● COLORADO SERENADE. PRC, 1946. Eddie Dean, Roscoe Ates, David Sharpe, Mary Kenyon, Forrest Taylor, Dennis Moore, Abigail Adams, Warner Richmond, Lee Bennett, Robert McKenzie. Screenplay: Frances Kavanaugh. Director: Robert Emmett Tansey.

● THE TIOGA KID. PRC, 1948. Eddie Dean, Roscoe Ates, Jennifer Holt, Dennis Moore, Lee Bennett. Screenplay: Ed Earl Repp. Director: Ray Taylor.

   Personally, speaking for myself, Eddie Dean is the unlikeliest of B-western heroes that I can think of, although perhaps I’m not thinking hard enough. From a distance he doesn’t have the body build of a cowboy, and in the movies he’s been in that I’ve seen, he’s far more handy with a guitar and a song than he is with a gun. On the other hand, in The Tioga Kid, he has a huge smash-up-the-bunkhouse fight with another guy that busts up the stove, the bunks, the table and several chairs to boot. Very nice!

   As far as songs are concerned, there are more in Colorado Serenade than there are in the later movie, four to maybe only three, but the latter makes up for it by adding an equal amount of time in watching the bad guys being chased by the good guys on horses, or is it the other way around? Who can tell.

   One big difference between the two movies is that the first one is filmed in color, and this I found impressive. Not many B-westerns were filmed in color in 1946. (Were there?) It also has a story line that’s actually interesting, one which has Eddie and his pal Soapy (Roscoe Ates) giving a helping hand to a circuit judge (Forrest Taylor) being sent to clean up one of those towns in the west being run by a gang of outlaws.

   But wait. There’s more. Unknown to the judge, always willing to give a bad man the benefit of the doubt if he decides to go straight, is that the head of the gang he’s after is his son, who kidnapped by a really bad guy when he was just a boy. In fact neither father nor son knows the relationship between them, which gives the movie a deeper meaning than do most films of this caliber.

   No such luck when it comes to The Tioga Kid, which is about as dull as it could be, even though Eddie Dean plays two characters in this one, two brothers, one good, one bad. This is a fact unknown to either one of them, but since the two are all but identical, there are some who suspect they’re related. But while the resemblance really is uncanny, you can easily tell which one is the Tioga Kid. He’s the one who dresses in black with a cigarette dangling from the left side of his mouth.

   There’s not much more to the story than this. It is a remake, although never mentioned, of an earlier Eddie Dean film, Driftin’ River (PRC, 1946), written by the same Frances Kavanaugh who was responsible for Serenade. In the latter several scenes are taken – not remade, but simply taken from the former and inserted into this one (see below). I wonder how it happened that pulp western writer Ed Earl Repp got credit for the screenplay. From the description of Driftin’ River, he added very little. (One source says about 15 minutes’ worth.)

   Amusingly (sort of), there is a scene in Tioga in which a grizzled old ranchhand (William Fawcett, I believe) appears briefly perched on a fence as the ranch lady tries to break a bronco, then disappears mid-scene, never to show up again. Tioga, as it turns out, was either the last or next to last movie produced by PRC. They’d reached the bottom of the barrel, the end of the line, and it shows.

   But getting back to Colorado Serenade briefly, I see I’ve failed to mention famed stuntman David Sharpe. He has a rare starring role in this one, a mysterious young cowboy with a big handsome smile. No one in the movie seems to know how he gets around or which side of the fence he’s on, but I think somebody missed a bet. Eddie Dean was OK, but charisma, he was a little short of. It’s only a thought in passing, but I wonder how David Sharpe would have fared if he’d been the star of long line of B-western movies too. Says IMDB, he “probably holds the honor of being in more films (albeit, often uncredited as a stuntman) than any other person in Hollywood history.” Four or five thousand, can it be?

   The 1916 Whispering Smith was shot in ten reels. According to which report one chooses to believe, it was originally intended to be either a serial or an extra-long feature film. In any event, it was released as two five-reel feature films, the first in June and the second in July.

   Although McGowan played the title role, his then-wife Helen Holmes got top billing in both Whispering Smith and Medicine Bend. She was a much bigger box-office draw, having attained fame as the eponymous star of the Hazards of Helen series (which is often mistaken for a cliffhanging chapter play, owing to the fact that Holmes also starred in episodic thrillers and at the time was second only to Pearl White in the serial-queen sweepstakes).

   McGowan’s involvement with the character didn’t stop with the two 1916 features, however. He also played Smith in Universal’s 1927 serial Whispering Smith Rides, but again lost top billing — this time to Wallace MacDonald, whose character was the story’s juvenile lead and carried most of the action.

   The piece on the Thrilling Detective website fails to mention that Rides was remade by Universal just three years later, again as a ten-chapter serial, this time titled The Lightning Express. Al Ferguson, usually cast as a heavy, played Smith; the role played by MacDonald in Rides was taken in Express by Lane Chandler.

   Although the George O’Brien Whispering Smith Speaks is ostensibly based on several Spearman yarns, it’s essentially an original story using nothing from the author’s works other than some locations and character names.

   An unbilled J. P. McGowan has a bit part as a rail-riding old-timer who shares his boxcar with fellow stowaway O’Brien (whose character’s real name is Gordon Harrington Jr.; he only uses Don Smith — not John, as the Thrilling Detective entry erroneously reports — as an alias). Since McGowan had been directing railroad films since 1912, I believe Whispering Smith Speaks producer Sol Lesser hired him as a second-unit director to handle the various train scenes.

   The O’Brien film is a particular favorite of mine because George and I were friends for a couple years leading up to his debilitating 1981 stroke, and for my money Speaks is the film that best captures his off-screen personality. But as a Spearman adaptation it isn’t worth a tinker’s damn.

Darcy O’Brien wrote a pair of novels, A Way Of Life Like Any Other and Marguerite In Hollywood, that with devastating honesty, and brilliant writing, illustrate the world of George and Marguerite. Ed, you must have known these people and your insights are welcome.

   Well, I could go on forever about George O’Brien, but the short form is this: In 1979 I chaired Cinecon, an annual convention of vintage-film fans, collectors, and archivists. Since our guest stars were primarily actors from the silent and early-talkie years, I decided to invite my two top favorites of that era (that is, of those still alive and ambulatory at the time): George and Alice Faye.

   Alice had other plans but George — who had been invited to, but never before attended, similar events — accepted my invitation because coming to NYC for the convention would allow him to spend some time with his daughter Orin, a musician with the New York Philharmonic.

   Part of our tribute to George included a screening of Sunrise at the Museum of Modern Art, which earlier that year had won a special Academy Award for its film-preservation efforts. Since George was justifiably proud of that film, the opportunity of seeing it at the Museum held considerable appeal.

   When the film ended, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and I encouraged him to take a bow. The still-fit 80-year-old bounded atop the auditorium stage and, waving and beaming, accepted a standing ovation that, I was told later, lasted nearly five minutes.

   As a long-time hobbyist who turned his passion into a career by writing professionally about movies and moviemakers, I’ve met dozens — hundreds, even — of film folk over the years. It doesn’t take long to realize that “picture people” are just as diverse as society at large. You have some nice people and you have some real pricks. Early on, one learns not to judge them by their screen personas.

   To my delight, however, George O’Brien turned out to be not only the perfect convention guest — making himself available to fans practically every hour of Cinecon’s three and a half days — but a wonderful, down-to-earth human being as well. I picked him up at New York’s La Guardia Airport, and by the time we had completed the 45-minute drive back to Manhattan, I already felt like we were old friends.

   That was George’s way. To this day I have never known a man who could make friends as easily as George O’Brien. And he didn’t put on airs, either: when I offered that first evening to take him to a high-class restaurant in midtown Manhattan, he replied: “Well, that’s very generous of you, Ed, but how about we just go to a comfy place where we have a good hamburger and get to know each other better?”

   Throughout the weekend I never had to look far for him: wherever a group of convention attendees had clustered, I knew he was in the middle, telling some of his many amazing stories. He jokingly referred to himself as “a man of few thousand words,” and he wasn’t kidding.

   After the convention, we stayed in touch via letters and phone calls. George still traveled frequently and often wrote me from an airplane while flying to Hawaii or the Philippines or some other Pacific destination. He invited me to visit him when and if I ever came to Los Angeles, but to my everlasting regret he was in Hawaii when I went to Tinseltown for a convention the following year.

   That same year (1980), based on the wonderful time he’d had at Cinecon, George finally accepted the invitation extended yearly by organizers of the Memphis Western Film Fair, another annual confab. Since I normally attended that show anyway, I looked forward to seeing George again, especially since one of his fellow guests was Cecilia Parker, his leading lady of several films and a close personal friend as well. But I deliberately decided not to tell him I’d be there.

   As the Memphis film festival — being oriented toward “B” Westerns and serials — catered to a somewhat different fan base than Cinecon, I realized that virtually all of the attendees would be meeting George for the first time. Upon arriving at the show, I could instantly tell where he was by looking for the biggest crowd huddled in a circle. But I didn’t want to interfere with these other fans and deliberately remained in the back of the room while he autographed photos and regaled the fans — most of them middle-aged men who gazed at their childhood hero with the worshipful stare of a ten-year-old — with stories of Hollywood’s halcyon days.

   At length the crowd thinned and we made eye contact. Then, as though he had last seen me a day earlier, he smiled and said: “Oh, hello, Ed.” After signing a few more stills and wrapping up a story, he told the surrounding fans, “Gents, please excuse me for a minute while I go say hello to an old friend…” — at which point he gestured to me, and all eyes swung in my direction. To this day, 31 years later, I still remember the pride I felt at being identified as one of George O’Brien’s old friends.

   Later that day, during a lull in the action, George said to me: “Oh, let me introduce you to Skippy.” I had not the slightest idea whom he meant; no such name appeared on the convention guest list. But it turned out to be Cecilia Parker.

   â€œSkippy,” he said, “I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine, Ed Hulse.” I stammered a bit as I shook her hand, and Parker instantly knew why I was temporarily tongue-tied. “He’s been calling me Skippy for close to 50 years,” she explained. “He gave me that nickname when we did our first picture together [1931’s The Rainbow Trail].” At the time she was 17 and just out of convent school.

   I must be a man of few thousand words myself, because I realize I still haven’t answered the questions posed above.

   I met Darcy in 1991 at a 60th anniversary screening of Riders of the Purple Sage, the film that paired George and Marguerite and eventually led to their marriage.

   He told me he regretted that some people had assumed the George-like character in A Way of Life Like Any Other was identical to his dad in every particular. Like most novelists, he created characters who were composites. (Although I later learned, however, that his mother was closer to the Marguerite in Hollywood protagonist than George was to his Way of Life counterpart.)

   And in any case, George didn’t take offense. In fact, he mentioned the book in a couple different letters to me, in one case proudly reporting that it had just won some literary award.

   I’m not given to idolatry of my favorite movie stars; in fact, my experiences with some have made me quite cynical about the breed in general. But George O’Brien impressed me profoundly, and I still cherish the memory of our relatively brief but genuinely warm friendship.

   George even took something of a paternal interest in me, giving encouragement when I began my career as a professional writer and telling a mutual friend that he was concerned about my recent weight gain.

   I often cite Whispering Smith Speaks — which is really a romantic comedy, not a blood-and-thunder action piece — as the film whose protagonist best represents the real George O’Brien: warm, funny, gregarious, supremely self-assured without being arrogant.

   It’s well worth seeking out for that reason alone, although it’s never been commercially available on any home video format. You can only get it in bootleg VHS or DVD versions.

WHISPERING SMITH. Paramount Pictures, 1948. Alan Ladd, Robert Preston, Brenda Marshall, Donald Crisp, William Demarest, Fay Holden, Murvyn Vye, Frank Faylen, John Eldredge. Based on the novel by Frank H. Spearman. Director: Leslie Fenton.

   You can learn a lot by writing reviews, or at least I do. For example, I never knew there was a real “Whispering” Smith, and that he really was a railroad detective, among other occupations. You can read about some of his exploits online here at the Legends of America website.

   A writer named Frank Spearman was intrigued by the name and wrote an early western novel about a railroad detective named Whispering Smith in 1906, but his work of fiction and the his facts seemed to brush up against reality only on occasion.

   There also were three early silent films with Whispering Smith as the hero. Quoting from Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website:

   There was also a TV series on NBC that starred Audie Murphy in 1961, but it didn’t last long, only half a year. It is easily available on DVD.

   It was Alan Ladd, though, who played Whispering Smith in this movie made in 1948. While Ladd was notorious for being short, he also had the ability to command attention in a crowded room by speaking barely above a whisper. Or at least he did in the movies, and in this one in particular.

   He’s also a railroad detective in this film. His good buddy Murray Sinclair (boisterously played by Robert Preston, who does boisterous very well) is a rancher who works part time for the railroad to clear up train wrecks. When business is bad, he creates his own train wrecks. He has fallen on hard time, however, and in with bad friends.

   Murray has also married the girl that Smith had had a wish for, to Smith’s lasting regret, though he will never admit it, to anyone, and to Marian Sinclair’s regret as well (she being portrayed by beauteous Brenda Marshall). It’s this tacit love triangle that lies between these three old friends, as well as Murray’s taste for the good life, one that will (eventually) bring him to a bad end.

   I am not revealing anything I shouldn’t here, not if you’ve watched a few movies and a few of them happen to have been westerns. This was Alan Ladd’s first western, and the first movie he did in color. The stars are fine, the story’s passable, and you should have as much fun watching this one as I did.

THE LAST MUSKETEER. Republic, 1952. Rex Allen, Koko (the Miracle Horse), Mary Ellen Kay, Slim Pickens, James Anderson, Michael Hall, The Republic Rhythm Riders. Director: William Witney.

   Someone more knowledgeable than I about B-western movies will have to explain (in the comments, if you would, if you can) why titles of B-western movies have so little to do with the movies as they were filmed, and this one (I shouldn’t have to tell you) is about as puzzling as they come.

   The son of Taskerville’s founder (with a statue of him in the town’s square, a touch I don’t remember seeing before in any western, B or not) is the villain of the piece. His reservoir is the only water in the valley, and his prices are so steep that the cattle of all of the other ranchers is curling up and dying.

   A fact that Rex Allen, cattle buyer, soon discovers as he rides into town. He also discovers the local divining wizard, Slim Pickens, being beaten up by Tasker’s men. Coming to Slim’s assistance, Rex then finds himself on the outs with Tasker’s men throughout the rest of the movie, and Tasker himself.

   Tasker is no ordinary villain, though. He has plans. A dam across the end of the valley, once the other ranchers have moved on, will generate electric power for the vicinity, then the whole state, then a big chuck of the entire West. No small planner, he.

   You may have noticed the presence of the Republic Rhythm Riders in this movie, and if you were to infer from that that this is a singing cowboy movie, you’d be right. A good portion of this film is taken up with songs and music (including the most horrible braying, there is no other word for it, by Slim). Rex is a pretty good yodeler, though; in fact, he’s better than OK, though I’m not sure I would have agreed when I was 10 years old, which is the age level this movie was aimed for.

   What I really wonder what I at that age would wondered about the ending of the movie, one in which the villain is defeated by a not-so-small case of breaking, entering and worse. By which I mean totally illegally. Foul means, unsportsmanlike conduct, and below the belt. All in a good cause, but still.

NO MAN’S LAW. Hal Roach production, distributed by PatM Exchange, 1927. Rex (King of the Wild Horses),Barbara Kent, James Finlayson, Oliver Hardy, and Theodore Von Eltz. Photography by Floyd Jackman and George Stevens; director: Fred Jackman. Shown at Cinevent 40, Columbus OH, May 2008.

   I usually have a good memory for animal stars, but I don’t recall seeing the reportedly temperamental equine star before. Rex was a nom de cinema, with Casey Jones his original moniker. Rex’s career continued into the sound era, but No Man’s Land was the third and last of his Roach-produced oaters.

   It may be surprising to see the names of James Finlayson and Oliver Hardy attached to a dramatic film, especially since Hardy is the villain of the piece, with not a good (or funny) bone in his body.

   Hardy and Von Eltz play crooks on the lam who attempt to take over the claim where prospector Jake Belcher (Finlayson), helped only by his foster daughter Toby (Barbara Kent), has been digging for gold for many years.

   Rex is a wild horse, presumably beholden to no man (or woman), but for reasons that aren’t explained he keeps a close watch on Toby and Jake, finally driving Hardy into a gulch where he pounds him to death with his driving hooves. (No, we don’t see this; the camera focuses on Hardy’s clenched fist that slowly relaxes as he dies.)

   Barbara Kent is still alive, living in Sun Valley, Idaho, and refusing to talk about her movie career. She has an extended nude swimming scene (well, it looks as if she’s nude, but with a long shot she may be wearing a skin-tight outfit) and the interest this aroused in the Cinevent audience (and probably in audiences at the time of the film’s original release) may explain why Rex seemed so cranky during much of this hokey, entertaining film.

TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN. United Artists, 1958. Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly, Eugene Martin, Ned Young, Victor Millan, Frank Ferguson. Screenwriter: Ben Perry (as a front for Dalton Trumbo). Director: Joseph H. Lewis.

   Mention of Nedrick Young [in my previous review ] may have baffled some of you out there, so I should say he was a sometime-actor/sometime screen-writer who wrote Jailhouse Rock and won an Oscar for The Defiant Ones, which he had to accept under a pseudonym because he was black-listed.

   He also appears uncredited and disguised by a heavy beard in House of Wax (1953) but Young’s chief claim to fame is his portrayal of the sympathetically loathsome gunfighter in a little cheapie called Terror in a Texas Town (1958).

   This was the last feature film of director Joseph H. Lewis, and a fitting cap to a career that started out in B-westerns and veered through such films as Gun Crazy and So Dark the Night. Terror moves with that manic intensity sometimes seen within the febrile reaches of desperate cinema, parading its clichés like a magician doing card-tricks, flashing one at us where we expect to see another, till the whole thing speed-shuffles itself into one of the most bizarre shoot-outs in the movies.

   In all this delirium, there’s little time for serious acting, which is why it’s surprising to see some very nice turns here from thespians whose careers were mostly marginal. Sterling Hayden does a very creditable job as a Swedish sailor (a thematic echo of John Wayne in The Long Voyage Home) out west to join his father who has bitten the dust, courtesy of gluttonous Land Baron Sebastian Cabot.

   Someone named Carol Kelly plays a poignantly masochistic kept woman, whose keeper is the declining gunfighter Johnny Crale, played here by Nedrick Young.

   Young somehow brings real feeling to a stock character here. Black-clad, with six-guns at his hips, he strides about with a weary grace, his balletic movements always somehow tired and over-practiced, as he goes through the motions of pleading with his victims not to make him fulfill his destiny, or begs his opponent to get closer for a fair fight.

   That bit happens in the final confrontation in the middle of a dusty street, and it seems less a cliché than one would think, thanks to Young’s assured playing and Lewis’s vigorous direction.

   Perhaps the performances stand out because director Lewis puts them in such stark relief. Or it may be just a matter of budget that there are no extras in this Texas town till the last reel. Whatever the case, Terror lingers in the memory as an authentically strange film and even a rather good one.

THE TEXAN. Paramount, 1930. Gary Cooper, Fay Wray, Emma Dunn, Oscar Apfel, James Marcus. Based on the story “The Double-Dyed Deceiver” by O. Henry. Director: John Cromwell. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   Another film from the vaults that has probably not been seen since its initial release. Gary Cooper plays the Llano Kid, an outlaw with a price on his head, who falls in with a crooked lawyer who persuades him to join him in a scam to rob a South American widow by persuading her that the Kid is her long-lost son, returning to his mother after years of wandering.

   The plan goes well until the Kid develops a conscience and wants to back out of the agreement. Emma Dunn plays the mother, Senora Ibarra, with Fay Wray her niece, with whom the Kid, predictably, falls in love.

   There’s a nice O. Henry twist to resolve the story (no, the Kid does not turn out to be the son) and it’s a good-looking production that lets the characters and their relationships build slowly before the action-packed climax.

Editorial Comment:   The cover illustration based on the film, shown above, was done by Norman Rockwell. The original painting recently sold at Sotheby’s for nearly six million dollars.

ALBUQUERQUE. Paramount Pictures, 1948. Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, George “Gabby” Hayes, Lon Chaney, Russell Hayden, Catherine Craig, George Cleveland. Based on the novel Dead Freight for Piute, by Luke Short. Director: Ray Enright.

   I don’t know whether the Luck Short novel this above-average technicolor Cinecolor movie is based on takes place in Albuquerque or not, but I suspect it doesn’t, since Piute is in Utah (or California) and therefore not particularly close (as the crow flies) to the titular city in New Mexico using anyone’s map, including Google’s.

   The people who made this movie tried to dress it up a bit. Some of the various background settings appear Spanish in origin, such as one scene in particular that takes place on a Sunday morning with worshipers entering a Spanish chapel in their Sunday best finery. Otherwise the town the story takes place in could have been any other place in the West. They all look alike to me, anyway.

   Randolph Scott has lead billing, and he’s definitely the star. He plays Cole Armin, who comes to town to work for his uncle John (a not so genial George Cleveland), who owns most of the freight contracts in the area, but when Cole discovers how crooked his uncle is, he goes to work for the competition instead, a brother and sister team played by Russell Hayden and Catherine Craig.

   Second-billed Barbara Britton doesn’t show up until at least half the film has gone by, but perhaps she had a good agent to speak up for her. Which is not to say that she doesn’t have an important role. She also comes to town originally to work for John Armin, this time in an undercover capacity; which is to say that her job is to spy on the Wallaces for him.

   With more plot to the tale than is usual – compared, that is, to your typical Rex Allen film, for example – there are a few twists and turns to the plot to come, with the whole story ending with a hair-raising trek down a mountain in a pair of freight wagons in an effort to win a new mining contract.

   Which not so incidentally makes Dead Freight to Piute a better title, if you were to ask me, and yes, I know it’s too late now. But at least maybe the people who made the film did stick to the novel at least a little bit.

   Seeing this movie in color was nice, and Gabby Hayes plays his usual colorful sidekick to the hilt. It’s Randolph Scott who’s the star attraction, though, and he’s given plenty to do to prove it.

THE DESPERADOES. Columbia Pictures, 1943. Randolph Scott, Claire Trevor, Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Edgar Buchanan, Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, Raymond Walburn, Porter Hall. Based on an original story by Max Brand. Director: Charles Vidor.

   Randolph Scott and Claire Trevor were the bigger names at the time, and they’re listed first in the credits, but neither of the two contributes nearly as much to this western extravaganza as do stars number three and four, Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes.

   Glenn Ford, who plays Cheyenne Rogers in the film, was being groomed as a star at the time. The same path was envisioned for Evelyn Keyes, who was married then to director Charles Vidor, but as pretty and talented as she was, most of her films were of the B-variety. On the other hand, Glenn Ford, who was a very young 27 in 1943 – and looks it – did go on to many bigger and better things.

   Cheyenne is a gunfighter hired by Evelyn Keyes’ Uncle Willie (Edgar Buchanan) to rob the local bank – unknown to her, of course – while Randolph Scott is the local sheriff who has a fatherly interest in Keyes. Maybe more, but he steps aside without a fuss if he did when Cheyenne comes along – the latter is a friend of his, as it turns out, even though they are on opposite sides of the law.

   As for Claire Trevor, she’s the owner of the local gambling palace – and a very sumptuous one, as far as the usual standards of small western towns are concerned. They may be more going on in the back rooms than could be let on in a movie made in 1943. She’s also in on the plot to rob the bank, but if her part hadn’t been written into the screenplay, nobody would have noticed.

   There is a lot of action in The Desperadoes, including one of the wildest wild horse stampedes I have ever seen in a movie, clear through Red Valley [Utah]. Of course some fool decides he has to run across the street from one sidewalk to the another just before the horses run through, but I guess every town has fools like that. (He makes it.)

   Personally, I’d have liked to have seen more of Randolph Scott than Glenn Ford, who seems too young (see above) to be a wanted man with a reputation, even if wrongly accused, and awfully unsure of himself as an actor. Evelyn Keyes, though, is very pretty in either a calico dress or a western shirt and blue jeans. Even so, I’m afraid I’d have to agree that she doesn’t have the onscreen catch-your-eyes-and-hold-them type of personality she needed, as much as I’d like to say otherwise.

   I mentioned a lot of action, but I haven’t mentioned (so far) the beautiful outdoor scenery, as befits a western film shot in color. (In fact, The Desperadoes was the first movie by Columbia to be released in color, a more than incidental fact that’s worthy of note.)

   Incongruously, though, there is more comedy in this film than seems appropriate; that is to say, the presence of Edgar Buchanan and Big Boy Williams, not to mention the saloon fight that all but destroys the place. It is also difficult to reconcile Edgar Buchanan’s crooked and outwardly befuddled Uncle Willy with the innocence of Evelyn Keyes’ character; they simply don’t mesh.

MAN OF THE WEST. United Artists, 1958. Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O’Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner, Royal Dano, Robert J. Wilke, Dick Elliott, Frank Ferguson, Emory Parnell, Chuck Robertson. Screenplay by Reginald Rose, based on the novel The Border Jumpers by Will C. Brown. Music by Leigh Harline. Producer: Walter Mirisch; director: Anthony Mann. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   This film was chosen as an example of the films produced by Mirisch, beginning inauspiciously with the “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series, then in collaboration with his brothers in the Mirisch Production Company, advancing light years to the production of films such as Some Like It Hot, West Side Story, The Magnificent Seven, and In the Heat of the Night, garnering three Oscars for Best Picture, as well as numerous other awards.

   Mirisch had just written his autobiography, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, copies of which were available at a lobby signing.

   Mirisch was born in 1921, but the only concession to his age was the scheduling of his screening interview before instead of after the film. He was an engaging interviewee, with apparently total recall of his films, and the Cinephiles award was presented to him by George Chakiris, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in West Side Story.

   Man of the West was an early Mirisch film (and not a financial success), a dark Western in which Gary Cooper plays a reforned outlaw who, escaping a train holdup with two fellow passengers (Julie London and Arthur O’Connell), stumbles into the hideout of his former gang, led by his uncle (played by the decade-younger Lee J. Cobb).

   Cooper has to convince Cobb that he’s back to join the gang, which is planning a bank robbery. The climax of the film, the robbery in what turns out to be nightmarish ghost town, is an exciting and unconventionally shot shoot-out against what appear to be overwhelming odds for Cooper.

   There is something of an air of implausibility about the film (written by notable TV scriptwriter Reginald Rose) that may have contributed to the film’s failure at the box office. Nonetheless, the film has a fine cast and director, and whatever its shortcomings, it was still great fun to watch.