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.
Posts from Quirt Evans in thread „Who Played the Worst Cowboy, and What Was The Worst Western“
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
