THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: Burt Kennedy
SCREENWRITER: Burt Kennedy
FILM STARS: John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor, Ben Johnson, Christopher George, Bobby Vinton, Jerry Gatlin, Ricardo Montalban
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Sam Bowie (Todhunter Ballard)
TYPE: Novelization
PUBLISHER: Ace
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1973
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1973
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Western
WORDS: A straight novelization. The film is light, escapism but with stunning photography from William Clothier. The selling point is the cast. John Wayne (always good), Rod Taylor (always underrated), Ben Johnson (hilarious), Ann-Margret (beautiful), Christopher George (love him), Bobby Vinton (good, and without a song), western regular Jerry Gatlin and in a role against type Ricardo Montalban. A hoot of a film. It’s lazy in Burt Kennedy’s late period style, and ambles along without much drama, but it looks good and the cast are having fun.
Many times, the author of a novelization writes, under the belief, that the reader has seen the movie and can visualize the main character(s) delivering their lines with very little writing around that. Here Bowie actually delves deeper into defining the characters. Sam Bowie was a pseudonym for Todhunter Ballard (1903 – 1980), a Cleveland, Ohio-born American author, known for his Westerns and mystery novels. He also wrote numerous screenplays and teleplays and many novels under his names and other pseudonyms (aka Brian Agar, P D Ballard, W T Ballard, Parker Bonner, Sam Bowie, Walt Bruce, Hunter D’Allard, Brian Fox, John Grange, Harrison Hunt, John Hunter, Neil MacNeil, Clint Reno, John Shepherd, Jack Slade, Clay Turner)
LINKS
TRAILER
MUSIC
The suite by the underrated Dominic Frontiere
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