Posts by Dukesfan

I like "Dances with Wolves" too! It was a great Western movie and the running time of 4h is not too long. Kevin Costner and Mary McDonnell did an wonderful job in this Western!

I met Mary McDonnell a few weeks ago in Germany at a SciFi-Convention, because at the moment she works on the SciFi-series "Battlestar Galactica". She is a very nice and fine lady and gave intelligent answers to the questions of the fans. I got her autograph and we did a photo together.

About Kevin Costner I can´t say much. I don´t know more about him, than that he had done four good Western movies: Silverado, The Legend of Wyatt Earp, Dances with Wolves and Open Range.

High Noon was the first Western movie, I ever saw! I liked it as a child, but, maybe, I have seen it too often...

Today I prefer John Wayne in Rio Bravo as a more professionel lawman than Sheriff Caine played by Gary Cooper, who ran around through the town, to ask people, who are not professionals with their gun for their help.

We could see "The Rifleman" in Austria on television about 35 years ago. They aired it once a week on saturday afternoon at the children´s primetime. I always enjoyed Chuck Connors, the fast man with the Winchester!

I videotaped a few episodes, as they did a rerun 20 years ago. Unfortunately there are no reruns of "The Rifleman" on German or Austrian television any more and there are no DVDs.

I could see a few episodes of Bonanza in Austrian Television as a child, and I liked it that much, that I started reading Bonanza books and comics. Therer are also some LPs with the actors making good country music! I have them all at home.

In Germany they are now releasing the whole Bonanza series (14 Seasons) on DVD! I have bought Season 1-7, that are available at the moment, and I still like it. I have not seen most of the episodes before.

- And my favourite characters on the show are Ben and Hoss...

I wish the Duke had not done „The Green Berets“! Not because of what the movie said about war in Vietnam. Although the Duke´s opinion about the Vietnam-War isn´t mine, it´s O.K. for me, that he wanted to express his feelings about that war in the movie, but “The Green Berets” is not a good War Movie and John Wayne had done much, much better War Movies!

In “The Green Berets” we have two different story plots, like two episodes of a TV-Show. First there is the fight for that US-camp in the jungle and then the secret operation to capture a communist leader. The characters in the movie do not have a real good and interesting background. Compare “The Green Berets” to “In Harm´s Way”, You will find much more interesting characters there! If You compare it to “They were Expendable” You will see, that this movie has one good story arc – it is about leaving, saying good bye and loosing friends in war. If You take a look at Sergeant Stryker in “Sands of Iwo Jima”, he is a much more interesting character for John Wayne to play and to show his great talent as an actor, than Col. Kirby in “The Green Berets”. I even prefer “The fighting Seabees” to “Green Berets”.

Some people here mentioned “The Conqueror”. I can live with that, although it´s not typical for John Wayne and sure not his best. I think, he is not the man for those history-movies, but he was a strong male actor and so they choose him for the role. I cannot imagine Marlon Brando as Temujin, he is not as tall and strong as the Duke! Maybe it would have been a good role for Charlton Heston, who played El Cid and Ben Hur… I have watched “The Conqueror” in English and German language, and believe me: this movie sounds much better with the German dialogs!

Others here did not like “The Cowboys”. I always enjoyed that movie! “The Cowboys” had all the traditional Western elements like horse-braking, cattle-driving, rustlers trying to steel the herd, and it is about loyalty and being responsible for bringing a job to an end. It´s about boys growing up to be men, and Will Anderson shows them what it means, to be a man – who could teach them better than John Wayne? And I like the soundtrack of “The Cowboys” very much!

I wish John Wayne had done “Lonesome Dove”! I read, that long before Larry McMurtry wrote the novel and brought it later to television, starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, he had given a script to John Wayne and the idea was, John Wayne to play Capt. Woodrow Call and James Stewart to play Capt. Gus McCrea. I think, this would have been the perfect couple for “Lonesome Dove”, but the Duke did not like the script and the rest is history…

I liked Robert Duvall as Gus, but I never liked Tommy Lee Jones, how much better would have been John Wayne as Woodrow Call! – “Lonesome Dove” would have been a perfect John Wayne movie, I think, because is about friendship and keeping promises, it´s about how it can change Your life, whether You ride with good companions or You fall in with bad companions and we have a father-son conflict too. We all know, John Wayne could have handled that great, because we have seen it in “Red River”!