MALE MATTERS Old west trivia: FACT, FICTION, AND HOLLYWOOD by Elliot Goldenberg I just finished watching a terrific movie, Open Range, starring Kevin Costner, Robert Duval, and Annette Bening, which, in my opinion, is one of the best westerns ever made, right up there with The Outlaw Josey Wales and the original version of The Magnificent Seven {a true horse opera classic featuring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and Robert Vaughn), not to be confused with the poor man’s version starring Denzel Washington. Not that I have anything against Denzel – I think he’s great, actually – it’s just that you can’t remake perfection, just like, no matter how hard you try, you can’t copy a Michael Jordan or a daVinci. Imagine a new interpretation of, say, Gone With the Wind, Citizen Caine, Casablanca, or The Godfather? It just doesn’t work. That being said, this past year Hollywood filmmakers got the bright idea to splash a fresh coat of paint on Ben Hur, a movie that, to no one’s surprise, fizzled at the box office. Food for thought for trivia mavens of the Old West: Do you know who wrote the story the multi-Oscar version of Ben Hur (with Charlton Heston) was based on? The answer is Lew Wallace, the governor of New Mexico during the time of the Lincoln County War of the early 1880s. It was Wallace who also callously betrayed a young gunslinger taking part in the fight, and to whom Wallace had promised amnesty, named William Bonney, better known to history as Billy the Kid. As far as the “Kid” goes, there have been dozens of movies and books written about him, not all of them particularly accurate. But like Mark Twain famously said, tongue-in-cheek, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” When it comes to the Western, after all, Hollywood often takes the myth by the hand – and runs with it. But, often, the truth can be more interesting than fiction. Then again, sometimes it’s hard to tell where the truth ends – and the myth begins. Here are a few tidbits you may find interesting. Davey Crockett, the famed frontiersman who led a colorful life that ended at the Alamo, was never known as Davey; he called himself David Crockett. “Davey” was an invention of the Walt Disney Studio, probably a good idea because, back then, just about every boy in America had his parents buy a Davey Crockett coonskin cap. Bat Masterson, meanwhile, is a western hero who had a life probably more interesting than anything Hollywood could have cooked up. I became interested in Masterson when, as a little urchin, I began watching the Bat Masterson TV show starring Gene Barry. Besides his friendship with the famed Wyatt Earp, in real life the colorful Masterson – a lawman and gambler – also befriended a rich “dude” named Teddy Roosevelt, moved to New York City, where he became a sportswriter, and, as a reporter for a paper called the New York Examiner, took a train back west to Reno to cover the “Great White Hope” heavyweight championship fight between Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson. As for the legendary Earp, toward the end of his life, he was an advisor on a movie set in Hollywood where he took a young stuntman named Marion Morrison under his wing. Morrison would later change his name to John Wayne. Meanwhile, The Magnificent Seven’s Robert Vaughn died this past year, and a few months earlier, I had seen an interview of Vaughn where he reminisced that he was “the last man standing” from that great cast – now, sadly, all gone. When I read Vaughn’s obituary I recalled some great scenes from the classic film, including the one where James Coburn shoots a horseback-riding bandito, who’s probably 50 yards away, with a sixgun. “That’s the best shot I ever saw!” exclaims an awe-stricken young gunfighter. “The worst,” Coburn snaps. “I was aiming for the horse.” As I said: perfection P 58 MAY <strong>2017</strong>
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