Came across an interesting article from The Age, back in October of 1955 — “New Twist To Westerns” from Screen News by L. R. Swainson — covering what was going on in the Western genre in the middle of the 50s.
“No one need be surprised at Marlon Brando’s announcement that the first film of his newly formed company, Pennebaker Productions, will be a Western — Louis L’Amour’s To Tame A Land — with himself as Gunman No. 1″
Brando and Pennebaker did indeed make a Western, One-Eyed Jacks (1961). It was based on The Authentic Death Of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider, not the L’Amour book.
“…what is surprising is the way in which, even in this age of nuclear weapons and inter-planetary preoccupation, American movie makers are still loyal to the good old horse-opera on which the cinema was reared… A recent check-count on the production schedules of Hollywood studios revealed that more than 80 top budget Westerns were lined up — approximately one-third of Hollywood’s average annual output.”
“In The Man From Laramie, hero James Stewart suffers the usual physical degradations. But they — and the simple plot — are decorated with some up-to-date psychological knickknacks.”
Stewart certainly suffers some physical degradations in that picture, but I’d hardly call them usual.
Jimmy said that this was his favorite.In hollywood,a star loves the child produced from a short lived married period.But he no longer speaks or calls by name the ex that gave him that child.Jimmy never referred to anthony mann by name.He was just ” the director ” when he talked about the film.The actor loves his baby but never mentions his ex in interviews.This actor loved this film,but he never called mann by name.It is hard to have as your favorite western you’ve made be made by a man you chose not to speak of.Instead he would talk on and on about john ford.If you count the alcoha episode of flashing spikes ford directed with jimmy,they worked together four times in three years.But the man from laramie was his favorite.It took ten or twelve years for hollywood and the spaghettis to match the power and force to compare with jimmy’s gun hand getting shot.If only night passage had not been the reason they fell out.Or was it the fact mann did not like the script or he thought audie murphy too short to play jimmy’s brother ? I guess if jimmy saw fit to call this western his favorite western,I can do no better.It is mine too.