Oh, wouldn't that be delightful if there could be one epi where all the sidekick/deputies storm off together after some incident with their boss makes them go off the deep end? Just based on Chester and Festus' longer and more varied life experience, I think the pair of them could easily have sold Johnny McKay the Brooklyn Bridge, a stuffed jackalope, and the map to The Lost Dutchman's mine. Then, all three Maverick boys could have gotten them into a "friendly" poker game and skinned 'em alive.MissGoddess wrote:This thread has been more entertaining to me than most of the epis of "Lawman" I've seen so far. I missed the one with Virginia Gregg...it sounds like an exception.
Moira, you have me rolling with your references to Peter Brown's astuteness. Are you saying Chester and Festus could have sold him a swamp? I guess it is a perogative that deputies have to be a smidge less sharp than their boss, though "Gunsmoke" gave the boys opportunities to break that stereotype from time to time.
I looked around the internet and Russell is almost always wearing a hat no matter what role he played. It doesn't matter if he helped nature along, but I wish he'd had a designated "hair fluffer" on Lawman so that it wouldn't be quite so noticeable. One movie that I have seen and in which I believe we see Mr. Russell's own tonsorial splendor is Yellow Sky (1949).MissGoddess wrote:I also agree about Russell's arresting features, ha. That hair is rather mesmerizing. I can't figure it out. But with a stetson on he is mighty fine. My one feature film recollection for him is from a disturbingly sadistic scene in John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright, which vividly illustrated how much more screwed up the white folks were in that idyllic little community.
If you know the movie Yellow Sky, you might remember this scene when John Russell, Harry Morgan and Richard Widmark are bellying up to the bar for a drink (in the exact same saloon that Wellman opened The Ox Bow Incident with years before ). Russell, gazing lovingly at the painting of a near naked Mazeppa on the back of a horse behind the bar, wonders aloud, "I wonder if she has any plans for later?"
I haven't seen The Sun Shines Bright since I was about 8 so my conscious memory of it is quite vague. Don't tell anyone, but I haven't seen every John Ford movie in existence...like some peopleMissGoddess wrote:My one feature film recollection for him is from a disturbingly sadistic scene in John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright, which vividly illustrated how much more screwed up the white folks were in that idyllic little community
I started to watch that Gunsmoke, but when I saw that Denver Pyle and his inbred offspring were going to be the centerpiece of that episode, I gave up. I just can't spend any more time with troubled family members (unless they are in my family), you know what I mean. I'm with Marshal Dillon's first instinct.MissGoddess wrote:I like what you all bring out about the lawman's code of fairness. I ahve't seen enough of "Lawman" to say much, but I like the early episodes of "Gunsmoke" because I often see Matt struggling with the confines of the letter of the law. Yesterday, for instance, he was just busting to get Denver Pyle and his boys (who made the Clantons in My Darling Clementine seem like graduates of M.I.T.). AT one point he even yells "If I could, I'd hang you and your ape-sons from the highest tree in Kansas!" Boy, was I ever in agreement. I have noticed watching these western shows is making me more blood thirsty. During the entire show I was fervently wishing for the death of Pyle and his goon-boys. Not an acceptable development in my character.