Now, it makes me as tight in the throat as that "Republic" quote.
Great film, historical warts be damned. It's a shame that it's original cut has been lost. There are websites that discuss restoration efforts on another longer cut, a full copy of which was found in a Canadian theater.
I’ve got a version on video tape where Crockett lets Emil Sand have it right in the heart with Bowie’s knife. That scene was edited out in a later release, and I believe was omitted too during a showing on TCM. Great music there too.
But I’ve got a confession to make in that I find the 2004 version much grittier, and the scorer, Carter Burwell, was also very much up to the task of paying tribute, as it were, to Tiomkin. The story stays reasonably well with Walter Lord’s “A Time To Stand”. And the scene where the tubuculosis ridden Bowie’s sister-in-law hovers over him to become, in his eyes, his own dead wife for one last fleeting moment, is one of the greatest scenes in all cinema, IMHO.
There. I got it out.