Autry National Center

This is a great museum! The Autry National Center, created in 2003 by a merger of three museums devoted to the American West, one of which was founded by actor-singer Gene Autry, is located in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. There are exhibition halls that catalog aspects of life in the Old West along with galleries that display oil paintings illustrating the artists’ views of the 19th century West. Other exhibits showcase how the West was portrayed by Hollywood. Special exhibitions pertaining to the West are also presented.

I spent most of my time at the Autry National Center in the Imagination Gallery, which describes the history of Westerns in film and, to a lesser extent, on TV. This part of the museum includes an entire section devoted to Buffalo Bill and another to Gene Autry, with other areas focused on Native Americans, women, Mexicans, and Asians in Westerns. A highlight is the area set up as a typical Old West main street. Be sure to look up to see the movie cameras on the balcony!

The explanations of the artifacts—props used in movies, posters and lobby cards, costumes worn by actors—were very detailed, and it was fascinating to read about the early years of Westerns. Many actors I had never heard of and now my interest has been piqued to learn more about them and to see their work.

In addition to displays of objects, there were many mini-documentaries about Westerns that lasted about ten minutes, which are well worth the time to watch. Five that I especially enjoyed were those about: Buffalo Bill, with actual footage of him shot at the turn of the 20th century; the first Western movies; early Western movie stars; Westerns on TV, although only shows from the 1950s and 1960s were featured; and how women and minorities have been depicted in Westerns through the years. Although Alias Smith and Jones was not mentioned, this section of the Autry National Center is a must-see for anyone interested in movie and TV Westerns.

Downstairs, the Spirit of Opportunity exhibition included sections on mining and old San Francisco as lived by those in “society.” The Spirit of Conquest exhibition highlighted how the Army and others “tamed” and settled the West. A restored stagecoach was exhibited in this part of the Autry National Center, along with related tools of the trade. The Spirit of Community, spread over a large portion of the downstairs area, featured sections on immigrants from many lands and how they lived in this region of the country; the styles of clothing, the types of work they did, and the everyday objects used by men, women, and children from different ethnic groups was really quite interesting.

Other sections of the Autry National Center, which I unfortunately did not have as much time to spend looking at as I would have liked, included an exhibit on cowboys and their way of life, and the Earps and the O.K. Corral gunfight. I did, however, take the time to look closely at the room set up like an Old West saloon, complete with wooden bar, gambling tables, and lots of whiskey glasses. One of the exhibition halls on the main level is named the George Montgomery Gallery but it was closed the day I visited. I would love to know why the museum has a space named for Curt Clitterhouse (Jailbreak at Junction City)!

The Golden Spur Café has good food and is reasonably priced. Besides jewellery, toys for children, food products, videos and music CDs, the museum shop at the Autry National Center has a large selection of books about the West, both historical and contemporary. I bought a book about train robberies in the Old West; glancing through it, I was disappointed but not surprised to see that Heyes and Curry were not mentioned.

I spent about three hours at the Autry National Center, not including time for lunch at the café or browsing the gift shop, and was not able to see everything before the museum closed. I will definitely return for another visit the next time I am in Los Angeles.

Official website of the Autry National Center:
http://theautry.org

Official website for Gene Autry:
http://www.autry.com/home.php

The King and Four Queens

Clark Gable stars as Dan Kehoe in this 1956 movie as a man who serendipitously learns about a hidden cache of gold and then proceeds to search for it in a town whose only inhabitants are the women who were married to the four outlaw brothers who stole it and the mother of the outlaws.

Three of the four brothers are dead and the fourth may or may not be dead. Their mother, played by Jo Van Fleet, keeps a tight rein on her daughters-in-law but the arrival of Dan shakes things up considerably. Filled with sexual innuendo and little violence, The King and Four Queens runs 86 minutes, giving Dan sufficient time to get to know each of the ladies well enough to decide whom to seduce and also to deduce where the gold is.

There are a couple connections to ASJ but no actors who were in the series appear in The King and Four Queens. The nearest town is named Touchstone, like the one in Everything Else You Can Steal; and one of the widows comments that $100,000 (the haul from the robbery) weighs a lot and would be too heavy for her to move by herself, which harks back to what Heyes tells Alice in The Legacy of Charlie O'Rourke.

 Partway through the film, Kehoe plays a song on the melodeon (a type of organ), in a scene reminiscent of Heyes playing the guitar in The Posse That Wouldn't Quit, except that in The King and Four Queens, he also ends up dancing with the women. The song, "In the Sweet By and By," is a traditional hymn and could have been sung in the time period of ASJ; a link to an instrumental version played on an organ is included below.

It's not clear if the king in The King and Four Queens refers to Dan Kehoe or to the mother of the outlaws, since she rules her household with iron-fisted absolute authority, nor is it completely clear if Kehoe is a crook or merely an opportunist. But it's always enjoyable watching Clark Gable and this movie, while not a masterpiece, is no exception.

The Hired Hand

Peter Fonda, the director, calls this 90-minute long 1971 Universal Pictures film "an incredibly different Western," "a revisionist Western." It sure is different from all the others I have seen! Fonda's audio commentary really helps explain what he was trying to do when filming The Hired Hand and makes it obvious that it is definitely a film of its time.

Fonda stars as Harry and Warren Oates as his partner of seven years, Arch. The movie, set in 1881, opens with an oddly-filmed scene along the Rio Grande in New Mexico (the movie was filmed on location). Somewhere along the way, they have picked up Dan, played by Robert Pratt (Billy in Night of the Red Dog); he wants to see California and the Pacific Ocean and since the two older drifters have nothing better to do, they go as well.

However, when they stop at a town in the desert to quench their thirst and see to their horses, bad things happen and plans change. Harry, wearing a slightly fancier sheepskin jacket than Kid, goes "home" to the wife and child he abandoned years earlier, and Arch accompanies him. The rest of The Hired Hand is about the relationship between Harry and his wife, Hannah, played by Verna Bloom, and the relationship between Harry and Arch.

The Hired Hand seems almost like it was filmed in slow motion: Each scene takes its time unfolding and there is a minimum of talking. There are lots of close-ups of faces, lots of scenes filmed in silhouette, and lots of sunsets which are filmed beautifully. There are also many places where scenes are slowly dissolved into each other and the audience sees the two images superimposed, a technique that becomes tedious as the movie drags on. The Hired Hand seems more like a sequence of separate scenes strung together than a film with a cohesive plot, until the violent end when it becomes obvious why it was necessary to have a partner in the Old West who would always watch your back.

Because there were no opening credits for The Hired Hand, it wasn't until the end when the closing credits appeared that I realized Severn Darden (Alan Harlingen and his father, Oscar, in Never Trust an Honest Man) was in this movie. He plays a very bad guy and although I hadn't recognized him at first--I don't think I've ever seen him in anything else--once I knew who his character was, the resemblance was obvious. He looks thinner here, even though his appearance in ASJ was the same year, but his voice is very similar. Ann Doran (Mrs. Simpson in Witness to a Lynching) has a small part as a middle-aged busybody who needles Hannah about her husband.

The War Wagon

So many scenes and lines of dialog in The War Wagon are reminiscent of ASJ episodes that, at times, I felt I was watching a pastiche of the TV show. This movie, based on the book Badman by Clair Huffaker, was directed by Burt Kennedy. It was filmed in 1967, runs 101 minutes and was produced by Universal Studios. Set in and around Emmett, New Mexico, the movie was actually filmed in Durango, Mexico.

Starring John Wayne as Taw Jackson and Kirk Douglas as Lomax, The War Wagon is the quintessential buddy movie. As one character says to another, "A beautiful thing to see--friendship." Taw is a rancher framed for a crime and sent to prison so a rival could get control of the gold on his land. He has many attributes of Hannibal Heyes.

 Lomax is a gunfighter with scruples who ultimately sides with Taw in his quest to recover the gold that was stolen from him. Lomax resembles Kid Curry in many ways but there is one important difference: Lomax is the safe-cracker in this partnership. There is a lot of great banter between these two characters. Robert Walker, Jr. plays Billy Hyatt, an explosives expert whose character reminds me of Kyle.

Two actors who had multiple guest starring roles on ASJ appeared in The War Wagon. Keenan Wynn (Charlie Utley in Stagecoach Seven; Horace Wingate in Dreadful Sorry, Clementine; Artie Gorman in What Happened at the XST?) played a grumpy old codger who becomes part of the gang Taw assembles. He is immediately recognizable and even wears red underwear like he did on ASJ.
Joanna Barnes (Janet in How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson and Mrs. Hanley in Miracle at Santa Marta) is Lola, a card dealer in a saloon; appearing about one hour into the movie, she looks a lot softer here than in ASJ.

Two other actors who appeared on ASJ also are in The War Wagon: Boyd "Red" Morgan (Augie Helms in The Fifth Victim) and Hal Needham in two uncredited roles (one of the Devil's Hole Gang members in Wrong Train to Brimstone and Duke in The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone).

ASJ episodes the movie reminded me of are, listed sequentially as the plot of The War Wagon develops: The Bounty Hunter; Six Strangers at Apache Springs; The Mcreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone; The McCreedy Bust; How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson; Wrong Train to Brimstone; The Long Chase. Sometimes it is an entire scene and sometimes it is just a line or two that makes the connection for me. In one instance, it is a prop--a safe that is cracked, using nitro by the way, has the name "Pierce Mining Company" on it. Could this be the precursor to the Pierce & Hamilton line of safes? The ending of The War Wagon is very ASJ-like as well.

There are three bonus features and all are worth watching. The first one is production notes about the making of The War Wagon. It includes a very interesting fact about Keenan Wynn. The second bonus feature gives biographies of John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Kennedy. I learned that Kirk Douglas attended St. Lawrence University, just like Pete Duel! A theatrical trailer for the movie is the last bonus feature and it includes an oral description of the film by John Wayne, which is pretty interesting.

Watch The War Wagon and draw your own conclusion as to whether it had any influence on the television show that was produced by the same studio only a few years later!

Escort West

If Last of the Mohicans were transported about one hundred years into the future, it might look like Escort West. This 1959 black and white film stars Victor Mature as Ben Lassiter, an ex-Confederate soldier traveling with his daughter in 1865 who, because his wife/her mother has died, are going to Oregon to live with the girl’s aunt.

At a waystation, they encounter two sisters, who do not get along, and an Army detail that is escorting them to California, where one sister is going to be married. Naturally, the Army soldiers and the sisters, who are from Boston, take an instant dislike to the “rebel,” as they call him.

Several guest stars on ASJ were in Escort West. Noah Beery (the sheriff in Something to Get Hung About) and Slim Pickens (Mike the bartender in Exit from Wickenburg and three sheriffs in The Man Who Murdered Himself, The Day They Hanged Kid Curry, The Strange Fate of Conrad Meyer Zulick) play two of the soldiers. Slim Pickens was easily recognized, although his voice didn’t have as pronounced a twang as it did in ASJ. Noah Beery was also recognizable, albeit not as easily.

X Brands (one of the poker players in The Biggest Game in the West and Roberts in McGuffin) plays a renegade Modoc Indian leader, and underneath all the makeup and a wig, I couldn’t identify him at all. Leo Gordon (Ebenezer in Smiler with a Gun) was also one of the soldiers and I couldn’t identify him, either; additionally, he is credited as one of the three writers of the film.

When Lassiter discovers the women after their party has been attacked by Indians, he ends up taking on the responsibility of escorting the two sisters on their journey. An injured African-American soldier tells them about an Army payroll they were carrying and after locating it, together they all resume their trek west. It was not clear to me why the Army had split up but for some reason they did and Escort West cuts back and forth between Lassiter and his group and the soldiers, who are trapped by the Indians in a canyon.

Many adventures ensue before they all finally reunite. There is lots of action, some suspense, a little romance, and betrayal as the movie reaches its climax. There is also a scene with a rattlesnake, which is even sillier than the scene in High Lonesome Country when Kid wrestles with the cougar. Other than that, at 75 minutes, Escort West was an enjoyable diversion.