Westerns, Poems, Hope

I'm doing a post for the Western Fictioneers blog on an old televison film about what happened to Ms. Etta Place, a Western enigma. That'll be coming up in a couple of weeks. Until then, I believe I haven't shared here the link to my last WF write up on Scott D. Parker's Empty Coffins novel. In the review, I also tease an upcoming project both Scott and I are working on (hint: Cash Laramie, Gideon Miles meet up with Calvin Carter).

Also, a couple poems of mine have been published at Punk Noir Magazine. These make a complete baker's dozen of my verse to be published over the last two years. Here are links to some of the others I'm partial to: 

Hugh Chaffin

The Long Return 

The Killing of Jamal Khashoggi 

The Inconsiderate 

Dead Burying the Dead

More importantly, thank you to all who've reached out to me about my Aunt Pat. She was recently taken off the ventilator and transferred to a rehab where they will try to wean her off the oxygen. She's not out of the woods yet but there's hope on the horizon.

Catching Up

 A wind shear knocked out our power, a week ago, and it was fully restored today. So a few catch-up links of what was happening while I was away include my article Modern Western Films Written Better Than Ever at LitReactor. And remember I told you I had more to say about MAN OF THE WEST? Well, here I am at the Western Fictioneers with an appreciation for the Gary Cooper film along with a new poem. Lastly, speaking of poems, Close to The Bone webzine announced that they will be featuring four of my poems in what they are calling the 4.4. Very honored to say the least.

Okay, now I will zip around your blogs and see what I've been missing. 

Man of the West (1958)

I saw MAN OF THE WEST (1958) starring Gary Cooper for the first time, unbelievably, last week. An extraordinary Anthony Mann film based on THE BORDER JUMPERS 1955 novel by Will C. Brown. Its theme, one of redemption, has much in common with Shakespeare's KING LEAR. And that cast! Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Lord, John Dehner, and Robert J, Wilke hit all the marks, and then some. I'll be writing more on this gem at some point in the months to come.

Move It On Over

Thanks for stopping by but my latest post titled Forgotten Western Classics: The Spikes Gang (1974) is at the Western Fictioneers. C'mon, lets head on over there together.

Buddies in the Saddle: Ron Scheer

I finished my first Cash Laramie short story in over seven years and before I crossed the finish line, I spent some time with an old cowboy friend of mine named Ron Scheer. I met Ron online, here at Blogger, over our mutual appreciation for the Western genre. Before he sadly passed away in 2015, I had the distinct privilege of publishing his three volume series How The West Was Written with BEAT to a PULP. The third volume contains colloquial words he had found in the numerous classics he had read, and it was an indispensable resource while working on my latest hardboiled western. Thank you, Ron, for sharing this gem not only with me but with everyone.

The Hired Hand (1971)

Somehow The Hired Hand escaped my viewing until now, and that's peculiar because I'm a Warren Oates enthusiast (The Wild Bunch, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) and enjoy other films where he teams with the underrated Peter Fonda (Race With The Devil) who also directed this 1971 revisionist western. The running time is brisk at just over ninety minutes and that works to the film's advantage because the plot is straightforward, building on character development and eschewing gratuitous action scenes. Fonda plays Harry Collings and Oates is Arch Harris, two drifters headed for the California coast when Harry, weary of the meandering lifestyle, decides to return to his wife and daughter that he abandoned several years earlier. Arch counts Harry as a good friend and because of his easygoing demeanor tags along.

Hannah Collings (Verna Bloom) gives her wayward husband a justified cold welcome assuming he will once again leave her. She's a progressive thinker and has done quite well without him once she got over the initial hurt. Hannah allows Harry and Arch to stick around to work as hired hands, maintaining her distance; still, the married couple eventually find a route back to each other's hearts. Arch realizes he needs to move on since not only is three a crowd but he finds Hannah attractive as well. Ms. Bloom dominates every frame she's in, building a complicated, nuanced character. But this is still a Western, and there's a violent shootout after Arch is kidnapped by some thugs who he and Harry had run afoul at the beginning of the story. It's about one of the most realistic, choreographed gun plays I've ever watched.

Peter Fonda does an adept job of directing though I could do without the slo-mo and the ocassional out-of-focus angles that were all the rage of the late sixties and early seventies cinema. That trivial note aside, this is a fine film for fans of westerns and Warren Oates aficionados alike, especially those who wish to get away from exhausted tropes that plague the genre. And perhaps because of the unorthodox approach, I wasn't surprised to read The Hired Hand was a commercial failure on its initial release—now it's regarded as one of the defining films of the 1970s. I obviously agree, and the next time I'm watching, I'll plan on making it a double feature with another revisionist gem, Robert Altman's acclaimed McCabe & Mrs. Miller that was released the very same year.

Robert Mitchum at 100

Mitch would have turned 100 today. I've written three articles for Criminal Element celebrating the actor's centennial. In the first, I take a look at his Westerns. A sample:

Innovative Western artfully directed by Raoul Walsh that noir historian Jake Hinkson (The Big Ugly, The Posthumous Man) calls, “… one of the premier examples of Neurosis In The West.” Controversial topics like repressed memory, hallucinations, and a passing hint of incest are broached in this cutting-edge production. 

Both Montgomery Cliff and Kirk Douglas were considered and rejected for the role. Mitchum, known as “the soul of film noir” for classics like Out of the Past (1947), took the dark, tortured outsider and easily adapted it to the Old West while hardly missing his fedora and trench coat.

Under Burning Skies 2: Best of 21st-Century Westerns

Part II of my article Under Burning Skies: Best of 21st Century Westerns.

21st-Century Western Movies

Under Burning Skies: Best of 21st-Century Western Movies by David Cranmer.

Under Burning Skies: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Junior Bonner, Waiting for a Comet

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (film, 1962)
Senator Ransom “Ranse” Stoddard (James Stewart) and wife Hallie (Vera Miles) return to the town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of old friend Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Through a flashback we learn of what ties them altogether—specifically the sadistic villain Liberty Valance played by Lee Marvin. What more can be said about this John Ford directed classic except with each passing year a central theme of guns vs. law continues to be debated in parts of this county which is sad to my way of thinking. Film shot in stark black and white only ages in some of its hackneyed comic subplots, usually involving the coward sheriff (Andy Devine) or drunken town editor (Edmond O’Brien). Interesting to note Ford’s subtle presentation of African American Pompey (Woody Strode) who is shown on the community’s fringes like an observant, silent, all-knowing arbitrator: not saying the film was the gold standard of progressive thinking but it was a necessary step in the right direction.

Classic quote: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”


JUNIOR BONNER (film, 1972)
Steve McQueen plays a modern Western cowboy as a rodeo champion Junior ”JR“ Bonner who returns to Prescott, Arizona, to reunite with his parents and brother and ride the unruly bull, Sunshine. Junior turns down a job from his arrogant salesman brother Curly by saying, “I gotta go down my own road.” “What road?” Curly replies, “I mean, I'm workin' on my first million, and you're still workin' on eight seconds.” The film bombed at the box office—director Sam Peckinpah remarked, ”I made a film where nobody got shot and nobody went to see it.”—but it’s now considered a film classic. A rousing crowded bar-room scene where the entire Bonner family and friends end up brawling but nobody is seriously injured is a hoot.

Note: I review Steve McQueen: The King of Cool Westerns at Macmillan’s Criminal Element blog.


WAITING FOR A COMET (Jo Harper Book 1, 2014) by Richard Prosch
Jo Harper is a twelve-year-old girl. She and her father, the publisher of the Willowby Monitor in Wyoming circa 1910, live alone after Jo's mother died years earlier. Things change when new constable Abigail Drake arrives with her pet calf. Jo finds a friend/mentor in Abigail and an unlikely adventure is in the works. A real joy to read this Y/A slice of Americana in the Mark Twain tradition who's referenced in the book (fellow Western author Wayne D. Dundee links similarities to Rooster Cogburn). Richard Prosch's (Holt Country Law, Devil’s Ledger) natural storytelling abilities hits all the emotional notes in this entertaining tale that adults as well as teens will find engaging.