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Old July 15, 2012, 06:05 AM   #76
BlueTrain
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Geez, all the westerns I've been watching are black & white and are long forgotten by most people. Hardly any of them had much shooting and not always that many horses. Some were serials. The good guy didn't always get the girl; he just rode off with his partner. They'd be back with a new adventure in a few months time anyway. The sidekick was as entertaining as the hero. In some there were two heros. Sometimes there was a lot of incidental music. My son didn't like movies in which everyone would just start singing. But a singing cowboy was more authentic than a gunslinging cowboy, never mind that usually characters weren't exactly cowboys. They were just westerners.

A couple of westerns were based on stories from Japanese movies, like the Seven Samurai. In one Japanese samurai movie, the good guy is sitting in what looks like a corn crib watching a leaf blowing around in the wind. He takes out a dagger and practices throwing it at the leaf. Later, the bad guy shows up for the final "shootout" (the bad guy has a percussion revolver, so it's in the 1860s-1870s). The good guy throws his dagger and gets the bad guy in his gun hand, thus evening the odds.

Don't let that happen to you.
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Old July 15, 2012, 08:46 AM   #77
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Blue Train. I've been watching those 30-40's cowboy movie boxed specials from Wally World. The shoot outs are pretty bad and in many cases, no homicide because the good guy just shoots the gun out of the other feller's hand. Even when folks are shot, they're just "winged" and according to the hero (or a doc if there's one in the script), "he'll be fine." They kept the violence down in those films to get some approval. As for some of those singing cowboys like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry or Tex Ritter, these were depression era films and all sorts of stuff had to be packed into a film.

Another funny thing was the use of double action revolvers by some cowboys. Certainly some were around, but I never noticed them before in the older movies. The worse is when one mob chases another. The pokes in the chasing mob all shoot at the fleeing mob. Never mind if one of your own is in front of you, shoot away anyway! I also think they all taught Elmer Keith how to shoot since they hit at 75-100 yards by snap shooting their revolvers. I don't think Keith snap shot and hit things at 100.
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Old July 15, 2012, 10:11 AM   #78
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Another vote for the "Outlaw Josie Wales." Specifically the scene where he frees the "Jayhawks" and the Indian from the Comancheros. I'd like to give an honorable mention to the shoot-out at the end of "True Grit" where Rooster faces down Ned Pepper and his gang. I know it's Hollywierd but I like those two because I know how hard it is to shoot accurately from a moving horse.
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Old July 15, 2012, 10:47 AM   #79
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Old July 15, 2012, 12:16 PM   #80
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Cowboys and Aliens by far....

http://www.cowboysandaliensmovie.com/splash.php

of course most critics liked Brokeback Mountain better. Not Me.
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Old July 15, 2012, 06:17 PM   #81
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No one has mentioned The Jimmy Stewart's Winchester 73 Movie.. Decent Indian attack, But The shoot out in the Mountain is awesome with the ricochet rounds in the rocks is very classy
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Old July 17, 2012, 04:27 PM   #82
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+ one more for Open Range. The chemistry between Costner and Duval is just magical. . . and more to the point, that shootout at the end just seems real. No heroes, just a bunch of guys trying to get outta this alive!
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Old July 17, 2012, 08:40 PM   #83
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Indy 1919, winchester '73 was a great movie.

There is another good but short gun fight scene with Glenn Ford in a made for tv movie called the Sacketts. Ford is supposedly the actor who has the fastest draw of all hollywood actors (even beat out James Arness and Eastwood). If you watch the shootout in "Sacketts" you will see why.
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Old July 17, 2012, 10:29 PM   #84
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Yeah, Glen Ford has been left out to date, and when you consider the body of Cowboys he did he needs to be included
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Old July 18, 2012, 10:05 PM   #85
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Great stuff guys,
It was a sad day (for lack of a better term) when I found out that there was NO fast draw in the real west. That it was ALL a illusion of Hollywood, although a wonderful one for all us kids. That the wonderful start of Gunsmoke never happened nor would have happened in the real West.
(the original one, not the late "hippie-ized" one where Marshall Dillon is simply riding the horse)

No hijack meant, but TV westerns were much more my thing as a kid, than movies. Maybe we can start taking about those now.
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Old July 19, 2012, 11:52 AM   #86
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There were so many movies and so many TV shows that it's really hard to pick one that standout above the others, even the shootouts. Still, there are memorable moments for a lot of them. Someone mentioned Glen Ford. There was some western he was in where the bad guy was trying to get his land or something. That plot accounted for half of all westerns anyway, I think. He had a faceoff with the bad guy and said something like, "you won't like the way I fight." He let the bad guy's gang burn down his ranch house, then ambushed them on their way back to town. But I don't remember the name of the movie, which I shall dutifully look up.

Again I don't remember the name of the movie but it's the one with John Wayne, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan and Dean Martin. There are a couple of good shootouts in that one. Maybe not very realistic but that's not what we're looking for in the movies. I get all the realism I can handle in my real life.
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Old July 19, 2012, 11:59 AM   #87
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I didn't get quote exactly right but the movie was "The Violent Men," and it was from 1955. That's a pretty old movie now.
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Old July 19, 2012, 02:02 PM   #88
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Blue train, that john wayne with nelson is called "rio bravo"
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Old July 19, 2012, 06:06 PM   #89
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There were a couple of funny scenes in one of the early John Wayne movies I watched. First he draws his gun and as he brings it up it, he fires it prematurely at about a 45 degree angle into the ground. They switch the view to show a guy with his gun out up on a rooftop drop dead.

Then, whenever one of the good guys starts to talk about standing up against the bad guys in town, suddenly they will be mysteriously shot dead. No one knows where the shot came from. In the middle of the street there is a stump. There's no shrubbery growing off of it or anything, a bare stump. You can plainly see a hole in it (gun port) and the top is cut all the way around making a hinged lid. No one has noticed this, but JW figures it out and the next time he pulls open the lid and yanks the shooter out by his collar.

I do like the shootout in Open Range, the smoke and sound make it a lot more realistic looking and sounding then most shootouts. Also the music they play in the Clint Eastwood Unforgiven when he goes into the bar and takes care of business really sounds ominous. Mark
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Old July 19, 2012, 08:14 PM   #90
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Shane
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
High Noon
Hombre
Unforgiven
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Old July 19, 2012, 09:48 PM   #91
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Per OutlawJoseyWales disappointment with Hollywood over the lack of real fast drawing in the real west.. Another hollywoodland misrepresentation from real live is the expert marksmanship in the movies, When you read about the old bar fights lots of times guns were emptied and no one was hit. Or like in the case of Wild Bill Hickock, Jessie James, Virgil & Morgan Earp they were just Ambushed from behind
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Old July 20, 2012, 07:39 AM   #92
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There was serious interest in the Old West lawmen and gunfighters up through WWII. Some writers went into some detail about some of them and I believe Rex Applegate even visited their graves. Of course that was before the new wave of gunfighters and shooting school master. So they tried to learn as much as they could about how the old-timers did it (when they were young) since it appeared they knew what they were doing.

The so-called adult westerns of the 1950s and early 1960s helped to maintain that interest, although that interest took on a different form with various kinds of handgun competitions. That's where Jeff Cooper came in, you know. Other writers also made frequent reference to the fast draw hip shooting arts and some of them had killed men, so they were serious about what they were writing about, not just games with guns. They tended not to make references to the movies, however.
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Old August 28, 2012, 12:01 AM   #93
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There are so many, but the Sacketts is one of my favorites. The best part doesn't even have any gunplay. When Tell and Cap are eating supper at Rosie's, and that other idiot is trying to pick a fight. "Do that, and you're gonna force me to take hold of that pistol. Then I'll have to kill ye, and killin' don't set well with a man's supper."

Crossfire Trail is another good one. Makes me want an 1876 Winchester in .45-60.

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Old August 28, 2012, 12:25 PM   #94
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Well it is a "western" movie, just took place in a different west, and the most memorable part of the movie:

As Marston lays dying, referring to an early conversation concerning Colt revolvers, Quigley tells him, "I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn't know how to use it."
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Old August 28, 2012, 12:33 PM   #95
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Mr. Indy1919, I am reminded of current events with you post of how the movies showed expert marksmanship, while real fights had guns being emptied with no one being hit.
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Old August 28, 2012, 10:57 PM   #96
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Opening scene in Waterhole #3

James Coburn walks over behind his horse, takes a rifle out of the scabbard, and shoots the other guy over the back of the horse.
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Old August 28, 2012, 11:31 PM   #97
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Pale Rider
Open Range
Sons of Katie Elder
Josey Wales
Tombstone
El Dorado
Yeah I'm gonna say all of em!!
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Old August 29, 2012, 11:09 AM   #98
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Just my opinion but Gus fighting the comancheros from behind the dead horse in "lonesome dove" is my favorite.
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Old August 29, 2012, 01:59 PM   #99
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Bluetrain, No Need to put Mr in front of Indy1919.. Indy1919 is my 1st name...

Per you thought of Poor Marksmanship in bar fights, I just remembered a gun fight a few years ago between 4 gang bangers in a crowded bar.. Each armed with a semi auto pistol.. 14+ round mags and no one (Thank God and poor fire discipline) Was even scratched.. So it does still happen in real life..
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Old August 30, 2012, 01:35 PM   #100
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I was thinking of the police shooting in New York, of course. As regards the Mr., I think a little formality might help with the civility around here. After all, even though an armed society is a polite society, one has to try to be more polite than the other guy. Right? Besides, I'm not really on a first name basis here.

"BlueTrain" is my middle name. The first name is "The" and the last name is "Rover." You ought to look it up.
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