THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: Thomas Carr
SCREENWRITER: Christopher Knopf
FILM STARS: Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Michael Pate, Michael Ansara, Leo Gordon, Whit Bissell
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Louis L’Amour
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Gold Medal Book
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1963
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1957
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Western
WORDS: This novel comes across as a short story extended, which would be right. Early on author L’Amour had a habit of writing novellas for magazines, then later fleshing them out a bit, giving them new titles, and re-selling them as stand-alone paperbacks or as potential film treatments. That seems to be the case here (though I’m not sure what story it’s based on, if any). This approach had paid off before with his classic novel, Hondo (hence the referencing to it on the cover art), which, was a book adaptation by L’Amour of a movie written by a screenwriter based on a short story by L’Amour. Still, I’ve read a lot of Louis L’Amour, he is one of my “read, clear the head, and be entertained” writers. This isn’t up there with his best but ….
Likewise, the film isn’t one of McCrea’s best westerns but it has a great cast and it is very watchable … a bit like comfort food for me.
I'm a fan of Kubrick and no, you're not being harsh. I think those enthralled by it back then are…