Tonight we were back up at the Alabama Hills for "Man In The Saddle" (1951) with Randolph Scott. I am trusting you to do an honorary "Blazing Saddles" Randolph Scott Chorus, so I won't instruct or double check you. I know you've got it covered. :)
I've been watching a boatload of Westerns lately and most of 'em have been pretty good. A few were even great, for B-Movies, and as we have discussed, there are many "B" grade films of all genres that surpass major A-List releases in quality. Usually you'd be able to count on Randolph Scott every time down the pike, but I suppose no actor has a perfect track record. "Man In The Saddle" isn't horrible, just a bit of a misfire for Scott. It has the feel of "going through the motions", and though the cast is competent enough, the end result is tossed off, so to speak, as if everyone wanted to finish the movie and go home, but being professionals, they wanted to make everything presentable.
That's about what you have here, a presentable Western in gorgeous Technicolor, with interiors (and the exterior Western Town set) shot at the Columbia Pictures ranch out in Burbank. If you watch enough B-Westerns you will see the same buildings from the same set used again and again, just with different signs in front of the various stores and offices. You've gotta figure that motion pictures were still a developing commodity in 1951, the sound era was only 22 years old at that point, and though the technical capabilities of movies had improved by leaps and bounds, the subject matter still relied on the tried and true, and Westerns were a huge part of the financial success of Hollywood from Day One.
So, they made a ton of Westerns. There is even a major thoroughfare in Hollywood called "Western Avenue", one of the main streets in town. I didn't always love 'em. When I was a little kid I loved Big Spectacle movies like "The Sound Of Music" or "Dr. Doolittle" or "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", or of course "Mary Poppins" (and I am willing to give the remake a chance, since you asked).
I didn't become a huge fan of Westerns until I was well into adulthood, maybe in my late 30s or thereabouts, but once I got a feel for them I was hooked. When you watch a Western, it's more than just a movie because you are living in that period, with that ethos. There was no modern technology, but the Gun Fascination was just as bad as it is today. But in Westerns, the Good Guys always win, and I guess that's why I really came to be a big fan. And also because, when there is a romance, it always ends up happily ever after. So there is a format to Westerns for sure, involving several classic dramatic scenarios, but the emphasis is on the positive, and good always winning out over evil.
Movie Stars always figured in the success of failure of a Western, and you could always count on actors like Joel McCrea or George Montgomery or even John Freakin' Wayne, though he often overtook the movies he was in by sheer force of personality. But he made a bunch of good ones. Randolph Scott, however, was the Go To Guy. He was Mr. Western Movie Star and nine times out of ten he gave you a picture that was exciting and didn't lag. When you go to the movies for entertainment, any slowdown in that aim is the mark of a badly directed picture.
Unfortunately, that was the case tonight with "Man In The Saddle". Scott plays a Texas rancher (actually Alabama Hills in the Mojave Desert) who is being slowly squeezed out by a wealthy and obdurate landowner who has also married Scott's woman, a motif that seems to crop up regularly in these plots, so as to encourage emotional rivalry as opposed to fighting over mere business interests, which would be a "dry" premise.
The romantic leads in this case are Joan Leslie and Ellen Drew, beautiful ladies both, but again, none of this is really developed, to the detriment of the story. Maybe the problem is in the editing, I don't know, but if they spent half the time developing the romantic angles as they did on showing the mano-a-mano punch outs, then they might have had a movie here.
They should let me direct, I think. ////
Tomorrow I will be watching the news along with most everyone else. We all know that this is going to be a scripted and phoney-baloney show on the part of the Republicans. I should note that, even as Democrat, when they first nominated this guy Kavanaugh, I thought, "well, he's a far right winger and he's going to be confirmed, but something seems off". It was his voice, when he gave his first "thank you" speech to Trump. His voice had an adenoidal quality to it that sounded forced. Elizabeth, who is a linguistics expert, might understand what I am talking about. I operate almost entirely on intuition in my life, but I am an expert myself on reading people. I can tell you where somebody is coming from, from a mile away, and Kavanaugh struck me as a phoney-baloney (and not just a typical right winger) from the moment he began to speak.
Beyond that, look at his face. Watch his body language. This guy is a f-kin liar, 100%.
So I hope to God these hearings go well tomorrow, because this particular group of Republican Senators and Congresspeople, headed up by Mitch McConnell, is the worst bunch in American history.
They know that because they have backed Donald Trump, that their whole party is about to go down the tubes, and so they are sticking with this total asshole Brett Kavanaugh, who lies and lies, and who was a privileged frat boy who advanced because of his stature in the Georgetown hierarchal scene.
I get really upset, because I dealt with my own experience with Jared Rappaport, a psychopath who lived next door to me, who posed - as all psychopaths do - as a "normal" accomplished person, in his case as a college professor at CSUN. And like Brett Kavanaugh, his bugaboo, his perversion, was sexual and violent.
These kinds of men are pure garbage and evil.
Listen to Brett Kavanaugh's voice as he speaks tomorrow. I will never forget Jared Rappoport's high pitched whine, which sounded just as unnatural.
May the truth come out about both men.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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