In a half-century plus career, Jack Nicholson turned to wearing spurs and leveling six-shooters only a handful of times with less than successful box office returns. He even wrote one. Think Jack Nicholson and you picture that sly smirk, devil-be-damned boldness, and slow drawl that’s usually trailed by a sarcastic putdown. Like Marilyn, Clint, or…
Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda had one of the longest lasting friendships in the history of Hollywood. They met as young actors, became instant pals, and stayed close until Fonda’s death in 1982. Orson Welles is supposed to have said, “I thought these two guys were either having the hottest affair in Hollywood, or they…
From the early 1970s until 1992’s Unforgiven, Westerns had become outmoded, pitiful television productions and lame B-films that had run the genre into the dust heap, and unless Clint Eastwood was starring in the saddle, no Western was getting noticed. I was still unabashedly hooked, even with the worst of the lot, and championed the…
The Cowboy Rides Away is a series on the final Western films of great cowboy stars. Other entries include John Wayne’s The Shootist (1976) and Gary Cooper’s The Hanging Tree (1959). The supposed immortality of movie stardom is a funny thing. Some stars only grow in stature as the years go by, but others shrink.…
This is the second entry in a series on the final Westerns of the great cowboy stars. The previous entry looked at Gary Cooper and The Hanging Tree. Don Siegel’s The Shootist is an elegy. Made three years before John Wayne’s death from cancer, it tells the story of a gunfighter (or a “shootist” to…
Steve McQueen (1930-1980) built a legendary acting career playing anti-establishment characters in memorable films like Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair, and The Getaway. In 1974 he finally passed a personal goal by becoming the highest paid Hollywood star (and top billing against friendly rival Paul Newman) with his turn in The Towering Inferno. But, at…
Seth MacFarlane’s recent comedy A Million Ways to Die in The West may have been gunned down at the box office, but that’s no reason to give up on having a laugh at the expense of the Western genre. Here are ten films guaranteed to tickle your funny bone. The General (1926) Amazing what…
The Phantom Empire starring Gene Autry is widely regarded as the first mash-up between Western and science fiction on the big screen. From the singing cowboy to recent films like Cowboys and Aliens, here are seven titles offering up androids and spaceships mixed with six-shooters and stagecoaches. The Phantom Empire (film serial, 1935) Gene Autry’s…
When Thelma and Louise hit the big screen in 1991, it stood out in the world of mainstream movies for being a film that portrayed women as badass renegades who fought against abuses from men and took the law into their own hands. But it was hardly the first film that had that kind of…
In 2003’s Monte Walsh, a story about the end days of the Old West cowboy, our protagonist played by Tom Selleck tells another long-time ranch hand that as long as there is one cow and one cowboy, it ain’t over. The film closes with Monte heroically galloping away on horseback, leaping over a car stuck…
