Saturday, April 27, 2013

From Eric Beheim



Opening title for one of Johnny Mack Brown's 1936 B-Westerns.

Posted by Buckles at 4/27/2013 03:40:00 PM

2 comments:

Eric said...

Johnny Mack Brown was a college football star -- a halfback on the University of Alabama team. In 1926, he scored the winning touchdown in a Rose Bowl game against the University of Washington. Within a year, he was in the movies and by 1928, was at MGM, co-starring with the likes of Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. Gradually overshadowed at MGM by an up-and-coming Clark Gable, Johnny made a couple of westerns for Universal and Paramount, respectively, which served to establish him as a western star. His first B-western series was for A.W. Hackel’s Supreme Pictures. These films were well scripted and had plenty of action. After a couple of serials, he played opposite John Wayne in BORN TO THE WEST. Not long afterwards, he was hired to star in a series of B-westerns at Universal with Fuzzy Knight as his sidekick. In 1942, Tex Ritter joined the series and the Brown-Ritter films were superior in terms of plots and action. (Robert Mitchum appears in one of them as a bad guy.) In 1943, Brown moved over to Monogram and starred in a series of B-westerns with Raymond Hatton. (In several of them, he did his gun twirling flash act that Smokey later saw him do in person.) He made his last starring western in 1952. He later worked as a character actor in films and on TV.

27 April, 2013 17:59
Roger Smith said...

Gunplay, as its called in competition, is quite an act when done with real six-shooters. Those things are heavy, and strong fingers and hands are required to manage them in action. Look for this event to be included with whip-cracking and knife throwing along the routes of fairs and rodeos. Gabby Hayes used to amaze live audiences when he tossed up an apple and cut it in half with a bullwhip.

29 April, 2013 00:02

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