The Buffalo Films Festival-Ride the High Country-sam Peckinpah

8/20/2019 The Buffalo Films Festival-Ride the High Country-sam Peckinpah

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February 23, 2010 (XXSam Peckinpah, R IDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962, 94 m

Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Written by N.B. Stone Jr., Sam Peckinpah and Robert Creighton

Williams

Produced by Richard E. LyonsOriginal Music by George Bassman

Cinematography by Lucien Ballard

Film Editing by Frank Santillo

Randolph Scott...Gil Westrum

Joel McCrea...Steve Judd

Mariette Hartley...Elsa Knudsen

Ron Starr...Heck Longtree

Edgar Buchanan...Judge Tolliver

R.G. Armstrong...Joshua Knudsen

Jenie Jackson...Kate

James Drury...Billy HammondL.Q. Jones...Sylvus Hammond

John Anderson...Elder Hammond

John Davis Chandler...Jimmy HammondWarren Oates...Henry Hammond

SAM PECKINPAH (21 February 1925, Fresno, California, - 28December 1984, Inglewood, California, of a stroke) directed 28

films and tv series, some of which were The Osterman Weekend (1983), Convoy (1978), Cross of Iron (1977), The Killer Elite (1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Pat Garrett &

Billy the Kid (1973), The Getaway (1972), Junior Bonner (1972),

Straw Dogs (1971), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), The Wild

Bunch (1969), "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" (1

episode, 1967), Major Dundee (1965), Ride the High Country

(1962), "Zane Grey Theater" (3 episodes, 1959-1960), "TheRifleman" (4 episodes, 1958-1959), and "Trackdown" (1957) TV

series (unknown episodes).

LUCIEN BALLARD (6 May 1908, Miami, Oklahoma -1 October

1988, Rancho Mirage, California, of a road accident) was the

cinematographer for 133 films and tv series, some of which were

My Kingdom For... (1985), Rabbit Test (1978), Mikey and Nicky

(1976), From Noon Till Three (1976), St. Ives (1976), Breakout

(1975), The Getaway (1972), Junior Bonner (1972), Elvis: That'sthe Way It Is (1970), The Hawaiians (1970), The Ballad of Cable

Hogue (1970), The Wild Bunch (1969), True Grit (1969), Will

Penny (1968), Nevada Smith (1966), The Sons of Katie Elder

(1965), Wives and Lovers (1963), Ride the High Country (1962)

"The Westerner" (3 episodes, 1960), "Disneyland" (3 episodes,

1959-1960), "Zorro" (2 episodes, 1960), The Bramble Bush (196

Al Capone (1959), Band of Angels (1957), The King and Four

Queens (1956), A Kiss Before Dying (1956), The Proud Ones

(1956), The Magnificent Matador (1955), White Feather (1955) Prince Valiant (1954), The Desert Rats (1953), Don't Bother to

Knock (1952), Berlin Express (1948), Laura (1944), The Lodger

(1944), The Outlaw (1943), Coast Guard (1939), Rio Grande

(1938), Highway Patrol (1938), Penitentiary (1938), The Shado

(1937), The Devil's Playground (1937), and Crime and Punishm

(1935).

R ANDOLPH SCOTT (23 January 1898, Orange County, Virginia

March 1987, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, of heart andlung ailments) appeared in 105 films, some of which were Ride High Country (1962), Comanche Station (1960), Westbound (19 Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Decision at Sundown (1957), Sho

Out at Medicine Bend (1957), 7th Cavalry (1956), Seven Men fr

Now (1956), A Lawless Street (1955), Ten Wanted Men (1955),

Bounty Hunter (1954), The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), The M

Behind the Gun (1953), Carson City (1952), Man in the Saddle

(1951) , Fort Worth (1951), Santa Fe (1951), Colt .45 (1950), Th

Nevadan (1950), The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949), Canadian

Pacific (1949), Return of the Bad Men (1948), Albuquerque (194


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Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY

Home, Sweet Homicide (1946), Badman's Territory (1946), Belle of

the Yukon (1944), 'Gung Ho!': The Story of Carlson's Makin Island

Raiders (1943), Bombardier (1943), Paris Calling (1941), Belle

Starr (1941), When the Daltons Rode (1940), Virginia City (1940),

Coast Guard (1939), Jesse James (1939), The Texans (1938),

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), The Last of the Mohicans

(1936), She (1935), The Last Round-Up (1934), The Thundering

Herd (1933), Hello, Everybody! (1933), and The Far Call (1929).

JOEL MCCREA (5 November 1905, South Pasadena, California - 20

October 1990, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, of

pulmonary complications) appeared in 93 films and tv series, someof which were Mustang Country (1976), Cry Blood, Apache (1970),

Sioux Nation (1970), Ride the High Country (1962), "Wichita

Town" (26 episodes, 1959-1960), The Gunfight at Dodge City

(1959), Fort Massacre (1958), Cattle Empire (1958), The Tall

Stranger (1957), The Oklahoman (1957), The First Texan (1956),Wichita (1955), Black Horse Canyon (1954), Border River (1954),

Lone Hand (1953), Rough Shoot (1953), The San Francisco Story

(1952), Colorado Territory (1949), Four Faces West (1948), The

Virginian (1946), Buffalo Bill (1944), Sullivan's Travels (1941),

Foreign Correspondent (1940), Union Pacific (1939), Wells Fargo (1937), Come and Get It (1936), These Three (1936), Rockabye

(1932), The Lost Squadron (1932), Kept Husbands (1931), The Jazz Age (1929), Freedom of the Press (1928), and Dead Man's Curve

(1928).

R.G. ARMSTRONG (7 April 1917, Birmingham, Alabama -)

appeared in 182 films and tv series, some of which were TheWaking (2001), Purgatory (1999), "Millennium" (5 episodes, 1997-

1998), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), "Cybill" (1 episode,

1995), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (1 episode, 1994), "L.A. Law" (2

episodes, 1992-1993), Dick Tracy (1990), "Matlock" (2 episodes,

1989), "War and Remembrance" (2 episodes, 1988-1989),

Bulletproof (1988), "Trapper John, M.D." (6 episodes, 1981-1985), Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), "Dynasty" (3 episodes, 1982),

Hammett (1982), Reds (1981), The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981),

Raggedy Man (1981), Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), The Last

Ride of the Dalton Gang (1979), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Stay

Hungry (1976), Race with the Devil (1975), "Cannon" (2 episodes,1971-1973), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), The Great

Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), "Disneyland" (4 episodes, 1959-

1972), "Hawaii Five-O" (2 episodes, 1969-1970), The Great White

Hope (1970), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), "Gunsmoke" (5

episodes, 1961-1967), "The F.B.I." (3 episodes, 1965-1967),

"Bonanza" (3 episodes, 1959-1966), "The Fugitive" (3 episodes,

1963-1965), "Rawhide" (4 episodes, 1959-1965), Major Dundee

(1965), "Perry Mason" (3 episodes, 1958-1962), Ride the HighCountry (1962), "Cheyenne" (2 episodes, 1960-1961), "Maverick"

(2 episodes, 1959-1960), The Fugitive Kind (1959), "Have Gun -

Will Travel" (2 episodes, 1958), From Hell to Texas (1958), A

Face in the Crowd (1957), and Garden of Eden (1954).

JAMES DRURY (18 April 1934, New York City, New York - )

appeared in 70 films and tv series, some of which were Hell to Pay

(2005), The Virginian (2000), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (3 episodes,

1993), "Firehouse" (13 episodes, 1974), "The Virginian" (249

episodes, 1962-1971), The Young Warriors (1967), "Perry Mason"(1 episode, 1961), "Rawhide" (3 episodes, 1959-1961), "The

Rifleman" (2 episodes, 1958-1961), "Gunsmoke" (4 episodes, 1955-

1961), "Cheyenne" (1 episode, 1959), "Have Gun - Will Travel" (1

episode, 1959), "The Texan" (1 episode, 1958), "Broken Arrow"

episode, 1958), Forbidden Planet (1956), and The Tender Trap

(1955).

L.Q. JONES (19 August 1927, Beaumont, Texas -) appeared in 15

films and tv series, some of which were A Prairie HomeCompanion (2006), Route 666 (2001), The Mask of Zorro

(1998),The Patriot (1998), In Cold Blood (1996), Casino (1995)

The Legend of Grizzly Adams (1990), Bulletproof (1988), "TheYellow Rose" (10 episodes, 1983-1984), Lone Wolf McQuade

(1983), The Beast Within (1982), "Charlie's Angels" (4 episodes1976-1980), "The Incredible Hulk" (1 episode, 1979), "McCloud

(1 episode, 1977), Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), White Line Fev

(1975), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), "Alias Smith and Jon

(3 episodes, 1971-1972), "Gunsmoke" (7 episodes, 1963-1972),

"The Virginian" (25 episodes, 1963-1971), The Ballad of Cable

Hogue (1970), The Wild Bunch (1969), Hang 'Em High (1968),

"The Big Valley" (5 episodes, 1966-1968), "Rawhide" (5 episod

1963-1965), Major Dundee (1965), "Wagon Train" (5 episodes,1959-1964), "Laramie" (7 episodes, 1959-1963), Ride the High

Country (1962), "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" (1 episod

1961), Cimarron (1960), Warlock (1959), "Cheyenne" (3 episod1955), Target Zero (1955), and Battle Cry (1955).

WARREN OATES (5 July 1928, Depoy, Kentucky - 3 April 1982Los Angeles, California, of a heart attack) appeared in 122 films

and tv series, some of which were "Tales of the Unexpected" (1

episode, 1985), Tough Enough (1983), Blue Thunder (1983), Th

Border (1982), Stripes (1981), "East of Eden" (1981), 1941 (197The Brink's Job/China 9, Liberty 37 (1978), The African Queen

(1977), 92 in the Shade (1975), Race with the Devil (1975), Ran

Deluxe (1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Th

White Dawn (1974), Badlands (1973), Dillinger (1973), The Hir

Hand (1971), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Wild Bunch (1969

"Gunsmoke" (10 episodes, 1958-1967), In the Heat of the Night(1967), Welcome to Hard Times (1967), The Shooting (1967), "T

Virginian" (4 episodes, 1963-1966), Major Dundee (1965), Ride High Country (1962), "Wanted: Dead or Alive" (5 episodes, 195

1961), "Have Gun - Will Travel"(2 episodes, 1958-1960), The R

and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), "Wagon Train" (1 episode,

1959), and "The United States Steel Hour" (1 episode, 1956).

MARIETTE HARTLEY (21 June 1940, Weston, Connecticut - )

appeared in 119 films and tv series, some of which were The InnCircle (2009), "The Cleaner" (1 episode, 2009), "Law & Order:

Special Victims Unit" (5 episodes, 2003-2009), "Grey's Anatom

(1 episode, 2008), Baggage (2003), "One Life to Live" (1968)

(unknown episodes, 2001), Snitch (1996), "Courthouse" (1episode), "Murder, She Wrote" (1 episode, 1992), Encino Man

(1992), "The Love Boat" (2 episodes, 1983), The Love Tapes

(1980), "M*A*S*H" (1 episode, 1979), "Columbo" (2 episodes,

1974-1977), "Little House on the Prairie" (1 episode, 1976),"Gunsmoke" (5 episodes, 1963-1974), The Magnificent Seven R

(1972), "Bonanza" (4 episodes, 1965-1971), Marooned (1969),

"Star Trek" (1 episode, 1969), "Peyton Place" 30 episodes, 1965

1966), "The Virginian" (2 episodes, 1964), Marnie (1964), "The

Twilight Zone" (1 episode, 1964), Drums of Africa (1963), and R

the High Country (1962).


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PECKINPAH from World Film Directors, V. II, Ed. John

Wakeman. H.W. Wilson Co, NY 1988

American director and scenarist, was born in Fresno California, the

son of David Samuel Peckinpah and Fern Church. Peckinpah told

interviewers that he had a great-aunt with Paute Indian blood, but

he believed that his family name originated in the Friesland Islands

of the Netherlands.

Both the Peckinpahs and the Churches had migrated to theFresno area in the 1850s. His paternal grandfather had hauled borax

out of Death Valley, earning enough to buy timberland andestablish a sawmill in 1873 on Peckinpah Mountain in the Sierra

Nevada, subsequently selling out to buy a general store and way

station. His other grandfather,

Denver Samuel Church, had

come out west to work on an

uncle’s sheepfarm. He

qualified as a lawyer and set

up a practice in Fresno, then bought a cattle ranch in Crane

Valley, near Peckinpah

Mountain. Church becameDistrict Attorney of Fresno

County, then a Congressman,

and finally a Superior Court

judge. In 1914 Sam

Peckinpah’s father David went

to work on the Church ranch,

where he met and married

Fern. With his father-in-law’s backing, the cowboy qualified

as a lawyer and also went into

practice in Fresno.

Though they were raised in Fresno, Sam Peckinpah and his

older brother Denver spent long periods on the Church ranch.Peckinpah often referred to this as the happiest period of his life, a

kind of lost Eden. His grandfather Denver Church was an important

and perhaps crucial influence on him. An American individualist of

the old school, he opposed all kinds of government control. Though

a total abstainer himself, he voted in Congress against Prohibition

and later abandoned his political career because of his disapproval

of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Denver Church taughthis family that you hunted only for food, never wasted ammunition,

and respected the animals you killed.

His father David was also a man of principle, founder ofthe Fresno Humane Society and a lawyer who, during the

Depression, was always ready to accept payment in kind—or no

payment at all. He often said that he wanted only to feel that he

could “enter his house justified.” David Peckinpah also became a

Superior Court judge and so did Sam’s brother Denny. “Sitting

around a dining-room table talking about law and order, truth and

justice, on a Bible which was very big in our family, “I felt like an

outsider,” Peckinpah said, “and I started to question them. I guessI’m still questioning.”

Peckinpah attended primary school in Fresno and

developed an equal delight in movies and in books. At Fresno High

School he became a formidable member of the football team andalso laid the foundations of his reputation as a brawler and boozer.

His parents tried another school, and when this did nothing to

moderate his violent temper, sent him for his senior high school

year to San Rafael Military School. He did well academically but

also accumulated more demerits than anyone else in the school’s

history.

Graduating in 1943, Peckinpah enlisted in the Marines.

the summer of 1945 he was sent to China, where he saw virtuall

no action but fell in love with a Chinese girl and “began my stud

of Zen.” Back home in 1947, he enrolled at Fresno State College

There he met Marie Selland, a stage-struck student whom he

married the same year. She introduced him to the theatre and

Peckinah took to it immediately, switching his major to drama. Hgraduated with a B.A. in that subject in 1949, the year that his

daughter Sharon was born, and went on for post-graduate work athe University of Southern California. For a master’s thesis he

wrote an adaptation of a one-act play by his idol Tennessee

Williams, and filmed it (to his re

the movie was destroyed).

Peckinpah began his

career as a director-producer in

residence at the Huntington Park

Civic Theatre. After a year and ahalf he decided to try television

making a modest start at KLAC

in Los Angeles as a stagehand, propman, and floor-sweeper. He

lasted two years there and then,

the first but by no means the las

time, lost his job after a row wit

studio executive. However, he h

managed to put together some sh

films in his time at KLAC, and o

the strength of these was hired bCBS in 1953 as an assistant edit

That short-lived assignment end

when he failed to report for wor

while his wife was in labor with their second child, Kristen.

His first sortie into the film industry followed. He sat fothree days in Walter Wanger’s waiting room at Allied Artists, an

in the end Wanger gave him a job as third assistant casting direc

(or gopher). His first assignment was on Don Siegel’s Riot in Ce

Block 11 (1954). He and Siegal liked one another, and Peckinpa

worked as “dialogue director”—in fact mostly as Siegal’s person

assistant—on Private Hell (1954), An Annapolis Story (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and Crime in the Streets(1956). Peckinpah also played a bit part in Invasion of the BodySnatchers and did some rewriting of one or two scenes. He learn

a lot from Siegel, whom he called his patron and also worked asdialogue director on some of Jacques Tourneur’s films for Allied

Artists in 1955-1956.

At that time Peckinpah was beginning a new career as a

television writer. It was Siegal who prodded him in this direction

when he loaned him a batch of scripts submitted to the CBS

Gunsmoke series. Using these as models, Peckinpah wrote some

scripts of his own that were accepted. Ten episodes of Gunsmok

produced in 1955-1956 were written by Peckinpah. most of themadaptations of Gunsmoke radio scripts. He went on to write for

other western series and in 1957 sold his first script for a feature

film. This was The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, based on t

book by Charles Neider that itself derived from Pat Garrett’s Th

Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Much altered by other hands, it

eventually surfaced as Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks.

Peckinpah directed his first television film early in 195

an episode of Broken Arrow called “The Knife Fighter.” His

television career took another step forward when he reworked an


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original script rejected by Gunsmoke and sold it to Dick Powell at

Four Star Productions. This was “The Sharpshooter,” screened

during the spring of 1958. A story about a boy growing up in the

California foothills of the Sierra Nevada, it drew on Peckinpah’s

own youthful experiences and was enthusiastically received. It

became the pilot for a successful new series, The Rifleman,

beginning in the fall of 1958. Peckinpah directed four episodes of

the show himself but left it in 1959, saying that the producers had

“perverted it into pap.”Late that year, Peckinpah became producer of The

Westerner , an NBC-TV series that grew out of another pilot he hadwritten and directed for Dick Powell. The series starred Brian Keith

as Dave Blessingame, a self-sufficient drifter. Peckinpah, who

directed five of the half-hour episodes, co-wrote four of them, and

launched the series with one for which he had performed both

functions. This was “Jeff,” a story (as Peckinpah said) “about a guy

who goes to take this young whore, who he knew as a kid, home.”

“Jeff” received ecstatic reviews…“The half-hour had only one flaw,

a couple of descents into violence that didn’t help the story at all.”The Westerner went on to receive a Producers Guild nomination as

Best Filmed Series, but was canceled after only thirteen shows—

stifled by affiliate anxieties about its “adult” subject matter and bythe viewing public’s sudden and mysterious hankering after hour-

long shows.

Peckinpah’s first feature followed in 1961, The Deadly

Companions, scripted by A.S. Fleischman from his novel Yellowleg

and produced for Pathé-America-Carousel by Charles B.

FitzSimons. Peckinpah was hired at the request of Brian Keith of

The Westerner , who stars opposite FitzSimons’ sister, Maureen

O’Hara….Peckinpah had altogether less control over his firstfeature than he had anticipated and was not much pleased with the

film. However, it performed adequately at the box office and

brought him some good personal notices. Indeed, as Doug

McKinney says, this “psychological Western” was an impressive

debut, placed resolutely in a Peckinpah landscape, allowing for thecontrivances of the script in delivering a film of angular, subdued

tensions, somewhat skewed within the confines of the genre.”

Moreover, this “story of a quest for redemption and identity”

provides “an auspicious introduction to themes Peckinpah will

explore more fully in later films.”

In 1961 the Pckinpahs had a third child, Matthew, who

later appeared in several of his father’s films; the marriage endedthe same year. After another brief stint in television, Peckinpah was

hired by MGM to direct Ride the High Country (1962; in Britain

called Guns in the Afternoon), a modestly budgeted Western from ascript that Peckinpah heavily revised. The project became caught up

in a front-office power struggle at MGM that resulted in Peckinpah

being banned from the studio during postproduction. He had by

then made his first cut, however, and the editing was completed

more or less in accordance with his intentions.

Ride the High Country was shot by Peckinpah’s favorite

cinematographer, Lucien Ballard, in Cinemascope and in the

autumnal colors that set the film’s elegiac mood. Its opening creditsroll over vistas of the American wilderness wilderness—mountains,

forests, rivers—all magnificently beautiful and totally empty. From

there we switch to the crowded California town of Hornitos at the

turn of the century. Hornitos is in carnival, and we see huckstersselling mementos of the vanished frontier and a race between a

camel and a horse—that emblem of the old West—which the camel

wins.

Riding into town (and almost run down by an early

automobile), Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) finds his old friend Gil

Westrum (Randolph Scott) running a crooked rifle range, dresse

up like Buffalo Bill. Both men have outlived their jobs as frontie

lawmen—Hornitos has uniformed policemen. Judd clings to the

values but Westrum has sold out in the interests of survival and h

acquired an equally unprincipled young sidekick, Heck Longtree

(Ron Starr). Judd secures for all three of them a job transporting

gold from the Coarse Gold mining camp. On their way they stop

the farmhouse of Joshua Knudsen (R.G. Armstrong), a

sanctimonious tyrant whose puritanism masks incestuous desireshis motherless daughter Elsa (Mariette Hartley).

Coarse Gold is in a state of lawlessness close to anarchy

dominated by five brutish brothers, the Hammonds, against who

the drunken Judge Tolliver (Edgar Buchanan) is helpless. To esc

her father, Elsa Knudsen comes to Coarse Gold and marries Bill

Hammond (James Drury) in a grotesque ceremony in a brother-

saloon. After it, two of Billy’s brothers try to rape Elsa, but are

restrained by Judd and Longtree. “Cutting between the attempte

rape of Elsa and scenes of brawling in the saloon…,” wrote Tere

Butler, “Peckinpah for the first time in his work uses a montagetechnique to create the impression of energy exploding.”

The Hammonds break into Joshua Knudsen’s house and

murder him. Westrum relieves

Judge Tolliver of Elsa’s marriage lines, freeing her from her

misguided union. He is a more humane man than the rigorouslylaw-abiding Judd (who is given the line originally spoken by

Peckinpah’s own father: “All I want is to enter my house justifie

But Westrum has been corrupted by materialism, and he now

violates their friendship by making a bid for the gold he is suppo

to protect. Judd wins out in this encounter, but is forced to reass

his old certainties when Elsa questions her own dead father’s

equally rigid morality.Having escaped from Judd, Westrum returns to help him

a final confrontation with the Hammonds at the Knudsen

farmhouse. The Hammonds are wiped out and Judd is mortallywounded. In their final reconciliation, Westrum undertakes to

deliver the gold to its rightful owners; Elsa and the reformed

Longtree pair off. “According to the conventions of the Western

as Butler says, “Gil Westrum, in his capacity as a good-bad guy,

should have been the character to die as a means of atoning for h

disrespect of the law…. Westrum’s survival constitutes the mov

final refutation of the Manicheanism of the Western….For

Peckinpah, Westrum’s claim to human dignity lies not in whethehe can uphold the law but in whether he can respond to Judd’s cr

for friendship.”

As many critics have pointed out, Ride the High Countr

a film about the changing Western as well as about the changingWest, and the casting of those old cowboy heroes McCrea and S

emphasizes this; Scott’s role in particular—his last—is an almos

shocking assault on his screen image as a man of iron integrity.

Peckinpah learned a lot in the making of this film, especially (as

said) fromLucien Ballard, who introduced him to the crane shot


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which he makes such telling use here and elsewhere, and from the

editor Frank Santillo. Peckinpah credited Santillo with teaching him

the “flash-cutting” that became a characteristic of his editing

style—the use of very short shots, only a few frames long, to

capture rapid and violent action.

For Doug McKinney, Peckinpah’s eye for detail adds

immeasurably to the movie’s impact: “the hole in his boot, the

frayed cuffs, the touching way he goes to the john to take out his

glasses, telling Heck not to litter: all details which humanize SteveJudd…. Coarse Gold, Kate’s place, the slovenly quality of the

Hammonds’ camp, and the Knudsen farm are triumphs of detail,”while in the dialogue, “the stories Steve and Gil reminisce over on

the trail...have a ring to them that must be recognized as a major

accomplishment.” McKiney goes on to describe Peckinpah’s

growing mastery of mise en scène in the final shootout, when Judd

and Westrum, walking steadily into the guns of the Hammonds—

two against five—are filmed from an increasingly low angle until

they loom as “heroes of mythic proportions.”

Because of the front-office conflict in which the film had

become embroiled, it was released by MGM as the bottom half of a

double bill. To the studio’s embarrassment, it was enthusiastically

reviewed and became one of the year’s “sleepers.” Newsweek called

it the best picture of 1962, and the following year it won several

European awards, including the grand prix at the Belgian

International Film Festival. Some regard it now not only as one ofthe finest examples of the genre, but as Peckinpah’s best film, free

of his obsession with violence. However, Richard T. Jameson in Film Comment (January-February 1981) suggests that “those whonostalgically prefer it to the more stylistically adventurous, and

temperamentally contentious, works that followed must have an

aversion to voluptuous kinesis.”

Peckinpah returned for a time to television, producing and

directing two hour-long films for The Dick Powell Theatre. These

were Pericles on 31 st Street (1962), based on a story by Harry Mark

Petrakis (Peckinpah collaborated on the script) and The Losers

(1963), an adventure-comedy modeled on The Westerner andstarring Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn. Highly successful and

frequently rerun, it was almost taken up as a series with Peckinpah

as producer. This project collapsed with the death of Dick Powell,

and Peckinpah then joined Walt Disney Productions as a writer-director. He left after a disagreement with a producer, and in the

late summer of 1963 was hired by the independent producer Jerry

Bresler to direct Major Dundee (1965), released through Columbia.

Adapted from a story by Harry Julian Fink, Major Dundee

is a cavalry Western starring Charlton Heston as an autocratic

Southerner who has chosen to fight for the Union during the Civ

War, a stubborn but deeply divided man clinging to vague notion

of order, law, and duty. Because of his arrogant behavior at

Gettysburg, he has been relegated to the command of a prison

camp.... Major Dundee was the subject of bitter conflict during a

after filming….According to the director he left the film at a len

of about two and a half hours. It was cut by Columbia to a releas

length of 134 minutes. Whole scenes were excised, wrecking the

movie’s logic and rhythm. There is much to admire in whatremains, but the result as a whole has been described by Jim Kit

as “one of Hollywood’s great broken monuments.”In 1964 Peckinpah married Begonia Palacios, who had

played a minor role in Major Dundee. It was a fiery relationship

and the couple were to be married and divorced three times in al

they had one child, Lupita. The anguish Peckinpah experienced

during the filming and editing of Major Dundee was followed by

another tremendous blow. Signed by Martin Ransohoff to directThe Cincinatti Kid at MGM, Peckinpah began work in October

1964. He and the producer disagreed, and he was fired after fourdays of shooting, the film being completed by Norman Jewison.

The release of the truncated Major Dundee in April 1965 renewe

gossip about Pekcinpah’s intractability, and he was effectively blacklisted throughout the industry, his career apparently at an e

The only feature credit Peckinpah earned over the next

three years was or his script The Glory Guys (1965), a bitterly

cynical cavalry Western loosely based on the Custer disaster and

clumsily directed by Arthur Laven….He taught writing at UCLA

the fall of 1967, and at this time, his reputation partially

rehabilitated, he reentered the movie industry.

Signed by Phil Feldman for Warner Brothers-Seven ArPeckinpah began the second phase of his career with The Wild Bunch (1969), now generally regarded as his masterpiece.

It was scripted by Peckinpah and Walon Green from a story dev

by the stuntman Roy Sickner, about the last days of the West’s l

gang of aging outlaws. It was shot by Lucien Ballard in Panavis70 and Technicolor, has a marvelous score by Jerry Fielding,and

apart from its stars, features several of the character actors who

formed a kind of Peckinpah “stock company—Warren Oates, Be

Johnson, Strother Martin, and L.Q. Jones. From the outset,

everyone shared an awareness that they were involved in the

creation of an important film.

[Referring to The Wild Bunch last battle] Richard Gentn

and Diane Birdsall described this long orgy of killing as “theunparalleled montage event of cinema history. It is both ‘son of

Potemkin’ and light years beyond it. It is the most exhausting ree

film ever created—not merely a cluster of quick cuts. . . but a

cascading avalanche of comprehension. The destruction of

Mapache’s stronghold (and, of course, the Bunch along with it)

inevitable as it is exhilarating.”

. . .The film ends with a shot of the Bunch laughing, cu

from an earlier sequence. “By ending with these killers as theylaugh, behaving as everyone does,” Peckinpah said, “I wanted to

remind the audience that they were just people like themselves.”

Cut from 148 to 135 minutes, The Wild Bunch was

previewed in June 1969 and released the same month. Its realistidepiction of violence, “the way blood spurts practically across a

room, provoked an outburst of almost hysterical vituperation fro

critics, journalists, and other moralists. . . Peckinpah maintained

that he did not like violence: “My idea was that it would have a

cathartic effect.” Asked why, if he wanted to oppose violence, h


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had not made a film about the Vietnam war, the director said: “The

Western is a universal frame within which it is possible to commenton today.” Even at this “near-raucous” press conference, however,

there were those (like the critic Roger Ebert) who insisted that The

Wild Bunch was “a great film...a masterpiece.”According to Doug McKinneym Peckinpah’s thesis is that

“violence is a part of all of us….Abhorring violence is not enough;

we must recognize that the enemy is within, and how that capacity

for violence works and shows itself.” J.-P. Coursdon, on the other

hand, speaks of Peckinpah’s “exhilaration in depicting violence,

escalating it into orgiastic celebrations of death, given and received

as the ultimate experience.”

Coursodon (in his American Directors, V. II) points outthat The Wild Bunch continues Peckinpah’s refutation of the

Western’s “moral Manichaeism,” driving home “the by then

familiar point that there is no such thing as Good or Evil, only

different forms and degrees of evil and different levels of awareness

of this evil.” All the men in the film are “motivated by self-interestand greed” and “the only glimpse of a moral, lawful social

structure” is the blatantly ludicrous Temperance Union. “Law

enforcement is abandoned to outlaws and irresponsible killers.

women are venal and treacherous (all the female characters in the

film seem to be whores). Even the childhood image of innocence is

repeatedly deflated.

In his Freudian reading of Crucified Heroes TerenceButler dwells on the misogynism of the film (or of its heroes), and

offers a thesis that Pike Bishop is driven by a death wish inspired by

the pain and confusion of unresolved homosexual impulses.Coursodon speaks rather of the Bunch’s “instinctive adhering to an

unformulated, dimly grasped code of virile togetherness.”...

It is, as McKinney says, “at the very least a landmark

Western,” and there are those who think it the greatest of all

Westerns.

A much gentler film followed, again produced by Phil

Feldman for Warner Brothers-Seven Arts. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) was a original script by John Crawford and Edmund

Penney, brought to Peckinpah by his friend Warrem Oates. Once

again the director had Lucien Ballard as his cinematographer, Jerry

Fielding as his coposer, and several of his regular stock players. Themovie was shot in Nevada’s Valley of Fire in the early months of

1969….Cable Hogue was a script that Peckinpah initiated and

greatly liked, but his next was the opposite. During the filming of

the former, the producer Daniel Melnick brought him a British

novel by Gordon M. Williams called The Siege of Trencher’s Farm.

Peckinpah had other projects in mind but these fell through.

Melnick then offered his own first-draft adaptation of the novel

along with financing through ABC Pictures. Peckinpah sat down

with David Zelig Goodman to try to make something out of a

“lousy book with one good action sequence.” The result, which

bears very little relationship to the original novel was Straw Dog

(1971)….

Peckinpah made no secret of the fact that he was much

influenced in Straw Dogs by the thesis advanced by Robert Ardrin The Territorial Imperative —that human behavior is much clo

than is usually recognized to animal behavior, and that a key facin both is the possession and defense of territory. The film’s title

comes from Lao Tse: “Heaven and earth are ruthless and treat th

myriad creatures as straw dogs” (used as substitutes for real anim

in Chinese sacrificial rites): “the sage is ruthless and treats the

people as straw dogs.” David [Dustin Hoffman] becomes a “sag

when he recognizes the truth of this adage. Or, as Peckinpah said

a much-quoted Playboy interview (August 1972), “an intellectua

who embodies his intellect in action, that’s a real human being.”Released at the end of 1971, Straw Dogs revived and

redoubled the uproar created by The Wild Bunch. It was hailed b

some as a masterpiece, vilified by others as an endorsement ofviolence and as a sexist tract. Pauline Kael called it “the first

American film that is a fascist work of art.” Others insist that the

movie does not endorse violence, but only asserts that it is an

element in human nature which must be dealt with, not simply

denied. Peckinpah was still editing the film when Martin Baum,

president of ABC Pictures, invited him to direct Junior Bonner

(1972), from an original script by Jeb Rosenbrook. Lucien Balla

shot the film in Todd-AO 35 during the annual rodeo in PrescottArizona. Many of Peckinpah’s films are elegiac studies of the ol

West in transition to the new. Junior Bonner , his first contempor

Western, wryly illustrates the outcome….An atypically gentle

movie for both Peckinpah and McQueen, Junior Bonner was a

commercial failure….Peckinpah’s next assignment was The Getaway (1972),

produced by First Artists, a partnership set up by Steve McQuee

and other stars. The script, based on a novel by Jim Thompson, w

by Walter Hill. Peckinpah had Ballard as his cameraman, but

McQueen scrapped Jerry Fielding’s score, substituting one by

Quincy Jones….The Getaway was a major box-office success,

grossing $25 million. Contemporary reviewers also like the filmthe whole, though some complained that Peckinpah was panderi

to the current fashion for outlaw heroes. Molly Haskell found th

picture “a lot more fun and less pretentious than Straw Dogs andThe Wild Bunch,” and its violence, “not having to sustain the

burden of Peckinpah’s atavistic anthropology, is less hateful.” …

For a Peckinpah project, the filming of The Getaway ha

been relatively free of disputes. Not so Pat Garrett and Billy the

Kid (1973), “a Gordon Carroll-Sam Peckinpah Production”

financed and distributed by MGM. An original script by Rudolp

Wurlitzer, the film was shot on location in and around Durango,

Mexico, during a ferocious flu epidemic and under conditions of“open warfare” between the director and the president of MGM,

James Aubrey. John Coquillon, who had shot Straw Dogs, was t

cinematographer, and the music was supplied by Bob Dylan, wh

also appeared in the film as Alias, a former printer who joins Bilgang.

Billy the Kid, an outlaw whom the dime novels turned

a legend in his own brief lifetime, was shot dead in 1881 by She

Pat Garrett, once his friend. Beginning with the silents, at least a

score of movies have dealt in various terms with this incident. In


7/10


hands of Wurlitzer and Peckinpah, the story becomes another elegy

for lost frontier values, and one with something of the inevitability

of Greek tragedy. Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is one of Peckinph’s

survivors. The cattle barons and the politicians want a west in

which their money talks louder than guns and Garrett knows they

will win. He accepts election as sheriff and sets out to hunt down

his former friend and protegé Billy (Kris Kristofferson), whose

ways make him an embarrassment to the money-men….MGM cut

seventeen minutes from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid , excisingwhole scenes and characters. The most serious of these mutilations

was the removal of framing scenes showing the murder of PatGarrett in 1908 by the so-called Santa Fe Ring, representing the

same powerful and corrupt interests on whose behalf he had killed

Billy. As originally conceived, the movie would have been a

flashback composed of Garrett’s dying memories….In spite of

mutilations (for which Peckinpah sued the studio), the film had its

fervent admirers….

The screenplay of Peckinpah’s next film, Bring Me the

Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), is credited to Gordon Dawson andthe director, from an original story by Frank Kowalski and

Peckinpah….Peckinpah said: “I did Alfredo Garcia and I did it

exactly the way I wanted to. Good or bad, like it or not, that was myfilm.” Most contemporary reviewers disliked it intensely, and the

film was censored in Germany and Sweden. Later critics have

responded very differently….

In his 1972 Playboy interview, Peckinpah said that “a

director has to deal with a whole world absolutely teeming with

mediocrities, jackals, hangers-

on, and just plain killers….The

saying is that they can kill you but not eat you. That’s

nonsense. I’ve had them eating

on me while I was still walking

around….”

As J.-P. Coursodonsays, Sam Peckinpah is

“undoubtedly the most

controversial American director

since Orson Welles.” Dismissed

by some as a failed prodigy

and/or a fascist, he is regarded

by others as a major artist who“reinvented the shape of the cinema.” Robert Wood calls him the

heir of John Ford, his values, like Ford’s “embodied in the myth of

the Old West, with its emphasis on manhood andindependence...but he follows through the implications of such a

commitment (clung to in the context of contemporary America)

with a ruthlessness of which Ford (ultimately a more complex

artist) was incapable.”

from Peckinpah A Portrait in Montage. Garner Simmons.

University of Texas Press, Austin, 1982.

“An incurable romantic who has been married five times to three

women, and who frequently has fallen in love with prostitutes on a

“pay-as-you-go” basis, Peckinpah summed up the end of his first

marriage: “You clothe the object of your own needs in thevestments of your own desires. When you wake up to the fact that it

just ain’t there, that’s when you’ve got to go.”

Ride the High Country

“Good fight...I enjoyed it.”

There is a rumor that Ride the High Country was first offered to

film director Budd Boetticher who had directed a number of

Randolph Scott Westerns in the late fifties and early sixties. Wh

he turned it down, the rumor continues, it was offered to Burt

Kennedy, Boetticher’s scriptwriter, who had recently directed hi

first feature, The Canadians. When Kennedy turned it down, the

rumor concludes, Sam Peckinpah was offered the job. Another

rumor credits John Ford, the renowned Western director with

recommending Peckinpah for the picture. The truth is thatPeckinpah got the job on his own merit.

Richard Lyons, the film’s producer, recalled: “I’ve hearseveral stories through the years that a number of other directors

were considered for Ride the High Country, but that’s a lot of cr

I was the producer, and I’d know. The way Sam got the picture w

that he and I were both at the William Morris Agency in those d

and Silvia Hirsch, who was with the agency, heard that I was

looking for a director for this Western and asked me if I’d ever

heard of Sam Peckinpah. I said no and she convinced me to look

a couple of the segments of The Westerner that Sam had directedSo I did, and they really impressed me.

“Now you have to understand that this picture was to b

made at Metro and they were very class conscious. I mean they jdidn’t even consider hiring television directors. But I called Sol

Siegel who was head of production at the studio at the time and

him that I had this director who’d worked in television, and Id se

four segments that he’d done and I thought they were outstandin

Well, Siegel was coming in over the weekend and said he’d have

look at one. So he came in, and

we ran one, and then he did ju

what I’d done. He said, ‘You gany more?’ So we looked at th

all, and when we finished Sieg

turned to me and said, ‘Hire

him.’”

Ride the High Countrwas Rick Lyons’s first major

picture as a producer. ...Lyons

was hired to produce a small

budget Western—roughly

$800,000—primarily for relea

in European markets to offset

expensive productions, whichwere then being made by Fox, like Lewis Milestone’s Mutiny on Bounty starring Marlon Brando. The story Lyons finally decided

film dealt with two over-the-hill gunfighters who get one lastchance at glory when they are hired to escort a fold shipment fro

High sierra mining camp back to civilization….

“Lucien Ballard did a magnificent job,” stated Joel

McCrea. “He was very smart. He knew Sam better than any of th

rest of us, and he had a very tactful way of saying, ‘What would

you think of it if we shot it from over here?’ and, of course, it wo

look twice as good. He is a very talented fella.”McCrea’s co-star, Randolph Scott, retired from the mot

picture business following completion of his work on Ride the H

Country, leaving behind a distinguished career. He is now a priv

businessman in Southern California and declines to give intervieor “talk about old movies.” In a phone conversation, he did,

however, make the following statement about his experience wit

Peckinpah: “Sam, in my estimation, is one of the top directors—

upper echelon of directors. I would have liked to have worked on

other films with him. I wish that he had come along earlier in my


8/10


career, which is not to say that I was not satisfied with the many

men I did work with. But Sam is a great troubleshooter on a film. he

has an innate instinct and talent for dealing with a script that many

others just do not have.”…

Principal photography for the picture was completed on

November 22, 1961. Then Peckinpah’s luck took over….MGM

employed a full-time staff of cutters under the direction of Margaret

Booth, MGM’s editor-in-chief, who had begun her career as an

editor working for D.W. Griffith before MGM had even beenformed. As a consequence, MGM could easily have decided to take

the film as shot and turn it over to Booth for routine editing by astaff editor with minimal interference from Peckinpah on the

“director’s cut.” There was one complication, however, Margaret

Booth disliked the daily rushes that had come in from location and

had virtually said that the film would be impossible to cut. Siegel,

on the other hand, had been impressed by what he had seen. This

circumstance, coupled with the fact that Siegel was a fighter and

had liked Peckinpah from their first meeting, caused him to offer

Peckinpah a legitimate chance to make the first cut on the picture….We had a marvelous little editor name Frank Santillo, and

Sam spent fourteen weeks with Frank in the cutting room editing

the picture until they threw him off the lot. But in those fourteenweeks, Santillo taught him how to edit.”…

[Santillo:] The thing that’s really difficult in cutting for

Sam is that he shoots a lot of film, but it’s all good. That makes it

difficult to decide what to keep and what to throw away. With other

directors, you start to assemble a scene and about half the stuff is no

good, so you can throw it away. You have no problem in deciding

what to use. Sam’s footage is just the opposite. And Sam knows

every inch of that film. You’ll almost be finished with a picture, andSam will look at it, and he’ll say there was such and such a shot and

to cut it in. And Sam doesn’t care how long it takes. You’ve got to

find it because it is essential to Sam’s conception of that character.

“But probably the best illustration of what Sam was able to

do with Ride the High Country is in the final shoot-out sequence atthe end of the film. Margaret Booth had seen the dailies and said:

‘This is the worst footage I’ve ever seen. It’s impossible. Two old

guys who have been trapped by three young ones. Nobody will ever

believe they could possibly win. And the number of shots they all

fire when they’re standing there in the open. It’s ridiculous!’

“At any rate, I had done montage for Metro for years, and

during the Second World War I had worked for the military censorsat the Pentagon. We’d get the footage shot by the Army, and we’d

have to cut it quickly, making a little story out of it, and then turn it

over to the newsreels. So when we came to this final sequence inthe picture, Sam was upset because he didn’t really want to cut any

of it. I mean it was all good footage. So as always, I took it and

made a rough cut. But because of my work with Vorkapich, I knew

that even with a one-frame cut the audience could retain something

of what was on the screen, and because of my war experience, I

knew how exciting a battle sequence could be made by cutting it to

a fast pace…..Consequently, I cut the sequence and some of the

shots were only six frames long [one-quarter of a second on thescreen], and I said to Sam that even at that length some of them

would appear to be too long on the screen. And he said, ‘Oh, no.’ I

could tell that he was afraid that maybe I’d cut them too short

already.“So we went to the screening room and looked at what I’d

cut, and after the sequence was over Sam looked at me, smiled, and

said, ‘You know, you’re right.’ And then we went back, trimmed

the sequence down until it was exactly the way Sam wanted it, and

some of the shots were only two frames long. Sam has always g

me credit for teaching him how to ‘flash cut’ like that.”…

A Time review: “This story could have been sheer

slumgullion, but under Sam Peckinpah’s tasteful direction, it is a

minor chef d’oeuvre among westerns.”

As a consequence of all this, the film began to be

discussed as a possible dark horse nomination for an Academy

Award in two categories, best direction and best original

screenplay. When Peckinpah learned of this, he called both Metrand the Academy and told them flatly not to bother, “If this film

nominated for best screenplay without my name on it as writer, I

will sue every one of you!” Ride the High Country received nonominations for an Academy Award that year.

Released for foreign distribution in 1963, the film, calle

by a variety of names abroad (most notably by its working title,

Guns in the Afternoon) won the Belgium International Film Fest

Grand Prix (beating out Federico Fellini’s 8 ! among others),

Mexico’s Diosa de Plata (Silver Goddess) for Best Foreign Film

well as high praise from France’s Le Conseil des Dix.

More important to Peckinpah, however, was the personvictory bound to this film. His sister, Fern Lea, recalls: “we wen

see Ride the High Country at a sneak preview, and when it was

over, I went into the ladies’ room and cried and cried because th

character played by Joel McCrea reminded me so much of myfather who had just died the year before. My father liked to quot

the Bible and could. The line ‘All I want to do is enter my hous

justified’ was a saying I often heard my father say.” This was

Peckinpah’s tribute to “the Boss.”


9/10


Peckinpah’s real vindication as a director, however, came

for his former employer, Sol Siegel, who upon seeing the film in a

theater wrote Sam a letter that began, “Who the fuck do you think

you are...John Ford?”

Sam Peckinpah’s Feature Films. Bernard F. Dukore. University

of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999.

Documentation on Peckinpah’s uncredited revisions ofscreenplays is abundant. “The producer Richard Lyons, and the

head of the MGM studio at that time, Sol Siegel, brought me in torewrite the N.B. Stone script [of Ride the High Country] and shoot

the picture,” says Peckinpah, for example, “and they gave me a free

hand.” According to Lyon and Joel McCrea, who played Steve

Judd, Peckinpah rewrote some 80 percent of the dialogue,

reconceived the characters of the two old westerners, and had Judd

rather than the other old-timer die at the end; furthermore,

Peckinpah’s copy of the original shooting script, which he gave to a

typist, authenticates how massive his revisions were….According to cinematographer Lucien Ballard, Peckinpah

“must have rewritten half of The Ballad of Cable Hogue while

shooting it,” and Stella Stevens, who played Hildy, maintains thatonce she signed to do the film he reconceived the role for her;

Marshall Fine flatly states that Peckinpah and Gordon Dawson

“rewrote the script, though they didn’t receive credit.” Jeb

Rosebrook, the screenwriter of credit for Junior Bonner , admits the

director “helped me a great deal” in revising the script and calls him

“a master rewrite man.”...

Peckinpah “knew Aristotle’s Poetics cold,” says PaulSeydor. It “gave him the foundations for dramatic writing,” notes

David Weddle, “and he became a strong believer in the

philosopher’s theory that great drama provides an audience with a

catharsis through which they can purge their own pain, rage, and

fear.” Such contemporary French writings as Sartre’s No Exit andThe Flies, adds Weddle, also fascinated him….

Complexities mark characters in Ride the High Country.

Joshua Knudsen’s language and rules of conduct cue audiences to

consider him not only a harsh and inflexible religious fanatic, an

unyielding, moralistic despot who may have driven his wife, Hester

(probably named after the heroine of The Scarlet Letter ), to seekaffection elsewhere—that is, to commit adultery—but also a

tyrannical father….Although Peckinpah rewrote a great deal of

Richard E. Lyons’s screenplay, as Weddle points out, he “madeonly one structural change.” Yet this change “was crucial.” Weddle

says, “Instead of Westrum getting killed in the final gun battle, he

switched things around; Judd would die and Westrum would

survive. It was an inspired move, not only because it flew in the

face of the genre’s conventions (the villain must always die for his

sins), but because it threw the story’s theme into sharp focus. With

a few quick strokes of the pen, Peckinpah had made Westrum the

protagonist and the upstanding Judd the antagonist.”

WESTERNS ON U.S. TV, 1950-2000: Action in the Afternoon, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., T

Adventures of Champion, The Adventures of Cyclone Malone, T

Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, The Adventures of Jim BowThe Adventures of Kit Carson, The Adventures of Lariat Sam, T

Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Adventures of Spin and Marty,

Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Alaskans, Alias Smith andJones, Annie Oakley, Barbary Coast, Bat Masterson, Best of theWest, The Big Valley, Black Saddle, Bonanza, Boots and Saddle

Bordertown, Branded, BraveStarr (animation), Brave Eagle, Bre

Maverick, Broken Arrow, Bronco, Buckskin, Buffalo Bill Jr., Th

Californians, Casey Jones, Cheyenne, The Chisholms, The Cisco

Kid, Cimarron City, Cimarron Strip, Circus Boy, Colt .45, The

Cowboys, Custer, The Dakotas, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett,

Deadwood, Death Valley Days, The Deputy, Destry, Dick PoweZane Grey Theater, Dirty Sally, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,

Dundee and the Culhane, Dusty's Trail, Empire, Father Murphy,

Four Feather Falls (puppet show), Frontier, Frontier Circus, Fron

Doctor, Frontier Justice, F Troop, The Gabby Hayes Show, The

Gene Autry Show, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,

Gunslinger, Guns of Paradise (originally, Paradise), The Guns oWill Sonnett, Gunsmoke, Harts of the West, Have Gun – Will

Travel, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, Hec Ramsey, H

Come the Brides, The High Chaparral, Hondo, Hopalong Cassid

Hotel de Paree, How the West Was Won, Into the West, The Iro

Horse, Jefferson Drum, Judge Roy Bean, Johnny Ringo, Kung F

Lancer, Laramie, Laredo, Law of the Plainsman, Lawman, TheLazarus Man, Legacy, Legend, The Legend of Jesse James, The

Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Little House on the Prairie, The

Lone Ranger, The Loner, Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove - Th

Outlaw Years, Mackenzie's Raiders, The Magnificent Seven, AMan Called Shenandoah, The Man From Blackhawk, Man With

a Gun, The Marshal of Gunsight Pass, Maverick, The Monroes,

Friend Flicka, Nichols, Northwest Passage, The Oregon Trail, TOutcasts, Outlaws, Overland Trail, Paradise (later Guns of

Paradise), Pistols 'n' Petticoats, Ponderosa, Pony Express, The

Quest, The Range Rider, Rango, Rawhide, The Rebel, Red Ryde

Redigo, The Restless Gun, The Rifleman, Riverboat, The RoadWest, The Rough Riders, The Rounders, The Roy Rogers Show

The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, Saber Rider and the Star

Sheriffs, Sara, Shane, Sheriff of Cochise, Shotgun Slade, Sky Ki

Stagecoach West, State Trooper, Steve Donovan, Western Mars

Stoney Burke, Sugarfoot, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Tales ofWells Fargo, The Tall Man, Tate, Temple Houston, Tombstone

Territory, Trackdown, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, 26 Me

Two Faces West, Union Pacific, The Virginian, Wagon Train,

Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Westerner, Whiplash, WhisperingSmith, Wichita Town, The Wide Country, The Wild Wild West,

Wildside, Wrangler, Yancy Derringer, Young Maverick, The

Young Pioneers, The Young Riders, Zorro.


10/10

Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2010 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XX:

Mar 2 Costa-Gavras Z 1969

Mar 16 Peter Yates, The Friends of Eddie Coyle 1973Mar 23 John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence 1974

Mar 30 Stanley Kubrick, The Shining 1980

Apr 6 Wolfgang Petersen, Das Boot 1981Apr 13 Federico Fellini, Ginger & Fred , 1985Apr 20 Michael Mann, Collateral 2004

CONTACTS:

...email Diane Christian: [email protected]

…email Bruce Jackson [email protected]

...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected]

....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center

and State University of New York at Buffalo

with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News

Michael Lee Jackson & Warren Oates, 1976

The Buffalo Films Festival-Ride the High Country-sam Peckinpah

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