Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Tumbleweeds

Any time I watch a silent movie, it takes me a little while to adjust to it, but once I do, I nearly always enjoy it. TUMBLEWEEDS, from 1925, is William S. Hart's magnum opus, a big sprawling epic of the Oklahoma Land Rush in 1889. There's some great stunt work in it, and it's worth watching for that alone. The whole movie is available on YouTube.

When TUMBLEWEEDS was reissued in 1939, it included an eight-minute sound prologue of Hart talking about the making of the film and then bidding farewell to his viewers. Is it hokey and melodramatic, as you might expect from a silent film star? Absolutely. Does it work? Well, when Hart is almost overcome by emotion near the end, I get a little misty-eyed myself, and I've seen it many times. Such sincerity is a nice respite from modern-day irony and cynicism.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Action Stories, October 1930

Pretty good cover on this first issue of DETECTIVE ACTION STORIES, but the real appeal is inside, with novelettes by Erle Stanley Gardner, J. Allan Dunn, and F.V.W. Mason (billed as Frank V.W. Mason, something I haven't seen too often). Probably a solidly entertaining pulp, with that lineup.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: A Taste of Honey - Martin Denny

My favorite version of this song is still the one by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, but this one by Martin Denny is pretty good. We had several Martin Denny albums when I was a kid because my dad liked his music. Don't remember if this song was on any of them.

Now Available: Branded - Ed Gorman

Young Andy Malloy is surrounded by tragedy and trouble. His stepmother is dead. His father, accused of her murder, is on the run from a posse led by a brutal sheriff with demons of his own. Andy’s investigation into the crime is about to put him in deadly danger. And the truth, not to mention Andy’s own life, may rest in the hands of a pathetic town drunk and a freckle-faced redhead . . .

BRANDED is a classic novel by the master of Western noir, Ed Gorman. Filled with compelling characters, breathtaking suspense, and stunning plot twists, it’s a yarn guaranteed to please Western and mystery readers and a novel not soon to be forgotten.

(This is one of Ed's best books. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and grab it.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Spicy Western Stories, August 1938

This is a pretty eye-catching cover, even for SPICY WESTERN STORIES, and the lineup of authors inside is a good one: E. Hoffmann Price, James P. Olsen writing as James A. Lawson, Laurence Donovan writing as Larry Dunn, and two stories each by Edwin Truett Long (as by Luke Terry and Wallace Kayton) and John A. Saxon (as King Saxon and Rex Norman). Prolific and entertaining pulpsters, each and every one. 

Forgotten Books: The Man I Killed - Shel Walker (Walt Sheldon)

The second novel in the upcoming Stark House volume of reprints from Lion Books is THE MAN I KILLED by Shel Walker, who was really Walt Sheldon. This fast-paced crime novel is the only time Sheldon used that pseudonym. The narrator has a pseudonym, too. He calls himself Lew Ross but makes it clear that’s not his real name. The alias is because ten years earlier he killed a man in a bar fight and went on the run.

The law has never caught up to him in his adventurous life since then, but as this novel opens he’s come back to the unnamed city in the American Southwest where his crime took place. The scene of that crime is now a much fancier nightclub and gambling joint run by mobster Marty Evans. Lew meets a girl there and falls for her, but he has a tendency of getting in trouble and before you know it he’s up to his neck in a murder frame, complete with beatings from the cops and the gangsters alike.

Anybody who’s read many hardboiled crime novels from the Fifties will have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this book, but the real pleasure in reading THE MAN I KILLED is Sheldon’s crisp, literate prose. The story moves along very fast, Lew and both of the beautiful girls he encounters are likable characters, and the antagonists on both sides of the law are suitably detestable, although a couple of them (a police detective and a former college football star who now works as muscle for the mob) have more depth to them than you might expect. This is actually the first novel by Sheldon that I’ve read, although I’ve seen his books around for many years and have a few of them on my shelves. I enjoyed it very much and will be checking out more of his work.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Garden in the Rain - Diana Krall

This seems like an appropriate song, since I'm sitting up with dogs freaking out from thunderstorms.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Escape From Fort Bravo

This one is kind of a mixed bag, but it's a Western I'd somehow never seen before, so I'm glad we watched it. Fort Bravo is a Union post in Arizona where Confederate prisoners are kept during the Civil War. William Holden is a hard-nosed Yankee officer, John Forsythe is the leader of the Confederates (an odd bit of casting), William Demarest is the comedy relief (not used much in what's basically a pretty grim movie), and Eleanor Parker is the beautiful woman who shows up and complicates things.

ESCAPE FROM FORT BRAVO was directed by John Sturges, so you know the film is going to look good and the action scenes will be well-staged. That part works just fine, and the actors are all okay, despite the fact that I'm not a big fan of any of them except maybe William Holden, who's been in a lot of movies I've liked. However, the script is full of lapses in logic. For example, in order to romance Parker, Holden takes her--alone--to the exact same spot where an entire cavalry patrol got attacked by Apaches a day or two earlier. That sort of thing happens all too often.

But the last thirty minutes has a lot of nice action in it, which makes ESCAPE FROM FORT BRAVO worth watching. I'll probably never watch it again, though.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 8, 1933

"World's End", the serial by Victor Rousseau that starts in this issue of ARGOSY, sounds pretty apocalyptic. The cover by Paul Stahr makes the situation look pretty dire, too. Maybe somebody who's read this one can tell us what it's about. Elsewhere in this issue are stories by Charles Alden Seltzer, Robert Carse, and George Worts writing as Loring Brent with an installment of a Peter the Brazen serial.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, February 28, 1925

I'm sure there's a name for this sort of endlessly repeating cover, but I don't know enough about art to know what it is. Frank Richardson Pierce and Peter Henry Morland are the biggest names among the authors, "Morland" really being Frederick Faust. This issue contains the conclusion of the serial "Beyond the Outposts", which was later reprinted under Faust's more famous pseudonym Max Brand. I've heard great things about this novel and have a copy of it, but I haven't read it yet.