Ben Johnson

[pvitari]

Batch 2 of screencaps from The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

Fingerpointing!

[pvitari]

Last batch! I've posted all the screencaps I made to the Ben webpage, including a few I didn't post here.







More fingerpointing!

[JackFavell]

Moira, thanks for posting that story. I am so glad you did, not only because of the Ben anecdote, but also because some of us had no idea that Alan Mowbray or Mowbray Jr. wrote any books at all. That is a real find!

[pvitari]

Anyone have a spare $385 sitting around? If you do, you can do a "buy it now" on eBay and get a pair of Ben's custom made boots. :)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ACTOR-BEN-JOHNS ... 758wt_1098




From the personal collection of Horse Rancher Andrew Yochem, we are pleased to offer this pair of beautiful cowboy boots owned by long time western actor and close friend of John Wayne, MR. BEN JOHNSON! This is a beautiful pair of custom, size 9 1/2E, Cowboy Boots made by Lucchese! This pair of custom boots is from the Andrew Yochem Estate. The original Letter of Provenance from Mr. Yochem will accompany this pair of boots as well as a photo of actor Ben Johnson.
Mr.Yochem was close friends with Mr. Johnson and when they were not working, they spent many hours together on the ranch of Mr. Yochem or Mr. Johnson. On one such visit to Mr. Johnson's ranch, Mr. Yochem was given this beautiful pair of boots to add to his personal western memorabilia collection.

Mr. Yochem acquired this pair of custom Lucchese Boots directly from his close personal friend, Mr. Ben Johnson!

[Maricatrin]

Anyone have a spare $385 sitting around? If you do, you can do a "buy it now" on eBay and get a pair of Ben's custom made boots.

Wow, they'd be great to own (and they'd probably fit me) but first I'd have to rob a bank, and that doesn't always turn out too well ....

[JackFavell]

Quick! If he's going down, you can steal his boots!

[pvitari]

Real life is a little busy right now so sadly I've slowed down a bit but I should have the 1981 Santa Fe Film Festival program book posted by tomorrow morning. Ben was honored at the festival, which saluted the Western genre, and this is in the program book (that's some hat!):



The contents of the program book are fascinating to any Western film fan. I'm sure you will all enjoy it once I get it onto the page. I bet Ben got a standing ovation at the festival.

[Maricatrin]

Quick! If he's going down, you can steal his boots!

Good idea ... gee, now I'm getting into Coffer and T.C. territory, my morals have really down downhill.

I did make an ebay purchase yesterday, albeit one of considerably lesser value than the boots: a 25 cent DVD of Stranger on My Land, which I bought for the Ben roping scene (no need to guess what I need it for.)

[pvitari]

You girls crack me up. :)

Mary-Kate, let us know what you think of Stranger on My Land. I love that action sequence with Ben, though for some reason the bit that I REALLY love is when he kicks down the fence (or is it a sign? can't remember) from the saddle.

The 1981 Santa Fe Film Festival program book is now at the webpage. That must have been SOME festival. The honorees included Ben, who attended a screening of Wagon Master, as well as Katy Jurado, Jack Palance, Buster Crabbe, King Vidor, Niven Busch, Charlton Heston, Sam Peckinpah and Lee Marvin. Films screened included rare treasures from the UCLA Film Archives, Lonely Are the Brave, The Hired Hand, Siringo, Que Viva Mexico!, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Rancho Deluxe, Duck, You Sucker!, and China 9, Liberty 37 (Warren Oates' last film with director Monte Hellman, and which also features a cameo performance by Sam Peckinpah). The festival also included presentations on Cowboys: The Saturday Matinee Idols, The Western Parody, The Western Hero, How the West Really Was, Indians - The Myth and the Reality, and The Western Producer. William Everson hosted several of these programs.

[pvitari]

A great big roll of the drum and a HUGE thank you to MoiraFinnie! I bought Alan Mowbray Jr's Snapshots From the Road, which is an utterly delightful book, and have posted information about it on my webpage, including scans of the cover, the Ben story, and a little picture of Alan Jr. taken in 2011. I was saddened to discover he lost his sight about 10 years ago due to undiagnosed glaucoma. :( But he has a wonderful guide dog named Ricky who he writes about in the book. He's also got a great chapter on the Bundy Drive Boys (John Decker, Errol Flynn, Gene Fowler, John Barrymore, etc.) who were close friends of his dad. Definitely worth a purchase! The scans are permanently installed in the Book section on the webpage, too.

The cover photo is Alan Jr. during his service in Korea


Moira also sent me a link to a terrific 2002 interview at the Archive of American Television webpage with David Dortort, the creator and executive producer of Bonanza and The High Chaparral in which he spends several minutes extolling Ben. (Dortort also produced The Restless Gun. Ben appeared in an episode of The Restless Gun, three episodes of Bonanza, and two of the Bonanza TV movies). The comments are in chapter 7 of the interview, minutes 5:19-6:40 and I highly recommend going to the page (http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews ... id-dortort) and listening to the entire interview. The interviewer was Henry Colman. Here, though, is a transcription of his comments about Ben:

Dortort: Then we did a second [TV movie, Bonanza: The Return] -- Lorne [Greene] had passed away -- and I brought in one of the best -- probably the best real cowboy I had ever worked with, who had worked for me as a stunt man, a man named Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson was an incredible guy. He was one of the nicest, most modest people who ever... Big, husky, wonderful. And he could ride a horse. Even as an older man. Noone ever could ride a horse the way Ben Johnson could ride a horse. The horse knew that he had a great rider, and the horse did everything -- and Ben was just absolutely marvelous as the foreman of the ranch. And he did two of -- three... -- and then Ben passed away. I'm surrounded by all these ghosts, you know.

Colman: Well, but they were very effective pictures... what now...

Dortort: Ben Johnson did...could be no better man playing an American cowboy than Ben Johnson.

Colman: And he won an Academy Award too.

Dortort: And he absolutely did, best actor.

THANK YOU, MOIRA!!!

[Maricatrin]

You girls crack me up.

Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!

Mary-Kate, let us know what you think of Stranger on My Land. I love that action sequence with Ben, though for some reason the bit that I REALLY love is when he kicks down the fence (or is it a sign? can't remember) from the saddle.

I will, when I get around to seeing the whole picture. The first thing I plan to do is locate the scenes I want to include in my video. By the way, I'm so glad I got my pre-order in for Tomboy and the Champ; I see that it's sold out on Amazon already! (and the price tag has gone up too). I guess that goes to show Ben Johnson still has a formidable fan base - as if I didn't already know.

P.S.
Some more great Ben stuff posted, thank you Paula and Moira!

[pvitari]

Amazon is the pits for ordering MOD discs -- you can wait forever. I hope your order ships soon, Mary-Kate. (Or has it shipped?) Apparently DVD Empire actually had one copy in stock, and I think it's on the way to me, along with another DVD. At least that's what their e-mail said. We'll see if it really arrives. Moviesunlimited also lists it.

OK, I have some super extra special stuff up on my web page today and I hope you all go there for a look-see. (http://benjohnsonscreencaps.shutterfly.com)

The Silver Spur Award is an award started by the Reno Chamber of Commerce to honor western stars and the first awards were given to John Wayne and John Ford, in May 1950. An absolutely amazing photo from the award ceremony on May 13 turned up on ebay, and I made sure I was the winner of THAT auction! (Fortunately, the photo went for what I can only call a low, low price...)



Love Ben's outfit (are those CHINOS he's wearing?) -- the one and only time I've ever seen him look like a suburban dad. Kind of like my dad in the 1950s, if my dad were tall, athletic and drop dead handsome. (Well, he did have the dark hair and blue eyes -- hair now grayish white but eyes still sparkling blue.)

I also dug up a nice color picture of John Wayne's plaque, and a newspaper article about the events, plus an ad for gala screenings of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Wagon Master with John Ford and the cast in attendance. Oh, how I wish I could travel back in time to Reno on May 12 and 13, 1950!





OK, now come over to the web page for a look at everything and BIG scans in the albums in the Memorabilia section.

[MissGoddess]

What a marvelous photo, I love it. It would have been fun to be there.

[MissGoddess]

I was just noticing the kerchiefs, tie and tie-less Ben. They're all so individualistic, these guys. Everyone has their own personality that shows in their style and yet it looks so un-studied. In Ben's case he was just a natural, Dobe too I'm sure. Ford studied how to look really sloppy sometimes. They're all so cute. And this is one of the handsomest candids of Ben I've seen.

[pvitari]

The irony is that in Company of Heroes, Harry Carey Jr. said as a young man he dressed in your basic men's style -- blazer, slacks, etc., and that Ben would scoff at him, calling them "jellybean clothes." And now here is Dobe in his suit with bandana tie, and Ben looking as non-cowboy as I've ever seen him outside of a movie role. (Though if you look closely you can see he's wearing a Western-style belt buckle.)

I got bored with the orange color on my page and switched it to taupe and brown. Wonder how long that color scheme will last. :) Shutterfly does not give you a lot of options for colors, and at least half of them I don't like at all, at least not for a webpage about a cowboy. :) Let's just say I'm never going to switch to pink. :)