Tagged: Winchester Model 1873

James Stewart’s Western Gear as The Man from Laramie

James Stewart in The Man from Laramie (1955)

Vitals

James Stewart as Will Lockhart, freight hauler and former cavalry officer

New Mexico, Late 1870s

Film: The Man from Laramie
Release Date: September 20, 1955
Director: Anthony Mann

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Since 2008, the National Day of the Cowboy has been observed on the fourth Saturday in July to recognize the spirit of the pioneering men and women who helped establish the American West. James Stewart’s homespun persona naturally lent itself to Western cinema as the actor’s prolific Western filmography includes Destry Rides Again (1939), Winchester ’73 (1950), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and John Wayne’s swan song The Shootist (1976). Among these, Stewart recalled that his favorite Western was his eighth and final collaboration with director Anthony Mann: The Man from Laramie. Continue reading →

Legends of the Fall: Brad Pitt’s Tan Leather Car Coat

Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall (1994)

Vitals

Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow, tough bootlegger and World War I veteran

Montana, Fall 1925

Film: Legends of the Fall
Release Date: December 23, 1994
Director: Edward Zwick
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Legends of the Fall may be a biblical title, but the style is autumnal, set amidst the network of the fictional Ludlow ranch in Montana across the first quarter of the 20th century.

Family patriarch William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) had been a decorated Army colonel before leaving the service in protest of the government’s treatment of Native Americans, raising his sons Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas) on their remote ranch, where they learn to be the self-sufficient types that can survive bear confrontations… and if they don’t survive them, at least put up enough of a fight to earn “a good death.”

Portraying the tough but troubled Tristan Ludlow provided a breakthrough opportunity for Pitt, continuing the momentum he’d built in a similar role two years earlier in A River Runs Through It, though Tristan is arguably a more rugged character than Paul Maclean. By the mid-1920s, Tristan had seen and done it all, as a cowboy, soldier, big-game hunter, and now a bootlegger whose rumrunning runs him afoul of his own Volstead-voting brother Alfred and his nemeses, the crooked O’Banion brothers. As blood spills on both sides of the conflict, Tristan fears that those he love most are damned to die before him, only to be saved by the bonds of his family. Continue reading →