THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: George Cukor
SCREENWRITER: Dudley Nichols, Walter Bernstein
FILM STARS: Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn, Margaret O’Brien, Steve Forrest, Eileen Heckart, Ramon Novarro, Edmund Lowe, Frank Silvera
COUNTRY: Great Britain
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Louis L’Amour
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Gold Medal Book
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1960
COUNTRY: Great Britain COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1956
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: Heller with a Gun
NOTES
GENRE: Western
WORDS: A straight Louis L’Amour western becomes an odd (but excellent) western directed by George Cukor (his only western). As much a comedy as a western it ditches with some characters and focuses instead on the relationship between the manager of a ramshackle theatrical touring company in the old West and his leading lady, a flighty Italian beauty. The “heller”* in the book was the guy with the gun. The “heller” in the film is the woman in pink tights (not a guy with a gun in pink tights, though it could be, if the film was made today). If you want your westerns straight, read the book, it you like them quirky and outside the box, watch the film. Both work for me … but, then again, I have read a lot of Louis L’Amour and watched a lot of Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren.
*Heller – a noisy, rowdy, troublesome person; a hellion.
LINKS
TRAILER
Great work by the voice-over guy on the trailer, and a lotta Blazing Saddles source material there, too: fantastic!
Richard, you are right. There is a lot of Blazing Saddles in there! As an aside : I wonder if Blazing Saddles would get made now? Well, I’m not really wondering. I doubt it would. Not by a major studio.
Curb Your Enthusiasm covers a lot of the same ground in grand tradition, I think. Mel absolutely blasted the doors off, though!