Making Movies: Flaming Star (1960).

Elvis Presley passed away 45 years ago today — way too soon. One of his best pictures is certainly Don Siegel’s Flaming Star (1960). (If you ask me, it is his best.) It gets a chapter in my book, and when I was the guest on the Western Podcast, it was our subject.

Here, they’re shooting the film’s only musical number. That’s Barbara Eden dancing with her back to us. (By the way, Barbara Eden is part of the events happening at Graceland during Elvis Week.)

Elvis drinks a lot of milk on location.

Elvis and director Don Siegel on location.

Elvis on horseback, crew on film truck. The DP was Charles Clarke. It was one of his last pictures.

Lastly, here’s Elvis with the great John McIntire. McIntire would replace Ward Bond on Wagon Train about a year later.

 

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RIP, L.Q. Jones.

L. Q. Jones (Justus Ellis McQueen, Jr.)
(August 19, 1927 – July 9, 2022)

The great Western character actor L.Q. Jones has passed away at 94.

His real name was Justus Ellis McQueen, Jr., but for the screen, he took his name from his first picture, Battle Cry (1955).

Jones worked with some of the greats of 50s Westerns: Randolph Scott (1958’s Buchanan Rides Alone, above), Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy. Sam Peckinpah made him a member of his stock company, casting Jones in five of his films. He stayed extremely busy on TV, often in Westerns, throughout the 60s and 70s. And he wrote, produced and directed the 1975 science fiction film A Boy And His Dog.

He was a great storyteller, as the many YouTube videos of him will prove.

L.Q. is T.C., the bad guy on the far right, in this promo still from Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). He became close friends with Strother Martin (upper left). 

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