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liscarkat's Replies
"while the young lady he is with is gathering indian heads"
Damn!
Buck Hannassey in "The Big Country" was a craven villain, but he wasn't a derelict.
"The Rifleman" pre-dated "Flipper", "My Three Sons", "Andy Griffith", and "The Courtship of Eddie's Father". It was probably the first television show about a single father. "Bachelor Father" came a year earlier (1957), but was about a single man who was raising his niece.
What princes are you talking about? Where do they come in?
The music by Herschel Burke Gilbert is great. The percussion section and French horns, in particular. And the way it's used is clever, always fitting the scene. In the opening, the way Lucas twirls the rifle after firing, perfectly synchronized with the pause in the music, is brilliant.
I had no idea they were using glass backboards in the 1940s.
In the late '50s and '60s most adults smoked. I can hardly remember any adult non-smokers from when I was a kid back then. Yet for some strange reason that I am quite thankful for I never picked up the habit.
It takes place in the early to mid 1880s. Their clothes were sewn with machines, and there were probably some zippers in there, too. I've spotted machine-made whiskey bottles in the bar, which didn't exist until at least 1903. McCain's rifle is a model 1892. Everybody uses modern smokeless gunpowder, which didn't exist yet. "The Rifleman" utterly fails as a documentary.
But still, it's fun to spot these mistakes. It adds to the entertainment.
So, what happened to all these white-trash inbreds just a couple of years later when Bill Cosby became a star as one of the heroes on "I Spy"?
It wasn't the public that didn't want black heroes, it was the timid networks who had the same dumb ideas that you and obama seem to have.
Yeah, in the early '60s when my baby teeth were loosening I would just keep working them back and forth until they came out to make room for the permanent teeth. A couple that were stubborn were actually removed by tying a thread around the tooth, then around a door knob, and slamming the door shut while I stood still. It worked! Do people actually take their kids to dentists now to remove loose baby teeth?
It's interesting how every region of the country seems to have had its own kids' shows with locally famous hosts. In Los Angeles it was Sheriff John, Engineer Bill, Skipper Frank, and others.
Very few tv shows were shot in color in the late '50s and early '60s. Color did not become the norm until about 1966. Lucas's hair always looked light gray, which I interpreted as blonde. If you see Connors in color movies when he was still young, like "The Big Country", his hair color ranges from very blonde to a sort of darker, "dirty" blonde.
It always gives me a chill when in the opening, after firing the twelve (or thirteen) shots, he spins it in perfect time with the pause in the music. Awe inspiring.
Yes, he was great. You must see him as Buck Hannassey in "The Big Country" for an example of his portrayal of a craven villain. He filmed that just before he started on "The Rifleman", and should have had an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Maybe six or seven would be okay, but I saw it at age five when it was released in 1959, and the banshee scared the hell out of me. I wouldn't subject a kid that age or younger to it. That was in a theater, though; maybe the impact wouldn't be as intense on home tv.
The whole dark and gritty past thing has become overdone in recent movies. The 1995 adaptation with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth was more like Austen's book (except for everybody's favorite part--the Darcy wet shirt scene). Austen didn't have her heroines sharing quarters with cattle.
Political correctness and the lack of interest today in that type of music will prevent this from ever happening, unless drastic changes were made to the story and the score. In that case, it would no longer be "West Side Story".
No nudity, but she's half dressed most of the time.
Yes, he was great; always has been. Extra haunting when I saw it because it was just after he'd died. It's nice that he went out with a pretty good, if not great movie, with a great role, instead of some silly car chase nonsense. I even liked Winter (after the first half), who I loathe on "Modern Family".
Being shot at every day, eating dehydrated swill out of a can, crapping in the bushes, and sleeping in your clothes in a hole without showering for months on end will harsh even the most cheerful disposition.