Gunsmoke or Bonanza...discuss

[JackFavell]

Wow. I don;t care if those shots are fuzzy. There beautiful anyeway.

[MissGoddess]

Moira, thank you for that info on "The High Chapparal" German DVD and the youtube channel. You are such a marvel at unearthing these things! I will look into both. I may ask my mother to see if she can find the Amazon dvd cheaper over there and send it to me.

I like Henry Darrow a lot, and I imagine his autobiography would be interesting. Isn't Linda Cristal still alive? I wonder why she is not mentioned to appear at the reunion, unless it's health.

[moira finnie]

I like Henry Darrow a lot, and I imagine his autobiography would be interesting. Isn't Linda Cristal still alive? I wonder why she is not mentioned to appear at the reunion, unless it's health.

I think Linda Cristal was mentioned on that newsletter site for The High Chap and it said she was working on a project, but wasn't ready to discuss it publicly just yet. I bet she could tell some tales about working with all those guys on the show, not to mention working with Ford, Widmark, Stewart, & the one and only Woody Strode.

[klondike]

A major reason for my general lack of enthusiasm for "High Chapparal" was the casting of Cameron Mitchell as Buck Cannon . . I could just never seem to move past my memory of Mitchell as Gary Cooper's mongrel-dog tag-along in the off-beat Western The Garden of Evil, wherein he kept see-sawing between hair-trigger belligerence & self-loathing crying jags.
Not fair to the actor or his body of work, granted, but goes to the power of first impressions, I guess.

[Rita Hayworth]

A major reason for my general lack of enthusiasm for "High Chapparal" was the casting of Cameron Mitchell as Buck Cannon . .
Not fair to the actor or his body of work, granted, but goes to the power of first impressions, I guess.

I agree with Klondike ... I've never like High Chapparel at all because of Cameron Mitchell. Cameron Mitchell to me is one of those actors that I don't like at all. I just don't like his style, his mannerisms, his demeanor, and I had great difficulty following him on films and on television. He is one of my least favorite Western Stars on Television ... I watched High Chapparel with an open mind ... but my first impressions of this show ... was this show is not good as Gunsmoke or Bonanza. To me, its 2nd tier TV Westerns.

[MissGoddess]

I can usually deal with a performer I'm not crazy about so long as they are part of an ensemble and the show isn't built around them.
Mitchell is funny to me as "Buck", so opposite to his brother. But he certainly was no oil painting, ha.

I do not like and never have cared anything about Michael Landon, but I still enjoy "Bonanza" (though the later ones less so, as I said) for the other performers.

[moira finnie]

Hey, quit picking on the original Uncle Buck!


Sure, Cameron Mitchell was hammy as all get out in that part as the sweaty, but sincere, fun-loving, free-spirited Buck, who was recently a member of the Confederate forces, (I always wondered if his personality quirks stemmed from that experience and his equally sincere desire to be a camera-hog). I like the ol' reprobate, and besides, the stories usually concerned someone else in the cast or a guest star. As Miss G. said earlier, even she likes him (when he gets cleaned up)--and I think our resident Goddess has very high standards! :!:

Besides all that, Mitchell was great in one of the most lachrymose family flicks of all time: All Mine to Give (1957)


He played Robert Eunson, an adventurous Scot who emigrated to Canada after marrying his "fearchara," Glynis Johns. Soon the pair of them are out on the edge of the wilderness living in a cool log cabin and have more bairns than they can count, including "The Bad Seed" herself, Patty McCormack (she's an okay kid in this one, not a psycho, though she still wears her braids too tight) and the ultimate '50s freckle-faced boy, Steve Wootton, seen below.


I'm telling ya--have two boxes of kleenex at the ready if you watch this one. And don't watch it at yuletide, or your eyes will be awfully red on Christmas Day.

I now step down from my soap box and return this thread to the dullness of Bonanza and Gunsmoke. (Yes, I am only kidding and live by the words, "to each his own").

[MissGoddess]

Oh, I forgot he was in ALL MINE TO GIVE. That really is one of the tear-jerkers of all time. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw the movie. I kept thinking it's going to get better, it's going to get better...I'm referring to the circumstances in the story, not the quality of the movie. Talk about a sad story.

[stuart.uk]

Sorry April

But who remade All Mine To Give, but Michael Landon in an episode of Little House On The Prairie with Patrica Neal as a dying widow who had children. Mr. Edwards proposed to his widowed girlfriend Grace and adopted the children

[moira finnie]

Oh, I forgot he was in ALL MINE TO GIVE. That really is one of the tear-jerkers of all time. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw the movie. I kept thinking it's going to get better, it's going to get better...I'm referring to the circumstances in the story, not the quality of the movie. Talk about a sad story.

We must have been posting simultaneously in defense of Buck. I like your phrase "he's no oil painting," which made me chortle. I've never really been able to decide if All Mine to Give is good, bad or just manipulative as hell. It is compelling viewing, in any case, and, God knows, triple tragedies like those depicted befell many pioneer families. All I'm sure of after catching a few minutes of AMTG the other day was that Reta Shaw was EVIL.

[mrsl]

.
When he first came on the scene, I often confused him with John Garfield, it took a while to realize the curly hair belonged to Cameron but to me they looked very similar to each other. In any case, I preferred Cameron over John because he wasn't so tense all the time. I also loved him as the bad guy in Carousel..

As a quick P.S., is The High Chapparral on TV at any time right now? I haven't seen it listed, but I may not have the station it's on. Sorry I didn't use my search engine, but I didn't want to lose what I had already typed.

[moira finnie]

.


As a quick P.S., is The High Chapparral on TV at any time right now? I haven't seen it listed, but I may not have the station it's on. Sorry I didn't use my search engine, but I didn't want to lose what I had already typed.

As far as I know it was last broadcast on The Hallmark Channel, as Miss G. mentioned above. You might want to look at The High Chaparral Newsletter that is mentioned a few posts back to see if there's more info there, Mrs.L

[klondike]

Sure, Cameron Mitchell was hammy as all get out in that part as the sweaty, but sincere, fun-loving, free-spirited Buck . . . I like the ol' reprobate . .
As Miss G. said earlier, even she likes him (when he gets cleaned up)--and I think our resident Goddess has very high standards! :!:

Moira, your affectionate memories of Buck Cannon put me in mind of a similar Old West scoundrel . . also an Uncle, and also appearing on a family ranch series . . . Inger Cartwright's brother, the infamous Gunnar Borgstrom, who appeared in two episodes of "Bonanza" - but forget about the 1830's Illinois flashback tale - check out our old pal Neville Brand, assigning the role when the roguish Uncle Gunnar encounters his estranged nephew as a full-size grown-up:
{afraid the only embed was an all-in-one, but at least peruse it 'til the intro!}

[youtube][/youtube]

[pvitari]

A brief detour... before he was a singing cowboy, Ken Curtis was a big band singer. :) Here he is singing with the Shep Fields band. :)

[youtube][/youtube]

[moira finnie]

FYI to those who get the cable channel Encore Western:

Saddle up and ride your pony over to the Long Branch Saloon to hoist a parting glass to the memory of Mr. James Arness, who made it look easy for so long. The presence of the late Arness is celebrated all weekend long on June 11th and 12th in a marathon of choice Gunsmoke episodes as well as movies.