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Post by Hoosier X on May 10, 2016 14:26:05 GMT -5
Lawless Frontier is John Wayne's Bowery at Midnight. And that's a good thing! |
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2016 14:45:44 GMT -5
My Top 5 John Wayne Movies
1) The Searchers (1956)
2) Red River (1948)
3) Rio Bravo (1959)
4) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
5) They Were Expendable (1945)
Honorable Mentions
The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)
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Post by Phil Maurice on May 10, 2016 15:14:39 GMT -5
I remember Dick Cavett telling of meeting his hero John Wayne on the set of "The Shootist." As Wayne was being made up, Cavett found himself absently humming a song from a Noel Coward play, maybe "Dearest Love" or "Someday I'll Find You." Wayne, recognizing the tune, remarked, "Gee, wasn't he terrific?" Cavett reported that he could have been knocked over with the proverbial feather.
Wayne professed an unfulfilled desire to perform in one of those wonderful drawing-room dramas with sparkling dialogue and acid wit, but the studios had convinced him that the public would never accept him on those terms.
It turns out that John Wayne was utterly captivated by the theatre and was quite the learned student, well-versed in every aspect of his craft. "Well, of course he was," Cavett concluded, "after all, he wasn't a cowboy; he was an actor."
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Post by Prince Hal on May 10, 2016 16:27:34 GMT -5
Hoosier, I will look for Lawless Frontier, not only because you are a reviewer of taste and insight, but because I, too, love John Wayne movies.
Please do watch The Quiet Man, in which the entire cast is superb, and Wayne is charming.
I'm with you on your five favorites (sans Lawless, obviously), all of which I love, and I also like Mecha’s list.
May I suggest that if you haven’t seen it, you take a look at Trouble Along the Way (1953), in which Wayne plays a not-so-pure football coach with a young daughter who is charged with creating a championship football team in order to save a small Catholic college from closing.
Here’s what this little diamond in the rough has going for it: Wayne, natch, who deftly handles both light comedy and affecting melodrama; the just-about-perfect Donna Reed as a child-welfare worker who’s worried about the vagabond life widower/tough guy Wayne is providing his adoring and loyal daughter; that wise-beyond-her-years daughter played perfectly by future heartthrob Sherry Jackson; frequent choruses of “Gaudeamus Igitur” to set the classic movie-college atmosphere; early 50s football featuring some pretty tough characters, like Chuck Connors; James Dean and Merv Griffin in uncredited parts; Marie Windsor as the horrible mom and ex-wife; Charles Coburn as the seemingly dotty but crafty priest who maneuvers everyone; an ending that is not out of the usual playbook; a Max Steiner score; and, as if it couldn’t get any better, the matchless Michael Curtiz directing!
Phil's great story about Cavett and Wayne doesn't surprise me, as he showed another side of his talent in both Quiet Man and Trouble.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 10, 2016 16:30:44 GMT -5
It's not exactly a drawing-room comedy, but I love his small role in Baby Face.
As to his acting ability, yes, he is sometimes rather unfairly dismissed out of hand. But then you remember that he made Big Jim McLain and The Conqueror. As hilarious as both of them are, he deserves a few lumps for those two.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 10, 2016 16:33:23 GMT -5
Lawless Frontier is available on YouTube!
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Post by Prince Hal on May 10, 2016 16:37:55 GMT -5
It's not exactly a drawing-room comedy, but I love his small role in Baby Face. As to his acting ability, yes, he is sometimes rather unfairly dismissed out of hand. But then you remember that he made Big Jim McLain and The Conqueror. As hilarious as both of them are, he deserves a few lumps for those two. Agreed, but at least they're funny.  BTW, have you seen The Big Trail? Well worth it! |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 10, 2016 16:54:11 GMT -5
It's not exactly a drawing-room comedy, but I love his small role in Baby Face. As to his acting ability, yes, he is sometimes rather unfairly dismissed out of hand. But then you remember that he made Big Jim McLain and The Conqueror. As hilarious as both of them are, he deserves a few lumps for those two. Agreed, but at least they're funny. BTW, have you seen The Big Trail? Well worth it! I would love to see The Big Trail! I keep looking for it on TCM. |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 10, 2016 17:13:54 GMT -5
I remember Dick Cavett telling of meeting his hero John Wayne on the set of "The Shootist." As Wayne was being made up, Cavett found himself absently humming a song from a Noel Coward play, maybe "Dearest Love" or "Someday I'll Find You." Wayne, recognizing the tune, remarked, "Gee, wasn't he terrific?" Cavett reported that he could have been knocked over with the proverbial feather. Wayne professed an unfulfilled desire to perform in one of those wonderful drawing-room dramas with sparkling dialogue and acid wit, but the studios had convinced him that the public would never accept him on those terms. It turns out that John Wayne was utterly captivated by the theatre and was quite the learned student, well-versed in every aspect of his craft. "Well, of course he was," Cavett concluded, "after all, he wasn't a cowboy; he was an actor." There were three things my grandfather liked; baseball, westerns (American and the Italian) and Charles Bronson. None of which my father seemed to have picked up on. His favorite John Wayne movie was The Quiet Man, and my mother's She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. So apparently he was skilled in not always being the tough and gruff man that he got stereotyped as in the majority of his movies, be they western or war movies. I guess that's why I got the name of a non-cowboy John Wayne character. My personal favorite is The Sons of Katie Elder. Though that has a lot to do with Dean Martin's character. He was always my favorite from childhood to adulthood. |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 10, 2016 17:57:51 GMT -5
Another movie I considered for my John Wayne Top Five was Seven Sinners. I never hear anybody talk about it. I love it! I haven't seen it for a while. It never shows on TCM or any of the other movie channels.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 10, 2016 18:13:31 GMT -5
I remember Dick Cavett telling of meeting his hero John Wayne on the set of "The Shootist." As Wayne was being made up, Cavett found himself absently humming a song from a Noel Coward play, maybe "Dearest Love" or "Someday I'll Find You." Wayne, recognizing the tune, remarked, "Gee, wasn't he terrific?" Cavett reported that he could have been knocked over with the proverbial feather. Wayne professed an unfulfilled desire to perform in one of those wonderful drawing-room dramas with sparkling dialogue and acid wit, but the studios had convinced him that the public would never accept him on those terms. It turns out that John Wayne was utterly captivated by the theatre and was quite the learned student, well-versed in every aspect of his craft. "Well, of course he was," Cavett concluded, "after all, he wasn't a cowboy; he was an actor." There were three things my grandfather liked; baseball, westerns (American and the Italian) and Charles Bronson. None of which my father seemed to have picked up on. His favorite John Wayne movie was The Quiet Man, and my mother's She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. So apparently he was skilled in not always being the tough and gruff man that he got stereotyped as in the majority of his movies, be they western or war movies. I guess that's why I got the name of a non-cowboy John Wayne character. My personal favorite is The Sons of Katie Elder. Though that has a lot to do with Dean Martin's character. He was always my favorite from childhood to adulthood. If you liek Dean, be sure to watch Rio Bravo! |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 10, 2016 18:40:55 GMT -5
Dean Martin's best movie is Jumping Jacks!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 10, 2016 19:10:29 GMT -5
But then you remember that he made Big Jim McLain and The Conqueror. As hilarious as both of them are, he deserves a few lumps for those two. He might have gotten real lumps for doing The Conqueror. Here's a write-up about the curse of that film The film is sometimes called "An RKO Radioactive Picture." It was filmed near a nuclear test site, and the set was contaminated by nuclear fallout. Photographs exist of John Wayne holding a Geiger counter. After location shooting, contaminated soil was transported back to Hollywood in order to match interior shooting done there. Over the next 20 years, many actors and crew members developed cancer. "People" Magazine researched the cast's and crew's health for an article. By the time it was published, in November 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members had developed cancer. Forty-six had died, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz (who shot himself soon after learning he had terminal cancer), Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt and director Dick Powell. The count did not include several hundred local Native Americans who played extras, or relatives of the cast and crew who visited the set, including John Wayne's son Michael Wayne. The article quoted the reaction of a scientist from the Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency to the news, "Please, God, don't let us have killed John Wayne". As of June 2011, the "People article" is available in its archive online. |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 10, 2016 20:46:23 GMT -5
There were three things my grandfather liked; baseball, westerns (American and the Italian) and Charles Bronson. None of which my father seemed to have picked up on. His favorite John Wayne movie was The Quiet Man, and my mother's She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. So apparently he was skilled in not always being the tough and gruff man that he got stereotyped as in the majority of his movies, be they western or war movies. I guess that's why I got the name of a non-cowboy John Wayne character. My personal favorite is The Sons of Katie Elder. Though that has a lot to do with Dean Martin's character. He was always my favorite from childhood to adulthood. If you liek Dean, be sure to watch Rio Bravo! Its added to my Netflix DVD queue. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 10, 2016 23:35:34 GMT -5
South Pacific (1958) Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, Ray Walston
WWII in the South Pacific islands. Two storylines going on here. A young American Lt. is being pressured by an island mama to marry her daughter. An older French exile is falling in love with a young American nurse but is being asked to volunteer for a dangerous spy mission against the Japanese
What a disappointment this was. Big budget, filmed on location, long running Broadway musical, lots of famous Rogers and Hammerstein songs, and Ray Walston provides comic relief (he's been popping up in a lot of movies I've been watching lately)
But good grief is Rossano Brazzi a boor. Even Maurice Chevalier would make him look bad. Mitzi Gaynor is decent but they could have done much better with the casting. It's a long, long movie, close to 3 hours and when the main cast is not appealing it's butt-numbing to get through
And for some "artistic" reason, it was decided to drench certain scenes in colored tint to convey the proper emotion. Green, purple, blue, yellow-it's distracting and very silly.
The musical does contain an anti-racial prejudice song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" which I would guess was controversial for it's time
I was expecting so much better
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