real as it can be.  And all the guys in the camera department, they can worry about the scientific changes.  Actors, we’re blessed to keep doing the same stuff. 

Luke Perry swears in Cameron Bright

H:  In ANGEL AND THE BAD MAN, 2009, you switched gears radically, playing the villain to Lou Diamond Phillip’s hero.

L: Old LDP, that’s right.  He’s a great guy, been a friend for a long time.  I was in Vancouver, doing another movie, literally on my way to the airport when my agent rang up and said, ‘You may want to stay.  They need somebody for a few days on this picture.’  ‘What is it?’  He told me ANGEL AND THE BAD MAN, I went , ‘Shit, that’s a John Wayne movie!’  It was good, because I met the director of that picture, Terry Ingram and I think we’re going to make another movie together.

H: Another Western?

L: Hopefully.  Because he likes doing them and I really like doing them.  

H: How did you like playing the bad guy for a change? 

L:  Loved it, loved it, loved it!  I said, give me an eye patch, give me a wad of tobacco, I’m going to be a bad guy.  And the director wasn’t so sure about it.  I said I ain’t budging. If you’re getting me you’re getting the eye patch, the tobacco spit, or get yourself another boy.  If you’re an actor and you’re going to make a big character choice like that, you’ve got to commit to it, to make it work.  And I stayed committed to the choice, and as you’ve seen, that’s how it went down in the movie. 

H: In 2008 you starred in A GUNFIGHTER’S PLEDGE, with C. Thomas Howell and Jaclyn DeSantis.  That was written by Jim Byrnes who wrote 35 GUNSMOKE episodes.

L:  Again, that was a Hallmark picture.  When I was doing JOHNSON COUNTY I was thinking that maybe I could do this, and after GUNFIGHTER’S PLEDGE I knew for sure I could make one of those.  After I came home from GUNFIGHTER’S PLEDGE I sat down, picked up a pen and said this is what I want the next one to be like.   I started thinking about a character that was interesting to me. 

H: I would describe John Goodnight as sort of a dissipated attorney – would you agree with that?

L: Boy, I don’t like to think of him as an attorney at all!  (laughs)  He’s a guy who was dissatisfied at being an attorney, wanted something different, wanted to actually have an effect on the outcome. 

H: And obviously you and Hallmark are pleased with the outcome, because you’ve made a second, and I understand you’re going to make a third film pretty soon. 

L: We actually have already: we made number two and number three back to back this summer.

H: So that’s already in the can?

L:  Yup; well, we don’t can ‘em anymore, but it’s on the card, as they say – it’s crazy how that’s changed.

H: Is the character of Goodnight inspired by any real person?

L: A combination of different things that I’ve wanted to see in a character, things that I’ve read about.  I’ve read a lot about Andrew Jackson in his time before he was the president of our country.  He was a circuit judge, in the hill country between South Carolina and Tennessee.  And it started me thinking about what the reality of the job would be, having to go from place to place, to be judge, jury, sometimes executioner.  Seemed to be a heavy load; a lot going on for a character, and that’s what I like.  Because many times in scripts, when people conceive a western, they look down on them, and they think they’re just simple stories.  But my favorite movies are simple stories told well.  Larry McMurtry’s great at it.  Larry and Diana Ossana, they know that these stories have got to be layered and textured, and about different things. 

Cameron Bright and Stefanie von Pfetten

H: John Goodnight’s backstory is really interesting.  And what struck me is that normally, most stories would have ended when you graduated from law school,  that would be the happy ending, proving that you had triumphed over adversity, but that’s where you begin.

L: That wasn’t interesting to me, no.  As I was telling them the story of the first one – because the way it works is I come up with these stories, and I write it down as a story, three, four, sometimes eight pages.  One was sixteen pages.  And I take it to these writers, Neal and Tippi Dobrofsky, that I work with, and they hammer that into a screenplay.  They give that screenplay back to me, and then I can start altering and changing things, but they’re the ones that put it into screenplay form. 

H: So you tend to create it at the story point.

L: Right.  I come up with the stories, and they come up with the screenplay.  And I write on that screenplay.  It’s been a really good system for us, you know, we all feel like we’re getting to do what are our strong suits.  And I feel like I can protect my character that way. 

H: Did you have any misgivings about playing a hero with such a dark past?

L: No, because I’ve always been drawn to the darker characters.  I like to look inside that darkness, and see what it is that makes him dark, and when’s the change gonna come.  Because nobody’s dark forever.  And what’s interesting to watch is the process of that change.  Somebody coming from the darkness to the light.  And it’ll be interesting to see, as these movies unfold, what kind of direction Goodnight goes in.  If he goes towards the light, and that dark’s always going to be pulling him. 

H: Do you have an idea in your mind about how many times you’d like to play this character? 

L: No, I don’t have it, I never think of the end, I just keep thinking of the next story. 

H: How did your old BEVERLY HILLS 90210 costar Jason Priestly come to direct the first one? 

L: I said, “Hey bud, you want to direct this thing? We’re shooting it in Canada, and the law says we’ve got to have a Canadian direct it.”  And it was the closest way for me to be the director of the movie without actually being the director.  Because Jason and I work so closely together.  That’s always been the nature of our collaboration; it’s difficult to tell who is actually doing what job at any given time, but I know at the end of the day that he’s the director of the movie. 

H: And of course he played Billy Breckinridge  in TOMBSTONE.  He’s got a good background for westerns. 

L: Yes he did.  He’s been on the set with George Cosmatos, who is an intense filmmaker – let’s put it that way.  And he had a pretty clear vision on TOMBSTONE. 

H: Do you go through a lot of drafts on the GOODNIGHT films?

L: We don’t actually.  In the first one we did; there were a number of drafts back and forth.  But now we’ve got a better machine in place.  We all have a much better understanding of each other, and what we’re trying to do.  And I’ve got to say, they allow me to be very specific in my story-telling with them, when I explain why it is I need this, and what it is I would like to have happen for the character; they’re really good listeners.  

H: Have you thought of adding continuing characters, or a sidekick?  Or do you think you’re going to stay a loner? 

L:  Ahh…I don’t need no sidekick.  No, I think everyone can relate to a solitary character, because we all have our moments where it’s just us, and I think those are the moments of contemplation and speculation, and that’s a lot of what this character is about.  I always picture, as he’s riding across those big open shots, that he’s thinking about things like, ‘Did I hang the wrong guy?’  ‘Did he really do that?’  If you’re a guy who does that job for a living, I’ve got to believe there’s going to be some serious times of second-guessing yourself,.  And I want him to be alone for those moments, because I want the character to go through that. 

H: While GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE is about a judge, and there are a lot of trials involved, it’s not a law show in the strict sense.

L: Nah, they've got enough of those on TV.  In these next two movies, I don’t know if there’s even going to be a trial, if there’s even a legal component to them.  I’ve established who the guy is and what he’s about; we don’t have to see him in the courthouse every time.  Because he’s just a man out there who happens to be good at the law.  I like to have scenes where we see him just being a regular guy.  He’s playing cards, he’s drinking whiskey, hanging out with other guys; he’s just living his life.

H: I heard the first one was shot at Bordertown Movie Ranch in British Columbia.

L: Bordertown, what’s left of it. 

H: What is left of it?

L: Not much.  (German director) Uwe Boll burned the train station down.  And we almost burned one of the barns down this time.  But they’re all still standing, and Bordertown is in better shape than it’s ever been, thanks to a really great construction crew that we had this year.

H: A Western, or any period story, tends to be more complicated to shoot than a contemporary story. 

L:  Yes and no.  I mean, sometimes the horses and livestock offer their own specific challenge, but when you get they guys who know how to do it, it’s just as easy as anything. 

H: How long is your shooting schedule?

L: We got this picture shot in fifteen days. 

H: My goodness, that’s fast.

L: Yes, that’s pretty fast, but what we’re finding is in being able to keep the same crew together on these movies, everybody gets that cohesive spirit, and they know what we’re looking for, we can do it.  We hired some really great people – fantastic production designer Paul Joyal; our make-up department, Candace Stafford – she’s making up all the Indians, making people look old, dirt and different things, and they’re all really enthusiastic about doing it, because they like the movies: we all have a lot of fun doing them. 

H: Are you very involved with the casting?

L: I read with every actor who comes through the door.  And it takes a lot of time, but it’s what works for me, because then I can see who it is who I’m going to be doing the scene with on the day.  I like that.  I was very impressed with the efforts of Cameron Bright, the young actor who plays my potential son.  I was a little skeptical, because I knew Cameron had been in the TWILIGHT movies, and sometimes those kids get an attitude.  And that was never the case with this kid; he showed up, he knew I was gonna put his ass on a horse and make him actually do it.  And he injured his back at the beginning of the thing, and that still didn’t stop him.  He sucked it up,  went out there and got on that thing, and I was very impressed.  He made quite an effort.  And Stefanie Von Pfetten was quite beautiful also.  She’s a stunner.  We were casting, and that’s one of those things where I’m happy that I get to pick.  I’m like, look at her: that’s the one.  She was wonderful.  I was very, very impressed and thankful for her contribution. 

H: I’m not going to give it away, but I liked that the ending of the first movie is a bit darker than you’d expect in a Hallmark movie.

L:  Thank you.  That was the one place where me and the network, we kind of bumped heads.  It’s not your typical Hallmark ending, everybody kissing in the sunset, but not all stories end that way.  And Barbara Fisher, the executive at the Hallmark Channel, I looked her right in the eye and said, ‘At some point, Barbara, you’ve just got to trust that if I set this guy up right, even if the ending’s that heavy, they’ll want to see him in another movie.  And that lady took a shot and she believed in me and let me do that, editorially.  I just wanted to find a way to end that story that a guy like Earl Holliman would watch and go, ‘Okay, he was thinking about it.’ He didn’t just say, okay we’ve got three minutes left, let’s wrap this movie up.  I really wanted that story to culminate in something meaningful, that would make people think. 

H: It seems in the last few years there’s been a growing interest in making Westerns again, starting with the success of the 3:10 TO YUMA remake and the TRUE GRIT remake. 

L: Yuh, the TRUE GRIT remake was fantastic!  Those guys had a real serious challenge, obviously.  They were going after not just ‘a’ John Wayne movie, but pretty much ‘the’ John Wayne movie, and they said, ‘no, we’re going to tell the story from the book,’ and I thought that was  great movie. 

H: What do you think of recent hybrid sci-fi westerns like JONAH HEX and COWBOYS & ALIENS?

L: I didn’t think either one of them were particularly any good.  Although I couldn’t see enough of COWBOYS & ALIENS – the photography was too dark!

H: HELL ON WHEELS just finished their first season.  NBC has three Western pilots ordered, most of the other networks and cable outfits have at least one Western in development.  Do you think this is good, or do you think it’s too much? 

L: I think it doesn’t matter what I think.  They’re going to do what they’re going to do.  I’ve got stories that I want to tell in this vein, and I’m going to concentrate on that and do the best I can.  I wish them the best in all their endeavors, and we’ll see who gets where at the end. 

H: Having done several westerns, how do you relate your persona to Western actors of the past?  Do you see yourself in Glenn Ford roles or Joel McCrea roles, for instance?

L: Ahhh…clearly I see myself as a young Walter Brennan.  A young Wilford Brimley.

(He says it so straight-faced that I am stupidly taken in until he laughs.)

H: I would not have guessed.

L: (laughs) No, I try not to think about it, but I’ll tell you, I watch those guys a lot, and I’m sure, that just by osmosis, there’s a little bit of all of them in all the movies I make.  Because when I grew up, those were the guys I wanted to be like.  Joel McCrea – what a great actor; people don’t talk about him much anymore.  And Richard Widmark, he’s  just great.  Ben Johnson was a great actor who made a ton of those movies.  You look at the cast of LIBERTY VALANCE, and it’s got Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef when they’re both really young.  The other thing I like about making these things is I get to employ a lot of actors.  When you look at those movies, the great westerns, it’s not enough just to have a hero that you think is effective.  That movie’s got to be deep, man – the bartenders are great parts, all the sheriffs – you know what I mean?  That’s where you get those great character actors, and that’s one of the reasons I also love those old movies, and try to do the same thing.

H: Do you think the audience for Westerns is growing?

L: I think this stuff ebbs and flows.  There are waves of nostalgia that wash over our country sometimes.  Like right now as we’re looking at the Second Depression, everybody’s remembering the way things were, and when Americans remembers back, they don’t have to go too far back to when the cowboy was the hero.  And I think that’s what we’re seeing now. 

SPURS AND SADDLES AMONG AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS JAN. 28^TH

(I apologize for the lack of photos, but either my software or my hardware is putting up one helluvah fight!)

High Noon’s Western Americana Auction and Antique Show in Mesa, Arizona will present a dazzling array of Indian art, the finest Bohlin saddles and silver-work, spurs and swords, a saddle that belonged to Zane Grey, and even Geronimo’s autograph!

And that’s not even counting the more than 150 dealers in fine art, furnishings, Cowboy and Indian art.  The auction is Saturday, but the antique show is Saturday and Sunday.  We’ve discussed the remarkable Pancho Villa saddle, with an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000.  There are beautiful Bohlin spurs that belonged to Montie Montana (note the M M monogram), as well as his butterfly boots.  The estimate on the spurs is $10,000 to $15,000, and the boots, in a lot with a Nudie shirt, is expected to draw one grand to fifteen hundred.  RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE author Zane Grey’s saddle is predicted in the $4,000 range. 

A Tom Mix belt and Bohlin buckle is guestimated at twelve to sixteen thousand.  Hopalong Cassidy’s leather director’s chair is estimated at two to three thousand, and I’ll bet it goes for twice that.  The catalog also offers two pages of items that belonged to the great Buck Jones.

Apache Chief Geronimo’s autograph is a fascinating item.  During his long captivity by the U.S. government, he made public appearances, and was allowed to make money by selling things he made, and autographs.  Although he was taught to print his name, he was never taught to read and write, so he wrote his name without being able to read it.  They expect it to sell for from $1500 to $2000, which to me sounds awfully low.  Finally, a 42’’ Cheyenne longbow said to be from the Little Bighorn Battlefield is estimated at $3,000 to $5,000, being sold by a lady who’s annoyed at her son’s lack of interest in inheriting it! 

If you can get to Mesa, Arizona this weekend – and I’m jealous – you can find out more HERE. 

You can also find out about all the ways you can bid remotely, if you can’t get there.

CASTING NEWS: RICHARD DREYFUS JOINS ‘TO APPOMATTOX’

Richard Dreyfus, who won a Best Actor Oscar for Neil Simon’s THE GOODBYE GIRL, will be joining the already impressive cast of the miniseries TO APPOMATTOX (if you missed that line-up, go HERE) as General George Thomas.  Dreyfus, who will soon be seen in the feature version of THE BIG VALLEY as Charles Crocker, founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, recently spent four years in England, teaching American History at Oxford University.

WESTERNS ACROSS THE POND

Our British correspondent, Nilton Hargrave, informs us that the Men & Movies Channel is currently airing STAGECOACH WEST and CIMARRON STRIP; CBS Action is playing season 12 of GUNSMOKE and the 1990s TV movies, plus BLOOD RIVER, BUTCH & SUNDANCE, and the TEXAS miniseries; and CBC drama and ITV 3 are running DR. QUINN.  Let us know what’s running in your neck of the sagebrush, and we’ll share 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, GUNSMOKEandMARSHALL DILLON, which is the syndication title for the original half-hour GUNSMOKE.Incidentally, I see on Facebook that a lot of watchers are mad as Hell at losing CHEYENNE and THE VIRGINIAN.

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 WOMAN on weekdays, and BONANZA on Saturdays.

WHT runs DANIEL BOONE on weekdays from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., Pacific Time, and on Saturdays they run two episodes of BAT MASTERSON. They often show western films on the weekend, but the schedule is sporadic.

TVLANDhas dropped GUNSMOKE after all these years, but still shows four episodes ofBONANZA every weekday.

GEB is largely a religious-programming cable outlet that runs at least one Western on Saturdays – the ones I’ve caught have been public domain Roy Rogers and John Wayne pictures –and sometimes have weekday afternoon movies as well.

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 TVis currently running RIN TIN TIN, CIRCUS BOY, HERE COME THE BRIDES, andIRON HORSE.

Another‘in between’ outfit, ME-TV, which stands for Memorable Entertainment TV, runs a wide collection: BIG VALLEY, BONANZA, BRANDED, DANIEL BOONE, GUNS OF WILL SONNETT, GUNSMOKE, MARSHALL DILLON,RAWHIDE, THE RIFLEMAN, and WILD WILD WEST.Some of these channels are hard to track down, but if they show what you’ve been missing, it’s worth the search.

And for those of you on the other side of the pond, our British correspondentNilton Hargrave tells me CBS ACTION has begun showing GUNSMOKE.

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 HERITAGE MUSEUM

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.

Well partners, I've got one more story to add, but it's going to have to wait until the morning -- I've got to do some work on a documentary tonight, and it's already after midnight!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright January 2012 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved