(By one account, there were 36 Westerns on the tube in 1962.) Short on scenery and action (due to budget constraints), the good guys and the bad guys talked each other to death, usually in a saloon.
Reversing His Course
Henry Fonda, who played American idols Abraham Lincoln and Wyatt Earp in John Ford classics, did a complete turnaround in the late 1960s.
In 1967’s dreary hayburner, “Welcome To Hard Times,” when bad guy Aldo Ray tries to rape the leading lady, Fonda turns tail and runs out of the saloon, leaving the woman to fend for herself.
Finally, in 1969’s “Once Upon A Time In The West” Fonda guns down a 9-year- old boy who witnessed his father’s murder.
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys
Born in the Oklahoma Territory, Will Rogers would become America’s favorite cowboy hero in the early 1930s.
Newspaper columnist, wit, radio commentator and popular actor (he and Shirley Temple kept 20th Century Fox out of bankruptcy, 1933-35) his gentle humor and down-home ways made him an icon.
When he died in a plane crash in 1935 in Alaska, along with aviator Wiley Post, his passing was given the same nationwide coverage as the death of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
Here Comes Autry
In 1928, Rogers was visiting back home in Oklahoma when he came across Gene Autry playing his guitar and singing in a local telegraph office.
Rogers encouraged Autry to enter show business. As a singing cowboy, Autry was one of Hollywood’s top moneymakers from 1938 to 1942. During World War II, he served as a flight officer with the Air Transport Command.
Taking Charge
After World War II, Autry formed his own production company. He produced his own films, a radio and television show and wrote over 200 popular songs, including “Here Comes Santa Claus and “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.”
On Sept. 27, the 100th anniversary of Autrys birthday will be celebrated.
His Legacy
In a recent column in the Los Angeles Times, it was noted that he left Southern California two great legacies, a major league baseball team, now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, one of the finest repositories of Western memorabilia in the country.
Will Rogers also discovered another cowboy hero, Joel McCrea, a popular leading man in the 1930s and 40s.
McCreas Resume
He played the lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “Foreign Correspondent” and in Preston Sturges’ classic comedies, “Sullivan’s Travels” and “The Palm Beach Story.”
From 1950 on, McCrea appeared only in B Westerns.
But in 1962, he co-starred in what was to become a classic of the genre with Randolph Scott, “Ride the High Country.”
A series of Westerns noted the passing or the death of the West in this period.
The List
“The Misfits,” “Lonely Are the Brave” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance were bleak assessments about the end of days of the cowboy hero.
The major studios were in their death throes during this period.
Louis B. Mayer had died in 1957, and MGM was in a downward spiral.
Going, Going, Gone
Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Ernest Hemingway had died. In November of 1963, President John F. Kennedy, who considered himself a cowboy and coined the term, “the New Frontier,” was assassinated.
“Ride The High Country” was Sam Peckinpah’s second feature as a director.
It stands as a wonderful visual love poem to the American West and its passing legacy.
Background
The film was made at MGM, and many of the major scenes were filmed on the MGM backlot in Culver City.
In “Ride the High Country” McCrea and Scott both played their real age (pushing 60). Once famous lawmen, they’ve come upon hard times at the turn of the 20th century.
Scott is a con man and flat store operator with a traveling circus.
McCrea, is a bartender and bouncer in a saloon.
The Plot
McCrea gets hired to bring a gold shipment down from a High Country mining camp. He sees the job as an opportunity to redeem himself and regain his self respect.
Scott plans to steal the gold and retire in style. Trying to persuade McCrea to keep the gold, he asks, “When you die, do all you want left is the clothes on your back?”
Famous Line
It is then that McCrea uttered the great line that sums up the cowboy philosophy, “All I want is to enter my house justified.”
“Ride the High Country” was conceived as a B Western but Peckinpah’s direction and Lucian Ballard’s photography gave the film an added sparkle.
Peckinpah entered the film in the Berlin Festival where it won the Silver Lion Award.
Doomed
Still, MGM dumped the film into the lower half of a double feature (“Tarzan Goes to India” was top billed).
Over the years, the film’s reputation has grown, and it has been restored to the classic status it deserves.
My own personal cowboy hero was my uncle, Ted Kortson, the son of immigrants from Denmark. He was born in Buckeye, Ariz., and served in the Marines during World War II.
Founding Dad
His father, James (Papa) Kortson founded the town of Stanfield and built a cotton gin there.
After the war, Ted bought a ranch near Wilcox, Ariz., 40 miles from the New Mexican border, 40 miles from Mexico. The family of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor lived nearby.
Assessing a Mans Worth
My uncle usually wore a $5 pair of Levis and a $5 cotton shirt. shirt. The only luxuries he allowed himself were his hand-tooled boots and his Stetson hat.
It doesnt matter how much money a man has, he once told me. Iif you can’t believe what he tells you, he’s worth nothin’.”
Now to me, that’s a good cowboy hero philosophy.