Turner Classic Movies is handing Wednesdays to Joel McCrea all through May. And they’re offering up some really good stuff.
There’s great pictures like Sullivan’s Travels (1941) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), lots of ‘em. And there’s a heavy helping of Westerns, too.
The 50s Westerns scheduled are: Stars In My Crown (1950), which is not really a Western, but that’s OK; The Outriders (1950), which has a great part for James Whitmore; The Tall Stranger (1957), a hard-to-find ‘Scope Louis L’Amour adaptation co-starring Virginia Mayo and Michael Pate; Fort Massacre (1958), with McCrea knocking an Ethan Edwards-type role out of the park; Trooper Hook (1957) which co-stars Barbara Stanwyck; and two of McCrea’s Universal Westerns, Frenchie (1950) and Cattle Drive (1951).
You’ll find the full details here. I can’t think of an actor more deserving of this kind of attention.
We’re going to have a grand time watching TCM this month!
That pic of the drive-in is fantastic!!
Best wishes,
Laura
Thanks for the heads up.
Stars In My Crown is I suppose a quasi-Western, though it does begin as a Western. It’s a post Civil War rural drama, but it does have the requisite horses and guns and lynchings, with a dose of cholera thrown in. Overall, I rank it up there with his, and Jacques Tourneur’s, best pictures. I’d put next to Ride the High Country. Dean Stockwell is just amazing as is Alan Hale. James Arness is barely noticeable but Amanda Blake is sumptuous.
ROUGH SHOOT (a.k.a. Shoot First) is a lot of fun.Joels only Fifties
non-Western. Its a spy caper with a top-notch Brit supporting cast.
Film has a lovely Fifties feel to it.Flick has some bizzare plot devices too
like the bomb on top of Madame Tussaudes.Joel does seem somewhat
out of his element but film is far superior to Joels other film with
Robert Parrish;the dire SAN FRANCISCO STORY.Also in the cast is the
wonderfully imperious Patrica Laffan (Devil Girl From Mars).
THE TALL STRANGER is action packed expertly handled by serial and
B expert Thomas Carr now promted to somewhat bigger budgets,
After THE FIRST TEXAN and THE OKLAHOMAN;frankly two of the
dullest films Joel ever made; Allied-Artists/Mirisch decided to up the
sex/violence quota..His fight with veteran hard man Barry Kelley is
extremely brutal.MIchael Ansara uses dum-dum bullets in his high
powerd rifle;hardly fair in a Western.Film was highly censcored in England
especially a Virginia Mayo nude bathing scene.(actually what looks like a
very long shot of a body double in a body stocking!)The BBFC thought
this too much for the wayward youth of England; the entire scene had
to go.Confused viewers wondered why the build up to the bathing
scene suddenly cut to halfway through a fight between McCrea and Ansara.
Only TV viewings have revealed the full version! Furthermore the
UK distributor needed the film to get a U certificate to boost up a weak
main feature;The Golden Disc starring ill-fated Brit rocker Terry Dene.
THE TALL STRANGER is good fast moving fun with a great supporting
cast and Leo Gordon is a solid good guy for a change!
Thanks for that, John. It seems absurd, in this day and age, that these films were censored.
It’s been ages since I’ve seen The Tall Stranger. Sure wish it’s crop up on DVD.
I agree. Fantastic marquee photo.
I ran STARS IN MY CROWN this past Saturday night to my monthly film watchers group.
None of them had ever seen it, and they all thought it was fabulous.
SIMC was a huge, huge success in North Carolina. It had six bookings in my county alone during its first year of release.
It’s a special film for many, many reasons. It’s so easy to see why McCrea and Tourneur would claim it as their favorite of their own work.
It’s times like this that I wish I didn’t cancel my cable 5 years ago. It doesn’t happen often, but once or twice a year I’d like to have cable back for Encore West and this month for TCM. “Shoot First” is a film I’ve heard about and wanted to see, first I thought it was a western then found out it wasn’t. But it’s from Joel’s prime movie making period and would be worth watching just for that. There are so many good movies occurring on one night recording them in SP speed will be impossible unless you’re there in person every 2 hours to switch the discs. Looks like LP speed for most will be necessary, some of the ’30′s McCrea movies will have to be in EP speed.
It’s absurd that cable providers don’t offer a la carte programming–if I could cut the stations I don’t want or need, you could count my TV activity down to my fingers and toes, or pert near.
Exactly.
For those of you who (like me) will watch Joel McCrea in ANYTHING (not just westerns)… Kino recently released Bird of Paradise on Blu-ray, and has also just announced The Most Dangerous Game for Blu-ray on July 3.
That has been a long time wish of mine too (a la carte), if I could just choose the 5 or 6 channels I want I would gladly pay for just those. But being forced to subsidize 200 channels you could care less about and even actively oppose is out of the question. So I rely strictly on my DVDs for all my classic TV show and movie watching. Good thing about DVDs, once you buy them they’re yours forever, no endless monthly fees just to watch your shows which always seem to disappear even when they are on cable for a little while. One current example, I’m watching DVDs of Bourbon Street Beat from the now defunct Good Life TV’s broadcasts of years ago. It’s long gone from the cable airwaves but it lives as good as ever on DVD. I find DVDs the best solution to watching the shows you want. Every once in a blue moon I wish I had TCM or Encore back.
Now that TCM is being broadcast in the high definition channel, it really makes watching their movies something special
Unfortunate that this is not a regular type board, for this comment probably won’t be seen. But did any of you notice that TCM’s showing of “Tall Stranger” was not in widescreen? This was very disappointing, as I was hoping TCM of all places would show the widescreen version. The Pan-scan version they did show was so squeezed together the picture was distorted, esp. during the opening credits. BOOO TCM, I thought you knew better, have they become TBS?