The books in this section focus on the actors and directors that contributed to making the Western an iconic genre of filmmaking.
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Television Western Players of the Fifties
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Television Western Players
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Shooting Stars of the Small Screen
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Horizons West
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Everett Aaker. Television Western Players of the Fifties: A Biographical Encyclopedia of All Regular Cast Members in Western Series, 1949-1959. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1997.
From Amazon: Modeled after the Mack V. Wright 1920 film version, the 1949 western television series The Lone Ranger made Clayton Moore's masked character one of the most recognized in American popular culture. Other westerns followed and by 1959 there were 32 being shown daily on prime time television. Many of the stars of the nearly 75 westerns went on to become American icons and symbols of the Hollywood West. This encyclopedia includes every actor and actress who had a regular role in a television western from 1949 through 1959. The entries cite biographical and family details, accounts of how the player first broke into show business, and details of roles played, as well as opinions from the actors and their contemporaries. A full accounting of film, serial, and television credits is also included. The appendix lists 84 television westerns, with dates, show times, themes, and stars. |
Everett Aaker. Television Western Players, 1960-1975: A Biographical Dictionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2017.
From Google Books: This biographical encyclopedia covers every actor and actress who had a regular role in a Western series on American television from 1960 through 1975, with analyses of key players. The entries provide birth and death dates, family information, and accounts of each player’s career, with a cross-referenced videography. An appendix gives details about all Western series, network or syndicated, 1960–1975. The book is fully indexed. |
Douglas Brode. Shooting Stars of the Small Screen: Encyclopedia of TV Western Actors, 1946-Present. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009.
From Google Books: Since the beginning of television, Westerns have been playing on the small screen. From the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, they were on of TV's most popular genres, with million of viewers tuning in to such popular shows as Rawhide, Gunsmoke, and Disney's Davy Crockett. Though the cultural revolution of the later 1960s contributed to the demise of traditional Western programs, the Western never actually disappeared from TV. Instead, it took on new forms, such as the highly popular Lonesome Dove and Deadwood, while exploring the lives of characters who never before had a starring role, including anti-heroes, mountain men, farmers, Native and African Americans, Latinos, and women. Shooting Stars of the Small Screen is a comprehensive encyclopedia of more than 450 actors who received star billing or played a recurring character role in a TV Western series or made-for-TV Western movie of miniseries from the late 1940s up to 2008. Douglas Brode covers the highlights of each actor's career, including Western movie work, if significant, to give a full sense of the actor's screen persona(s). Within the entries are discussions of scores of popular Western TV shows that explore how these programs both reflected and impacted the social world in which they aired. Brode opens the encyclopedia with a fascinating history of the TV Western that traces its roots in B Western movies, while also showing how TV Westerns developed their own unique storytelling conventions. |
Jim Kitses. Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood.London: British Film Institute, 2007.
From Amazon: When first published in 1969, Horizons West was immediately recognized as the definitive critical account of the Western film and some of its key directors. This greatly expanded new edition is, like the original, written in a graceful, penetrating and absorbingly readable style. |
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The Western Legends Live On
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Last of the Cowboy Heroes
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William S. Hart
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Arthur Kennedy
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No Name on the Bullet
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Charlie LeSueur. The Western Legends Live On: Tales and Interviews with the Cowboy Stars of the Silver Screen. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2nd Edition, 2017.
From Amazon: In 1998, western film historian, Charlie LeSueur, wrote his first book based on interviews with the cowboy stars of the silver screen who were still with us. Names like Lash LaRue, Harry Carey, Jr., John Smith, Ben Johnson, Gene Autry and many more. Since then Charlie has become friends with many of the silver screen cowboys and in this 20 year update has revised and updated many of the stories in the first edition. The Western Legends Live On: Tales and Interviews with the Cowboy Stars of the Silver Screen is one of the most incisive and comprehensive books on many of our favorites from film and television. |
Robert Nott. Last of the Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2000.
From Amazon: In the world of Western films, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy have frequently been overlooked in favor of names like Roy Rogers and John Wayne. Yet these three actors played a crucial role in the changing environment of the post-World War II Western, and, in the process, made many excellent middle-budget films that are still a pleasure to watch. This account of these three Western stars' careers begins in 1946, when Scott and McCrea committed themselves to the Western roles they would play for nearly twenty years. Murphy, who also joined them in 1946, would continue his Western career for a few years after his cohorts rode into the film sunset. Arranged chronologically, and balanced among the three actors, the text concludes with Audie Murphy's last Western in 1967. Covering both the personal and professional lives of these three Hollywood cowboys, the book provides both their stories and the story of a Hollywood whose attitude toward the Western was in a time of transition and transformation. The text is complemented by 60 photographs and a filmography for each of the three. |
Ronald L. Davis. William S. Hart: Projecting the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
From Amazon: Stage actor turned Hollywood star, William S. Hart (1864―1946) was for movie fans a cherished symbol of the romantic Old West. His silent westerns offered excitement, lessons in righteous behavior, and a nostalgic vision of the American frontier. This intriguing biography explores the personal and professional life of Hollywood’s prototypical cowboy hero. Born in Newburgh, New York, Hart grew up in a Victorian atmosphere that gave rise to the rigid morality prevalent in many of his films. From 1914 to 1924, he appeared in or produced more than sixty movies, but it was not until he abandoned Shakespearean characters for parts in The Squaw Man and The Virginian that Hart truly assumed his western persona. For the first time, readers are given insights into Hart’s somewhat lonely and tragic personal life, his quarrels with exploitive studios, and his association with such latter-day frontier legends as Charles M. Russell, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp, who regarded him as a kindred spirit. Other highlights of this book include excerpts from his previously unpublished letters to starlet Jane Novak, Hart’s one-time fiancée, as well as numerous photographs from studio and private collections. Drawing on Hart’s papers, primary sources of the Motion Picture Academy, oral histories, and contemporary newspapers, this chronicle of Hart’s life is the first since his own starry-eyed autobiography, My Life East and West, appeared in 1929. More about William S. Hart. |
Meredith C. Macksoud. Arthur Kennedy, Man of Characters. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2003.
From Amazon: “Basically, all parts are character parts. The problem of the actor is to protect the differences in a character: to identify that the character being portrayed has his own personality traits. He has to find things within himself to establish these differences. I’m best when I portray not good guys, or bad guys, but human guys. These are the people I understand.” Arthur Kennedy’s words speak volumes about the kind of actor he was, one sought by both Hollywood and Broadway to be in dramas involving real people struggling with real problems. His many talents were recognized with several Academy Award nominations and the winning of a Golden Globe and a Tony award. This work covers Kennedy’s film and stage career, film-by-film and play-by-play, and provides pictures, synopses, and commentary for each one. Acting anecdotes from Kennedy himself or from his peers in film and on stage, such as Errol Flynn, Elia Kazan, James Cagney, Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, and many others, bedizen the commentary. Among the films and plays included are Joy in the Morning, Henry IV Part I, Strange Alibi, High Sierra, Bad Men, Desperate Journey, Cheyenne, The Window and Champion. More about Arthur Kennedy. |
Don Graham. No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990.
From Amazon: Profiles the baby-faced soldier who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor and became the most decorated soldier in American history as a teenager and went on to become a Hollywood star before slipping into a life of dissolution. More about Audie Murphy. |
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King of the Cowboys
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Duke
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John Wayne
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Wayne and Ford
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The First One Hundred Men and Women
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Raymond E. White. King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
From Amazon: "This is a book that every Roy Rogers and Dale Evans fan should have in their collection. It contains Raymond White's informative and extensive research and is a must read for those who want to learn more about the King and Queen of the West."--Dick Baxter, Dale Evans's Manager "White presents a wealth of new, carefully organized, and highly readable information—the largest source I have seen yet on the professional careers of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. A detailed narrative is accompanied by thorough reference materials that point fans to recordings, videos, comics, and memorabilia."—Gary A. Yoggy, professor emeritus of history at Corning Community College, editor of "Back in the Saddle: Essays on Western Film and Television Actors" and author of "Riding the Video Range: The Rise and Fall of the Western on Television" More about Roy Rogers. More about Dale Evans. |
Ronald L. Davis. Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
From Amazon: Almost two decades after his death, John Wayne is still America’s favorite movie star. More than an actor, Wayne is a cultural icon whose stature seems to grow with the passage of time. In this illuminating biography, Ronald L. Davis focuses on Wayne’s human side, portraying a complex personality defined by frailty and insecurity as well as by courage and strength. Davis traces Wayne’s story from its beginnings in Winterset, Iowa, to his death in 1979. This is not a story of instant fame: only after a decade in budget westerns did Wayne receive serious consideration, for his performance in John Ford’s 1939 film Stagecoach. From that point on, his skills and popularity grew as he appeared in such classics as Fort Apache, Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, The Searches, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, and True Grit. A man’s ideal more than a woman’s, Wayne earned his popularity without becoming either a great actor or a sex symbol. In all his films, whatever the character, John Wayne portrayed John Wayne, a persona he created for himself: the tough, gritty loner whose mission was to uphold the frontier’s--and the nation’s--traditional values. To depict the different facets of Wayne’s life and career, Davis draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, most notably exclusive interviews with the people who knew Wayne well, including the actor’s costar Maureen O’Hara and his widow, Pilar Wayne. The result is a well-balanced, highly engaging portrait of a man whose private identity was eventually overshadowed by his screen persona--until he came to represent America itself. More about John Wayne. |
Scott Eyman. John Wayne: The Life and Legend. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2014.
From Google Books: The New York Times bestselling biography of John Wayne: “authoritative and enormously engaging…Eyman takes you through Wayne’s life, his death, and his legend in a detailed, remarkably knowledgeable yet extremely readable way” (Peter Bogdanovich, The New York Times Book Review). John Wayne died more than thirty years ago, but he remains one of today’s five favorite movie stars. The celebrated Hollywood icon comes fully to life in this complex portrait by noted film historian and master biographer Scott Eyman. Exploring Wayne’s early life with a difficult mother and a feckless father, “Eyman gets at the details that the bean-counters and myth-spinners miss…Wayne’s intimates have told things here that they’ve never told anyone else” (Los Angeles Times). Eyman makes startling connections to Wayne’s later days as an anti-Communist conservative, his stormy marriages to Latina women, and his notorious—and surprisingly long-lived—passionate affair with Marlene Dietrich. He also draws on the actor’s own business records and, of course, his storied film career. “We all think we know John Wayne, in part because he seemed to be playing himself in movie after movie. Yet as Eyman carefully lays out, ‘John Wayne’ was an invention, a persona created layer by layer by an ambitious young actor” (The Washington Post). This is the most nuanced and sympathetic portrait available of the man who became a symbol of his country at mid-century, a cultural icon and quintessential American male against whom other screen heroes are still compared. More about John Wayne. |
Nancy Schoenberger. Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero. New York: Nan A Talese/Doubleday, 2017.
From Google Books: For more than twenty years John Ford and John Wayne were a blockbuster Hollywood team, turning out many of the finest Western films ever made. Ford, known for his black eye patch and for his hard-drinking, brawling masculinity, was a son of Irish immigrants and was renowned as a director for both his craftsmanship and his brutality. John “Duke” Wayne was a mere stagehand and bit player in “B” Westerns, but he was strapping and handsome, and Ford saw his potential. In 1939 Ford made Wayne a star in Stagecoach, and from there the two men established a close, often turbulent relationship. Their most productive years saw the release of one iconic film after another: Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But by 1960 the bond of their friendship had frayed, and Wayne felt he could move beyond his mentor with his first solo project, The Alamo. Few of Wayne’s subsequent films would have the brilliance or the cachet of a John Ford Western, but viewed together the careers of these two men changed moviemaking in ways that endure to this day. Despite the decline of the Western in contemporary cinema, its cultural legacy, particularly the type of hero codified by Ford and Wayne—tough, self-reliant, and unafraid to fight but also honorable, trustworthy, and kind—resonates in everything from Star Wars to today’s superhero franchises. Drawing on previously untapped caches of letters and personal documents, Nancy Schoenberger dramatically narrates a complicated, poignant, and iconic friendship and the lasting legacy of that friendship on American culture. More about John Wayne. More about John Ford. |
Carolyn Lowrey. The First One Hundred Noted Men and Women of the Screen. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1920.
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