Westerns are not just for guys. They aren’t all shoot’em-up-bang-bang. Some are quite funny, and some are very romantic. I don’t mind admitting comedies are my favorite genre. But, westerns hold a special place in my heart. So, when you can mix comedy, romance, and cowboys - well, can you ask for anything more?
I believe I’ve mentioned a partiality to James Garner. He makes the best Wyatt Earp there is! Sunset, with Bruce Willis as Tom Mix, is a charming, fish-out-of-water tale, completely sending up the watery romp through silent-film Hollywood.
The film is loosely based on the friendship Earp and Mix, who would join John Ford and play poker together on the back-lots of Republic Pictures. For me, the saddest part of the whole story is the fact that the film takes place in 1929, just a few months after the real Earp had died, at the age of 80, from complications of kidney disease. He had one of the largest funerals in the history of Hollywood. Mix and William S. Hart, another early silent-film star, were pallbearers.
Garner, capturing the real Wyatt Earp, is at his best in Sunset. But my favorite film of his is Support Your Local Sheriff, another mix of romance, cowboys, gunfights and comedy. Perhaps here, as in no other movie, Garner becomes Earp in the prime of life. He is 'laid-back,' charming, brave, quick-thinking, and quite romantic.
We complete the James Garner trilogy with Mel Gibson’s remake of Maverick. Garner is a 'legendary sheriff,' charming, romantic, quick-thinking… Wyatt Earp. Jodie Foster’s gorgeous wardrobe is unusually accurate for a movie. You need your remote to continually pause the poker tournament. Those sequences alone make the film worth-while. It is full of old television western ‘heroes,’ along with a few country music stars mixed in for good fun. Great ending! Graham Greene steals the show, trust me.
McClintock was my first ‘adult’ film. I was seven or eight when my newly-married aunt and her husband took me with them to see it at one of the great old movie theaters in West Palm Beach. We met my other uncle and his new wife there. I was so grown up. Until McClintock, every time she took me to see a Disney movie with her I would start crying and we would need to leave. I just did not like, and still do not like, those old cartoons. But this was a turning point in my childhood. Consequently it holds a special place in my heart. So the storyline might be a little sexist. The cast and scenery over-come the sexist deficit. Quite a bit of it was filmed around Tombstone.
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Article comments
1 - Brent McKee
Any movie with Lee Remick in it is fine with me, and one where she's tipsy, and in a bath, and dressed the way she is in this is a bonus. One of the most beautiful women ever in Hollywood, which is why I have a fondness for Hallelujah Trail even if I sometimes find it overdone. As for McLintock! I love it for the easy way that John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara come together. Sure it's sexist but then it's essentially a western version of Taming Of the Shrew.
2 - Ian Woolstencroft
I've a female friend who's never watched a western and you've given me a few ideas to get her started.
I'd also add to your list -
The Big Country - An epic love story with a love triangle formed by Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons and Carroll Baker. And Charlton Heston's in it.
All the Pretty Horses - Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz in an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel.
Bend of the River - Probably the most romantic of the Anthony Mann/James Stewart westerns.
Two Mules For Sister Sara - A rare chick flick western from Clint Eastwood this pairs him with Shirley MacLaine as the nun in the title.
North To Alaska - Another fun comedy western from John Wayne. Not as good as McClintock but it has got Stewart Granger to keep the ladies happy.
3 - Sister Ray
"Destry Rides Again," with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, is a good one.
4 - Chap O'Keefe
As a writer of scripts for comic-book westerns back in the 1960s, as the author of a string of 18 western novels that began in 1993, and as a viewer of movie and TV westerns since I don't know when, I agree with most of the suggestions here. I was rewatching "Destry" just the other night and thought its exuberant tone somewhat similar to what I'm trying to achieve with my current "Misfit Lil" series. None of your comment-makers mention books here, but if anyone's interested, may I suggest they nip over and take a look at Black Horse Westerns?