[ReformationFan]

Today's feature is one of the most important Westerns in cinema history. Conservative Republican superstar Gary Cooper has one of his signature roles as the hero of Owen Wister's classic Western novel. This is the one where Coop utters his great line: "Ya wanna call me that...Smile." Definitely one of the definitive cowboy films. Directed by Victor Fleming a decade before he made "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With The Wind".

[ReformationFan]

ping

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I just finished reading Wister’s book — highly recommended. I’ve been wanting to see this movie version — thanks for posting today.

[Mr Rogers]

I thought the book was unbearable. The TV series varied between pretty good to awful. How was the movie?

[balch3]

“The War on Powder River” by Helena Huntington Smith” is good background material for the historical events that inspired the novel and movie. Written in the 1930’s, but is still available. It was a range war between small ranchers and larger absentee owners-some from outside the United States, who termed the smaller outfits “rustlers.” It culminated in an armed standoff between the factions that took federal troops to quell. The Virginian’s author, Owen Wister, was friendly with the out of state cattlemen and the novel reflects that. The historical reality is much more ambiguous.

[gunsequalfreedom]

Movie for a Sunday afternoon. That would be after the football games are over, right?

[imardmd1]

Seen it and read the book as a child. But I like the more recent one with Bill Pullman. His Dad was my family physician back in the '50s and '60s. I drag the tape out overy so often and watch it.

I also read all of Zane Grey's novels, and Louis Lamour's as well. Owen Wister set the pace. What a wellspring of Western movie plots!

[greene66]

Some of my favorite westerns are early talkies... “Law and Order,” “Hell’s Heroes,” “To the Last Man,” “Gun Smoke,” etc. Probably because of the way that era was still presenting the western genre via the curiously stark and contrasting elements of the rugged grittiness of frontier life, right alongside the vintage worldview of romanticism left over from the Victorian times.

[Scrambler Bob]

M4L

[Silentgypsy]

Thank you!