Still riding high — hero who is 80 years old

Press, 22 September 1983, Page 21

Still riding high — hero who is 80 years old

By

CHARLES FRASER,

Features International

He wore a white hat, his smile was crooked, but his teeth straight, and he rode away into the sunset leaving a tearful sweetheart, because a man had to do what a man had to do ... He did it on 21 minutes of flickering celluloid just 80 years ago this month and the western movie had been born.

Since then, an estimated 20,000 cowboy pictures have been made, over half of them in Hollywood. Cowboys have had fist-fights in outer space, on the top of skyscrapers, in sunken galleons on the seabed, on the wings of planes and, on one epic occasion, in a monastery garden. Someone once estimated that if all the blanks used by movie cowboys in the last eight decades were fired at once, the explosion would deafen every man, woman, and child in America.

Today, although no major Hollywood studio has made a big-budget western for over two years, the cowboy movie still tops the list of Hollywood money-makers — a 20nation survey recently showed that it is still the most popular film on television.

It was on September 21, 1903, that the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company completed the world’s first western movie, “Kit Carson,” and optimistically copyrighted the idea with the United States Patents Office.

It related the story of Carson’s capture by Indians and his subsequent escape, helped by a beautiful Indian maiden. There were 11 scenes and the movie, made in the hills of New York state, lasted 21 minutes.

A few days later, Mutoscope and Biograph copyrighted another western, “The Pioneers,” a 15minute epic showing the burning of a settler’s homestead by marauding Indians who kill the homesteader and his wife and carry off their daughter.

The movie ended with the dramatic rescue of the child by frontiersmen who discover the bodies of her parents. Mutoscope and Biograph’s hopes of keeping a monopoly on westerns lasted a mere three months. Then, the Edison Company brought out a nine-minute classic, “The Great Train Robbery,” claimed to be the first “horse-opera” to tell a story.

Filmed on a railway in Dover, New Jersey, “The Great Train Robbery,” written, produced, and filmed by Edwin Porter, pioneered such classic western action as horseback chases, robbery on a train, and a fight on top of a moving carriage.

Soon a dozen hastily-formed companies were shooting one-reel westerns in the hills and woods of New Jersey. Among the extras was D. W. Griffith, later to direct such epics as “Birth of a Nation.”

He told his wife: “It’s not so bad, you know — $5 for simply riding a horse through the woods on a cool spring day!”

Another extra on “The Great Train Robbery” was a heavyweight bit-part actor named Max Aronson, who had got the jpb claiming to be an expert horseman. He mounted the horse from the wrong side and was thrown in every sequence in which he appeared. Later he changed his name to G. M. Anderson, formed his own movie company and starred in 375 one-reel westerns centred on his own screen character, Bronco Billy. Years later he recalled: “I never learned to ride properly. I used doubles for the sensational stunts and as for marksmanship ... in those movies, a blank used to turn a corner and kill a man every time!” Even so, by 1910 he was the world’s first western star, and successful enough to force the Edison Company to bring a series

of lawsuits alleging infringement of copyright. Broncho Billy moved to California, many other companies followed, and the Hollywood western was born.

Soon Bronco Billy, William S. Hart, and Tom Mix were the three superstars of western movies. Hart’s films had an almost docu-mentary-like realism, but Mix specialised in pep, escapism and showmanship. His pictures included aerial stunts, high-speed chases and even motor-racing. The vital ingredient of westerns, the hammer-and-tongs fist-fight, did not punch its way into movies unt.il 1914. Then came the classic film fight of all time — the battle between William Farnum and Tom Santschi in “The Spoilers.” The epic punch-up lasted a full reel, and both men needed a week off to recover. Farnum later recalled: “It really was a serious fight and we both got hurt, but there were no hard feelings afterwards.

“In later films, actors just faked fights, but we didn’t want to do that. We pulled no punches, and it really was a fight to the finish.” When a second version of the movie was made in 1930, Santschi and Farnum were brought in by Paramount to advise William Boyd and Gary Cooper how to restage the famous battle.

“Even so,” recalled Farnum, “they didn’t hit each other as hard

as we did! The insurance companies wouldn’t let them.” In the 19305, talking pictures brought in a new western hero — the singing cowboy. Gene Autry, Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers rode through a never-never-land where social conditions of 1880 rubbed shoulders with the costume and dialogue of 1935.Not until after World War II did westerns once again become bigmoney spinners, playing a minimum of 6000 cinemas in America alone. Gary Cooper won an oscar for “High Noon,” “Shane” earned over $8 million, and “Broken Arrow” was top box-office earner of 1950. By 1960, output of Hollywood westerns had dwindled from 25 per

cent in 1950 to a mere 10 per cent. Yet the indefatigable John Wayne was still voted Hollywood’s top star, and had cheering news for the western. He declared: “Westerns will never die. They are our heritage. They show how life was when we fought physical danger rather than some invisible death-from the sky. I love westerns. I’ll always make them.” The world’s first western movie star thought differently. “Westerns have never changed,” declared Broncho Billy Anderson on his seventy-fifth birthday. “It’s still stew out of the same stewpot. “They’re just like I used to make — except that now they talk a little!”