Western RoundUp: News RoundUp

Western RoundUp: News RoundUp

As we enter year six of my Western RoundUp column here at Classic Movie Hub, I’m going to do something a little different this month!

In this column I’ll be sharing a few different pieces of news about recent and upcoming events related to classic movie Westerns. As will be seen below, much of the news ties together.

We’ll start with my May visit to the annual Cowboy Cookout benefit at McCrea Ranch. It was my first time attending the benefit, which supports ongoing restoration work at the ranch, since 2019.

As I wrote here in a 2019 column on the Cowboy Cookout, McCrea Ranch was long owned by Joel McCrea and his wife Frances Dee and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Their grandson Wyatt McCrea was at the ranch to greet guests:

A highlight of the benefit is the opportunity to visit the McCreas’ home, which is located down a road some distance from most of the ranch buildings.

This was the McCreas’ view from their front porch…

…and this was a view out their back door.

Guests at the McCrea Ranch fundraiser this year included Bruce Boxleitner, who narrates the ranch’s Visitor Center video:

Also on hand was actor Rudy Ramos, seen here with Boxleitner glimpsed at the right.

McCrea Ranch regularly hosts screenings of movies featuring Joel McCrea and Frances Dee. Coming in August is a screening of the Western The Lone Hand (1953) with a special appearance by former child actor Jimmy Hunt, who played McCrea’s son in the movie. Ticket information may be found at the McCrea Ranch website.

Speaking of Joel McCrea, some wonderful news is the upcoming August 2023 Blu-ray release of his film Wichita (1955). It will be released by the Warner Archive Collection.

You can read more about Wichita in my 2018 column on Wyatt Earp Westerns. It’s an excellent film which was directed by Jacques Tourneur, and I highly recommend it.

Also just out is a brand-new 4K/Blu-ray Criterion Collection release of five films with McCrea’s Ride the High Country (1962) costar, Randolph Scott.

The Ranown Westerns set contains five films in which Scott was directed by Budd Boetticher: The Tall T (1957), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Ride Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960).

Some of the extras are imported from earlier releases, but the set also contains a new program on Randolph Scott by Farran Smith Nehme, whose work I highly respect. I’ll add that I’m hoping this set will eventually have a more affordable Blu-ray-only release.

Three of these Ranown movies were shot in Lone Pine, California. More on that below.

This summer Kino Lorber Studio Classics is releasing two new Blu-ray collections of Audie Murphy Westerns.

• 

• 

Some of the films in these sets have not been previously available in the U.S., even on DVD. Among the half-dozen titles in these sets is another Lone Pine favorite, Hell Bent for Leather (1960).

Finally, the Lone Pine Film Festival has started to release information on this year’s Western screenings and movie location tours. The festival guest list is also starting to take shape. 2023 guests will include Patrick Wayne, Robert Carradine, and Bruce Boxleitner.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Lone Pine Film Festival is being able to watch a movie and then immediately visit its locations.

This year festival guests will watch Hell Bent for Leather (seen below at left) and then visit where it was filmed in the Alabama Hills (seen at right).

• 

• 

Likewise, guests will watch a screening of Ride Lonesome and see the station featured in the screenshot below, then be able to see where it was actually filmed, as seen toward the left of the panoramic Alabama Hills shot below.

• 

• 

The panoramic shot above also includes the location of the Tall T hideout, which was at the rightmost “mountain” of rocks.

My husband Doug is the festival’s horseback tour guide, and this year there will be at least two horseback visits to some of these sites available, along with car caravans to locations for walking tours.

Tickets for the Lone Pine Film Festival, held in early October, will be on sale soon. Please visit the Lone Pine Film Festival website for much more information.

Those interested in the festival or Lone Pine locations can also click on my name at the top of this column and find several more columns on those topics.

The photographs and screenshots accompanying this article are from the author’s personal collection.

…

– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns.  She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals.  Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.