Posted on 11/30/2014 12:31:28 PM PST by ReformationFan
ping
I just finished reading Wister’s book — highly recommended. I’ve been wanting to see this movie version — thanks for posting today.
You’re welcome. Let me know what you think of it. It’s a little creaky being an early talkie. However, it benefits from being made in a time so near to when the old, wild west was still a living memory for so many people and I think that adds to its charm.
I thought the book was unbearable. The TV series varied between pretty good to awful. How was the movie?
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Does the movie include this scene from the book:
“Out of the lower country and its air he would urge his horse upward, talking to him aloud, and promising fine pasture in a little while. Then, when at length he had ridden abreast of the island pines, he would ford to the sheltered circle of his camp-ground, throw off the saddle and blanket from the horse’s hot, wet back, throw his own clothes off, and, shouting, spring upon the horse bare, and with a rope for bridle, cross with him to the promised pasture.
Here there was a pause in the mountain steepness, a level space of open, green with thick grass. Riding his horse to this, he would leap off him, and with the flat of his hand give him a blow that cracked sharp in the stillness and sent the horse galloping and gambolling to his night’s freedom. And while the animal rolled in the grass, often his master would roll also, and stretch, and take the grass in his two hands, and so draw his body along, limbering his muscles after a long ride.”
The TV series left it out.
;>)
The Virginian by Owen Wister is thought to be one of the best American works of fiction. Highly recommended as someone above had mentioned.
“The War on Powder River” by Helena Huntington Smith” is good background material for the historical events that inspired the novel and movie. Written in the 1930’s, but is still available. It was a range war between small ranchers and larger absentee owners-some from outside the United States, who termed the smaller outfits “rustlers.” It culminated in an armed standoff between the factions that took federal troops to quell. The Virginian’s author, Owen Wister, was friendly with the out of state cattlemen and the novel reflects that. The historical reality is much more ambiguous.
Ah, The Virginian’s reminiscences about his favorite place in the whole world — where he took his new bride for the beginning of their honeymoon.
Movie for a Sunday afternoon. That would be after the football games are over, right?
I post them on Sunday afternoon but they’re for anytime you want to watch them(as long as they’re not taken down).
I also read all of Zane Grey's novels, and Louis Lamour's as well. Owen Wister set the pace. What a wellspring of Western movie plots!
I also like the 1946 version with Joel McCrea. I’ve posted that one some time ago.
Some of my favorite westerns are early talkies... “Law and Order,” “Hell’s Heroes,” “To the Last Man,” “Gun Smoke,” etc. Probably because of the way that era was still presenting the western genre via the curiously stark and contrasting elements of the rugged grittiness of frontier life, right alongside the vintage worldview of romanticism left over from the Victorian times.
M4L
Considering that my folks weren't much for movies, this one must have impressed Dad, himself a farm boy turned Methodist preacher. Well, this is just an idle thought, not a high-jack.
It's just that I loved the old ride-'em, shoot-'em westerns before they became complicated psychodramas like another later one by Gary Cooper: "High Noon." And "the Virginian" done by the kid down the street, who was in Dad's Sunday School, was sort of special.
Me too —
Thank you!
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