August 13, 2022
In our Women's book, Jana and I are touching on some of the more edgy Western women and how they have been portrayed by Hollywood. Doris Day as Calamity Jane comes to mind as a reach, but then I got this tidbit from Nogales:
"Surely if you’re showing movie posters of the women in the book you’ll need to include 34-year-old Donna Reed portraying Sacagawea in the 1955 movie The Far Horizon. They kind of bronzed her up but she wasn’t very convincing as an English speaking teenage Native American guide. Donna was an excellent actor and had many great roles, this wasn’t one of them. Way too many liberties were taken in telling the Lewis and Clark story."
—Greg Scott
For Crying Out Loud, Sacagawea?!
All of which begs the question, did this crying Indian (1955) preceed Iron Eyes Cody litterbug tear, or did Donna Reed shed a tear first? Okay, looks like Donna Reed's preceeded Iron Eyes by 15 years. Cody shed his tear in 1971 and by the way, it's known as the most famous tear in American History.
Meanwhile. . .
We got this little beauty going.
Doris Day as Calamity Jane
To the credit of the crew who came up with "Deadwood" things got quite a bit more accurate.
Robin Weiger as Calamity Jane in Deadwood
Which is much closer to the real Calamity.
Jana had a history talk at the Phippen today so Kathy and Uno and I met her on the Carefree Highway at 32nd Street to grab a photo for the back page of our book. Of course, a certain ham had to be in the photo as well.
Yes, and Uno is in the picture as well. My son, Thomas Charles ordered a book for me and it arrived two days ago. Finally cracked it last night.
"I realized that I was going to have to get up at five in the morning if I wanted to write fiction. It took a while, the alarm would go off and I'd roll over. Finally, I started to get up and go into the living room and sit at the coffee table with the yellow pad and try to write two pages. I made a rule that I had to get something down on paper before I could turn the water on for the coffee. Know where you're going and then put the water on. That seemed to work because I did it for most of the fifties."
—Elmore Leonard, in the foreword to "The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard"
No comments:
Post a Comment
Post your comments