This is the amazing story of Ben Johnson, the cowboy who grew up in the tall grass prairie of Oklahoma, rode to Hollywood in a boxcar full of horses and became an Oscar-winning actor. Johnson co-starred in some of Hollywood's greatest Western movies of all time, alongside John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Burt Reynolds, Alan Ladd, and many more. Known as "Son" to his family and friends, Johnson was the son of a three-time world champion rodeo cowboy also named Ben Johnson. Dividing his time between the world of movies and the world of rodeo, "Son" Johnson became one of the greatest rodeo cowboys of all time, winning the 1953 RCA World Championship for team roping. A man of principle who believed in the value of "honesty, realism and respect," Johnson managed to forge a successful career in the film industry without becoming a part of the excesses of Hollywood. He often paid dearly for his integrity, enduring a blacklist by famed Western director John Ford for refusing to allow Ford to verbally abuse him. Johnson's career lasted more than 50 years, with many highs and lows, but through it all he always stayed true to the cowboy code. When he won his Oscar for The Last Picture Show in 1972, Johnson took the stage and, in his typical "aw shucks" way, said, "This couldn't have happened to a nicer fella." The Nicest Fella is a must read for fans of Ben Johnson, rodeo fans, Western movie buffs, Hollywood fanatics, and anyone who still believes in the American dream! With 30 pages of never-before-seen photographs from the Johnson family collection and a complete filmography.

For nearly two centuries, Americans have embraced the Western like no other artistic genre. Creators and consumers alike have utilized this story form in literature, painting, film, radio and television to explore questions of national identity and purpose. Westerns: The Essential Collection comprises the Journal of Popular Film and Television’s rich and longstanding legacy of scholarship on Westerns with a new special issue devoted exclusively to the genre. This collection examines and analyzes the evolution and significance of the screen Western from its earliest beginnings to its current global reach and relevance in the 21st century. Westerns: The Essential Collection addresses the rise, fall and durability of the genre, and examines its preoccupation with multicultural matters in its organizational structure. Containing eighteen essays published between 1972 and 2011, this seminal work is divided into six sections covering Silent Westerns, Classic Westerns, Race and Westerns, Gender and Westerns, Revisionist Westerns and Westerns in Global Context. A wide range of international contributors offer original critical perspectives on the intricate relationship between American culture and Western films and television series. Westerns: The Essential Collection places the genre squarely within the broader aesthetic, socio-historical, cultural and political dimensions of life in the United States as well as internationally, where the Western has been reinvigorated and reinvented many times. This groundbreaking anthology illustrates how Western films and television series have been used to define the present and discover the future by looking backwards at America’s imagined past.

Robert Mitchum was--and still is--one of Hollywood's defining stars of Western film. For more than 30 years, the actor played the weary and cynical cowboy, and his rough-and-tough presence on-screen was no different than his one off-screen. With a personality fit for western-noir, Robert Mitchum dominated the genre during the mid-20th century, and returned as the anti-hero again during the 1990s before his death. This book lays down the life of Mitchum and the films that established him as one of Hollywood's strongest and smartest horsemen. Going through early classics like Pursued (1947) and Blood on the Moon (1948) to more recent cult favorites like Tombstone (1993) and Dead Man (1995), Freese shows how Mitchum's nuanced portrayals of the iconic anti-hero of the West earned him his spot in the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

A unique and gifted actor once bucked the system in Hollywood. This is the life story of movie and TV actor Dale Robertson, told by the person who knew him best: his wife, Susan. Susan says she is not a professional writer but wanted to write this book totally herself with her own thoughts, ideas, time frame, and no ghost writer. She laughs when someone says, "Well, you are a writer now." As she states in the book, Dale would joke when someone would approach him to do his autobiography. He'd say, "Not now." It was because he did not know how it ended. Also he would remind them of all the thousands of interviews he had done over the years and to "let the younger actors do these interviews now." Because the autobiography had not been done, Susan wanted to do it to help in some way to preserve his legacy. Susan now resides in San Diego, California, to be closer to family and hopes folks will enjoy the book. She knows her husband better and that he did not compromise himself in the film industry and in life.

These were unique, complex, personal and professional relationships between master director John Ford and his two favorite actors, John Wayne and Ward Bond. The book provides a biography of each and a detailed exploration of Ford's work as it was intertwined with the lives and work of both Wayne and Bond (whose biography here is the first ever published). The book reveals fascinating accounts of ingenuity, creativity, toil, perseverance, bravery, debauchery, futility, abuse, masochism, mayhem, violence, warfare, open- and closed-mindedness, control and chaos, brilliance and stupidity, rationality and insanity, friendship and a testing of its limits, love and hate--all committed by a "half-genius, half-Irish" cinematic visionary and his two surrogate sons: Three Bad Men.

Both brawls and elaborate martial arts have kept movie audiences on the edges of their seats since cinema began. But the filming of fight scenes has changed significantly through the years--mainly for the safety of the combatants--from improvised scuffles in the Silent Era to exquisitely choreographed and edited sequences involving actors, stuntmen and technical experts. Camera angles prevented many a broken nose. Examining more than 300 films--from The Spoilers (1914) to Road House (1989)--the author provides behind-the-scenes details on memorable melees starring such iconic tough-guys as John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan.

The horses that captured the moviegoers’ hearts are the common denominator in Hollywood Hoofbeats. As author Petrine Day Mitchum writes, “the movies as we know them would be vastly different without horses. There would be no Westerns—no cowboy named John Wayne—no Gone with the Wind, no Ben Hur, no Dances with Wolves…” no War Horse, no True Grit, no Avatar! Those last three 21st-century Hollywood creations are among the new films covered in this expanded second edition of Hollywood Hoofbeats written by the daughter of movie star Robert Mitchum, who himself appeared on the silver screen atop a handsome chestnut gelding. Having grown up around movie stars and horses, Petrine Day Mitchum is the ideal author to pay tribute to the thousands of equine actors that have entertained the world since the inception of the film medium. From the early days of D.W. Griffith’s The Great Train Robbery to Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, this celebration of movies promises something for every Hollywood fan… the raucous comedy of Abbot and Costello (and “Teabiscuit”) in It Ain’t Hay, a classic sports films like National Velvet starring Elizabeth Taylor, a timeless epic with Errol Flynn, and films featuring guitar-strumming cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. INSIDE HOLLYWOOD HOOFBEATS Movie trivia and fascinating anecdotes about the stars of yesterday and today An inside look at the stunts horses performed in motion pictures and the lingering controversies Hundreds of illustrations, including rare movie posters, movie stills, and film clips Updated, expanded text including coverage of new movies and photographs Chapters devoted to action films, Westerns, comedies, musicals, child stars, and more Famous TV programs and their horses including Mr. Ed and Silver (Lone Ranger)

"Chronicles the life and achievements of Dean Smith, a Texan and Olympic gold medal winner who became a Hollywood stuntman and actor"--

When Harry Carey, Sr., died in 1947, director John Ford cast Carey's twenty-six-year-old son, Harry, Jr., in the role of The Abilene Kid in 3 Godfathers. Ford and the elder Carey had filmed an earlier version of the story, and Ford dedicated the Technicolor remake to his memory. Company of Heroes is the story of the making of that film, as well as the eight subsequent Ford classics. In it, Harry Carey, Jr., casts a remarkably observant eye on the process of filming Westerns by one of the true masters of the form. From She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Wagonmaster to The Searchers and Cheyenne Autumn, he shows the care, tedium, challenge, and exhilaration of movie-making at its highest level. Carey's portrayal of John Ford at work is the most intimate ever written. He also gives us insightful and original portraits of the men and women who were part of Ford's vision of America: John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, and Ben Johnson. Funny, insightful, and brutally honest, Company of Heroes is a rip-roaring good read that presents the remarkable life story of Harry Carey, Jr., and his many fine performances.