Posted in Lesley Selander, Lew Landers, Pre-1950, RKO, Tim Holt on February 6, 2013 | 4 Comments »
Here’s a stack of photos of Tim Holt, courtesy of Shaeffer Holt, Tim’s grandson.
A Norman Rockwell illustration of Tim for The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).
This publicity photo with Richard “Chito” Martin is probably from The Stagecoach Kid (1949) — judging from the TSK in the lower right corner. The Stagecoach Kid was directed by Lew Landers, who only did a handful of these films among his hundreds of credits — the majority of the RKO Holts were directed by Lesley Selander.
Posted in RKO, Tim Holt on February 5, 2013 | 13 Comments »
Tim Holt
(February 5, 1919 – February 15, 1973)
Happy birthday to one of my favorite cowboy stars, Tim Holt. He’s seen above in Trail Guide (1952), one of the last of his series of terrific Westerns for RKO. The bulk of these films have been released on DVD by Warner Archive. I can’t recommend these highly enough.
Thanks to John Knight for pointing this out.
Posted in 20th Century-Fox, Columbia, DVD reviews, releases, TV, etc., Lippert/Regal, MGM, Monogram/Allied Artists, Olive Films, Republic, RKO, United Artists, Universal (-International), Warner Bros. on December 25, 2012 | 22 Comments »
Don’t know if you’ve been naughty or nice, but one thing is certain: you people sure know your cowboy movies. Going through your responses for this year’s Want List, I was reminded of several films I’d forgotten. Thanks to everyone who played along.
The titles have been grouped by studio, according to their original release — independent productions such as The Hired Gun (1957) are with their distributor (MGM in this case). I’ve indicated the widescreen films (off the top of my head, not researched — sorry, it was really late).
20th Century-Fox
Canadian Pacific (1949)
Caribou Trail (1950)
The Gambler From Natchez (1954)
Pony Soldier (1952)
Sierra Baron (1958, Scope)
The Silver Whip (1953)
Allied Artists/Monogram
Arrow In The Dust (1954)
At Gunpoint (1955, Scope)
Bitter Creek (1954)
Dragoon Wells Massacre (1957, Scope)
Fargo (1952)
Jack Slade (1953)
Kansas Territory (1952)
Oregon Passage (1957, Scope)
The Rawhide Trail (1958)
The Tall Stranger (1957, Scope)
Wild Stallion (1952)
American International
Gunslinger (1956)
Columbia
Ambush At Tomahawk Gap (1953)
Cripple Creek (1952)
Domino Kid (1957)
The Doolins Of Oklahoma (1949)
Face Of A Fugitive (1959)
Fury At Gunsight Pass (1956)
The Gunfighters (1947)
Gunman’s Walk (1958, Scope)
The Hard Man (1958)
Jack McCall, Desperado (1953)
Jesse James Vs. The Daltons (1954)
The Pathfinder (1953)
Reprisal! (1956)
Stage To Tucson (1950)
The Texas Rangers (1951)
The Walking Hills (1949)
MGM
Heaven With A Gun (1969)
The Hired Gun (1957, Scope)
Paramount
The Eagle And The Hawk (1950)
Flaming Feather (1952)
Red Mountain (1951)
Regal (all RegalScope)
Ambush At Cimarron Pass (1958)
Apache Warrior (1957)
Badlands Of Montana (1957)
Copper Sky (1957)
Frontier Gun (1958)
The Quiet Gun (1956)
Ride A Violent Mile (1957)
Showdown At Boot Hill (1958)
Republic
Brimstone (1949)
California Passage (1950)
Dakota Incident (1956)
Hellfire (1949)
Last Stagecoach West (1957, Naturama)
A Man Alone (1955)
Man Or Gun (1958, Naturama)
Ride The Man Down (1953)
The Road To Denver (1955)
Rock Island Trail (1950)
The Savage Horde (1950)
The Showdown (1950)
Stranger At My Door (1956)
Timberjack (1955)
Trail Of Robin Hood (uncut, 1950)
Woman They Almost Lynched (1953)
RKO
The Big Sky (1952)
Blood On The Moon (1948)
Great Day In The Morning (1956, SuperScope)
The Lusty Men (1952)
Run Of The Arrow (1957)
Treasure Of Poncho Villa (1955, SuperScope)
United Artists
Abilene Town (1946)
Beast Of Hollow Mountain (1956, Scope)
Gun Belt (1953)
Ride Out For Revenge (1957)
Universal (-International)
Apache Drums (1951)
Black Horse Canyon (1954)
Bronco Buster (1952)
A Day Of Fury (1956)
Day Of The Bad Man (1958, Scope)
Destry (1954)
Four Guns To The Border (1954)
Incident At Phantom Hill (1966, Scope)
Last Of The Fast Guns (1958, Scope)
The Lone Hand (1953)
The Man From Bitter Ridge (1955)
Man Without A Star (1955)
Money, Women And Guns (1958, Scope)
Rails Into Laramie (1954)
Raw Edge (1956)
Saddle Tramp (1950)
The Saga Of Hemp Brown (1959, Scope)
Showdown At Abilene (1956)
Slim Carter (1957)
The Spoilers (1956)
Stagecoach To Dancer’s Rock (1962)
Star In The Dust (1956)
Walk The Proud Land (1956, Scope)
The Yellow Mountain (1954)
Warner Bros.
The Big Land (1957, Scope)
The Bounty Hunter (1954)
Charge At Feather River (1953)
Drum Beat (1954, Scope)
Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend (1958)
South Of St. Louis (1949)
Sugarfoot (1951)
Posted in 1955, Forrest Tucker, Randolph Scott, RKO, The Real West on October 6, 2012 | 3 Comments »
On this date in 1866, the Reno brothers gang robbed the Ohio and Mississippi Railway. This was the first train robbery. The contents of the safe were insured by the Adams Express Company, who hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to track down the robbers. Life for the Reno boys would never be the same.
The photo is from Rage At Dawn (1955). Randolph Scott is a detective hired by the railroad to track down the Reno brothers (Forrest Tucker, J. Carrol Naish, Myron Healey and Denver Pyle). It’s a solid mid-50s Randolph Scott picture, which means it’s plenty good indeed.
Thanks to Shay for bringing this to my attention.
Posted in 1950, 1951, 1952, Lesley Selander, RKO, Tim Holt on November 1, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Tim Holt’s back with a third volume of DVD-Rs from Warner Archive. This is cause for celebration.
As I’ve said many times (and I’m not finished), these Tim Holt RKO pictures are among the best series Westerns ever made. They’re tight, a bit more adult, and benefit from the presence of real craftsman like cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca.
This collection contains Storm Over Wyoming (1950), Rider From Tucson (1950), Border Treasure (1950), Rio Grande Patrol (1950), Law Of The Badlands (1951), Saddle Legion (1951), Gunplay, (1951) Hot Lead (1951) Road Agent (1952) and Target (1952).
Posted in 1950, 1956, DVD reviews, releases, TV, etc., Lesley Selander, Pre-1950, RKO, Tim Holt on August 10, 2011 | 3 Comments »
A couple more from Warner Archive have been announced. First, Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood in The Burning Hills (1956). Written by Irving Wallace from the Louis L’Amour novel. Directed by Stuart Heisler in CinemaScope and Warnercolor.
Next is the second volume in the Tim Holt Western Classics Collection. Covering the years 1943 – 1950, it includes Guns Of Hate (1948) and nine others. Lots of great action from Lesley Selander and gorgeous Lone Pine location work. These RKO Holts are as good as the B Western ever got.
Posted in DVD reviews, releases, TV, etc., RKO, Tim Holt on May 19, 2011 | 5 Comments »
I’ve been seeing stuff about a Blu-ray edition of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) arriving in September. That’s good news and all, but I just noticed something that’s not getting near the attention it deserves — at the same time, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) is also hitting the streets as a regular DVD.
Even though what we see today was edited to almost incoherence by RKO — Welles later said the first hour was left pretty much as he intended, The Magnificent Ambersons is a masterpiece. And it’s got Tim Holt in it. What more do you need?
You can find out more about the picture at ambersons.com. That’s where the behind the scenes shot of Welles and Holt came from.
Posted in 1955, Allan Dwan, Cinematographers, DVD reviews, releases, TV, etc., John Payne, RKO on May 11, 2011 | 3 Comments »
If there’s any cinematographer whose work deserves the red carpet treatment on DVD, it’s John Alton.
Alton was a master. He worked fast — coming to the set fully prepared and not using a lot of lights. And while “painting with light” was his thing, evidently diplomacy was not. He was fired a lot, until he finally got fed up with the whole business and vanished. Along the way, he went from pictures like An American In Paris (1951), his first color film — and the one that earned him an Oscar, to film noir with Anthony Mann (T-Men, Border Incident, etc.) to cowboy pictures at Republic (Wyoming).
In 1954, Alton found himself at RKO, working with director Allan Dwan on a series of medium-budget films produced by Benedict Bogeaus. These pictures gave Dwan a level of authority (or maybe he simply took charge of things) he hadn’t enjoyed since the silent days. However it came about, he really made the most of it.
Allan Dwan: “John Alton was a fine cameraman and we hit it off well. He was good for us because he’s wonderful with lights — very economical.”
From 1954 to 1956, Dwan and Alton made seven pictures together, all produced by Bogeaus for RKO.
Dwan: “Never over around $800-850,000. About three weeks shooting each — 15 days. That was the design. They were token pictures to keep the studio alive — Hughes wasn’t interested in a big splurge. And none of our pictures warranted a big budget — they all went out and got their money back plus a profit.”
The next to last of these “token pictures,” and the third Western of the bunch, was Tennessee’s Partner (1955) — in Superscope with prints by Technicolor. (Dwan would later list it as his favorite of the films he made for Bogeaus and RKO.)
John Payne is Tennessee, a gambler who’s set up shop in Rhonda Fleming’s saloon — the Marriage Market in Sandy Bar. Ronald Reagan is Cowpoke, who saves Tennessee’s life. Tennessee later proves that Cowpoke’s fiancé, Colleen Gray, is a gold-digger (named, appropriately, Goldie). Speaking of gold, there’s a subplot involving Grubstake McNiven (Chubby Johnson) striking it rich.
Dwan: “…this was a good, honest story, and I liked Bret Harte… I believe the original story was more tragic than ours, but it was very definitely more downbeat. And it was a short story, so we had to stretch it out some way or other.”
To stretch it, they seemed to have played up the humor and action. Dwan’s breezy direction and John Alton’s luscious cinematography make this a real piece of eye candy — aided by the art direction of Van Nest Polglase (Citizen Kane). The way the camera glides through Rhonda Fleming’s gambling hall is worth the price of admission. Then there’s its Technicolor tour of the Iverson Ranch in the last two reels. It’s a gorgeous, yet completely unpretentious, story of friendship and double-crosses.
Tennessee’s Partner has been available on DVD, in a nice full-frame transfer, from VCI for years. Superscope extracted a 2:1 anamorphic image from a full-frame negative — which is what the new edition, again from VCI, replicates. (The lack of a Superscope logo in the credits indicates that full-frame source material was used.) As far as color and sharpness go, this is comparable to their first release. But with the new attention to the framing, Alton’s camerawork is even more impressive. He’s quoted somewhere as saying “It’s not what you light — it’s what you don’t light.” And the 2:1 image, especially in the gambling scenes, really highlights the way he used darkness.
VCI gives us original trailers to Tennessee’s Partner and the other Dwan/Alton/Bogeaus titles they have available. Seen together, they really had me wanting to put together a marathon some weekend.
With a new edition of any film, in any format, there’s always the question of value. Is this worth reaching into my wallet for, again? In my case, certainly, as I’ve been dying to see how Tennessee’s Partner looked in Superscope. For those who own the full-frame version, it’s a matter of personal taste. For the rest, it’s a good picture — a significant 50s Western — and this is by far the best it’s ever been presented on video. Get it here.
[The Allan Dwan quotes come from Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer by Peter Bogdanovich, one of my favorite film books.]
Posted in 1955, Allan Dwan, DVD reviews, releases, TV, etc., RKO on April 15, 2011 | 4 Comments »
I’m really looking forward to VCI’s widescreen Tennessee’s Partner (1955), slated for the 19th. Their current edition of the film, which looks just fine, is full frame. The above image shows you about what to expect aspect-wise. Superscope pulled a 2:1 anamorphic image from a full-frame negative.
The film itself, supposedly Allan Dwan’s personal favorite of the 10 pictures he made with producer Benedict Bogeaus, is a lot of fun. Dwan’s breezy direction and John Alton’s luscious cinematography make this a real piece of eye candy — the way the camera glides through Rhonda Fleming’s gambling hall is worth the price of admission. It’s one of those instances where a sound stage is better than real life.
During the researching and writing of this book (and all the posts on this blog), these Dwan pictures have become some of my favorite 50s Westerns, especially Silver Lode (1954). I can’t recommend them highly enough.
Expect (still) more on Tennessee’s Partner once I get a load of the new DVD.
Posted in 1955, Allan Dwan, DVD reviews, releases, TV, etc., RKO on February 28, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Sometimes it feels like this blog is turning into the Allan Dwan Fan Club — not that that’s a bad thing.
Colin from Riding The High Country tipped me off that VCI has announced a widescreen edition of Tennessee’s Partner for April release.
A Superscope picture from RKO — with prints by Technicolor and starring John Payne, Ronald Reagan, Rhonda Fleming and Coleen Gray, Tennessee’s Partner looks fine in its original full-screen transfer, but was clearly shot (by the great John Alton) for widescreen exhibition. The pictures Dwan directed for producer Benedict Bogeaus range from Westerns to film noir. They’re all worth checking out.
Not too long ago, VCI upgraded another Dwan Western, the terrific Silver Lode (1954).
