r/Westerns

There have been quite a few Western actors who were also actual cowboys. Prime examples are Slim Pickens, Ben Johnson and Sheb Wooley. But in Leo Gordon we have a Western character actor who had been an outlaw of sorts. Prior to his acting career, Gordon and a couple of other fellows attempted to heist a bank. Gordon took a slug in the gizzard for his troubles and did a five-year stretch in San Q. So, later in life when cast as a badman or a prisoner, he had come by it honestly--so to speak.

According to famed director Don Siegel, Gordon was the scariest man he had ever met. That may not have been a compliment, but who knows? At any rate, Gordon was a very good Western heavy who appeared fully capable of doing the worst things. But he wasn't a dumb brute. Gordon read every single book in the San Q library, and once ensconced in Hollywood, wrote his fair share of screenplays and even a few novels! An interesting man, Leo Gordon.

Gordon's first Western role was in City of Bad Men (1953) and his last was in Maverick (1994). Other noteworthy Westerns in which Gordon acted were Hondo (1953), Ride a Crooked Trail (1958), McClintock! (1963), and My Name Is Nobody (1973). His Western career was long and reasonably distinguished.

Hail! Hail! All hail Leo Gordon!

With a name like Sheb Wooley, you almost have to be a man of the West, and so he was. Born in Erick, Oklahoma just east of the Texas Panhandle, Wooley was a working cowboy and a rodeo performer in addition to being an acclaimed country musician. One of his mentors was fellow Erick native Roger Miller who taught him how to strum chords and play the fiddle. Wooley later married a cousin of Miller's.

Speaking of Miller, Wooley played badman Ben Miller in High Noon (1952) among his myriad Western appearances. Indeed from 1950 thru 1986, Wooley appeared in practically nothing but Westerns. Among them were the wildly underrated Rocky Mountain (1950), Fort Worth (1951), The Lusty Men (1952), Johnny Guitar (1954), Terror in a Texas Town (1959), Rio Bravo (1959), The War Wagon (1967), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Silverado (1986). He also appeared frequently in Clint Eastwood's TV series "Rawhide," and wrote and directed a few episodes.

In general, Wooley didn't get many lines unless he was singing them, but was certainly a recognizable presence in the genre's Golden Age.

Hail! Hail! All hail Sheb Wooley!

This was inspired by my 88th watch of Tombstone. :D

Also, I wasn't sure which flair to use.

From MAD magazine #53, E C Publications, March 1960

Watched this on Hulu last night and you know what? It was pretty entertaining. I could see the vision and for a minute my disbelief was suspended. A nice modern western in the vein of Hell or High Water on probably a quarter of the budget. Check it out!

So I just happened to watch these two movies in tandem, not realizing they both featured master-apprentice narratives. A few thoughts on each:

Bandidos: I quite liked this one. I thought it was very well done in most respects, especially strong in the direction (Massimo Dallamano) and cinematography (Dallamano and Emilio Foriscot) departments. An Italian "spaghetti western," this stars Enrico Maria Salerno as an aging sharp-shooter who is brutalized in a train robbery by Venantino Venantini and his murderous gang (and partner gang), after which Salerno takes Terry Jenkins as his apprentice ("Ricky Shot") in a traveling sharp-shooting act – while Salerno also grooms Jenkins to be his shot at revenge against Venantini. Some simple but effective plot twists with the characters gives this added tension and intrigue, and Salerno and Venantini are especially good as Richard Martin and Billy Kane respectively. (It was also pretty amusing hearing the repeated words "Billy Kane" in that sing-songy Italian lilt.) For his part, Jenkins is good, poised somewhere between Clint Eastwood and Franco Nero, which was probably no coincidence given the slew of variations (and, let's face it, imitations) that came in the wake of Sergio Leone's groundbreaking spaghetti westerns. This one's worth looking for, especially for spaghetti fans. 4/5

Day of Anger: This seems to be fairly well regarded and the better known of the two movies, maybe especially because of the presence of Lee Van Cleef, but I thought it was very much the weaker of the two, and not an especially good movie. This also stars Giuliano Gemma as the "garbage boy" and town bastard who takes up with drifter Van Cleef after the latter comes to his defense in a local dispute. Van Cleef was at the peak of his spaghetti heyday as he became a big star in Italian westerns after his unforgettable turns in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and he's fantastic here. Unfortunately, I thought Gemma was somewhat less so, the direction, set design, and cinematography were rather too clean and flat, and the story rather muddled and hindered by pacing problems and underdeveloped characters. Overall, despite a couple of great scenes (a rifle "duel" on horseback is memorable), I found this pretty disappointing, and frankly, kind of boring. Still arguably worth a look for spaghetti and especially Van Cleef fans, but I found Van Cleef's The Big Gundown (1966) and Death Rides a Horse (1967) both quite a bit more satisfying than this, and would definitely recommend those two. 2.5/5

Have you seen either or both of these movies? What are your thoughts and feelings about them?