Art by Noel Sickles (1951)

On Apr 7, 1905, cowboys Bill Smythe & John Shaw order 2 shots of rotgut in the Wigwam Saloon in Winslow, AZ. While waiting for their drinks, they decide to rob a dice game nearby What follows involves a deadly pursuit, a bloody gunfight, a literal trip to Hell & a body rising from the grave... A 🧵

Artwork by N.C. Wyeth

Artwork by N.C. Wyeth

Artwork by N.C. Wyeth

Artwork by N.C. Wyeth

Illustrations by the great Noel Sickles for the 1955 Reader's Digest Books edition of Alan Le May's The Searchers

Illustrations by the great Noel Sickles for the 1955 Reader's Digest Books edition of Alan Le May's The Searchers

The Gal Who Got Rattled segment from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is based on Stewart Edward White's 1901 short story The Girl Who Got Rattled. You can read the original in this thread, or, if you're lazy, you can just read my summary of the major differences between the two... 🧵

Happy 68th Birthday to Nick Cave

Happy Birthday to Allan "Rocky" Lane, born Harry Leonard Albershardt 116 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the late, great Chuck Jones, born 113 years ago today

Happy 54th Birthday to Luke Wilson

Happy 68th Birthday to the great Ethan Coen

Happy 75th Birthday to Bill Murray

Mad (in its early comic book form) compares Western movies to the actual Old West in "Cowboy!" from issue #20, Feb. 1955. Written by Harvey Kurtzman, artwork by Jack Davis (1/2)

Happy 82nd Birthday to Jerry Bruckheimer, whose first film credit was as associate producer on The Culpepper Cattle Co.

Happy Birthday to the late, great Leonard Cohen, born 91 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the late Gail Russell, born Betty Gale Russell 101 years ago today

In preparation for his role as gunfighter Everett Hitch in Ed Harris' 2008 Robert B. Parker adaptation Appaloosa, Viggo Mortensen read John Wesley Hardin's autobiography & studied the gunfighting stances he'd seen in the artwork of Frederic Remington & other 19th century artists of the West:

The scantily clad woman in the attached photo is widely misidentified as Wyatt Earp's wife Josephine "Sadie" Marcus. Who's the lady in the photo & why do people think it's Sadie? A 🧵 ...

Western star Broncho Billy Anderson directed the first known instance of the pie-in-the-face gag in his 1909 Comedy short Mr. Flip. In it, Mr. Flip goes around obnoxiously hitting on women until they retaliate, including one who hits him in the face with a pie

Bonus: the one-handed match strike in MR. SILENT HASKINS (1915)

The Arbuckle version in OUT WEST (1918)

William S. Hart's signature one-handed cigarette roll in THE BARGAIN (1914)

The scantily clad woman in the attached photo is widely misidentified as Wyatt Earp's wife Josephine "Sadie" Marcus. Who's the lady in the photo & why do people think it's Sadie? A 🧵 ...

Happy 74th Birthday to Daniel Lanois youtu.be/8JuLKtz_EH8?...

Happy Birthday to the late Porter Hall, born Clifford Porter Hall 137 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the late Adam West, born William West Anderson 97 years ago today

Happy 77th Birthday to Jeremy Irons

Happy Birthday to the late Frances Farmer, born 112 years ago today

In A Fistful of Dollars, "Joe" uses a piece of metal as a makeshift bulletproof vest. Did anything like this ever happen in the actual Old West? Yes. Here's a brief 🧵 on "Deacon Jim"...

Happy Birthday to the late Jack Warden, born John Warden Lebzelter Jr. 105 years ago today

Usually armed with a shotgun or a .38, Mary Fields was the 1st black female mail carrier in the US. At a time when saloons were strictly "white men only", the ones in Cascade, Montana made exception for Mary. She was often foul-mouthed, drunk & violent, but always a good Catholic...

David Huddleston on the 5 Stages of an Actor's Life (with Jack Elam & John Wayne):

Happy Birthday to the late David Huddleston, born 95 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the late Roddy McDowall, born Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall 97 years ago today

Hey, here's a Hank Williams drawing I did a few years ago

Happy Birthday to the great Hank Williams, born Hiram Williams 102 years ago today

When Harry Carey Jr. was a small boy, the great cowboy artist Charlie Russell would visit his father & carve horses for "Dobe" out of loaves of bread. Russell would also give him some tips on self-defense... (1/2)

Wolf Lowry (1917) directed by William S. Hart Open Range (2003) directed by Kevin Costner

“Independence on the Plains. Gathering Chips" -Lakin, Kansas ca. 1893 The woman gathering cow chips for fuel is Ada McColl & the child is her brother Burt. Ada studied photography & staged photos that documented her life on the prairie. Her mother Polly took this particular photo

Orson Welles talking shit on The Searchers & inauthentic women's fashion in Westerns:

You'll never see this kind of stupid fashion in a Western: the left guy's shirt bib has a horned animal jumping through a hoop with a small dog, the middle guy's bib has an identical dog playing with another dog (I think?) & the right guy's bib has flowers & a deer head:

The term "maverick" originates with Texas politician Samuel A. Maverick, who was paid 400 head of cattle in 1845 to settle a debt. He had no interest in raising cattle & left the wandering, unbranded herd in the care of others. Soon, any unbranded stray cow in the West was called a "maverick"

Chance, Oklahoma, circa 1916

R.I.P.

Happy 79th Birthday to Tommy Lee Jones

Here's Mel Tormé playing a bad-ass, Bible-quoting killer-for-hire called The Deacon in James Clavell's 1960 Western Walk Like a Dragon:

Happy Birthday to the late Clayton Moore, born Jack Carlton Moore 111 years ago today