It’s rare for me to want to head north of the Mason-Dixon line — if I’m gonna travel, I wanna head West, but this is really tempting. From June 5 through July 3, the Museum Of Modern Art in New York is running a series of Universal Westerns, going from the silents into the 70s. It’s a great batch of movies, for sure — I’ve done commentaries for four of them on Blu-Ray.
A few folks have already asked which ones to see if you can’t see them all. That’s easy, since a few of my favorite U-I Westerns are here that aren’t available on Blu-Ray.
Apache Drums (1951) Directed by Hugo Fregonese Starring Stephen McNally, Coleen Gray, Willard Parker, Arthur Shields, James Griffith, Clarence Muse
Val Lewton’s last film, only Western and only picture in color. And guess what? It plays like a Val Lewton movie with cowboys — tight, efficient and suspenseful. In his fairly small part, Clarence Muse is incredible.
The Naked Dawn (1955) Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer Starring Arthur Kennedy, Betta St. John, Eugene Iglesias
Edgar Ulmer pulls off another minor miracle, making a Universal International Western in 10 days. Kennedy is a drifter who turns up to corrupt St. John and Iglesias. Ulmer could always make something out of nothing.
A Day Of Fury (1956) Directed by Harmon Jones Starring Dale Robertson, Mara Corday, Jock Mahoney
This is a terrific movie. A mysterious stranger (Dale Robertson) comes to town, and his very presence turns that town inside out. Robertson said he played his part as if he was the Devil. It works.
A Star In The Dust (1956) Directed by Charles F. Haas Starring John Agar, Mamie Van Doren, Richard Boone, Coleen Gray, Leif Erickson, James Gleason, Paul Fix, Harry Morgan, Clint Eastwood
Look at that cast! This has an interesting take on the cattlemen vs. farmers thing — both groups have their own reasons to be worked up about the hanging of a gunslinger (Richard Boone), with sheriff John Agar caught in the middle.
All four of these pictures get chapters in my someday book, 50 Westerns From The 50s. All are difficult to track down and highly, highly recommended. Wonder why they didn’t include an Audie Murphy picture? Hell Bent For Leather (1960) would’ve been my choice.
On May 31, 1958, the Trail Drive-In in Sarasota, Florida, got creative and booked a “Big Western Show” featuring six pictures with “Gun” in the title. Their resulting “Gun Roundup” offers up a pretty solid night of 50s Westerns:
The Stranger Wore A Gun (1953) Directed by Andre de Toth Starring Randolph Scott, Claire Trevor, Joan Weldon, George Macready, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine
Top Gun (1955) Directed by Ray Nazarro Starring Sterling Hayden, William Bishop, Karin Booth, James Millican, Regis Toomey, Hugh Sanders, John Dehner, Rod Taylor
Gunslinger (1956) Directed by Roger Corman Starring Beverly Garland, John Ireland, Allison Hayes
Gun The Man Down (1956) Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen Starring James Arness, Angie Dickinson, Emile Meyer, Robert J. Wilke, Harry Carey, Jr., Don Megowan
That’s six hours well spent. Would’ve loved to have been there! (By the way, you can recreate this bill with your DVD and Blu-Ray collection!)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur Starring Joel McCrea, Miroslava, John McIntire, Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Gates, John Carradine
Jacques Tourneur’s Stranger On Horseback (1955) starring Joel McCrea is a Western considered pretty much lost until Kit Parker sorted out and bought the rights — and tracked down what is probably the only surviving 35mm color print (hiding at the BFI).
This new Stranger On Horseback will be a huge improvement over the old DVD. The supplements include a mini-documentary, Thunder In The Saddle: The Making Of Stranger On Horseback; an audio commentary by some dude named Toby Roan; the theatrical trailer; and image galleries that include production photos, the original shooting script, posters, lobby cards and more.
UPDATE: The release date is December 16. Get ready, folks!
Cheyenne (1955-62) was more than just an excellent 50s Western TV show. It was the first hour-long Western, the first hour-long dramatic TV show to run more than a single season. It was also the first TV series produced by a major studio (Warner Bros.) that wasn’t derived from an established film property.
Now on Blu-Ray from Warner Archive — 107 episodes on 30 discs, Cheyenne is one of the best examples of classic TV in high definition I’ve seen so far. Scanned in 4K from the original camera negatives, these things are just stunning.
In its first season, Cheyenne shared its time slot with King’s Row and Casablanca, two WB shows based on their films. After the first season, those two vanished and Cheyenne had other slot-mates (Sugarfoot in the third season).
Clint Walker plays Cheyenne Bodie, a cowboy/scout riding across the post-Civil War West. Each week, he rides into a new spot and happens upon a new batch of folks. The plots are very much in line with what the laters B Westerns had been — and what we think of today as a 50s Western.
Cheyenne was raised by the Cheyenne after his parents were killed by another tribe. He later lived with a white family (the particulars vary a bit from show to show). He’s fair, kind, strong and always ready to help out those in need. And as if to prove the idea that “no good deed goes unpunished,” Cheyenne’s servant nature often lands him in a real mess.
Warner Bros. put their major-studio muscle behind their TV product, and it shows. Cheyenne fits right in with what Warners was doing with Western features in the late 50s. From the sets to the casts to the music, these episodes play like 50-minute versions of what WB was sending to theaters. For example, James Garner and Angie Dickinson appear in a second-season episode (“War Party”) about the same time they were in Warner’s Randolph Scott picture Shootout At Medicine Bend (1957).
The directors who did episodes of Cheyenne is a bit of a Western Who’s Who, with pros like George Waggner, Paul Landres, Thomas Carr, Joe Kane, Howard W. Koch, Paul Henreid, Lew Landers and Arthur Lubin.
Same with cinematographers. Shooting Cheyenne were folks like Harold E. Stine, Carl E. Guthrie, Bert Glennon, Ted McCord, William H. Clothier, Harold Rosson, William P. Whitley and Ellis W. Carter.
From week to week, the cast was incredible. Here’s just a sample of the folks who turn up over the course of the show: James Garner, Jack Elam, Ray Teal, Myron Healy, Bob Steele, Kathleen Crowley, Leo Gordon, Ann Robinson, Rod Taylor, Marie Windsor (above), Adele Mara, Gerald Mohr, Peggie Castle, Robert J. Wilke, Penny Edwards, Dennis Hopper, James Griffith, Angie Dickinson, John Qualen, Lee Van Cleef, Denver Pyle, Phil Carey, James Coburn, Nestor Paiva, Slim Pickens, John Carradine, Frank Ferguson, Joan Weldon, Tom Conway, Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, Edd Byrnes, Evelyn Ankers, John Russell, Claude Akins, Don “Red” Barry, Don Megowan, Dan Blocker, Adam West, Connie Stevens, Faith Domergue, James Drury, Lorne Greene, Mala Powers, Merry Anders, Alan Hale Jr., R. G. Armstrong, Ahna Capri, Ellen Burstyn, Sally Kellerman, Michael Landon, Harry Lauter and Ruta Lee. In three of the early episodes, LQ Jones (below) is his sidekick Smitty. (I left out dozens because it would’ve made for a pretty ridiculous paragraph.)
Cheyenne was a hit and it made Clint Walker a star. With a hit show, the exacting schedule that came with it, no features on the horizon, and an exclusive contract that paid him just $150 a week, after the third season, Walker was unhappy.
Clint Walker: “… I found out they [Warner Bros.] turned down some pretty nice features that I could’ve done… I heard that when people inquired, they were told, ‘When Clint Walker does features, he’ll do ‘em for Warner Bros.’ So that’s where we had the difference of opinion.” *
So, Clint Walker, well, walked. The show zigzagged to a “fake Cheyenne,” Bronco Layne (Ty Hardin) and kept going until Walker was coaxed back into the saddle. Warners put him in the excellentFort Dobbs (1958), which I’d love to see make the leap to Blu-Ray. Bronco Layne got his own series for a while, called simply Bronco.
This is an excellent TV series, a consistent favorite of fans of 50s Westerns — and for good reason. And Warner Archive has given us all good reason to pick up this set. They look wonderful. The audio has plenty of punch. They’re uncut and have the original WB openings and closings in place. A nice slipcover thing holds the seasons nice and neat.
Cheyenne was a home run back in 1955 — and it’s a home run on Blu-Ray 70 years later. Highly, highly recommended.
*From a phone conversation with this author back in 2010.
This old world has been churning out motion pictures for well over a hundred years. Some are good, some ain’t. Some are easy to find, and unfortunately, some ain’t. This has been on my mind lately, and it’s been a fairly frequent topic among the comments on this blog and “the other one.”
I just wrapped up my contribution to the second volume of Kit Parker’s Saddle Up Westerns series. (The first will be out soon.) Number 2 includes Jacques Tourneur’s Stranger On Horseback (1955)* starring Joel McCrea, a Western considered pretty much lost until Mr. Parker sorted out and bought the rights — and tracked down what is probably the only surviving 35mm color print (hiding at the BFI).
There was a DVD released through VCI several years ago, and now that lonely print has been pulled back into service for Blu-Ray. We should be happy to have a chance to see Stranger On Horseback, period. There are lots and lots of movies that haven’t come back from the abyss like this one has. For it to make it to DVD, much less Blu-Ray, is really something.
We’re Spoiled, Admit It. Many of us complain about “double dipping” — buying a film over and over as technology evolves. First, nobody’s holding a gun to your head — you don’t have to make all those re-purchases. You can stick to that VHS copy of Goldfinger (1964) you bought 30 years ago. Once upon a time, you thought that tape looked pretty damn good, now you’d turn your nose up at it. (Same goes for that ancient DVD of it.)
This new Stranger On Horseback will be a huge improvement over the DVD. And just as you have to open your wallet for these upgrades, so do these video companies — an entirely new transfer/scan is required. And that kind of restoration work comes with a pretty hefty price tag.
I’m so thankful that folks like Mr. Parker and Phil Hopkins of Film Masters are giving these films another chance to be seen (and maybe later another chance to really shine). Their efforts are to be applauded — and certainly supported. To be selfish about it (and to prove I learned something in Economics class), as long as we keep buying them, they’ll keep making ’em.
The major studios seem to have given up on the old, obscure films we cherish, making these independents even more important as a video source and as an engine for film preservation.
2025 already promises a wealth of video riches (and the restored The Searchers might hit your mailbox before the end of 2024). Rather than complain because there are so many movies NOT available on DVD or Blu-Ray (such as Republic’s The Great Train Robbery from 1941), I’m gonna look at my video collection as half full rather than half empty. And if I’m gonna complain about anything, it’s gonna be that I need more shelf space!
*The second feature in this set will be Outlaw Women (1952) starring Marie Windsor, scanned from a 35mm Cinecolor original.
Directed by Jacques Tourneur Starring Joel McCrea, Vera Miles, Lloyd Bridges, Wallace Ford, Edgar Buchanan, Peter Graves, Jack Elam
Jacques Tourneur’s Wichita (1955) was an early DVD title from Warner Archive and we were all excited to see it turn up. Now it’s coming to Blu-Ray in August — and I’m probably more excited this time around, given what we’ve seen CinemaScope and Technicolor look like in high definition these days. Wichita is getting a 4K scan of the original camera negative.
But no matter how you’re looking at it, Wichita is terrific. Tourneur was one of Joel McCrea’s preferred directors and they always seemed to strike gold when they worked together. This one, with McCrea as Wyatt Earp cleaning up Wichita, Kansas, is one of their best.
Riding along with Wichita are two Tex Avery cartoons, Deputy Droopy and The First Bad Man (both 1955). The whole thing comes highly, highly recommended.
Directed by Rudolph Maté Starring Tony Curtis, Colleen Miller, Arthur Kennedy, William Demarest, Robert J. Wilke, Chubby Johnson, I. Stanford Jolley
Explosive Media is really coming through for the rest of the year, bringing some prime 50s Westerns from Universal-International to DVD and Blu-Ray. I’ve already covered Seven Ways From Sundown (1960) and Hell Bent For Leather (1960), excellent Audie Murphy pictures, coming in May and June.
Watch this blog, since we’ll do one of these releases a day through the week.
Coming in July is Rudolph Maté’s The Rawhide Years (1955). Tony Curtis is a riverboat gambler who flees when he’s implicated in a murder. He returns three years later to clear his name, track down the real killers and be reunited with his girl (Colleen Miller).
Curtis is cool and Arthur Kennedy makes a nasty villain here. Irving Glassberg shot this in Technicolor and 2.0. Rudolph Maté and editor Russell Schoengarth keep things moving at a steady pace. Can’t wait to see this in high-definition. Highly recommended.
50 Westerns From The 50s.