An Outlaw Thanksgiving

This children's book, by Caldecott Medal winner Emily Arnold McCully, is a fictional account of a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by Butch Cassidy in the mid-1890s.  Published in 1998, it is based on fact and there is a detailed author's note at the end of An Outlaw Thanksgiving that provides information about Butch Cassidy and other real-life participants in the holiday meal, the railroads of the time period and how people regarded them, and train travel in the late nineteenth century.

The plot describes the journey west of Clara who, with her mother, is travelling by train to meet her father in California. On the prairie, their train becomes snowbound and sleds appear to take the passengers to nearby hotels to wait until the train is plowed out. A fellow passenger, kindly Mr. Jones, invites Clara and her mother to join him on the sled he has hired. Unbeknownst to the ladies, Mr. Jones takes them to Brown's Hole, where Butch Cassidy, going by the name Bob, is hosting Thanksgiving. Clara eventually recognizes the outlaw and Clara has to decide if she should reveal what she knows.

An Outlaw Thanksgiving is a quick, pleasurable read for elementary school-aged children. The many watercolor illustrations by the author effectively capture the spirit of the story and there is a map showing the routes of various railroads across the United States. The author visited Brown's Hole in Utah to research her story and adults interested in the Old West will also enjoy this work of historical fiction.

Winchester '73

Now I know why I like Jimmy Stewart so much--he had the same birthday as me! I found that out after watching this movie, because after listening to the interview he did as a bonus feature, I wanted to learn more about him. In Winchester '73, he stars as a man who wins a special rifle, the eponymous Winchester 1873, in a shooting contest, the end of which brought to mind the scene in the Pilot where Kid shoots two bullets at once.

While Stewart's character, Lin McAdam, doesn't quite do that, he does demonstrate an equally impressive feat of shooting. The referee for the contest is Will Geer (Seth in Smiler with a Gun, another episode with a shooting contest), playing Marshal Wyatt Earp when he was a lawman in Dodge City, Kansas. But this Earp is very different from the one portrayed in Which Way to the O.K. Corral?, played by Cameron Mitchell.

However, things go downhill for Lin when the rifle is stolen. He and his sidekick spend the rest of the movie trying to recover the weapon, which passes through several hands in a series of adventures. One person who acquires the rifle for a brief time is Rock Hudson, playing an Indian! Another actor is a US Cavalry sergeant who was at Gettysburg (as mentioned in Stagecoach 7 by LQ Jones).

There is an on-going conflict between Lin and a man named Dutch Henry Brown which is finally explained and resolved at the end of Winchester '73. Shelley Winters plays a sort-of love interest. One aspect of the movie that I especially appreciated was the lack of continual background music; only at certain points was music heard and that made it very effective.

A few other notes: There is a high stakes poker game, but I do not think Heyes would ever be caught playing for the stakes in this game. There is also a remuda in Winchester '73, just like in 21 Days to Tenstrike, but it was only after watching this film that I learned that the word refers to the string of horses a cowboy uses and not the place where they are corralled for the night.

And, when not riding horses, people are shown using stagecoaches for transportation, in particular, Butterfield stagecoaches. Since their stages are frequently seen in ASJ, I looked up the company and included a couple links for further information below. This is a Universal picture and I kept trying to find locations in the movie that were also used in ASJ, until I heard in the interview that it was filmed mostly in Arizona.

In his interview, Stewart is asked about working with Will Geer and his response is interesting. He also has some very interesting comments about the advantages of working under contract for a movie studio, which contrasted with what I've read of Pete's thoughts on the subject. Although it is not my favorite Jimmy Stewart Western, I enjoyed Winchester '73. The bonus feature, the only one Stewart ever did, makes it all the more worth watching.

Information about Butterfield's, with many first-hand descriptions from passengers:
http://www.desertusa.com/mag00/may/stories/butter.html

3 Godfathers

The music accompanying the opening credits was very familiar but I couldn't place it and it haunted me until later in 3 Godfathers when it was played again and the lyrics were included. Then I recognized it as the ballad Joan Hackett (Alice Banion in The Legacy of Charlie O'Rourke) sang but since she didn't sing the whole song, I never realized it was "The Streets of Laredo."

I searched the Internet hoping to find a clip of her singing the song but was not successful; however, I did find one of Johnny Cash singing all the verses and have included a link to it at the end of this entry. Burl Ives also sings the song but I couldn't find a video clip of him singing it online, though I did purchase it from iTunes. I quite like the song now!

As far as this 1948 movie (which is in color, by the way) goes, it's about three bank robbers--played by John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, and Harry Carey, Jr.--who are chased by a posse through the desert. The youngest outlaw, known as the Abilene Kid and called Kid, has been shot. They have no water; encounter a sandstorm and try to find shelter; and when the storm abates, they discover that their horses have run off and they have to walk out of the desert. Of course, these scenes reminded me of Smiler with a Gun.

I was also reminded of Six Strangers at Apache Springs when the men reach a place called Apache Wells, where they thought they'd finally obtain water; unfortunately, circumstances prevented that and they had to resort to squeezing moisture out of barrel head cacti to survive. Which made me wonder why Heyes and Kid didn't do the same when they were in the desert. I won't relate any more of the plot except to say there is death in the desert in 3 Godfathers and that the symbolism of the story is pretty obvious.

Pedro Armendariz apparently was a very well-known Mexican actor of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s and I wonder if Roy Huggins named Caesar Romero's character after him.

YouTube clip of Johnny Cash singing "Streets of Laredo":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSzfWLlvlAE

Stagecoach

Since Stagecoach was filmed in 1939, I figured it wouldn't have any ASJ connections in it. The only reason I decided to watch it was because it's considered a classic Western. But as soon as I heard that raspy, twangy voice, I knew I'd been wrong. And right there, receiving third billing in the credits, just after Claire Trevor and John Wayne, was Andy Devine!

There's a reason this movie is considered a classic: the stock characters, the plot, the location--it's all there but elevated to a very level by the performances of the actors. Andy Devine plays a stagecoach driver who, although of course much younger than the character he played in ASJ (the sheriff in The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg)--he is thinner and has dark hair, which is obvious even though the movie is in black and white--is still clearly recognizable.

The group of passengers he is carrying includes a crooked banker, a Southern gambler, a drunken doctor, a meek liquor salesman, a "tart with a heart" (as a writer friend of mine once said and which I, in the true spirit of ASJ, shamelessly recycle here), a lady too sophisticated to talk to the other woman, a marshal, and a pretty good bad guy. As the group travels to its destination, various encounters and adventures occur until, after they have finally arrived, there is a climactic scene in the middle of the town street with a bad guy named Plummer (another ASJ connection).

The accompanying audio commentary by Scott Eyman, a film historian who also assisted Robert Wagner with his autobiography (which I recently read, before I was aware of his work in the Western genre), is very useful in situating Stagecoach in the context of its time and among other Westerns. The background information he provides about how John Ford, the director, worked with John Wayne in the role that made him a star, is not to be skipped. At 100 minutes it's a long movie, for a Western, but one I highly recommend.

Ten Wanted Men

The best thing about this 1955 movie is the cinematography. I have developed a great appreciation for movies shot in Technicolor, as Ten Wanted Men was; the scenery here looks gorgeous.

As for the rest of the movie, well, the title doesn't make sense; the dialog is mostly melodramatic; and there are noticeable bloopers. Like, in a climactic shootout between Randolph Scott the hero and Richard Boone the bad guy, there is the sound of a gunshot but it's clear the gun in the actor's hand was never fired. It's a silly film but at only 80 minutes, it's fun to see the plethora of movie Western cliches in it.

Although there aren't any real ASJ connections in Ten Wanted Men, as I watched it I was reminded of several scenes in various episodes of the TV show. First, the name of the bad guy wasn't clear to me--it sounded like "Weed" or even "Wheat" so of course I was reminded of the scene in The Biggest Game in the West when the sheriff questions Heyes about the outlaws after the poker game has been robbed. Turns out the character's name in the movie is "Wick" but no matter. The bad guy also wears a vest with a string that ties both sides together, which resembled one of Roger Davis' Heyes' costumes. It looked silly here, too. At one point, one of the female characters says something about a man making love to her. It was same comment Louise made in Everything Else You Can Steal and clearly indicated the same thing; that phrase must have had a different meaning back then.

Besides all the beautiful saguaro--it's obvious the movie was filmed on location in Arizona--it was interesting to see close-ups of period handcuffs and leg irons. One of the characters is arrested and the sheriff puts those manacles on him. As a fanfic writer, it was useful to see how a person looked and moved when shackled like that.

For information about and pictures of saguaro:
http://www.desertmuseumdigitallibrary.org/public/sResults.php?squery=saguaro&ctgy=Plants&sort=&spp=16&pn=1
(From the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, on the outskirts of Tucson; speaking from personal experience, a great place to gain an appreciation of the desert), and
http://www.nps.gov/sagu/index.htm
(Saguaro National Park, near Tucson)