Randy rides lonesome We’ll come back soon to the great series of Westerns Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher made in the second half of...

Another gripper Decision at Sundown, the third of the late-1950s Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher Westerns, a series of seven, was a little...

Ultra-tense The Tall T was the second, after Seven Men from Now, which we reviewed recently (click the link for that) of the cycle of...

1950s Westerns at their very best This picture started life in 1954 when Burt Kennedy, click the link to read our essay on him, pretty...

Western maestro Prompted by reader Barry’s comment on The Tall T, I thought it might be time to re-examine that series of seven Westerns...

Dreary Burt Kennedy (1922 - 2001) about who we were talking yesterday (click the link for that), was certainly a major figure in our...

“Burt Kennedy writes Broadway in Arizona.” (John Wayne) Burt Kennedy (1922 - 2001), pictured below, was certainly a major figure in our...

A landmark Western movie We’ve been looking recently at the career of William S Hart, prototype Western star (click the link to read more...

Two-Gun Bill rides again As we have been saying, many of the films of the great silent Western star William S Hart (click the link for...

William S Hart's first feature Western The other day we were discussing the career of one of the big early stars of the Western genre,...

Two-Gun Bill William Surrey Hart (1864 – 1946) was the foremost Western star of the 1910s and early 20s. In fact in some ways he was the...

Chris Though he liked strutting around in a Stetson, Yuly Borisovich Briner, or Юлий Борисович Бринер, better known to us as Yul Brynner,...

The geezers return You probably know the story of AC Lyles (1918 – 2013), pictured left: he began at Paramount studios as an office boy...

Novel, play and various versions on film The author In 1906 Rex Beach (1877 – 1949) published his novel The Spoilers, set in the Alaska...

Although Charles Bronson was in little danger of winning an Oscar for the Westerns he was in, or indeed those Westerns of winning one for...

The most recent screen The Virginian, and the worst It is inevitable that any great Western story will be remade in different versions as...

The second-best Virginian We’ve been looking lately at Owen Wister’s seminal 1902 novel The Virginian, and its various ‘picturizations’,...

OK, I guess Much as I like Joel McCrea in Westerns, I have to say that his turn at being the Virginian was a bit of a disappointment. Not...

The best version Following our recent posts on this blog on the novel The Virginian by Owen Wister, and the first two silent movie...

Silent remake We’ve been looking at The Virginian, the novel by Owen Wister, and the first movie The Virginian, the Jesse Lasky/Cecil B...