Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Top 5 Movies (and TV) Watched in 2020

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I used to do top-ten movie lists every year as well as books, but fell out of the habit because I wasn’t watching enough new-to-me stuff each year to do a favorites list of any length. This year, however…well, we watched rather more TV than usual. So I have a list! I’m including TV as well as movies, because a good deal of what we watched was made-for-television in some form.

The Man From Snowy River (1982)

How in the world did it take me so long to see this movie? Still, it was nice to have something so good to discover at this point in time. I can’t remember the last time a movie impressed and moved me as much as this one. Just…wow. Great story, unbelievable scenery, beautiful music, the most incredible horsemanship I’ve ever seen on film…big thumbs-up.

Jeeves and Wooster, Seasons 1-2 (1990-91)

Bless you, Bertie and Co., for all the moments of hearty laughter you gave my family this year. I started watching the series when sick in bed way back in February, and then managed to coax the rest of the family into trying it when we were looking for something to watch later on during the summer—and once fairly into it, everybody loved it. (The scene at the Junior Ganymedes Club in the first episode of Season 2 had us practically rolling on the floor.)

I was initially slightly skeptical that any screen version could do justice to the books, but after a couple of episodes I was completely won over. There are still some finer shades of hilarity that don’t translate to the screen, but I don’t think anybody could manage a finer onscreen portrayal than this series does. Seasons 1 and 2 are definitely the best—we did watch most of Season 3, but it just wasn’t as strong or funny as the earlier ones (the Deverill Hall episode was the only real standout).

A Murder Is Announced (1985)

We watched through most of the made-for-television Marple adaptations starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple this year, and the three-part A Murder is Announced is definitely the pick of the lot. Near-perfect adaptation, great casting and performances, and I think a slightly brisker pace than some of the others in this series (and of course you’ve got to love the period costumes and English village scenery!).

Boots Malone (1952)

A lesser-known but entertaining horse-racing movie in which a cynical and slightly shifty jockey’s agent gets mixed up with a runaway boy who wants to become a jockey. A fun story, different from the usual racing movie in that it doesn’t focus on a star horse, but on the crowd of stable hands, exercise riders, and other hangers-on behind the scenes at the track.

Blood on the Moon (1948)

A solid Western, with some nicely conflicting character motivation and an unusually authentic look and feel, particularly when it comes to the men’s costumes. I’ve read that director Robert Wise studied period photographs for authenticity, and I believe it—see how they compare to Charles M. Russell illustrations, for example. (We will be charitable and not discuss the authenticity of the ladies’ costumes.) It’s based on a novel by Luke Short, and as I had read a couple of his books shortly before watching it, I was impressed by how the movie actually reflected the style of the author: a pretty rare quality in Hollywood Westerns.

Honorable Mentions: The Lady Vanishes (2013), Seabiscuit* (2003), Phar Lap (1983), Sleeping Murder (1987)

(*watched a version slightly edited for content)

I unpublished all my previous years’ movie lists during a spate of blog housekeeping, partly because the formatting of images and such got rather messed up when transferred from my old blog. I may restore them in a simplified form at some point; I don’t know yet—but if you’d like to see just the lists without commentary, they’re here on Letterboxd.

Legends of Western Cinema Week: Steel, the Four-Legged Star

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I would have liked to write a deep, thoughtful review or essay of some kind for Legends of Western Cinema Week—but no matter how hard I tried to think of something to write, all my brain would say was, “I got nothing, pal.” But I hated the idea of missing out on the event altogether, so I decided to contribute a post on one of the things that drew me to Westerns in the first place: horses. In this case, one horse, a particularly beautiful one who is always a joy to see gallop across the screen.

His name was Steel. A burnished chestnut with three white feet, a wide blaze, and a luxuriant mane and tail, his proud arched neck and graceful, fluid way of moving stand out among the many handsome horses that have appeared on a movie screen. According to IMDB, Steel was so prized as a mount that his owner, Clarence “Fat” Jones, was able to make it a condition that all the horses in a film had to be rented from the Jones stables if Steel was used in the movie.

Like some human actors, Steel paid his dues in B-Westerns. At the bottom of this page you can see several photos of him with the stars of B-grade Westerns in the mid-to-late 1940s, including Tim Holt and a young Robert Mitchum. But at the same time, Steel was already carrying A-listers too. In 1944 John Wayne rode him in Tall in the Saddle—pretty nice mount for a drifter new in town!

In 1948, Steel appears to beautiful advantage as Joel McCrea’s mount in that time-bending chase scene from Four Faces West (again, the fugitive drifter sure scored a nice horse somehow).

In Yellow Sky (1948), it’s Steel who carries Gregory Peck across the desert—looking a bit less elegant than usual, as does everybody else in the movie.

But what most Western fans probably remember him best for is his teaming with Ben Johnson, one of the finest riders in the movies (and also “Fat” Jones’ son-in-law). Steel’s grace and Johnson’s horsemanship made an unforgettable combination in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Wagon Master (1950), pictured above, and Rio Grande (1950). (I’ve also read that Johnson rode Steel when he won his roping championship, but couldn’t find a picture or record to confirm that on a quick search.)

In Rio Grande, Steel is the subject of an amusing plot gaffe. Johnson’s character is supposed to abscond with his commanding officer’s horse—played by Steel—but John Wayne’s Colonel Yorke rides an entirely different horse throughout the whole movie, both before and after the theft: a powerful bay horse with a narrow stripe down his face, named Banner. Well, perhaps Steel was the colonel’s best horse, kept for Sundays and holidays.

(You can spot John Wayne riding Banner in Red River (1948) as well—and he was also sturdy enough to carry the substantial Andy Devine in Under California Stars (1948). I think he may have been Henry Fonda’s mount in Fort Apache (1948) as well. Banner had a busy ’48!)

Steel was valuable enough to have his own stunt double. The hardest-riding chase scenes in Rio Grande and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon were doubled by another horse called Bingo—but in the above shot ’tis clearly the horse himself, in Oscar-winning Technicolor.

More Steel in color—ridden by Henry Fonda in Warlock (1959) and Richard Widmark in Broken Lance (1953). These screenshots don’t even really do him justice, though; you have to see him in motion to appreciate what a beautiful horse he was.

Steel with Clark Gable on the set of Across the Wide Missouri (1951). I don’t know how many times he appeared onscreen in total—I know Randolph Scott rode him too, but am not sure in which movie(s). If you know of one I’ve overlooked, comment below and tell me!

The Pen is Mightier Than the Six-Gun…Most of the Time

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When I set out to choose a subject for Legends of Western Cinema Week, I found that I kept wanting to write about Western books instead of movies. But it’s supposed to be about cinema, right? And then it hit me that there was a way I could do both.

More classic Westerns than you might realize were based on books—novels, novellas, magazine serials, and short stories alike. And in all but a few cases the movie versions seem to be better known than the original stories. Only a few Western writers have achieved the lasting popularity that means reprints and easy name recognition. Of course, with some authors it’s understandable. Not every pulp-magazine story was of lasting quality, even if some of them did manage to spawn a memorable movie. But on the other hand, there is quite a fair mix of the pulps and more “serious” fiction among the source stories for Western movies.

So today, let’s give the writers their day. Here’s a list of Western movies paired with the titles of the books and stories they were based upon (with intermittent opinionated commentary by myself). Some of them you may know well, but other titles and authors might surprise you!

It isn’t an exhaustive list—I’ve stuck mostly to films that are fairly easily recognizable, at least to Western fans, and covered only the “classic” era (for the purposes of this post, the cutoff date is 1965). And I’ve made a few deliberate omissions: (A) Owen Wister and the various adaptations of The Virginian, because most everybody knows all about that, and (B) Zane Grey, because I’ve yet to hear of a film adaptation that borrowed anything more from its Grey source besides a title and some character names.

I also called it quits at only a couple of Louis L’Amour titles, because reading the descriptions of some other “adaptations” (term used loosely) basically had me going like this:

Whoever managed to turn Heller With a Gun (not a half bad book) into something called Heller In Pink Tights deserves an award from relatives of the people who give out the Bulwer-Lytton Prize.

But let’s get on to the good stuff.

Stagecoach (1939) / short story “Stage to Lordsburg” (1937) by Ernest Haycox

(Probably one of the best examples of how a short story can be “opened up” into a film by fleshing it out with added material, without changing the core plot.)

Destry Rides Again (1939) / novel Destry Rides Again (1930) by Max Brand

(Only the title belongs to Brand. Trust me.)

Dark Command (1940) / novel The Dark Command (1938) by W.R. Burnett

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) / novel The Ox-Bow Incident (1940) by Walter Van Tillburg Clark

Tall in the Saddle (1944) / magazine serial “Tall in the Saddle” (1942) by Gordon Ray Young

Canyon Passage (1946) / magazine serial Canyon Passage (1945) by Ernest Haycox

Red River (1948) / magazine serial “The Chisolm Trail” (1947) by Borden Chase

Three Godfathers (1948) / short story “The Three Godfathers” (1912) by Peter B. Kyne

Blood on the Moon (1948) / magazine serial “Blood on the Moon” (1941) by Luke Short

Whispering Smith (1948) / novel Whispering Smith (1906) by Frank H. Spearman

(Haven’t seen or read this one, but I loved Spearman’s two short story collections about railroading, The Nerve of Foley and Held For Orders.)

Four Faces West (1948) / novella “Paso Por Aqui” (1926) by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

(I wrote about this adaptation at some length a while back. It’s a nice movie, but Gene Rhodes deserved better. But hey, at least his story wasn’t murdered in cold blood like some other authors’ have been! And as a writer who was always at daggers drawn with “the movies” even in their infancy, I’ll bet he would have been tongue-in-cheek philosophical about it.)

the cavalry trilogy

Fort Apache (1948) / short stories “Massacre” (1947) and “The Big Hunt” (1947) by James Warner Bellah

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) / short stories “Command” (1946), “The Big Hunt” (1947), and “War Party” (1948) by James Warner Bellah

Rio Grande (1950) / short story “Mission With No Record” (1947) by James Warner Bellah

(A note at the bottom of this page, which lists sources and tie-ins for John Wayne films, explains the background of the “trilogy” in relation to Bellah’s cavalry stories. I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy of Massacre yet, but I’d like to—and see how he measures up to my favorite genuine frontier-fort-alumnus Charles King.)

The Furies (1950) / novel The Furies (1948) by Niven Busch

Stars in My Crown (1950) / novel Stars in My Crown (1947) by Joe David Brown

Branded (1950) / novel Montana Rides (1928) by Max Brand

Singing Guns (1950) / novel Singing Guns (1928) by Max Brand

(*cough* This doesn’t sound like the book I read…)

Man in the Saddle (1951) / magazine serial “Man in the Saddle” (1938) by Ernest Haycox

High Noon (1952) / short story “The Tin Star” (1947) by John M. Cunningham

(No relation, incidentally, to the 1957 movie The Tin Star, which had an original script.)

Bend of the River (1952) / novel Bend of the Snake (1950) by Bill Gulick

Shane (1953) / novel Shane (1949) by Jack Schaefer

(The best novel-to-film adaptation in the genre, of the ones that I’ve personally read and watched.)

Hondo (1953) / short story “The Gift of Cochise” (1952) by Louis L’Amour

(Psst…can I tell you a secret? I think I actually liked the original short story better than L’Amour’s novelization of the movie script! Aren’t I a little rebel?)

The Man From Laramie (1955) / magazine serial “The Man From Laramie” (1954) by Thomas T. Flynn

The Searchers (1956) / novel The Searchers (1954) by Alan Le May

3:10 to Yuma (1957) / short story “Three-Ten to Yuma” (1953) by Elmore Leonard

(I’ve already written about this one in-depth too, but I’ll give you spoilers: I like the short story better. *dives behind water trough*)

The Tall T (1957) / short story “The Captives” (1955) by Elmore Leonard

Night Passage (1957) / novel Night Passage (1956) by Norman A. Fox

The Big Country (1958) / magazine serial “Ambush at Blanco Canyon” (1957) by Donald Hamilton

Apache Territory (1958) / novel Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957) by Louis L’Amour

(Based on my favorite L’Amour novel. Since they didn’t consult me, naturally the casting is all wrong. While fairly unremarkable in the larger scheme of things, it provides insight on the Hollywood attitude toward Westerns: if the book isn’t exciting enough, let’s throw in some dynamite. Literally.)

The Hanging Tree (1959) / novella “The Hanging Tree” (1957) by Dorothy M. Johnson

(Johnson is one of the best Western authors out there for my money. The novella is captivating…the movie synopsis made me ask “Why?”)

The Unforgiven (1960) / novel The Unforgiven (1957) by Alan Le May

(After liking the novel, I read the movie synopsis and it made my blood boil with its changes to the very heart of the story. I may still watch the movie one of these days and get steamed up again.)

Two Rode Together (1961) / magazine serial Comanche Captives (1959) by Will Cook

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) / short story “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1949) by Dorothy M. Johnson

(I’ve written a lengthy piece on this one too. This is another good example of opening up a very brief and crisp short story into something bigger, and where the three central characters are concerned it’s not a bad job—it was the fudging and over-simplifying of the history element that got under my skin.)

* * *

You know what strikes me most strongly about this list? Almost all of these adaptations closely followed their source material, most of them just a couple years after the original book/story was published. Kyne, Spearman and Rhodes are the only real “old-time” authors on this list. So at best, classic Hollywood was receiving its vision of the West at second- or third-hand. You have to wonder, why didn’t the movie-makers of the 1930s-60s ever dig back into the wealth of Western stories in what’s now our public domain for source material?

For the fun of it, let’s do a little unofficial survey here. I’ve seen 20 of the movies on this list, read 14 of the source stories, and I’d heard of all but three of the authors (Flynn, Fox, and Cook) before I compiled the list. How many of the titles on the list have you read, as opposed to the number of the movies you’ve seen? How many of the authors had you heard of before? And of course, if I’ve left any notable book-based titles out by accident, let me know!