John Wayne: Cowboys & Demons(2023)
John Wayne was a legendary actor and an embodiment of America itself. While he played men who always do the right thing on camera his real life is far more complicated.
John Wayne was a legendary actor and an embodiment of America itself. While he played men who always do the right thing on camera his real life is far more complicated.
The portrait of the last cowboy Hollywood legend dives into the 65 years of an extraordinary career in Hollywood, highlighted iconic films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as well as Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Gran Torino all the way to Cry Macho in 2021. It is no small task to cover more than 60 years of cinema history, especially when it is trying to surveyed with such breadth and diversity: TV star, international star, controversial icon, contested director, filmmaker with a capital F, Eastwood has been through it all, experienced it all, and it is first of all this romantic trajectory, this true American pastoral that the documentary wants to tell with all the passion it possibly can.
This is the story of a man who climbed the Hollywood ladder, one rung at a time, until he reached the top and became the most popular American actor of his era.
Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?
A retrospective of the career of actor John Wayne, showing clips from many of his most famous films.
The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.
They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.
John Wayne, Henry Fonda and James Stewart discuss working with John Ford.
In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.
This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special.
Documentary short about the making of John Wayne's final movie, the 1976 film The Shootist.
This installment in A&E's Biography series follows the life of John Wayne from his troubled childhood to his peak as America's biggest box-office draw to his later years as a controversial conservative icon. Examined closely, Wayne's life is a startling series of contradictions. He was a member of his high school's Shakespeare club who began his career by acting in scores of B-grade Westerns, and though he avoided military service, he was considered an American hero. Filled with well-chosen archival stills, as well as seldom-seen early clips, this video also features interviews with fellow actors Charlton Heston and Ron Howard, as well as writer and scholar Garry Wills (author of a brilliant intellectual study of Wayne's work and life, John Wayne's America).
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Video series spotlighting memorable moments and roasts hosted by Dean Martin. "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts" were periodic specials aired in the 1970s and 1980s, which roasted (or honored) such stars as Lucille Ball, Muhammad Ali and Johnny Carson; guests then recalled comedic moments they shared. Comedian Rich Little (a regular on the "Roast" specials) served as pitchman for the videos in a series of TV infomercials.
John Boorman met Lee Marvin in London when the latter was making The Dirty Dozen and immediately they struck up a friendship. Shortly afterwards they made two films together, the first of which was Point Blank, during which Boorman found that he learnt a lot about screen acting and how to direct from the contributions and support from Marvin. Later they worked together on Hell in the Pacific. With his friendship providing an insightful collection of memories of Marvin, Boorman leads this intimate documentary on the life of Lee Marvin.
A film scrapbook, images, phrases from our past, hiding their meanings behind veils. Let's lift those veils, one by one, to find how images, at one time seeming innocent, have revealed, after decades, to have homosexual overtones.
George Abitbol, the classiest man in the world, dies tragically during a cruise. The director of an American newspaper, wondering about the meaning of these intriguing final words, asks his three best investigators, Dave, Peter and Steven, to solve the mystery. (Sixteen French actors dub scenes from various Warner Bros. films to create a parody of Citizen Kane, 1941.)
Documentary about the making of the John Wayne film The Alamo (1960). Included are behind-the-scenes photos and footage of the actual production of the film, clips from it and interviews with members of the cast, crew and local residents in Brackettville, TX, where it was filmed.
Actress Sally Field looks at the dramatic life and successful career of the superb actress Barbara Stanwyck (1907-90), a Hollywood legend.
Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War.
While a few Hollywood celebrities such as James Stewart and Clark Gable saw combat during World War II, the majority used their talents to rally the American public through bond sales, morale-boosting USO tours, patriotic war dramas and escapist film fare. Comedian David Steinberg plays host for this star-studded, 90-minute documentary, which looks at the way Tinseltown helped the United States' war effort.
This gun safety film starring John Wayne is just as timely and appropriate today as when it was first shown almost 40 years ago.
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CBS honors Lucille Ball with this celebration of her three CBS series: I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy.
Afflicted with a terminal illness John Bernard Brooks, the last of the legendary gunfighters, quietly returns to Carson City for medical attention from his old friend Dr. Hostetler. Aware that his days are numbered, the troubled man seeks solace and peace in a boarding house run by a widow and her son. However, it is not Brooks' fate to die in peace, as he becomes embroiled in one last valiant battle.
A Western-genre narrative, loosely woven from old clips from B-Western features.
A tribute documentary on the most decorated U.S. Marine, General Lewis B. 'Chesty' Puller.
A collection of film clips profiling animal actors.
After a band of drunken thugs overruns a small Indian Nation town, killing Minister Goodnight and raping the women folk, Eula Goodnight enlists the aid of Marshal Cogburn to hunt them down and bring her father's killers to justice.
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Jim Brannigan is sent to London to bring back an American mobster who is being held for extradition but when he arrives he has been kidnapped which was set up by his lawyer. Brannigan in his American Irish way brings American law to the people of Scotland Yard in order to recapture this mobster with both a price tag on his head and a stuffy old London cop to contend with.