WESTERN NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH (***)
This silent film tells the epic tale of a New York engineer sent out West to tame the mighty Colorado River with the promise of bringing water to the California desert to turn it into a prosperous paradise, but avaricious motives are soon revealed. There’s also a love triangle with Willard Holmes (Ronald Coleman), the stodgy engineer, vying with rugged cowboy Abe Lee (Gary Cooper) for the affections of child of the desert, Barbara Worth (Vilma Banky).
WESTERN NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: AT GUNPOINT (**)
More melodrama than drama, AT GUNPOINT features Fred MacMurray as Jack Wright, the owner of the general store in the town of Plainview, who’s never handled a gun before but his very lucky shot wounds a bank robber who’s then shot dead by a local rancher. The robber’s brother, Bob Dennis (Skip Homeier), vows cruel vengeance.
WESTERN NIGHT AT THE MOVIES YELLOW SKY (***)
David Morrell chose the tough, tense and engaging YELLOW SKY (1948) for our April Western Night at the Movies viewing. This story of dust, lust and avarice set in what remains of the grim and gritty desert town of Yellow Sky concerns a mangy band...
Larry McMurtry, Author
I never met Larry McMurtry, but I was greatly saddened when I read that he died of heart failure yesterday, March 25, at the age of 84. He was the author of 29 books and 30 screenplays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for LONESOME DOVE and shared an...
WESTERN NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: FIRST COW (**)
This amusingly titled film tells the story of a couple of 1820s entrepreneurs, a cook named Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro) and King Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant Cookie finds cold and shivering in the Oregon woods.
WESTERN NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: NEWS OF THE WORLD (** ½)
It was Kirk Ellis’s choice for our February film and he chose last year’s NEWS OF THE WORLD.
Based on the novel of the same name by Paulette Jiles, a National Book Award finalist (which I have not read), the story is set five years after the end of the Civil War in Reconstruction Texas still occupied by Union army soldiers.
