| Chapter 8: | The Movies |
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
-shaven and polite and always removed his hat when greeting a lady. But what I enjoyed most about his films was the absence of a musical soundtrack. There were moments of silence in his movies. Sound was introduced at the appropriate moments: when people talked, when horses’ hooves hit the dirt in the road, when punches were landed in fist fights, when guns were fired, when a whiskey bottle hit a whiskey glass.
Tim McCoy returned to his wife Helen after years of amnesia in “Texas Cyclone,” a film in which John Wayne played a supporting role. Utah Becker had hit Tim McCoy in the head causing the loss of memory. Becker was not clean-shaven and never fought fairly. Tim fought the final and decisive gun battle with Becker after Becker announced that Helen was leading an immoral life.
Jack Holt was another one of my favorite early cowboy stars. I was pleased that Dick Tracy looked like him. To me it made Dick Tracy a square shooter like Jack Holt. I enjoyed reading western novels as a teenager. Among my favorites were Fran Striker’s The Lone Ranger and the Outlaw Stronghold and H. C. Thomas, Red Ryder and the Adventure at Chimney Rock. Red Ryder is described as “tall and tanned and leather-hard.”
My favorite writer of westerns was Ernest Haycox. His short story “Stage to Lordsburg,” was adapted for the movie “Stagecoach” starring John Wayne.
When I was a kid, I went to the Saturday matinees at the Rex with the Braves. We had to sit in the boys’ section and the girls sat in their area. We were very noisy and the matron, a big woman in a white uniform, kept aiming her flashlight at us while hollering “Keep quiet.” One Saturday we were there to see “Keep ’em