Trackdown “The Town”

To begin, I Looove Robert Culp.

His Columbo guest-murder spots are condescending cool.

Tarantino calls his performance as gunfighter, Thomas Luther Price, in Hannie Caulder one of the coolest of the cool.

I agree.

His turn with Eli Wallach in the little-seen TV-movie A Cold’s Night’s Death is tight Twilight Zone-esque material.

Hell, he’s fantastic at gunplay as the clip shows.

But…I have taken in a handful of episodes from this show, and while Culp is solid, I find I simply see nothing here that elevates this from B-Fare.

The episode in point was written by the mighty Samp Peckinpah, and yet…

A show I want to love.

If you do, I am jealous.

Steele of the Royal Mounted by James Oliver Curwood

 

“If you're starving, why don't you kill the dog?” he asked.

DeBar turned quickly, his white teeth gleaming through his beard.

“Because he's the best friend I've got on earth, or next to the best,” he said warmly. “He's starved with me through thick and thin for ten years. He starved with me, and fought with me, and half died with me, and he's going to live with me as long as I live. Would you eat the flesh of your brother, Steele? He's my brother--the last that your glorious law has left to me. Would you kill him if you were me?”

This 1946 novel was one of several Curwood centered around the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I’ll admit I went into it expecting a bit of a square read, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It is rife with good Northern scoutcraft and shot through with striking examples of honor and duty and necessity in a harsh landscape.

Admittedly not an A+ read, but an enjoyable one amongst robust characters, nevertheless.

Stoney Burke “The Contenders”

 

I viewed the 1^st episode of this 1962 contemporary Western TV series set in the world of rodeo.

This episode stars Jack Lord as Stoney Burke, our rodeo man in pursuit of the Gold Buckle. Lord handles this role well.

Equally fine are co-stars Bruce Dern and a superlative Warren Oates.

Fans of the Steve McQueen rodeo film Junior Bonner should find much to enjoy here. [For the Record: If not for the miscasting of Robert Preston in Junior Bonner I offer that it might be Steve’s finest performance as a laconic charmer.]

Fans of the original The Outer Limits might be surprised that the creator of that show, Leslie Stevens, is the man behind this rodeo oater.

I must say, based off of this single episode, I’ll dig in for more of this single-season series.

Bonus: They use stock footage of rodeo from the early 60s period and it is RUGGED stuff. You don’t see it like this anymore—these riders don’t even mount up with a mouthpiece, it’s all Cowboy, here.

Old School Fun!

“How Mr. Hickok Came to Cheyenne” by Alfred Henry Lewis

 

“Be you, Mr. Hickock?” he asked.

“Yes, my,” boy replied Mr. Hickock blandly. Mr. Hickok was tolerant of youth.

“Mr. Wild Bill Hickock?”

Mr. Hickock frowned; he disliked the ferocious prefix. It had been granted him, by certain romanticists with a bent to be fantastic, for deeds of erratic daring done long before. It was a step in titles the more strange, perhaps, since Mr. Hickok was not baptized William but James.

This story is a mini-marvel buried in the pages of an old issue of The Saturday Evening Post. The author, of Wolfville, in a scant few pages traces the life of the titled one in gorgeous idiosyncratic prose that grabs significant events in short wry bursts and sketches a character, a life with seeming effortlessness.

I recall Wolfville being so dialect-rife it was painful for this reader to get through but this short piece more than demonstrates the great skill of Mr. Lewis.

Easy A+ offering here, my friends. Gorgeous.