SIX-GUN JUSTICE PODCAST
SIX-GUN JUSTICE PODCAST
SIX-GUN JUSTICE PODCAST EPISODE 26—JOHN WAYNE VS AUDIE MURPHY
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In this full-length episode of the Six-Gun Justice Podcast, saddle up with Paul and Rich as they head down the trail while talking about their favorite John Wayne and Audie Murphy Westerns from Red River to Seven Ways From Sundown. Along the way, they will also be reviewing both vintage westerns and some new publications every Western fan is going to want to get their lasso around...
01:04 — Paul’s exciting news on Arnold Hano
02:10 — Rich reviews Richard Brister’s The Wolf Streak (1958)
04:24 — Paul takes a look at the debut issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly
06:56 — Another look at author, Richard Brister: Fawcett Gold Medal’s Renegade Brand (1955)
09:23 — Paul reviews Audie Murphy: Movie Stories by David Williams
12:04 — Rich and Paul talk John Wayne and Audie Murphy
13:55 — Paul takes aim at No Name on the Bullet (1959) with Audie Murphy
18:41 — Rich drives the herd across Red River (1948) with John Wayne
23:15 — Paul rides again with Audie Murphy in Destry (1954)
26:53 — Rich lays siege to John Wayne’s classic, Rio Bravo (1959)
32:07 — Paul braves The Guns of Fort Petticoat (1957) with Audie Murphy
35:00 — Rich joins John Wayne for The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
38:25 — Paul looks at Audie Murphy in Seven Ways From Sundown (1960)
40:48 — Shoot-outs and Shout-outs
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This is the Six Gun Justice Podcast with word slingers Paul Bishop and Richard Grosh.
SPEAKER_02Howdy, it's good to have you writing with us for another action-packed episode of the Six Gun Justice Podcast, where we celebrate the blazing six-gun action of the Western genre in books, movies, TV, and any other media at home on the range. I'm Richard Prosh, and writing next to me is my co-host Paul Bishop. Howdy, pal, how are you? Hey Rich, I'm doing well. Good to hear.
SPEAKER_01What's on the Chuck Wagon menu today? I know we've both been doing a lot of Western related reading recently, so why don't we start out with some reviews and then saddle up for a look at your chosen trio of John Wayne Westerns and my selected trio of Westerns starring Odie Murphy? That sounds great. But before we get started, you have a bit of exciting news. I do. We've spoken about Arnold Hannel on the podcast before, specifically during our Noir in the Range episode, since he's written some of the best and most unorthodox Western noirs I've ever read, including The Last Notch. Since that episode, I've been asked by Greg Shepard, the head honcho at Starkhouse Books, to write an introduction to their upcoming reprint, which collects two of Hanno's Westerns, Manhunter and Slade. That sounds like a lot of fun. Indeed, but it's not the best part. I discovered Hanno is still with us at ninety-six years of age and living in California. I was able to contact him by email, and he agreed to record a six gun just conversation segment, which we'll be releasing in a couple of weeks. Fantastic. That's quite the coup. I'm looking forward to hearing that conversation. Thanks. At 96 years old, I'm not exactly sure how the conversation is gonna go, but I'm sure it'll be entertaining one way or the other. Absolutely. Okay, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Why don't you kick us off with a review?
SPEAKER_02So when I was in college, I had this friend who went bad like summer bananas. I mean, nobody could stop him. He was a friendly, well-mannered kid at first, but then he became an irritable, self-absorbed young adult. As more responsibility was expected of him, his pampered home life became more evident, and he started drinking. He really let himself go. I stood by him for a long time. After most of our friends had relegated him to the trash heap, I tried to hang on to the friendship. It wasn't altogether altruistic. In college where the weekend option was drinking on the South Dirt Road, drinking on the North Dirt Road, or driving the streets drinking. My own ulterior motive was better the drunk you know than the one you don't, but ultimately I couldn't keep up with him. That's what happens with Lane Merritt and his half brother Phil Harlan in Richard Brister's 1958 Avon Original Paperback, The Wolf Streak. A half breed wolf hunter, Lane is a good guy who comes back to the family ranch a few years after his and Phil's dad has passed away. Disinherited during his absence, Lane just wants to visit the old crown ranch. He finds his brother Phil, his intended bride Fay, and a tough hired hand named Rube. But see Phil has gone bad. Worse, he's intent on continuing his downward spiral. As so often happens in these pot boilers, Phil tricked the old man into giving him the entire spread, and he cut out Lane. Naturally, Lane finds out about the betrayal. Like me with my old college chum, Lane tries to get along, but Phil makes it impossible. Rube plays the thug, Lane hires a thug of his own. Phil turns people against Lane, Lane has to find new allies and friends on a small ranch called the Long Seven. Through it all, Lane bends over backwards to hang on to the relationship, hoping things will get better and that Phil will confess his evil deeds and come back to the brotherly bonds that originally tied them. Of course that doesn't happen, comes to gunplay in the end. What struck me most about the Wolf Streak is it plays out very much like a real life drama between two people who should care for each other but no longer can.
SPEAKER_01You know, Rich, maybe it's because I'm so aware of the genre and always looking out for something related that is new and different, but right now westerns seem to be everywhere. The physical paperback shelves of Walmart and those of the few remaining brick and mortar bookstores may not be stuffed with the Westerns, but they are still regularly selling a corral full of new wests from the William Johnstone and Ralph Compton brands, as well as from such authors as Peter Bramble, Terrence McAuley, Charles G. West. It goes on and on. Currently, paperback reprint editions of Westerns from Louis Lemour, Elmer Leonard, Max Rands, and many others are readily available. And don't even get me started on the explosion of Western ebooks led by the likes of Wolfpack Publishing, disrupting the bestseller lists on Amazon and other virtual retailers. All this prelude is to say I wasn't surprised when I learned the debut issue of the Men's Adventure Quarterly was going to be dedicated to Western stories and art that originally appeared in the much maligned Men's Adventure magazines that began publication in the 40s through the height of their popularity in the 50s and 60s to their demise in the late 70s. What did surprise me, however, was the absolutely stunning quality of the magazine, from its striking visual layout to its informative editorial content to the stories themselves. This is top-notch specialty publishing at its finest. The men's adventure magazines were at the height of their popularity after World War II, driven by an audience of returned military vets looking to adjust to civilian life, but still needing the adrenaline of battle, with their wild stories and provocative, often purient illustrations, which offended many a Puritan. The men's adventure magazines provided the needed thrills. Between the 40s and the 50s, as the pulps were giving way to mass market paperbacks, the men's adventure magazines bridged the gap with many Western stories from top writers, including Lou Cameron, who would later go on to create the Long Arm series, and Jack Pearl, who also wrote a lot of Westerns and paperback originals, as well as a lot of TV tie-in novels. These stories would be lost to time if it wasn't for the efforts of editor Bob Dice and production designer Bill Cunningham. In this first edition of the Men's Adventure Quarterly, they have pulled together the best of the Western stories from the Men's Adventure magazines for our enjoyment. To be fair, I have to admit I did write a guest editorial for the magazine, but I still had no idea how beautiful and jam-packed the finished product was going to be. Every fan of the Westerns is going to not only want to add this to their collection, but will want to read every page. And if you are a fan of action espionage tales, Issue 2 will light your fire. What do you have next for us, Rich?
SPEAKER_02Up next is Renegade Brand by Richard Brister again, a 1955 entry in the Fawcett Gold Medal series. From three years earlier, this one's got all that the Wolf Street got and a little bit more. Cast from the same basic soap opera template, there's more action and more lead perforated bad guys. I wonder, Paul, if the editors of the Fawcett Gold Medal originals encouraged more violence than the Avon editors, because the difference is pretty striking.
SPEAKER_01Editorial decisions like that are interesting because they can change when the editors change jobs at the publishing company. Really, it's more of an editorial personal decision than what the company itself is coming down and saying.
SPEAKER_02Either way, this one's a better book. Neil Ashton isn't coming back from hunting wolves in this one. He's coming back from a few years on the Owl Hoot Trail. He's a man who hung around with some bad hombres, but he never actually did anything wrong. He sees the road he's headed down, and he comes home to take over the Stirrup Ranch when his stepmom dies. But of course, the Stirrup Ranch is broke, and since it's the only land around with a lake, it's coveted by bad neighbors and a childhood rival named Frank Buckmaster. Frank's got a hard buddy named Johnny Wenema and a good deal of influence over folks around the nearby town of Pipe Rock. It's hard for Neil to make a go of things with Frank in his way, and another neighbor named Pate English is sparking Neil's old gal pal, Ruth. Brister runs through all the tropes, fist fights, gun battles, and Frank trying to frame Neil in the eyes of the kindly old sheriff. Exactly as he would do later in the Wolf Streak, the author introduces a mean gunman who first works for the hero but then switches sides. But this time the showdown is more gut-wrenching than ever, with, for me, a more satisfying conclusion. All in all, renegrade brand is a better read.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. Sometimes you have an author who doesn't know exactly where they're going with a story, and that sounds like Wolf Streak, which is a much better title, but this one sounds like the better book.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it sounds like he was working through some ideas, and depending on which order you read them in, you'll see them differently. In this case, Renegade Brand did come first, so it's almost like the Wolf Streak is a recycling of that first story, whereas if he would have written them the other way, it would have been a defining of the story.
SPEAKER_01And you have one more review? I do, and it's tied into our movie Western discussion, which we'll get to in our future in a little while. Like the men's adventure magazines I talked about earlier, there's another genre of magazine, which, if possible, is even more marginalized by modern literary critics, to say nothing of those disapproving individuals who always remind me of the Mrs. Kravitz type of next door neighbor. Popular from the 40s through the 70s, movie magazines were filled with information on everyone's favorite movie stars, ranging from biographical to current undertakings to studio gossip to the scandals of who the stars were sleeping with, which ones have been arrested for what tawdry sex misdemeanor, and other salacious topics. Obviously, the movie scandal rags moved more issues in the tamer movie magazines of the day. There's a fascinating and mostly forgotten history behind these publications, but as it's not specifically related to Westerns, it's best we don't delve into it here. However, there was another aspect of the movie magazines that is somewhat pertinent. Both Movie Story magazine and Screen Stories magazine specialized in novelizing scripts from top movies and turning them into short stories. I received a collection of these for Christmas, and it was an amazing experience to read some of these gems. The book I received was Audie Murphy Movie Stories by David Williams, which contained novelizations of many of Murphy's movies, including some of his westerns, such as The Guns of Fort Petticoat, which I'll be discussing today, The Unforgiven, The Crooked Tale, The Quick Gun, and others. Williams has done a fantastic job tracking down these stories and presenting them in an easy-to-read format. It's a big book with over 400 pages, and while self-published, it's a very professional product from its glossy cover through its lack of typos, which are usually the downfall of these types of do-it-yourself projects. I was impressed with these tales, and for anyone like me who collects Western movie tie-in novelizations, this is a must-buy.
SPEAKER_02Sounds really cool. There's just so much out there to read, it's hard to keep up with it all.
SPEAKER_01Ain't that the truth? Every day I seem to uncover a new vintage Western I want to read or Western movies and TV series I haven't seen. This past couple of weeks I've been writing individual synopses of 101 one-season Westerns, putting together an extensive reference article for the next issue of Just Amaryass Western fanzine hot lead, which we've talked about on the show before. So I've been learning a lot about shows I didn't even know existed.
SPEAKER_02Wow, I will look forward to reading that issue when it comes out later this year. And with that, why don't you let the cattle loose and get into our feature?
SPEAKER_01John Wayne and Audie Murphy are two of the big dogs when it comes to Western movies. They both had their own style and always brought their A game. I read somewhere that there was pressure to add Murphy to the cast of 1960s The Alamo, believing his presence would make the film stronger. Wayne, however, was extremely sensitive to the fact Murphy was a real war hero while he was merely a movie hero? Since Wayne was the producer, director, and star of the Alamo, he felt disinclined to allow Murphy a chance to upstage him. On the other hand, since he was a Texan, Murphy had expressed an interest in playing Travis, the Alamo's defender who shoots off a cannon in response to the request for unconditional surrender. But the role was cast with Lawrence Harvey, an Englishman.
SPEAKER_02I believe that actor Lee Palmer was part of the six degrees of separation kind of thing between Wayne and Murphy. He played the machete wielding villain who kills Wayne's dog in Big Jake. He had previously made three films with Murphy at Universal, including To Helen Back, and later reunited for Columbia Studios The Quick Gun.
SPEAKER_01As we are both aware, Murphy and Wayne have amazing biographies, but those have been covered extensively elsewhere. And these guys are big enough stars for everyone to know at least a little bit about them, even today. So rather than rehashing their careers, I thought it would be more fun for you to talk about your three favorite John Wayne westerns, and I'll share my take on my three favorite westerns starring Audie Murphy. And then we can discuss why we think they're worth watching. Great. I'll start us off. No name on the bullet is an atypical Audie Murphy Western because it's a rare role where Murphy gets to play a stone cold killer. It's also the movie many critics consider his best. This is such a good movie because the role fits Murphy so well. I really have to wonder if he was trying to deal with a lot of his personal demons in the role, relating to the horrors he saw going to Hellemback while becoming America's most decorated soldier. I also wonder if he had some form of PTSD, which they didn't really talk about in those days, from those experiences that might have attributed to so many of the struggles he had in his personal life. In No Name on the Bullet, Murphy plays infamous hired gunman John Gantt. When he rides into the small town of Lordsburg, Arizona, the town folks are alarmed because of all the stories they've heard about him being a killer. They're also surprised because he's much younger than they expected for someone with such a heavyweight reputation. The citizens want Sheriff Buck Hastings to arrest Gant, but Hastings tells him Gant kills his rivals legally in self-defense after goading them into drawing their guns first. While everyone else in town is wetting themselves over who Gant's target might be, Gant meets Luke Canfield, who is both the town blacksmith and doctor. He appears to be totally unaware of Gant's gunslinger status, but he does take an opportunity to show off his perfect aim with a maul. Luke treats Gant in a friendly manner, giving him a tour of the town and even inviting him to play chess with him later on. It quickly becomes clear, however, the town's leading citizens are becoming paranoid, as each of them has enemies capable of employing a professional killer to settle their differences. Even when warned not to judge Gant prematurely, Sheriff Hastings remains scared of Grant, knowing he wouldn't stand a chance against Gant's guns. Mine owners Earl Stricker and Thad Pierce assume Gantt has been hired by their partner to kill them and take over the mine. They approach Gant with a counteroffer, but Gant rebuffs them while observing innocent men have no reason to be afraid. Hearing Stricker and Pierce were seen talking with Gant, the third mine owner, Ben Chafee, assumes they want to kill him. Store clerk Lou Faridan and his wife Roseanne are certain her ex-husband has sent Gant to kill them. Meanwhile, Luke Campfield is becoming aware that the townsmen are all hiding behind guns and locked doors. So Luke goes and seeks out Gantt and bluntly confronts him about his intentions. Impressed with Luke's bravery and integrity, Gant explains his belief that in Luke's role as town doctor, Luke saves the lives of men who deserve to die, making him less ethical than Gant himself. One of the mine owners panics and shoots himself, dying later that night. The townspeople think it's murder, and Gantt is accused. When Sheriff Hastings tries to run Gantt out of town, Gant simply refuses to leave. When Hastings pulls his gun, Gant shoots him in the hand. When asked why Gant didn't kill Hastings, the gunslinger says, No one was paying me. Convoluted, but perfectly clear complications ensue as townfolk shoot each other in fear. A vigilante mob is formed only to be backed down by Gant. Another citizen confronts Gant but turns coward before Gant can goat him into shooting. Believing Gant is there to kill her already dying father, who's a retired judge, Luke's fiancee grabs a gun and goes to kill Gant. But that turns out about as well as you think it would. Throughout all of this, Murphy never breaks character. He stays in Gant's ice cold persona. And when his target is eventually revealed, all the pieces of the film, from the opening scenes to the various confrontations, click into place with a sharp twist. I won't give away any spoilers here because I want listeners to enjoy the reveals of this film as much as I did, but Gantt's final statement before riding away says it all. Everything comes to a finish.
SPEAKER_02I will see your Audie Murphy and raise you a John Wayne. Go for it. I know the collaboration of John Wayne with John Ford is nearly synonymous with iconic Western cinema. But I prefer two films he did with Howard Hawkes.
SPEAKER_01Can you guess what they are? I know you well enough to know one of them will be Red River because you and I have talked about it before, and I'm pretty sure your second pick would be the same as mine, Rio Bravo. Bingo.
SPEAKER_02In Red River, Howard Hawk's masterpiece captures Wayne at arguably the height of his powers. He's young, trim, and tough. With Montgomery Clift in his first screen roll, Joanne Drew and Walter Brennan. And though he'd go on to make another two plus decades worth of great westerns, I get the impression Wayne was still a little bit hungry here, and the black and white film really accentuates his edge. That's the way I see Wayne in this one. Tougher than some of his later, more soft pictures, if you get what I mean.
SPEAKER_01I do. They seem to bland out after a while, and the studios don't want them disliked. I can't imagine Murphy going on to play cold-blooded killer after cold blooded killer and expect his career to take off. That's just not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Red River was a turning point in the Duke's career. It was the film that defined him as an icon. Remember, this is still early, the late forties. Wayne's role as conflicted, proud Thomas Dunstan prompted John Ford to tell Howard Hawkes, I never knew the big son of a bitch could act. Wayne's character has often been called the Captain Bly of the Range, and Red River is sometimes referred to as a Western mutiny on the bounty. At its basic level, it's a trail boss story. Wayne's character, Tom Dunstan, provokes his foster son, Matt Garth, played by Clift, to rebel during a long drive up the Chisholm Trail. Matt might be young, but like Audie Murphy, he has seen service during the Civil War.
SPEAKER_01Audie Murphy wasn't exactly in the Civil War, but I get what you mean.
SPEAKER_02He's no nonsense, and when he's driven to take a stand, he turns against Tom, causes all the men on the drive to take sides. Walter Brennan is as terrific as ever as Dunstan's ramrod, Groot Nadine, and that chemistry between Brennan and Wayne is there. Brennan has a funny line in the context of Guardians of the Galaxy. His name in the film is Groot, and his line is, I bet I ate ten pounds in the last sixteen days. Before this shenanigan is over, I'll probably eat enough land to incorporate me into the Union, the state of Groot. I am Groot. I couldn't hear Brennan without also hearing that.
SPEAKER_01Kinda like Groot grows up and becomes a cranky old man.
SPEAKER_02Both the Last Picture Show in 1971 and City Slickers, 20 years later in 1991, pay homage to Red River, and footage from Red River was inserted into the backstory of Wayne's character in The Shootist, his final film in 1976. The screenplay for Red River was by Borden Chase based on his original short story, Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail, serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.
SPEAKER_01It's interesting how many movies got their start as stories in the Saturday Evening Post. It sure is. It must have been a race for producers to get the new issue and dig through it immediately to see if there was anything there that interested them. Otherwise they'd be beaten to it by another studio. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Random House published the expanded story, Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail, in hardback form, and they used that same title. When the film was released in 1948, Bantam released a new paperback edition featuring John Wayne and Joanne Drew on the back cover, and with the new title of Red River. The original title was underneath in parentheses. In 1952, Bantam released a reprint of that paperback edition also featuring Wayne and Drew on the cover. Just as a bit of trivia, Borden Chase's real name was Frank Fowler, so look him up for some other things he's written.
SPEAKER_01Are you talking directly to Sheriff Minutia here? Because he'll be right out there Googling.
SPEAKER_02I absolutely am. As a final note, in 2016, Johnny Boggs wrote Return to Red River. In this sequel, which takes place 20 years after the film, Matt has two strapping sons of his own and is undertaking a desperate cattle drive from Texas to Dodge City, the new queen of the Frontier Cattle Towns. It's a great read as well.
SPEAKER_01I've never read the book, but I've always enjoyed the film, so I'm gonna have to try to dig up one of the movie time versions. What's your next movie? From 1954, Destry is the third film version of Destry Rides Again, based on the book by Max Brand, which is the well-known pseudonym of Frederick Fost. Director George Marshall helmed this film, which is almost a shot by shot remake of the 1939 version of the film, which Marshall also directed. The reason behind the remake is Marshall loved the story so much he wanted to shoot it again in color. Plus there were some things he felt he could do better with advances in technology since he shot the first version 15 years earlier. There was also a 1932 version of this film, but that isn't seen very often these days. As I mentioned, the critic's choice of best Audi Murphy Western is most often no name on the bullet. And while it's an excellent film, I prefer Destri because the role forces Murphy to repeatedly go back and forth between mild-mannered and deadly as he deals with the film's concept of limited pacifism, which is the ideology that one should only resort to violence when there's no other recourse. Mild-mannered here doesn't equate to weak, but to peaceably confident.
SPEAKER_02It seems like Murphy is dealing with some real moral issues with both of these films that you've reviewed so far. Issues of who deserves to be killed, who doesn't, do certain people deserve certain kinds of punishment after certain actions in society? Something that America was dealing with after the war.
SPEAKER_01You're right, and what I like about it so much is these films aren't preachy. The writing is so strong, that message just comes over. You don't really think about it while you're watching the film, but when you're thinking about the film later, some of those things start to drop into place. Exactly. In the case of Destry, a small frontier town is being controlled by ruthless mob boss Decker and his cronies. After the local troublemaking sheriff dies under mysterious circumstances, Decker arranges to have the town drunk appointed sheriff, believing he will be easily controlled. But the new sheriff decides to dry out, and he sends for Audie Murphy, who plays Tom Destri, the son of a famous two-fisted lawman, and asked him to be his deputy. When Tom arrives, he isn't exactly the swaggering he-man the sheriff had in mind. In fact, Destri doesn't even carry a gun. But the new deputy's mild exterior mass a fierce determination to see justice done, as Decker and the other locals soon discover. Destri might prefer friendly persuasion and the use of law over violence, but he's not reluctant to not only use trickery and his own impressive sharpshooting skills, but also some rudimentary forensic techniques to restore order to the town. This is CSI Old West style. For me, Destri is more enjoyable than No Name on the Bullet because it has a sense of humor. It's very hard to feel anything toward No Name on the Bullet's gunslinging gant. That film cleverly comes together, but it's relentlessly grim. Destry, on the other hand, is just as clever, but it pulls all its various plot tangents together in a way that has you rooting for the hero.
SPEAKER_02I agree, I like Destry better than No Name on the Bullet.
SPEAKER_01And it's not that No Name on the Bullet isn't a good film. It's an excellent film. But which one is the most enjoyable experience for the viewer? For my mind, that's gotta be Destry.
SPEAKER_02A little bit of humor can help lighten a grim situation when balance out the film, makes it feel a little better. That's the case with my next film as well. Ten years after Red River, Hawkes and Wayne, again with Brennan, team up for Rio Bravo, 1959, joined here by Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, and Ward Bond. It's a grim tale, but there's humor involved, a lot of humor. The film tells the story of Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance, who arrests Joe Burdett, the spoiled younger brother of a wealthy landowner, Nathan Burdett. Chance tosses Joe in jail and has to hold him until the arrival of a U.S. Marshal. It's all up to John Wayne with Dean Martin as his drunken ex-deputy and his current crippled deputy, Brennan, to hold Joe against the wishes of Nathan and his army of goons. Enter young gunny Colorado Ryan, played by Ricky Nelson, and the action plays out naturally.
SPEAKER_01It's amazing to me how many action heroes are named after states, or they have the last name of kid, the Apache kid, the two-gun kid, in this case it's Colorado Ryan. It's like the cliche western name. Indiana Jones. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02I love everything about this movie from Brennan's over-the-top portrayal of Stumpy, especially when he starts flinging dynamite, Dean Martin's character study of Dude, proving that yet another son of a bitch can act. Dean Martin is not the guy you think of when you think of consummate actors, but he really could act. He was a good actor. Everybody in this film is solid. I love the way the set is constructed so that you have this long corridor of a town. The bad guys are on one end and the jail is at the other, and it's this long, narrow gauntlet that everybody has to go through to try to either approach the bad guys or the bad guys have to approach the jail. Everything about it is good.
SPEAKER_01I think it's one of Dean Martin's best roles. Watching it, you can see that he's really relishing this opportunity to stretch himself.
SPEAKER_02He is. Angie Dickinson does a good job too. Since I'm going to talk about her policewoman co-star Earl Holliman in the next movie, there's a hint. I thought I would mention the connection. Dickinson and Holliman are both two actors, I don't think get enough credit. I don't think their chemistry worked all that well in Policewoman. It was okay. But I think individually in some of these late 60s movies, they do a really good job and don't often get the credit they deserve. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01I've never really thought about it that way, but I think you're right. Angie Dickinson a lot of times gets by on the strength of her two gorgeous legs, but I also think she has some acting chops that she doesn't get credit for. Earl Holliman, on the other hand, I really loved him in a one-season TV series called Hotel du Paris, in which he played the character named Sundance. As you say, he is underrated.
SPEAKER_02He especially did a good job when he was younger, and maybe the problem with Policewoman is he was a little older and a little more comfortable, maybe. Another connection, because Ricky Nelson was a teen idol at the time, Hawks inserts songs for him to sing. One of them is My Rifle, My Pony and Me, which contains new lyrics to a Dmitry Tiumkin tune from Red River. The WWA chose My Rifle, My Pony and Me as one of the top 100 Western songs of all time. Another interesting piece of trivia, the film High Noon is sometimes thought to be an allegory for the Hollywood blacklisting of communists that was going on in those years. With Real Bravo, Wayne and Hawkes teamed up deliberately to rebut that story. So think about High Noon, where Gary Cooper goes around looking for help. With their take on a similar situation, Hawkes and Wayne wanted a hero who doesn't show fear or inner conflict and goes about doing his public duty with capable companions and wins at the end.
SPEAKER_01That's one of the things that I never liked about High Noon. At the end of the film, Gary Cooper's character has to be saved by his Quaker wife. She just all of a sudden turns up and does the right thing. And for me, that really spoiled the movie.
SPEAKER_02Agreed. I felt the same way. The screenplay for Rio Bravo was co-written by Jules Ferthman and Lee Brackett, traditionally said to be based on a short story, Rio Bravo, by B.H. McCampbell. Lee Brackett's called the Queen of Space Opera, is better known in science fiction circles for her short stories, also worked on a first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. Brackett wrote the tie-in novelization for Rio Bravo that came out from Bantam books in 1959. And is very expensive these days. Yes. As an interesting aside, the John Wayne movie Tie-In website claims that B.H. Campbell didn't actually write the original short story. Barbara Hawkes Campbell was Howard Hawke's daughter. The story goes that she was talking to her father about the movie and that it was she who came up with the idea of Stumpy throwing sticks of dynamite during the climactic fight between the sheriff and Nathan Burdett and his men. Hawkes liked the idea, and as he often did, he gave the writer, in this case his daughter, BH McCampbell, the credit for writing the original story. There's a Dell Comics adaptation of the movie with a photo cover, and Art Inside by comics great Alex Toth. And when you go out looking for that expensive paperback, don't confuse it with the gold medal western Rio Bravo by Gordon Sheriffs.
SPEAKER_01You can go ahead and pick up that gold medal western Rio Bravo by Gordon Sheriffs, because it's actually a great story as well. I think my favorite Audie Murphy Western is the Guns of Fort Petticoat. First of all, I've always thought the dichotomy of guns and petticoats in the title is very cool, especially as it gives you a great clue as to what to expect. The movie is based on the Petticoat Brigade, a two-part magazine story published in Carlier's Weekly in 1956. It was written by C. William Harrison, who, while not overly prolific, wrote a number of short stories and nonfiction works, as well as three Westerns under the pseudonym Will Hickok. Two of them were tie-in novels to the TV series Restless Gun. The rights to Petticoat Brigade were quickly stamped up by Audie Murphy, who changed the title to The Guns of Fort Petticoat for the movie, which he co-produced with Harry Joe Brown and Disney. Murphy continued to move quickly with the property, filming and releasing it a year later in 1957, with the tagline Good women, bad women, brawling women, brave women, they were all soldiers in skirts. You gotta love that. Between the title and the tagline, it's pretty clear this is going to be a movie akin to Santa Anna assaulting the Alamo or the Zulus attacking Rourke's Drift, a surrounded collection of overmatched individuals who, when faced with the reality of no escape, decide not to surrender to a bitter enemy. Only in this case, the surrounded group is women in proverbial petticoats going down fighting against marauding Indians. Murphy's brilliance as a star of this film is how he uses his presence to keep the whole outrageous setup grounded and believable. Murphy plays Texan Frank Hewitt, who has gone north to fight for the Union due to his avarance of slavery. Now a U.S. cavalryman, he is not trusted because of his ties to the Confederacy. However, it's clear Hewitt is a man of integrity who stands by his beliefs no matter the consequences. After failing to stop Colorado Union soldiers from carrying out the deadly Sand Creek Reservation Massacre and his warnings about the possibility of Indian revenge going unheeded, Hewitt feels he has no choice but to desert. Crossing back into Texas, he finds he has been labeled a traitor for fighting with the Yankees, making his warnings about possible Indian revenge being dismissed again. When a town near a mission, populated mostly by women, is threatened, Frank appoints himself as their protector and must build an army by training the women to fight and defend themselves against the coming Comanche attack. The Guns of Fort Petticoat is a top grade Western owing to the splendid outdoor action sequences and the smart sense of humor that doesn't allow anyone to take this all too seriously. It also has a certain sex appeal and displays political consciousness. Something of a feminist Western way ahead of its time, it never gets preachy, just gets on with the action and romance and a surprisingly effective touch of comedy. See William Harrison, who probably wanted to milk his good fortune for all it was worth, wrote the novelization of Walter Doniger's screenplay that was also released in 1957 under the Gold Medal Imprint. I just picked up a copy for myself, and I just love the art on the cover.
SPEAKER_02I've got that here on my shelf too, and it does have a really striking cover. What's up next for you? My third John Wayne movie is The Sons of Katie Elder from 1965, directed by Henry Hathaway and with Dean Martin again, and Earl Holliman. The four sons of Katie Elder are John, the gunman, Tom, the gambler, Dean Martin, Bud, Michael Anderson Jr., who's still in school, and Matt, Earl Holliman, a hardware dealer. It's the story of four brothers arriving in their mother's Texas town for her funeral, and how they end up having to defend her ranch and each other, an all-out actioner that's as much fun as it is seriously grim. And it's interesting, Paul, I reviewed two novels by Richard Brister, The Wolf Streak and Renegade Brand, and now with the Sons of Katie Elder, we've got three different stories that play on pretty much the same basic idea. You've got the offspring coming home to defend or reclaim a piece of property after a parent has died. That's a ranch story trope that goes through a lot of westerns. But it's always interesting to see what the author does to take it in a unique and personal direction.
SPEAKER_01It's got built-in drama, the sibling squabbling, and greed comes into it, and so many other things. It really gives an author a playing field that's already established.
SPEAKER_02And it is something we can all relate to today because everybody knows somebody who's inherited something and squabbled with the remaining parent or siblings. We all have had that experience, if not personally, we've known people who have. I'm an only child, thank goodness. I am too. So we don't have to squabble. That's right. This original story by William Wright and Talbot Jennings centered around a trail drive and was loosely based on a novel, The Life of the Marlowe's, a true story of five brothers by Glenn Shirley. Wayne had supposedly picked up the novel in a bookstore in 1953, and he paid the Marlowe family a thousand dollars for the rights to make it into a screenplay. However, the Sons of Katie Elder that finally reached the screen is quite a bit different than this original story. Wayne's real life tough guy bona fides were on display behind the scenes during the shooting of this film. Filming had to be delayed so that he could have part of a cancerous lung and two ribs removed. Even so, our hero insisted on doing his own stunts, which included being dragged through a river, and he almost got pneumonia from that. Another piece of minutiae the name Kate Elder is one of several names used by the historic Big Nose Kate, sometimes companion of Doc Holiday. No connection in the movie though. The score is fantastic, composed by Elmer Bernstein, who also scored true grit. And the Magnificent Seven. That's right. In 1965, Johnny Cash recorded The Sons of Katie Elder, a song written by Bernstein and Ernie Sheldon that doesn't appear in the movie.
SPEAKER_01And thankfully, there is a lyric version of the Magnificent Seven theme, which doesn't appear anywhere.
SPEAKER_02I would agree with that. Don't look for it. The Sons of Katie Elder was adapted by Dell Comics with a photo cover and Art Insight by Jack Sparling.
SPEAKER_01Now I'm going to cheat here a little bit because you've done three John Wayne movies, I've done three Audie Murphy movies, and I'm still going to throw in a fourth because it has a connection to one of yours and my favorite Westerns, The Cowboy and the Cossack. Go for it. Seven Ways from Sundown is a 1960 American Western film directed by Harry Keller and starring Ottie Murphy and Barry Sullivan. It is based on the novel of the same name by Claire Huffaker, who also wrote the script. Huffaker, of course, wrote one of our favorite Western novels, The Cowboy and the Cossack, which we talk about quite often on the podcast. Murphy plays Seven Jones, so named because he was a seventh child born into his family of twelve children. He is a young Texas Ranger on his first assignment, ordered to bring in outlaw Jim Flood, played by Barry Sullivan, a legendary gunslinger who is something of a Western folk hero. Despite his inexperience, Jones manages to capture the outlaw, but he soon finds that transporting him to prison will not be easy. Flood, though easy-going in his manner, warns Jones that he will never be locked up again. Along the way, the duo finds themselves under attack, while some of them want to free the outlaw, others are gunning to kill the young ranger. As the ranger and his prisoner make their dangerous journey, they occasionally have to work together to survive. They form a grudging respect for each other, almost a friendship, but they know that in the end they are on opposite sides of the law. The dynamics of the setup reminds me a lot of 310 to Yuma. Barry Sullivan almost steals the film while playing the suave and charismatic Robin Hood type villain, maneuvering Seven for his own amusement, even joining forces with him when needed, in much the same way as Glenn Ford did with Van Heflin in the original 310 to Yuma. The beginning of the film was directed by George Sherman. However, shortly after the unit had returned from location work outside Las Vegas, Sherman and Audie Murphy had an argument over a line reading, which resulted in Murphy pushing Sherman over and threatening to kill him. Sherman left the project and was replaced for the remainder of the shoot by Harry Keller. Murphy, who had been separated from his wife for a year, started an affair with co-star Venetia Stevenson. This is a greatly overlooked and excellent Western. It is available on TVD, but it is a little hard to find, but worth the effort. I've never seen that, and I will have to check that out for sure. I have the book, and it's really good, just a typical Claire Huffaker actioneer. I don't have the DVD either. I actually saw this on one of the Western channels, but I don't know how often they show it. So everybody keep your eye out for that one. There's a clanging of the Chuckwagon Triangle partner, telling us to wrap up this episode with our shootouts and shout-outs.
SPEAKER_02Thanks to Mike Bray and Wolfpack Publishing for being our premier sponsor. Thanks also to author Chris Enns and the Western Writers of America. Thanks to Roundup Magazine for their support promoting our podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks to our crew of Patreon backers for their financial support. If you are enjoying the podcast, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash six gunjustice and consider giving a small monthly stipend to help us keep moseying along. Donations are appreciated, but clearly not necessary or expected. We're grateful for all our listeners and truly happy to have you with us sharing this trail ride.
SPEAKER_02Next Monday, Paul will be hosting a Six Gun Justice speed lesson featuring everything you need to know about the movie The Professionals, all in under 15 minutes, give or take.
SPEAKER_01And in two weeks, we will be back with another full-length episode of the Six Gun Justice Podcast.
SPEAKER_02And don't forget our Six Gun Justice conversation segments every Wednesday, when either Paul or I get to hang out around the Six Gun Justice Corral, chewing the jerky with writers and friends who love the Western genre as much as we do.
SPEAKER_01Until we meet again, be kind to each other, be kind to yourself, and don't end up with your face on a wanted poster. Adios for now. We're out of here. Let's ride.
SPEAKER_00Join us in two weeks for another full-length episode of the Six Gun Justice Podcast, sponsored by author Chris Eds, the Western Writers of America, and Wolfpack Publishing. Publishers of such best selling Western series as The Legend of the Black Rose and Concho.
