I love western movies, especially old ones. But one thing that drives me crazy is how often they leave the rifles on the wall to walk outside, knowing there is going to be a gun fight!

Watching High Noon last night, there is Gary Cooper going out to take on 4 bad guys all by himself, and there in his office are at least 4 lever-action rifles (45/70, 30-30?), but he picks up an extra 6 shooter with a 4” barrel. WTF Gary? Grab 2 of the 45/70’s load them up and blast away! Man, you could shoot right through the fence and kill the bad guys!

Well hell, if you think about it (Spoiler alert) if I were Gary Cooper, I would have taken my rifles down to the train station, sniped the 3 bad guys right off the bat, then waited for bad guy number 4 to get off the train and popped him in the head before he could even get his gun! Not even work up a sweat……

Boy, that would be a short movie! I need time to eat buttered & salted corn & a big soda pop. A cartoon or travelogue would be welcomed also!

Kinda like in other shows where the bad guy with guns get in conflict/fight with the good guys fleeing without a weapon - they beat down the bad guy and continue fleeing WITHOUT taking the bad guys weapon!!

If I were Gary, I'd have extended the middle finger to the town and hit the road with Grace.

My favorite was an episode of Cheyenne. He's on a train, which is being chased and fired on by a band of Indians. He has a Winchester and a Colt. He uses the Winchester to smash out the window, then lays it aside so he can shoot at the Indians with his Colt. And all this time, I thought the pupose of your handgun was to be able to fight your way to your rifle.

The “middle finger” came at the end9f the movie.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KxH8b0nnl4Y

You want realism or you want a traditional Hollywood Western mythologizing the pistolero?

(Did you notice how Grace Kelley talks in that affected northeast/quasi-English accent that was the fashion in acting then? It was thought to sound hi-toned.)

quote:

You want realism or you want a traditional Hollywood Western mythologizing the pistolero?

Something like Deadwood is fine with me. You know, telling it like it really was back then.

28 year difference between Cooper and Grace.

Interesting.

She sure was a handsome woman (no Donna Reed mind you, but a looker in her own right). Shame she died the way she did. I watched a documentary some time back suggesting she was taken out for some reason or another. Conspiracy theorists are everywhere.

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Originally posted by jhe888:
You want realism or you want a traditional Hollywood Western mythologizing the pistolero?

(Did you notice how Grace Kelley talks in that affected northeast/quasi-English accent that was the fashion in acting then? It was thought to sound hi-toned.)

You'd rather she talk like Calamity Jane in Deadwood?

This is for kind of the same reason the villain leaves the hero in some kind of death trap from which he can escape, instead of just shooting him right there on the spot.

I always admired how Roy Rodgers could always shoot the gun out of the bad guys hand and never actually shot anyone, ever.

Western films of the 20th Century tend to obsess about Peacemakers and who might be the "quickest draw". The idea that a rifle would be much more effective than a handgun when there is any distance involved is almost entirely absent from Western films of the past century.

There are some egregious examples of this. One which comes to mind is The Fastest Gun Alive. Glenn Ford plays a man with superb quick draw and marksmanship skills with a Peacemaker. Some killers are coming to town and Ford wants to demonstrate to them what he can do with a Peacemaker. He shoots shot glasses thrown in the air, and stuff like that, so naturally, he's the one guy in town who can deal with the desperadoes.

Utter bullshit

The reality of the "old West" was better summed up by Ben Johnson in One Eyed Jacks, where Johnson tells Marlon Brando that they are going to take care of the sherrif by "laying ouside his house and cut him down with scatterguns" when he comes out of his house.

Another rare exception is an episode of The Twilight Zone, of all things. At the beginning of the episode The Grave, citizens of a town ambush an outlaw, shooting him from cover.

If the writer of The Fastest Gun Alive was being honest, this is how the townfolk would have dealt with the outlaws, but there's no chance of that, not with that film title. The film is about a gimmick, and nothing more.

In terms of 20th Century Western films, the Peacemaker was more than a six shot revolver. It was a talisman, and those who wielded it better than others came out on top.

Again, utter bullshit, but it's part of the Western lore.

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Originally posted by smschulz:
I always admired how Roy Rodgers could always shoot the gun out of the bad guys hand and never actually shot anyone, ever.

I believe the Lone Ranger did that, too.

Can't have the little chillins seeing blood & death on the small screen.

I love it when someone is holed up in a cabin or house, and a shootout starts up. The people in the house use their peacemakers to break the glass window panes. I just love it when they do that. Do they ever consider sliding the window up?

If they opened the windows, we couldn’t see bullets breaking glass & the added bonus of hearing glass breaking.

Jimmy Stewart knew the value of the long gun in
“Winchester 73”.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
You want realism or you want a traditional Hollywood Western mythologizing the pistolero?

(Did you notice how Grace Kelley talks in that affected northeast/quasi-English accent that was the fashion in acting then? It was thought to sound hi-toned.)

You'd rather she talk like Calamity Jane in Deadwood?

Which wasn't all that realistic, either, if strict accuracy is the goal. Apparently they decided to make the Deadwood characters swear like modern Americans deliberately. What was shocking swearing to 19th century ears would sound quaint and sort of silly to us - not shocking at all. To give it the impact they wanted, they made all the characters say "cock-sucker" every fourth word.

Neither is realistic. The point is that every era's "Old West" reflect that era as much as it reflects reality.

But to answer your question: Would I like to hear Grace Kelly say cock-sucker? You bet.

Even as young kids, we (the group of us who went to Saturday afternoon movies) knew that the Westerns -- "dusties," we called them, because of the dust clouds that followed the galloping horses -- we knew that these were for pure entertainment and bore no semblance to reality.

We took them for what they were, and enjoyed them, screaming and applauding when the hero did something outrageously, um, heroic.

We knew that the bad guys were shooting to kill, but usually missed, or if he hit, it would just be a "flesh wound," just as we could predict that the hero would quick-draw, shoot from the hip without aiming, and blast the gun out of the bad guy's hand.

It was good, clean, fun.

I love how John Wayne always totes around an 1892 Winchester, even in movies set right after the Civil War.

As I recall there was a scene in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean in which Paul Newman shoots a challenger in the back with a buffalo rifle from the upper story of a livery stable or barn. My reaction was, “Yes! That’s how you do it.”

As a kid I watched all the war movies I could and once I saw an interview with an Army major who was the technical consultant to the making of one set in WW II. I clearly remember his saying that they were making entertainment, not a “technical film.” Even then I could only think, “You obviously don’t understand that for some viewers realism and accurate details are part of the entertainment.” I was reminded of that much later while watching Saving Private Ryan. Although even the best movies are movies, that one contained countless small authentic details that I noticed and helped draw me into what was happening on the screen even though they would have been meant nothing to most viewers. To a lesser extent because I’m not as familiar with the 19th century Army, I appreciated the attempts at authenticity in Hostiles.

Just as in books, obvious mistakes and anachronisms act as speed bumps for me and often leave me looking for better products.