"Boone Kills! Candy Kisses!"

Having enjoyed a recent re-viewing of The Big Sleep of 1978, I took a look at its trailer.

Various of the actor's names are used to the same funny effect, but I liked these two in alphabetical order:

"Boone Kills! Candy Kisses!"

Richard Boone is a guilty pleasure favorite of mine "at the movies." He made his name and his fame and his wealth as Paladin on Have Gun Will Travel, but actually drew MY fanship when he did some movies and made improvements to the flamboyance of his line readings, gestures , and overall persona. Here are the best of those movies:

Rio Conchos(1964) A Western
Hombre(1967) A Western
Big Jake(1971) A Western
The Shootist(1976) A Western

and The Kremlin Letter(1970) NOT a Western. A spy movie.

and Goodnight My Love(1972) NOT a Western. A Marlowe like TV movie.

There are some other Boone roles in there (The War Lord, Madron, Against a Crooked Sky, The Arrangement) but for whatever reason, Boone isn't really allowed to show his best stuff in those.

By the time we reach The Big Sleep, Richard Boone was almost near the end of the line. As with his role in The Shootist two years earlier, Boone is really playing a cameo and barely in either movie at all. Evidently burdened by a heavy drinking problem , it shows up in his face and in a certain too-long-lingering on his lines, like maybe he is trying to remember them.

No matter. He's still frickin' Richard Boone and he deserves his over the title billing and "Boone KIlls!" in the trailer.

As for Candy Kisses...that's Candy Clark...and elsewhere on these boards, her extremely weird, extremely nutty, extremely sexy but extremely scene-short performance in The Big Sleep seems to have met with two audiences: some hated it. Some loved it (me.) Clark's career has her Oscar nominated work in American Graffiti above all else, but I found her weirdly memorable in The Big Sleep. Totally unique.

So..."Boone Kills!" "Candy Kisses!"....you bet they do.