WOW! So Marion Morrison went from "The Big Chair" to "The Big Trail"! It was a box-office flop, but a great "vehicle" to deliver John Wayne!
Quote of the Day: Raoul Walsh, storyteller More on filming Pancho Villa ‘By the way, before I went down, Griffith told me, “You know, we have no story to do of Villa’s life, so while you are on the train you will probably think up some story. Either that or get shot.” So I kept thinking about stories on the way down. I had nothing else to do. I kept about 8 possible stories in mind until I could see this bum and see how he would react. They led me in to Villa, and he was sitting there with his goddamn bug hat on and he was loaded with bullets and guns and he had a big black moustache.
That was an interesting video, Joe. I didn't know there was a Tyrone Power (Sr). Sneaking in a still shot of the wagons on the cliff, in case someone missed the video. Amazing.
Jeff Arnold's West The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans "One of the great larger-than-life figures of the Western movie was the rollicking Raoul Walsh. Albert Edward Walsh (Raoul was a much more dashing name he invented for himself) was born in New York in March 1887 and died in California in December 1980 aged 93." "He would have been The Cisco Kid in 1928 but a jackrabbit jumped through his car windshield, causing him to lose an eye and the part and to wear that piratic eyepatch for the rest of his life - like André De Toth. (John Ford and Nicholas Ray adopted them too, even with two eyes). Walsh's stand-in as Cisco, Warner Baxter, won an Oscar for his part in the movie." "In 1930 Walsh brought a Fox prop boy named Marion Morrison to the screen in the epic wagon-train picture The Big Trail and gave him the name John Wayne. It was a huge film (released separately in German and Spanish versions) and extremely influential in the genre. But the Wall Street crash and subsequent depression did for epic pictures from Fox, and also did for John Wayne's new-found stardom, which was not to revive seriously until John Ford, a director who greatly admired Walsh (almost wanted to be him) used Wayne in Stagecoach, and pretended that he, not Walsh, had 'discovered' Duke." "He was a masculine, not to say macho character and was famed for his fast, loud lifestyle. He was six feet tall and sported a slightly caddish mustache with the eyepatch. He was thrice married. He chuckled at what was said of him, that “your idea of light comedy is to burn down a whorehouse”. It is said that he borrowed John Barrymore’s corpse from a funeral parlor to frighten a drunken Errol Flynn. The very names of his pictures proclaimed the machismo. In the 1940s, for example, he directed Desperate Journey, They Died With Their Boots On, Manpower, The Strawberry Blonde, High Sierra, They Drive By Night, Dark Command and The Roaring Twenties. Even if you’ve never seen those movies you get a sense of them, and Walsh, from such titles."
Joseph Henaberry, played Lincoln Although Henabery's impersonation of Lincoln was a masterpiece of facial makeup, the 6'1" (185 cm) Henabery was three inches shorter than the 6'4" (193 cm) Lincoln. Kevin Brownlow's book The Parade's Gone By (1968) contains a photo of Henabery in costume and makeup as Lincoln, seated in a chair with planks placed on the floor under Henabery's feet so that his knees are raised several inches; this effect (with the planks kept off-camera in the movie) made Henabery's legs appear longer than they actually were.
Speaking of height... "the internet says" ... Humphrey Bogart was 5'8" and Raoul Walsh was just over 6'. And from a distance Joseph Henaberry looked just like Lincoln, to me ... until he laughed. Strange, but I've never even imagined Lincoln laughing.
That too, but most of the few things I've read concern the time after he became the president. It just seems like he had more than anyone's fair share of misfortune, and problems, late in life.
This post may prove to be a "re-hash", but it's a good one....... What the Cowboy Life Taught Raoul Walsh "Before he was old enough to vote, Walsh had already seen more adventure than most filmmakers do in a lifetime. He was born in New York in 1887 to a Spanish mother and Irish father. In America, Thomas Walsh designed men’s clothing; one of his clients was a sharp-dressing young officer named George Armstrong Custer. Young Raoul grew up surrounded by the rich and famous; houseguests included the tenor Enrico Caruso, showman Buffalo Bill Cody, millionaire glutton Diamond Jim Brady and artist Frederic Remington."