When The Wild West Really Was The Wild West- “Wild Bill”- A Jeff Bridges Retrospective

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Wild Bill Hickok.

DVD Review

Wild Bill, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Barkin, John Hurt, directed by Walter Hill, 1995

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s in the early days of television, black and white television, got our heroes, our Western heroes strictly in white hat, and our bad guys strictly in black. And the Indians (a.k.a. Native Americans) well, the less said about the treatment of those benighted and betrayed people the better. Of course this view was all hokum, or worst. It took the likes of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and others in literature to give us a more realistic view of the rawness, untamed rawness of the Old West. And the likes of Walter Hill to give us a more truthful cinematic view, a view with muddy streets, whiskey breathe, fistfights at the drop of a hat, or less, treachery among enemies, treachery among friends, many social diseases and all. And that was on the good days. The good director here has taken on the legend of Wild Bill Hickock, generally given the better of it in Western lore as an associate of Buffalo Bill, a civilizing influence, and a king hell gunfighter.

Of course, the subtext for this review is that the actor playing Will Bill is none other that last year’s Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges for his “modern” cowboy role (singer-songwriter, okay) in Crazy Hearts. My argument underlying the choice of subtext is that Bridges was born to play theses good old boy Western parts and has done mainly stellar work in the genre ever since he cut his teeth on the modern Texas good-old-boy-in-the-making Duane Jackson in the film adaptation of McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. And at the acting level that is true here, although the existential characterization and the Bridges cool wit is perhaps a little over the top for the nitty-gritty West of the late 19th century.

One comes away from this film feeling, and maybe not incorrectly, that the distance between hero and villain (here in this contrived concoction about the manner of Bill’s untimely end, as villain, the son, the driven son of “spurned” mother whom was once Wild Bill’s lover) is who is left standing at the end. And for most of his life from his service in the Union Armies during the American Civil War until that fateful day that Bill was just one step too cool Will Bill was the last one left standing. But, see there was that little matter of the spurned woman, and that driven son to lay old Bill low. In any case if you have not seen a Western since the 1950s (although I guess I would want to know where you have been) you will be hard-pressed to sort out the heroes from the villains here. The Indians (a.k.a. Native Americans) as usual, in real life or fiction, get short shrift.

The Legend-Slayer Is Back- Legends Of The Old American West-The Saga Of Jake Walz’s Old Hoary Dutchman’s Gold Mine-Ida Lupino And Glenn Ford’s “Lust For Gold” (1949)-A Film Review

The Legend-Slayer Is Back- Legends Of The Old American West-The Saga Of Jake Walz’s Old Hoary Dutchman’s Gold Mine-Ida Lupino And Glenn Ford’s “Lust For Gold” (1949)-A Film Review

By Will Bradley

Lust For Gold, starring Ida Lupino, Glenn Ford, 1949  .  

You know we have today, damn throughout history really, had enough alternate fact distortions of events to fill a library, a major college or big city public library. I have been on a tear in 2017-2018 (and hopefully for the future as well as long I have site manager Greg Green’s confidence) debunking a whole raft of undeserved, overblown or just plain false legends which have been built out of whole cloth and have entered the books with devoted followers and a whole lot of people not devoted who believe based on nothing more than somebody’s conjecture, opinion. This is my answer to the increasing number of fellow staff members, including writers who have not been able to get their heads around the idea of legend-busting. This so-called ironic indifference in a publication looking for some historical truths and whose unspoken motto is – “speak the truth no matter how bitter.” Which is exactly right, exactly the right note I am trying to achieve. Take a back seat doubters, way back.  

I have elsewhere in a previous trifecta of legend-busting reviews mentioned I have had a descent amount of success, some very positive comments about how my reviews have enlightened some readers to think through their acceptance without thought of legends, of everything from belief in angels to a glowing acceptance of the Hollywood/ television view of the American Old West and the desperadoes, malcontents, drifters, con men and women, and everybody who headed west after busting out in the East. I will not go through the litany here of who I have taken down but I cannot go to busting the so-called Lost Dutchman’s Mine legend around ornery bastard Jake Walz who allegedly found the pot of gold and kept everybody else away-with hot lead- unless I mention my one significant failure, the Johnny Cielo legend. The only reason I am doing that here is that I have new proof, if anybody who is still defiantly attached to the press agent baloney around that hoary legend about one of the key elements to the Cielo legend will listen -Johnny taking 1940s film star and off-handedly beautiful Rita Hayworth to Barranca when he ran rough shot there with his airplane mail service fro big bucks .

Belief in Johnny’s case, in his publicity agent legend, has always primarily depended on the hard fact that for a period, the period Johnny claimed to have Rita sharing his bed down in Central America, she had left Hollywood under mysterious circumstances and had not surfaced for a while. The documents I have, including lustrous photographs with dates of processing the negatives attached on the back as they did in the old days, prove that Rita was secretly playing footsie, house, whatever you want to call the liaison with the Aga Klan before they were married. Was in New York and or Morocco during that crucial time. As I speculated early on in my research Johnny had hook-winked, who knows maybe she was a willing accomplice getting free airfare south and away from whatever troubles she was running away from, some young gal from Hoboken down in the Jerseys, Sarah Miles, or at least that was the name she was using, who looked very much like Rita whom he had met either walking the streets or in some whorehouse in that town. The few photos of her, revealing photos for the 1940s from some men’s magazine show that her legs were not nearly as well-formed as Rita’s and that while you can never tell about a woman’s hair even now if they don’t want you to know she was a brunette. I can hear the aficionado disclaimers now that even if my information is true maybe, maybe an important doubt word trick used forever by con artists and press agents to set up alternate facts that maybe Rita had sent the Aga Khan Sarah in her place to be able to stay with Johnny in humid, sweaty Barranca bungalows. We shall wait for the bogus blowback.

I will admit that I had some early trouble with Zane Grey readers, hell, even Larry McMurtry brethren trying to cut down the legend of Link Jones, the baddest desperado who tried to con the world that he had changed, had become an upright citizen, that he had stopped being a ruthless gunslinger and no holds barred daytime bank robber. No question they should have strung him up, hung him high and this from a guy who doesn’t believe in the damn death penalty. The clincher there was Link’s prison confession to a fellow cellmate where he went out of his way, maybe even embellished his exploits, to make him seem a tough guy to a young kid just starting out on the wrong track. That said this saga of Jake (Jacob but nobody called him that, nobody still standing after saying that) Walz should be a lot easier to dispel since at least Link had been a man of the West. Jake had been an Eastern tin-horn from Europe failure heading west to avoid some German hoodlums who wanted his head.                                
So what is the big deal with Jake, with his longstanding legend that even my grandfather who first told me the story of how Jake had held off all-comers when they tried to “steal” his bags of gold (which he had in turn had gotten by wasting the real owners and his own partner, nice guy right) and had known Jake’s grandson, Brent, who retailed the legend (and who himself had spent a lifetime, or what seemed like a lifetime looking for the rest of what his grandfather had not hidden from plain view.) According to Brent his grandfather after busting out in the East headed West with an old prospector Winer who claimed he knew where a ton of already mined gold was located outside of what is now Phoenix. Other parties including a relative of the guy, the hombre, the Mexican who after all was only going home to what before the Gadsden Purchase had been part of his own country, who sweat mined the stuff were on the trail as well. Brent claimed that his grandfather had to kill that relative, had to kill that partner too or they would have killed him, shot him dead and left him for the buzzards. Sure thing, Brent.

The weird part, the part that has always made me wonder if all these Old West legends were produced solely in New York by lazy writers who couldn’t leave the comforts of their hotels, is what followed. What Jake had to do to keep his kale once he went into Phoenix to cash in with every hungry vulture in town ready to deal him low. The weirdest story was about some dame, some ex-whore, Julia something but don’t get hung up on names since everybody was using aliases then even the respectable citizenry, who was married to some grifter who couldn’t put two quarters together who took dead aim at Jake. Minus the husband part. She had been through from hunger long enough and wanted easy street, wanted to get out of stinking Phoenix, get out of Arizona which wasn’t even a state then and head to Frisco and the gay life of spoiled lady, mistress if that was the way things turned out.

She was going to use hubby as a decoy to keep Jake wondering about her, about whether her love was true. After a minute seeing Julia and hubby in the backstreets laughing together he got the dust out of his eyes and decided he had to kill the pair, or be killed. Legend has it that the bones of Julia and hubby are still guarding the empty plot where Jake’s gold had been. Nice guy right. They say, through Brent again, Jake roamed the hills at night keeping those who still thought there was still gold aplenty from entering. The reality is after the Julia bust-up Jake now John Walsh headed to Frisco and lived a life of splendor and only killing a couple more people who threatened his way of life by exposing him as another two-bit grifter. Another hoary legend down.                             

A Man Of The West- The Old West Ballads Of Johnny Cash

CD Review

Johnny Cash Sings The True Ballads Of The Old West, Johnny Cash, Sbme Special Mkts, 2009

I have spent some time, and I believe time well spent, at this site over the pass couple of years talking about things of the West, old and new. You know the stuff of legends like we grew up with as kids, at least my generation, the generation of ’68, did, for better or worst. Blame it on Larry McMurtry, his books, and his incessant Old West reviews in The New York Review Of Books. Some of this stuff is genuine history, things that today’s labor militants should know about like the struggles of the Western Federation Of Miners, Big Bill Haywood and the legendary Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World) who led many a strike against the mine, farm, and lumber bosses.

Other things are, and should be treated a little more circumspectly, like the legends of Jesse James and John Wesley Harding, especially those who honor the Northern victory in the American Civil War. There has, in short, been no lack of song and storytelling about the Old West. This is a round-about way of introducing Johnny Cash’s valuable little cache of old time Western-oriented material, mainly ballads, including some long needed focus on the struggle s of Native Americans, the odd group out in the West, old and new.

The name Johnny Cash, although well thought of in this space, has mainly been mentioned in connection with his connection to the legendary Carter family (he married Maybelle’s daughter, June, for those who are not familiar with that family’s genealogy), a family more noted for their contributions to mountain music, eastern mountain music, than the hard western plains described in this album. Nonetheless, Johnny in that deep, authoritative and plaintive voice of his has brought the Old West alive in this recording. I should like to note several stick out items of interest here. First off- the rendition, based on Longfellow, of “Hiawatha’s Vision”; an interesting song about the fate of the assassin of President James Garfield in the post-Civil War period, “Mr. Garfield; and, a song of the original old West, Kentucky, in” Road to Kaintuck”. Then to finish this compilation up there are songs that truly reflect the struggles of the Old West, “Stampede,” “Blizzard,” “The Streets Of Laredo,” and “Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie”. Just a nice little slice of Americana, mainly not mentioned in the history books, or by western Chamber of Commerces.

Once Upon A Time In Texas- “No Country For Old Men”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film No Country For Old Men

DVD Review

No Country For Old Men, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, directed by the Coen Brothers, written by Cormac McCarthy, Miramax Films, 2007

Cinematic studies of murderous psychopaths have a long and honored position in film history. Early on in the gangster movies of the 1930s, in such films as The Petrified Forest (with Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee) and, perhaps more famously, White Heat with true stone-killer mad man James Cagney ready to blow up everything (and throw an off-hand grapefruit or two), audiences got to confront truly banal (thanks Hannah Arendt) evil characters. Remorseless, if not always efficient. The psycho (played understatedly by Javier Bardem)in No Country For Old Men carries on that tradition, although as we are now a little more inured to mass murders and odd-ball methods of killing on the screen that those earlier audiences, the methods have been ramped up. In short, take no prisoners. None. Moreover, the Brothers Coen want to, around the murder and mayhem, squeeze in a little tale about how this country (well, Texas, great American West country, Larry McMurtry Last Picture Show country, anyway) has gone to hell in a handbasket since the old western frontiers vanished into, well, civilization.

Of course no savage tale of the New West, the border New West, would be complete without some drug deal going south (no pun intended), going south badly. The action of this film is centered on a discover of some dough, some serious dough, just waiting to be plucked like taking it from the low branches of a tree by the first guy (played by Josh Brolin) who comes on the scene, the first hungry, break-out hungry guy who comes along. Now if you or I, maybe not hungry enough, came upon a desert scene with a bunch of stone shoot-out dead bodies, a truckload of dope, and a satchel of dough, we would walk, hell, run away, right. There would be no story then though. So our lonesome hungry cowboy grabs for the brass ring. Unfortunately said dough belongs to those who have hired a bad-ass stone killer ready, very ready, and very willing to exterminate whatever number it takes to get said dough back. And throw in a few innocent by-standers and others for laughs.

But this is Texas remember and so once the chase is on the local law, in the person mainly, of one wised-up, old-timey sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones, a little out of his element in these new times when there is no honor among thieves (there really never was) and the crimes pile up more quickly and haphazardly than in the old days, is on the hunt. But age and world-weariness have taken their toll and old Tommy Lee is always about a step, maybe two steps, behind the central action. Needless to say things cannot turn out well here, and they don’t. Ya, this is no country for old men. Got it.