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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 6:47:57 GMT -6
Trish the Dish aka Tricia-
Interesting. I thought the Technicolor added real depth to the cinimotog - cinymophot - cynnia - the camera stuff in Shane. I wonder just how short Alan Ladd was. If we take the spacing of the buttons on his shirt front (3" on center) and multiply the number of times if fits into --- Oh, never mind, don't want to start another one of those debates.
I too was a big fan of 'Have Gun Will Travel' - Sunday nights, I believe, never missed it. Actually the White Knight's piece (or Paladin) from a chess set was his trade mark. He used one split length-wise in profile mounted on his holster. But he always wore a totally black outfit.
Hey-Boy, the Chinese bell hop in San Francisco, was the only other regular character. One season that actor's health was not good and the role was replaced by Hey-Girl. Being a typical male, I forgot all about Hey-Boy and was smitten with her immediately. Played by Lisa Lu, who later was in “The Joy Luck Club” … another of my favorite films.
M
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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 6:52:11 GMT -6
Gac-
Did poor old Strother Martin EVER get a role in which his character WAS redeemable? Certainly not in 'The Horse Soldiers' or 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' or even 'Cool Hand Luke'.
M
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 3, 2007 7:07:14 GMT -6
If he did, I for one can't remember it. Nor L. Q. Jones either, I think; that ferret face of his was just made for shifty crooks and cowards. Bo Hopkins, on the other hand, did once in a while get to play people who weren't idiots ... but not very often!
GAC, you've made me see something I hadn't spotted before about The Wild Bunch, even though I thought I knew the movie by heart: sticking by Angel is the reverse of what they do in the opening sequence, where the Hopkins character is just left. (Ditto in the Holden/Ryan flashback, where Ryan's left.) And in a sense it's Angel who's enabled their redemption, through that garden-of-Eden vision-of-innocence sequence in his home village ... What a movie. Yes, a Peckinpah treatment of the Custer story would have been something to see. It could be a fascinating exercise to try to map out what he might have done.
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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 7:22:14 GMT -6
" Yes, a Peckinpah treatment of the Custer story would have been something to see. It could be a fascinating exercise to try to map out what he might have done. "
Its simple. Sam would have shot the entire battle scene in slow-motion with LOTS of explosions of blood. Over and over and over......
M ;D
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 3, 2007 7:30:14 GMT -6
Well, yes ... I think we can bank on that!
Am beginning to think that maybe I need to see Shane again. I'd pushed it way down my personal list because (a) I don't like movies with a whining child at their heart, (b) I too found the Technicolor a bit much, and (c) Alan Ladd's hard to take seriously. But I'm obviously missing something. Haven't seen it for, oh, several decades at least -- so perhaps I should give it another go ...
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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 7:31:01 GMT -6
It seems like LQ (one of Peckinpaw's favorite actors) did get a few rolls that portrayed somewhat sympathic characters. The actor (real name Justus something) took the name, LQ Jones, from the first character he played in films.
M
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 3, 2007 7:36:48 GMT -6
That's good to know. I suppose I should have looked him up on IMDb first before pontificating!
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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 7:43:12 GMT -6
Yeah, give it a shot Elisabeth. I am making a point of catching WILD BUNCH my next opportunity. Maybe will see it in a new light thanks to all of you.
I really felt an understanding, for some unknown reason, with the Shane character and his wanting to be a part of the community but destined to ever be the outcast and drifter. The same life theme of Ethan Edwards in 'The Searchers'. The affection that Shane and Mrs. Starret, as well as Ethan and Martha, felt for each other (and chose to or could do nothing about) was - maybe a stretch here - reflective, in some way of the Libbie/Tom Custer relationship?
M
P.S. - I never thought that Ethan Edwards was as interested in rescuing Debbie as he was in seeking blood revenge for the rape and killing of Martha.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 3, 2007 7:51:08 GMT -6
Hmmm, maybe ... (Though if he had been cherishing a doomed passion for her, you'd think he'd have been a little politer about the nightshirt ...)
These suppressed/repressed relationships are so much more dramatic than overt ones, don't you think? Maybe that's why Jane Austen, Henry James, Edith Wharton et al work so well on screen.
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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 7:54:53 GMT -6
"...These suppressed/repressed relationships are so much more dramatic than overt ones.."
Absolutely. We all have, or have had our secrets, along those lines.
M
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Post by wild on Jul 3, 2007 8:11:46 GMT -6
Brokensword "You dirty lowdown Yankee lier." Reading his obituary that imortal line comes echoing down all the years evoking memories of gunfights among us street cowboys. It was a harbinger of mortal confrontations between gunslingers.Imaginery colts and widowmakers were thumed with lethal expertise.Mongrals and the fainthearted ran for cover.The night air was rent with blood curdling shrieks of those who bit the dust. It brings back memories of those far off frosty nights gathered around a street lamp telling the pictures.Stories of the "chap"[hero]and the "pal"[sidekick] and their latest adventures outwiting and outfighting the hoodlums.You made your way home humming Ghost Riders in the Sky or Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling. And the bad man lies spreadeagled on the bar room floor in spit and sawdust.Not for him the ride into the sunset alla Shane.A holed barrel above his head pours its contents over him extinguishing his last evil breath. Was not Jack Palance the best badman ever ?
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Post by BrokenSword on Jul 3, 2007 8:26:13 GMT -6
Jack Palance was THE 'king of bad' in films, although John Ford said of Leo Gordon (who played the husband of John Wayne's love interest in 'Hondo') ... "The SCARIEST man in Hollywood."
M
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Post by George Armstrong Custer on Jul 3, 2007 9:28:07 GMT -6
Gac- Did poor old Strother Martin EVER get a role in which his character WAS redeemable? Certainly not in 'The Horse Soldiers' or 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' or even 'Cool Hand Luke'. M ;D You're right about that, brokensword! Martin's characters always had that quality of sleazy corruptability about them which his appearance and acting ability made totally believable - Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet were of the same school! "You despise me Rick, that's why I trust you....." Elisabeth - The scene that for me establishes the ethos of the Wild Bunch is the one where William Holden's Pike Bishop intervenes to stop the Gorch brothers finishing off Edmund O'Brien's Old Man Sykes, telling them "When you side with a man you stick with him - and if you can't do that you're like some animal." And yes, I like your analogy between the Bunch's abandonment of the Hopkins character at the start of the movie being redeemed by their doomed loyalty to Angel at the end. Sitting down to watch this movie is always like embarking afresh on a great adventure - the veteran cast is so perfectly suited to their roles that they take you along with them, and some new nuance is to be found with every viewing. A masterpiece. ciao, GAC
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Post by harpskiddie on Jul 3, 2007 10:10:16 GMT -6
Sam Peckinpagh actually had a script for a Custer movie, and had annotated it for shooting. I am not sure where, when, or indeed if, it figured in his production plans. Michael Winner's films are particular favorites of mine. He has a habit of non-happy-traditional endings, which suit my own mindset. Burt Lancaster riding past Sherri North without so much as a nod, after ostensibly being willing to change his life for her love. Winner would have loved LBH as a vehicle, I think, since there were so few happy endings, and so many points at which he could have just stopped filming and left it at that [think Valdez Is Coming].
Re: Alan Ladd's stature - see the scene in Electraglide in Blue where Robert Blake tells the two girls at the ice cream stand that he is the same height as Alan Ladd.
I used to tell friends I was going to see a Ben Johnson movie, rather than whoever was the star. After The Last Picture Show, I had to fall back on Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones for my "unknowns." When I went to see TWB, that's where I was going - to a Martin/Jones movie. I stood outside the theatre in the bright sunshine for about five minutes, just breathing in the fresh air and feeling more or less dumbstruck.
Martin was a fantastic actor. Jones often had more sympathetic roles, and was also a wonderful writer and small filmmaker in his own right. As was Leo Gordon [Riot In Cell Block 11 etc etc].
Have Gun, Will Travel. Wire Paladin, San Fransisco. Richard Boone "Have Gun, Will Travel reads the card of a man. A kniight without armor in a savage land. His fast gun for hire, 'neath the calling wind, a soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin." that's for you, Trish.
My favorite scene [there are so many in the film for me] from the Wild Bunch is Edmund O'Brien's explanation of who the "they" was that had waltzed the bunch around in their railroad depot robbery and left them with bags full of "silver rings."
The line that sums up the whole idea of the movie and the lives of the protagonists is not much of a line at all - merely two little words uttered by [another of my guys] Warren Oates [whose ashes were left at the top of a mountain in Montana by his good friend Peter Fonda], when William Holden says: "Let's go get Angel," and Oates looks around for a second or two and replies: "Why not?"
Gordie, who always wanted to be The Kid at The Crossing.............................................................
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Post by wild on Jul 3, 2007 10:29:35 GMT -6
I just cannot take William Holden seriously in a western .Too much charm too like Cary Grant too modern.
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