Post by petrolino on Dec 16, 2017 0:00:47 GMT
In 'Gunman's Walk', putrid rancher Lee Hackett (Van Heflin) orders his maladjusted sons Davy (James Darren) and Ed (Tab Hunter) to saddle up for a cattle drive to Wyoming. The brothers don't get along and their situation worsens when they come across French-Sioux shop worker Cecily "Clee" Chouard (Kathryn Grant) and her horse-wrangling brother Paul (Bert Convy) at a supply store. Tragedy strikes at the heart of both families as their bonds are tested to the limit.
The psychological western 'Gunman's Walk' analyses what it takes to become a man in the expanding American Old West. Davy Hackett is a decent fellow and a reasonable cowhand who's at threat of being infected with his father's rampant prejudices. Ed Hackett is a stone cold psycho with an inability to fashion empathetic thoughts who's been spoilt rotten by his stubborn father. The two brothers find themselves at odds over everything.
Lee Hackett is a successful rancher who's built his fortune on corrupt practises and bigoted powerplays. Crippled by illness and alcoholism brought about by high living, Lee knows the stakes are high as he can't please both his sons. With his hooded eyes and heavy legs, he cuts a fading figure, coasting by on his former reputation, a man who knows it's time to hand the reigns over to his natural heir. Lee is mildly racist, mindlessly misogynistic and needlessly antagonistic, with an unpleasant edge and malodorous attitude that may yet prove to be his undoing.
"In 1984, despite my father’s strenuous objections that a VCR was a “luxury and not a necessity” I purchased my very first VHS videocassette recorder with a bonus I received from my place of employment. As a movie buff, I was pretty jazzed at the thought of being able to record films for the purpose of building a library so that I wouldn’t have to wait until the next time a favorite came on — I had even purchased several dozen videocassettes from the public domain bins at our local Wal-Mart in anticipation of eventually investing in a VCR. One of the first movies I taped was one of my all-time favorite Westerns — 1957’s 3:10 to Yuma, in which a notorious outlaw played by Glenn Ford is kept under guard by a man who’s so desperate for the $200 he’s being paid (he plans to use the money to buy water for his drought-stricken ranch) that he vows nothing will keep him from making sure Ford is put on a train that will take the two of them to the titular city…even though Ford’s gang outnumbers him and is planning to gun him down the minute he sticks his head out of the hotel in which they’ve hid. The actor playing this man who remains courageous in the face of overwhelming odds was born on this date 100 years ago today, and would not only become one of the finest stage and screen actors of his generation but gain an enthusiastic fan of his work in myself long after his death in 1971: Van Heflin."
- Ivan G. Shreve Jr., 'Centennial Tributes : Van Heflin
'Summer Under the Stars program with a day of movies starring Van Heflin on Monday, August 6. Best remembered for his roles in Westerns like " Shane " and "3:10 to Yuma", Heflin was a versatile actor who appeared in dozens of films and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work in "Johnny Eager".'
- Turner Classic Movies presents Van Heflin Day
- Ivan G. Shreve Jr., 'Centennial Tributes : Van Heflin
'Summer Under the Stars program with a day of movies starring Van Heflin on Monday, August 6. Best remembered for his roles in Westerns like " Shane " and "3:10 to Yuma", Heflin was a versatile actor who appeared in dozens of films and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work in "Johnny Eager".'
- Turner Classic Movies presents Van Heflin Day
Van Heflin, Richard Hart & Lana Turner
Van Heflin & Jennifer Jones
Lee Hackett is a successful rancher who's built his fortune on corrupt practises and bigoted powerplays. Crippled by illness and alcoholism brought about by high living, Lee knows the stakes are high as he can't please both his sons. With his hooded eyes and heavy legs, he cuts a fading figure, coasting by on his former reputation, a man who knows it's time to hand the reigns over to his natural heir. Lee is mildly racist, mindlessly misogynistic and needlessly antagonistic, with an unpleasant edge and malodorous attitude that may yet prove to be his undoing.
"Van Heflin never became a big star because he was too honest an actor. His range was too wide, so that he didn’t get typed during his most fruitful period, the 1940’s, and he was able to convey weakness and cowardice and general softness too well and too vividly; his lack of vanity probably worked against him. Raised in Oklahoma, Heflin began acting in the theater, and Katharine Hepburn championed him early on (he played Mike Connor on stage with her in The Philadelphia Story, but the starrier Jimmy Stewart got the movie role). In the early forties, he was signed to a contract at MGM and was assigned leads in second features and supporting roles in bigger films. Heflin recalled that the head of the studio, Louis B. Mayer, “once looked at me and said ’You will never get the girl at the end.’ So I worked on my acting.” He was usually on the outside of films looking in, never more affectingly than in the ballroom crash-up in Vincente Minnelli’s Madame Bovary (1949), where Heflin’s Charles goes from awkward wallflower to drunken rube in precise, helpless stages. In his youth, Heflin was attractive in a rugged way, but he had unruly curly hair, and his smallish eyes, nose and mouth sat too close together under his large forehead. There was something sexy about his low, craggy voice, and Heflin knew it; he relaxed into his voice slowly as if it were an old, plush easy chair made for dispensing sour, clever lines. Heflin won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Johnny Eager (1942), but it was only after the war that he briefly came into his own as a character actor able to play womanizers or dim husbands with equal conviction."
- Dan Callahan, Slant Magazine
- Dan Callahan, Slant Magazine
"A versatile craftsman, actor Van Heflin was never concerned with popularity or comfortable with stardom. Lauded by his peers, Heflin won over moviegoers with his portrayal of resolute homesteader Joe Starrett in George Stevens’ classic Shane (1953). He impressed in all genres, convincingly portraying every type of character from heel to hero. Van Heflin first garnered attention as the sensitive, alcoholic friend of gangster Johnny Eager (1941), for which he won an Academy Award, and later gave notable performances in a string of noirs, dramas and westerns. He was memorable as the psychotic cop in Joseph Losey’s masterpiece The Prowler (1951) but equally impressive as the doubtful executive in Jean Negulesco’s smart satire Woman’s World (1954)."
- Derek Sculthorpe, 'Van Heflin : A Life In Film'
- Derek Sculthorpe, 'Van Heflin : A Life In Film'
Ava Gardner & Van Heflin
Frances Neal & Van Heflin
Van Heflin radiates hate in this Shakespearian horse opera which features pulse-pounding horseback pursuits and high speed herdings. Phil Karlson's fine direction steers the story into some dark terrain as Tab Hunter spills gallons of that troubling emptiness he could turn on like a tap. The strained relationship between the brothers in 'Gunman's Walk', enriched by Hunter's intense interplay and Darren's easygoing charm, influenced Ang Lee's Oscar-winning western melodrama 'Brokeback Mountain' (2005).
