Turner Classic Movies is going to celebrate Roy Rogers’ 100th birthday this year as part of its annual Classic Film Festival. The restored prints of...
Legends: John Ford
Turner Classic Movies has released a two-disc, four-movie collection of John Ford films. The collection features 1949’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,...
Gunsmoke: The Fourth Season, Vol. 2
By early 1959, when these episodes of the number one show on TV aired, all three networks were loading their prime-time slots with Westerns that...
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Clint?
Clint Walker never really made sense; he was six feet, six inches tall and made average men look and feel like Mickey Rooney standing next to him....
True Fit
Y'know, my python boot is too tight, I couldn't get it off last night. A week went by, and now it's July. I finally got it off, and my girlfriend...
Snapshots of Old West History
Our collective American snapshot history began when George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera and roll film in 1888. As the years went on, more and...
The Last Great Buffalo Roundup
By 1880, the great herds of buffalo—estimated at 60 million in America—were all but gone, leaving behind them a dismal story of human greed and...
Cleopatras on the American Nile
If the Colorado River is the “American Nile,” as some fanciful writers have called it, was there a Cleopatra along its banks? More than one woman...
The Real Rooster Cogburn
John Franklin Cogburn, nicknamed “Rooster” by his Uncle Page, was my great-grandfather. While he never packed a badge, Franklin was quite familiar...
The Truth Behind True Grit
Fort Smith was once the last bastion of law and order before the wild frontier. In the heyday of Fort Smith, a popular saying went, “There is no law...
Kearney, Nebraska
For Ronnie O’Brien, her connection to Kearney begins in 1842 in Ireland and ends more than a century and a half later in Nebraska. Her husband’s...
True Masterpiece
True Grit is an American masterpiece. The success of the film by Joel and Ethan Coen has surprised pundits and led, yet again, to predictions of the...