Chris Recommends

The few Westerns seen on television during the early 1950s starred old-style movie heroes such as the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Casssidy, and had little to do with the real West.  Westerns were considered another form of obvious fantasy strictly for kids.  Two shows, Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp changed all that.  These two programs, which premiered during the same week in 1955, introduced the “adult Western” to TV, and began an enormous wave of Westerns on TV over the next ten years.  Gunsmoke had it genesis on CBS radio in the spring of 1952.  William Conrad was the voice of Marshal Matt Dillon but when CBS decided to take the series to television they wanted John Wayne to play the part.  Wayne turned it down but suggested James Arnez for the role.  Arness proved to be perfect casting for the role of the heroic marshal.  Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City, Kansas, around 1880.  Once you spend some time enjoying the reruns of the Gunsmoke series I recommend a trip to Dodge City.  It is a wonderful town with a fascinating history and the people there are some of the most decent you’d ever meet.  Gunsmoke ran from September 10, 1955 to September 1, 1975.

Support Your Local Sheriff uses as the basis for its comedy the many clichés that have become part and parcel of the Western genre.  Whether it’s the town dominated by a tyrant, the never-missing gunfighter, the absolutely pure hero, the chaste but unchased maiden , the growth of the territory – they’re all dealt with and done under, by demolishing dialogue or just enough exaggeration to point up the ridiculous in even the most respectable circumstances.  James Garner is delightful as the ‘stranger’ riding into town on his way to Australia, so modes, yet so perfect in his various abilities – never missing a shot, turning the town derelict into his deputy, outthinking the Danbys (a superb quartet of villains) outwitting the attempts of the mayor’s daughter to land him until he’s ready.  The action almost never moves beyond the tiny town’s limits, and the community itself seems just enough exaggerated to let the audience know that it’s not to be taken seriously.  It’s just a well written comedy.

Director Walter Hill’s superior movie The Long Riders (1980) was an accurate depiction of the James gang’s Northfield, Minnesota bank raid, starring Stacy Keach as Frank, and his brother James (looking like William S. Hart) playing Jesse.  It’s told in gory, post-Peckinpah fashion, complete with slow-motion gunplay, whizzing bullet sound effects and a twanging Ry Cooder score.  It’s a fantastic film and one of the best westerns ever made.

The Richmond Timed Dispatched called author Sharyn McCrumb’s book “a novel of mesmerizing beauty and power.” I was captivated at how McCrumb tied two stories together in one novel – set apart by at least a hundred and twenty years. This book starts out with sheriff Spencer Arrowood recovering from a shotgun wound, and his recollection of sending a young man to death row. Fate Harkryder was accused of murdering a young couple in such a heinous way that in spite of his claims of innocence, no one believed him in their rush for justice. While Arrowood is recovering, he finds himself intrigued with the case of Frankie Silver, a young mother who was accused of murdering her husband and butchering his body so that there’s three grave sites for him. McCrumb writes in great detail of Frankie’s trial, observed by the young clerk of court, Burgess Gaither, who tells her tale so vividly that I actually broke down in tears at one point. And Arrowood rushes to find out who really did murder the young college couple that fateful night, twenty years ago, Fate or someone else?

The stories of Fate and Frankie are tied up beautifully and examines the strength of family ties that bind even in death. This is one of the most provocative novels I have read in a long time. It addresses the legal system (which is deeply flawed as portrayed in this novel) and the issue of capital punishment. It is definitely a worthwhile read.