Posts by Quirt Evans

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.

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 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.

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.

Budd Boetticher in an interview a year or two before he passed on said that at the time of casting and planning that Duke had stated....Put Randy in it!He's through!After Duke seen the end result Duke stated.....I shoulda did it myself!I should cut my throat!Someone some where has read that same interview.Duke knew instantly that this one was special.The Searchers rightfully is remembered today,but what if Duke had did 7 Men from Now!Also.Budd put the blame on Michael Wayne,but Micheal is now passed on too.I don't know what is holding it up now.I have seen an E-bAY bidding war for it at over 35 dollars and that was a video camera filmed copy of a dark,scratchy 16mm print.I seen it once 35 years ago,Randy rode his palomino,Stardust.The favor Duke did for Randy got him started with Budd and culminated with Ride the High Country for Sam at age 64.I tip my stetson to Duke for giving an old friend,craggy,leathery,long in the tooth and teetering on has been obscurity in B westerns the chance of a life time.A chance that millions and millions and millions of people have never seen.

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.

Hello to everyone,especially Rob as the Lone Ranger.Your post really struck me ,and close to home because I am new here and I only live 25 miles from you in Blairsville,Pennsylvania.I was in Johnstown last week as a matter of fact.Do you dress up as the Lone Ranger and go to shows?This week end in DuBois,Penna.is the Tom Mix festival.Duke started out in 1926 as a prop boy on The great K and A and the last horse Duke touched on film was a t.v.special in 78 where he led a horse that was in silver saddle that looked like Tony and Duke spoke about Tom Mix .I don't know if the imdB lists that special or not,but I viewed it at that time.Tom Mix days will have men dressed as Tom and Duke and Lash and Roy and is a lot of fun.I was raised in Indiana,Pa.home of Jimmy Stewart and I got to talk to Jimmy a couple of times.Johnstown is in Cambria county and Cambria county was the home of Charly Bronson.I also saw a special from 1977 and Charlie and Duke were both their at an awards show.Someone somewhere in the over 300 members of this board has had to have seen it.Charly stated that he had never met Mr.Wayne before,but to him the word MACHO!meant John Wayne.Charly then went over and shook Duke's hand.Duke acted kind of embarassed and said something like I don't even know what macho means.Funny that after 26 years in the buisness that Bronson had never met Duke,but then mebbe not for Charly was a notorious anti social loner.His family meant everything but he didn't socialise much.Well Rob,being half an hour away,I don't think it will take 26 years for us to meet.Take care!

I want to thank you Hondo,Chester and itdo for your warm welcome and concern.The Searchers sorrel gelding was by far the fastest horse Duke ever swung his leg over.He had to have been contracted out because you can clearly see actor John Dehner mounted on him in a forgotten cavalry film from the 50's entitled Revolt at Fort Laramie.I believe John Ford liked this horse and that is why Duke rode him in thoses three films.After all if pappy picks your horse,you don't say no.He could have outrun the original white Duke from the 30's,Banner,Alamo or Dollor.He had flat track blue blood in him.The only horse that stood a chance of beating him,and on a good day could have was Steel.Duke only used Steel in Tall in the saddle and The Conqueror.Ben Johnson used him in She wore a yellow ribbon,Rio Grande and King Kong.Every one fought to ride Steel.Randy Scott,Joel McCrea,Greg Peck,Clark Gable.Hank Fonda was the last to use him in Warlock.Dollor was a huge horse.He was 5 foot 6 inches at the shoulder and weighed over 1200 lbs.Cochise was too small for Duke,but Howard Hawks wanted to show off his appy and that is the only appy Duke ever rode.Duke was a horseman for sure and for real.Not many men at age 64 could ride like Duke did in The Cowboys.Chuck Roberson doubled Duke for 27 years and owned a fall horse name of Cocaine that doubled for Dollor.Duke was on Cocaine for that John Ford special that Andy Devine was in.Duke broke his shoulder when his saddle slipped filming The Undefeated.Come to think of it,Clint broke his shoulder when his dapple grey slipped during filming Pale Rider.These things happen.In fact during a hospital stay in his last months Duke took a stroll through the ward and asked a girl what happened to her.The little girl said that she was hurt by a horse and Duke said that he understood,and knew what she meant.Duke truly was tall in the saddle and rode with a light hand on the reins,he didn't saw and jaw and jerk at their mouth.He use to complain that when others rode Banner at Republic that when he got him back,he had to reschool him because other actors bumped at his mouth and made him toss his head.I love John Wayne and I have studied him and his westerns.I don't know anything about airplanes,I have never led a charge in battle or roped wild animals in Africa,but I know actors on horseback and I never get tired of watching old Duke over and over again.This message board fits me like a used pair of leather gloves.

Boys, I am spankin new around these parts. It was June of 1962 and it just so happened that Liberty Valance was playing the week of my birthday. That is all I wanted for my birthday, to see old Duke and Jimmy on the big screen, and I have never forgotten him, Jimmy or that classic in 41 years. Now there is a great deal about everything that I don't know, beit Duke or anything else in life, except horses. I read with keen interest a story of old Beau still being alive a few years ago and that really caught my interest! True Grit was filmed in 1968 and if Beau had been a colt, say a four year old and new to movies and True Grit was his first film, that would have made him foaled in 1964. If he was still alive two or three years ago that would have made him 36 or 37 years old. Most horses live to be 27 to 30 before their organs shut down. Their are exceptions to the rule, their always is. Duke stated in an interview that the Walker he was riding in True Grit, in his own words... Just blew up! and he was replaced. You couldn't twirl a winchester and have the first Beau stand in his tracks. The second Beau has the blaze and stockings, but he is more red, while the first horse shows a roan cast to him. Duke only admitted to owning one horse in his name. A little Quarter Horse that the papers were in the name of John Wayne. Duke was a good rider. He didn't love horses, but he didn't hate them either. The horse Cochise from El Dorado was owned by Howard Hawks. Duke said that it took a lot of arm muscle to back him out of Ed Asners ranch. Banner was the horse at Republic that Duke rode the longest. Alamo was in The Alamo and his main mount in McLintock. Of course Dollor came along with Big Jake and except for the mule in Cahill U.S. Marshall, Duke never climbed aboard another horse, just ol Dollor. Now to my question. In The Searchers, The Horse Soldiers and Liberty Valance you see Duke mounted on a tall, very fast sorrel horse with a blaze with a tiny red spot in it. Duke only rode him in the three John Ford films and for no one else. It's like pappy Ford instructed Duke to ride this one special mount. The running insert where Duke rides and fires as he attacks the Indian village is one of the fastest galloping inserts ever filmed with a major star. Clint Eastwood never in his career rode that fast.I want to know the name of that horse and I have wanted to know for years. The Searchers is one of the greatest films of the Twentieth Century and I don't know the name of the horse that the greatest western star rode! He looks to have Thoroughbred blood in him and he was truly magnificent! Well old Quirt is your latest addition to a board that means a great deal to me. I will read every word typed for Duke and Jimmy Stewart are my two all time favorites and westerns in general are my cup of tea. Thank you for your time!