Posted on 08/05/2023 3:23:05 PM PDT by Twotone
The health of the American western in 1956 was robust if you go by just two pictures released that year: John Ford's The Searchers, probably one of the greatest westerns ever made, and George Stevens' Giant, which showed how western themes and values could be nudged forward into the modern world. It was also the year when Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels transplanted the Lone Ranger and Tonto from television to the movie screen with The Lone Ranger – a hit for Warner Bros. and the first of two pictures featuring Moore as the masked gunman, proof that there was still an appetite for an old-fashioned oater, especially if you could fill theatres with ten-year-olds. (And thanks to the Baby Boom you could.)
There was room for everyone and everything in the genre, and the year saw the release of another first – Randolph Scott's first film with director Budd Boetticher in what would become famous as the Ranown Cycle of westerns. Neither as epic as Giant or The Searchers or as cartoonish as The Lone Ranger, it would end up comprising "a series of westerns in which everything seemed to fit perfectly, nothing too loose and nothing too tight," in the words of critic Terrence Rafferty.
7 Men From Now – also known as Seven Men From Now depending on where you look – began as a script by Burt Kennedy, a US cavalry veteran who was decorated in the liberation of the Philippines. He studied acting when he returned home, while doing fencing training and stunt work while writing westerns for the radio. This led to a gig writing episodes for an unproduced TV western for John Wayne's Batjac productions, and finally the script for 7 Men From Now, which was supposed to star Wayne...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I was never a Randolph Scott fan. Even today if I see a western starring Randolph Scott, I won’t watch it. I really love westerns, but he just doesn’t do it for me.
The Searchers was a good western but the best is The Wild Bunch. “Bloody” Sam Peckinpah knew how to to shoot a western.
You’d do it for Randolph Scott. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVGFGmoltDs
Gail Russell, who plays Annie, was one of the most beautiful women on film, but Hollywood chewed her up and spit her out. She was in the full grip of alcoholism when the movie was made, and it shows on her face and in her increasingly frail frame.
Great movie! It has one of the most memorable gunfight/climaxes I can remember. I won’t spoil it for you. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about.
I will take Gregory Peck anytime, I love “The Big Country” and “The Gunfighter” both on Youtube. Classics!
Love Randolph Scott Westerns! Got many of the best on DVD!
The Wild Bunch really isn’t so much a Western as it is a Slasher/Horror genre movie.
Only my opinion.
My first thought...
GMTA
In “the big country”, the scene with Charlton, Heston and Gregory Peck, beating the living crap out of each other, while the camera keeps pulling back to emphasize how small they are… I laugh my ass off every time I see that.
One hell of a great flick… And Jean Simmons was beautiful in that.
” John Ford’s The Searchers, probably one of the greatest westerns ever made,”
Always heavily overrated for some odd reason and nowhere near the greatest western ever made. It’s not even close to the best John Wayne western. The story is a massive deviation from the Cynthia Parker story. But we got a good Buddy Holly sing from a line in it.
Later made western, The Missouri Breaks, a 1976 American Western film
starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, could fit that category.
I like Peck in “Yellow Sky.” Another great Western.
Clayton Moore’s home was just down the street, and up a couple of blocks from where I grew up. Never met him, but we all knew where he lived. (unlike our politicians - why is that?)
Beat me to it.... Love that movie.
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