Saga of a group of soldiers of fortune who are hired to rescue a kidnapped Marquesa being held for ransom. Set in Mexico, near the end of the Revolution.
The movies of the 1960s ran the gamut from glossy studio product to a less linear and less inhibited style of filmmaking. It was the decade during which censorship codes were demolished and the studio contract system fell apart. Every genre was strongly represented, from domestic dramas to spectacles, musicals, soap operas, and westerns. Some of the most diverse, daring, colourful, outrageous, and enduring of all motion pictures were released from 1965 to 1969."Screen World" editor Barry Monush tells the reader why his top selections stood out among the other releases of those five years. The text is accompanied by illustrations of movie ads, tie-in book covers, soundtrack albums, sheet music, and other oddities. In addition, each film's entry includes a plot synopsis, the opening date, the studio, and a creative staff and cast listing. From "The Sound of Music to Alfie", "In the Heat of the Night" to "The Lion in Winter", "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" to "Planet of the Apes", "Easy Rider", and "Midnight Cowboy", here is a pop culture feast for film buffs and all fans of that interesting point in time that was the late 1960s.
References to western movies scattered over some 250 works by more than 130 authors constitute the subject matter of this book, arranged in an encyclopedic format. The entries are distributed among western movies, television series, big screen and television actors, western writers, directors and miscellaneous topics related to the genre. The data cover films from The Great Train Robbery (1903) to No Country for Old Men (2007) and the entries include many western film milestones (from The Aryan through Shane to Unforgiven), television classics (Gunsmoke, Bonanza) and great screen cowboys of both "A" and "B" productions.
Hollywood’s West examines popular perceptions of the frontier as a defining feature of American identity and history. Seventeen essays by prominent film scholars illuminate the allure of life on the edge of civilization and analyze how this region has been represented on big and small screens. Differing characterizations of the frontier in modern popular culture reveal numerous truths about American consciousness and provide insights into many classic Western films and television programs, from RKO’s 1931 classic Cimarron to Turner Network Television’s recent made-for-TV movies. Covering topics such as the portrayal of race, women, myth, and nostalgia, Hollywood’s West makes a significant contribution to the understanding of how Westerns have shaped our nation’s opinions and beliefs—often using the frontier as metaphor for contemporary issues.
Westerns may have had their heyday, but they remain popular. The greatest films from 1914, when The Squaw Man and The Virginian were among the genre's best, through 2001, when American Outlaws and Texas Rangers were tops, are the subject of this work. For each year, the author names the outstanding western films in the following categories: picture, screenplay (original and adaptation), direction, cinematography, music, male and female leading roles, and male and female supporting roles. Also for each year, the author lists the westerns that received Academy Award nominations (and those that won), makes note of the births and deaths of notable actors, directors, producers, composers, cinematographers, authors and other such personalities, and describes the genre's significant achievements.
Hide in Plain Sight completes Buhle and Wagner's trilogy on the Hollywood blacklist. When the blacklistees were hounded out of Hollywood, some left for television where many worked on children's shows like "Rocky and Bullwinkle." A number wrote adult sitcoms such as The Donna Reed Show, and M*A*S*H while some of them ultimately returned to Hollywood and made great films such as Norma Rae, and Midnight Cowboy. This is a thoughtful look at the rising fear of communism in America and the aftermath of the horror that was the McCarthy period, from two expert historians of the blacklist period.
For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute. Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie's success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.
After a century of reinvention and, frequently, reinterpretation, Western movies continue to contribute to the cultural understanding of the United States. And Western archetypes remain as important emblems of the American experience, relating a complex and coded narrative about heroism and morality, masculinity and femininity, westward expansion and technological progress, and assimilation and settlement. In this collection of new essays, 21 contributors from around the globe examine the "cowboy cool" iconography of film and television Westerns--from bounty hunters in buckskin jackets to denizens of seedy saloons and lonely deserts, from Cecil B. DeMille and John Ford to Steve McQueen and Budd Boetticher, Jr.
This title was first published in 2003. The sixth edition of this compendium of film and television adaptations of books and plays includes several thousand new listings that cover the period from 1992 to December 2001. There are 8000 main entries, covering 70 years of film history, including some foreign language material.
Based on the life of bronc rider Doughbelly Price, The Diamond Hitch tells the story of Dewey Jones, western cowman and rodeo hooligan, as he travels the circuit throughout the Southwest in search of that one big purse that will punch his ticket out of rodeo bumming and into a more normal life. O'Rourke effectively evokes the sights, sounds and smells of the cowboy way presenting an unvarnished glimpse into this vanished way of life.