Who Played the Worst Cowboy, and What Was The Worst Western

The only one to come to mind for me is Sharon Stone. Over-rated movie. Even spagettie westerns were better than her cowgirl flick. But thats just me.

Naw Chance,Bob Taylor did a dozen westerns in 17 years that proved he was a giant in the genre.I won't squabble about your other picks but Bob earned his spurs and even Duke would have said that Bob Taylor knew what he was doing in westerns.Duke who was in charge of Batjac and would have overseen the developement of the Hondo t.v.series and Duke had him in Hondo and the Apaches.Bob went from pretty boy MGM adonis and with the passing of time,the sun and cigarettes those piercing,strilking handsome features became a road map of lines.Bob Taylor was the west and he lived it and loved it.He played an outlaw,a Native American,a wagon master,a gunslinger,a comical coonskin hat fronteirsman,a lawman,a cattle baron and a riveting,chilling deranged Indian and Buffalo hater.He took over Death Valley Days after Ronnie Reagan left to become a political force and starred in half a dozen episodes.He even flew to Spain to make a very good flintlock pampas western.He owned his own ranch and was an excellent horseman.His death was at least 25 years premature in my book and I think highly of him and I'll bet old Duke did too.The rest Chance,whether they gave credible performances in westerns or not I won't defend,but Bob Taylor became the west.

Check out Robert Taylor in "Ambush" almost as good as a John Wayne western...

Alan Ladd. I just don't like him in "SHANE". I mean, Shane is a great movie, but I really can't see Ladd in cowboy-clothes He's probably too thin lol Oh God I think everyone was ugly in that movie. Even Jean Arthur!

I do agree with Humphry Bogart, even he agreed with it also. He stayed with the gangster movies which he did well in.

I would also say that Rock Hudson was not that good either, and he should stay with romantic comedies.

Fred MacMurray did a western once, but I can't remember what it was. I saw it and it was not good at all. Stay with comedy, and drama.

Gregeroy Peck; good actor, but doesn't fit in the western gerne, he should stay with drama, and suspense.

I'll thing of others, and report later.

Cheers, Hondo B)

Yes Hondo and Chance and Slugaholic I see your points of view.But Fred MacMurray,Alan Ladd and Rock each made a dozen westerns,and nearly all thirty six of them made money.Between 1953 and 1959 Duke had four westerns out,all classics.Fred had nine westerns out in those six years but of course they are all forgotten.It was Disney that took Fred out of the saddle.Alan Ladd had the classic Shane and a very good one that critics liked too entitled The Proud Rebel.Alan was even an extra in Hell Town with Duke and Johnny Mack Brown.Rock did well in The Undefeated and eleven other westerns and sat a horse better than Ladd or MacMurray.Gable was King and the Duke knew it.The Tall Man was a Raul Walsh epic and Gable used Duke's stuntman Chuck Roberson.It's sad that Ladd was gone by age fifty.He brought a quiet,understated,golden angelic aura to Shane.Nobody else could have played him that way.Certainly not Monty Clift who was considered for it.Alan had his demons and who knows,if he hadn't seen his mother commit suicide and he had been four inches taller he might have lived to die this year.It seems everyone is passing on this year.Greg Peck did and old Duke groused the rest of his life that Peck beat him out for The Gunfighter.I can find goodness in many stars,but I am older and watched many of these westerns in the last forty years.I like Bob Taylor,Greg Peck,Alan Ladd,Fred MacMurray and Rock,plus many,many more.But I love John Wayne an awful lot too.

Just so nobody will hurt his eyes looking for Alan Ladd in Wayne's "Helltown": He's not in it. That's an old mistake that keeps popping up to this day. Yet it has been prooved he isn't (not even as an extra, which he was at the time). I just received my Helltown-DVD, and Ladd's name is put prominently next to Wayne's. But after all, the classic gunfighter of the Fifties, Shane, never co-starred with that classic western-star of the century.

Yes Itdo,John Wayne was the classic,best remembered movie cowboy of the Twentieth Century.It remains to the individual what the greatest western was.To director Steven Spielberg it will be The Searchers.To Woody Allen it would be Shane.I know that HellTown will not show a frame to the naked eye of Alan Ladd,but he had a small role in it.After Ladd became a star with This guns for hire in 42,HellTown was rereleased by Paramount and they padded it with more Ladd footage,a version that we will never see today which means we might have lost a scene or two with Duke that we will never see also.Their was a sad magnetism in Ladd as a buckskin clad knight in Shane who knew he was doomed and the fact that you can never go back.Duke could not have played Shane and Ladd could not have carried The Searchers.John Ford would have chewed up all five foot six inches of Alan and spit him out then went back to chewing his hankie.

Hello, Quirt
In my opinion, Shane is up there with the 10 Best - and I always wondered how Wayne would have tackled the role. Stevens' style in composing and cutting is simply wonderful, even after the 10th viewing, and it certainly is quite different from, say, John Ford. While Ford made it look like everything just happens while he just happens to have a camera there, Stevens' frames look very concious. Anyway, that's the first time I heard about the Alan Ladd-story in Helltown that way - what is to source to that version? Sources have been checked and re-checked before, and I think right know they agree on it being a mistake. Couldn't this be a case like the William Holden starring in The Longest Day case? (he was signed for the Wayne-part and they started printing the press releases, so in some books, even today, Holden stars in The Longest Day).

Well I learned something then too itdo because I didn't know Bill Holden was up for Dukes part.I do know that Holden was first pick for the Van Heflin role in Shane tho.Go to American Movie Classics and type in Helltown.In the left hand bottom corner it has a segment entitled,Did you know!If AMC doesn't know the truth well then nobody does.

Yes, as you probably know, as far as Wayne was concerned, Zanuck could take his picture and... and while this was going on, there were actually other stars interested in what was probably the part with the most meat in the whole film. Charlton Heston writes in his biography "In the Arena" that he was hoping for the part - but even with his kind of star power he had to stand aside when Zanuck got Wayne.
But about Ladd in "Hell Town" - I'm not yet sold on the idea that he really really was in in to begin with (not that I don't trust AMC - but I don't trust the Internet authors!) Variety and another movie magazine of the day actually named Alan Ladd in the role of "prospector". But since then film scholars pointed out that he never was. Probably his name was attached at some point to the picture - but as B-movies go, they were there to just make money. And when they re-released "Born to the West" as Helltown (after Ladd had made his "This Gun For Hire") they just put him on the marquee. Of course they would not check first if he was actually in it. If some footage got lost or replaced or whatever - isn't it kind of funny that those scenes are just the ones in which unknown Alan Ladd appeared?

Drew Barrymore would top my list, as does Kevin Costner.

If I say that Drew's private,partying lifestyle throughout the 90's has an effect on me personally,then such feelings would quite naturally have to extend to a star's political leanings,preferred sexuality and whether or not they called their dear old grey haired momma every day or not and told her that they loved her.It's what's up on the screen in the end that matters and what counts and no woman in the last twenty years has sat a horse on the big screen the way Drew rode that palomino.It was Kevin's success with Dances with Wolves that jumpstarted Clint who had been holding on to a script for a dozen years called Unforgiven to decide the time was right to film it.I have read message board after message board in the past year that predicted another flop for Kevin with his western Open Range and remarks concerning his attitude.In the end,Kevin fooled them.These same people would finally allow and grudgingly to boot that it was Robert Duval that saved it.The truth is that Kevin did an outstanding job and the truth is that again Kevin directed a nineteenth century piece that showed a profit.Kevin already owns another wertern that he wants to film and I wish him luck.The saddest portrayal of an actor in a western is by a man who had won an Academy Award and that is Broderick Crawford.Brod as the villain was teamed with star Audie Murphy in The Texican and he is truly a hair dyed,overweight,stiff,cartoon that is either drunk or with a hangover in every frame.Brod had fallen on hard times and middle age and he telephoned in his performance.

Guess I poked a bear here. I could care less how Drew Barrymore has lived her life. Frankly, I'm glad that she has got her act together and reduced her risk of following in the footsteps of her ancestors early deaths. That didn't form my opinion of her. My opinion was formed by the way she looked uncomfortable in the whole movie, and didn't deliver that good of a preformance, in my opinion. That's what we're talking about here, is people's opinions.

As for Costner. I didn't say he couldn't act, nor did I say he hasn't turned in some impressive perfomances. Dances With Wolves is one of my favorites, as is Bull Duram. I even like The Postman. I can't judge Open Range because I haven't seen it. What I can say is that the role he played as Jake in Silverado made him and the charector look like a dork, again, in my opinion.

Are both of the people I mentioned good actors? yes, some of the best. The roles they chose in this case weren't the best, nor did they pull them off the best.

Interesting to see that while in the US Costner is considered to be going downhill, he is still held in the highest regards in Europe. I really believe the media and bad publicity harmed lots of his films. Look for instance at Waterworld. They killed the movie even before they had seen it, simply for its costs. The movie actually recouped all of that and more, doing very well in Europe - and I believe it to be a great adventure yarn. Look at "Wyatt Earp". There go Costner and Kasdan and make a western, historically accurat (even down to the last dialogue spoken in Tombstone, if you're really into that OK-Corral-story you'll know they hit it on the head). The western genre always suffered from critics who said it's un-realistic. Do a realistic western and they bury you as well. Then Costner states himself he likes doing films "for Americans, for us", and he does films such as For The Love of the Game, et cetera. He simply doesn't plan his career in terms of box-office! Message in a Bottle - ever saw a love-story with a more down-beat ending (with the possible exception of "Love Story") - I say that takes guts. And it was a wonderful movie for it. The Postman (even though I must admit I'm the only one I know) I liked for its symbolic plot, for the great photography - just well done science fiction. When I went to see Silverado (again, I was the only one - nobody else wanted to come) I couldn't take my eyes off Costner - I knew he would be around for some time now. Thirteen Days? You don't make a film like this and hope for a blockbuster. That's what I like with Costner. He makes films he thinks can be good. Not films he think will make money. But in the long run, they always do.