3 Day Weekend of Movies

This is Memorial Day, a day of remembering those that gave up their lives serving our country.  I honor them in my thoughts and prayers for them and their families.  My father and uncle fought in WWII, my father in the Pacific and my uncle in Europe.  I think a part of them died during that war with neither offering to talk about their wars, their fighting.   My uncle opened up once and now I understand why.

Now, this weekend I watched a lot of movies, some I've already forgotten.  The last three were Hondo, Lucy, and The Quiet Man.  Every movie made with Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne were magic.  People still travel to Innisfree to see where the movie was made.  If I was lucky enough or rich enough I would do the trip myself I would do it in a heartbeat.

While Ford and Wayne made a lot of low budget western movies for Republic Films, this was the only one to earn them an Emmy and one of the few films the shot in Technicolor.  In order for this movie to be made, Republic Films had the three film Rio Grande.

Lucy is just another Luc Besson movie, not much else can be said and Hondo is another John Wayne western, while it's not close to being one of my favorites it's still worth the watch.  While Hondo, based on a Louis L'Amour book was directed by John Farrow, one of the last scenes was directed by John Ford because Farrow had to leave the film because the film went over schedule.

I'm in the process of reading The Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert but it's not keeping me as entertained as I would like.  I have to say it is getting better, but between having another go at Arch Linus and trying to load XFCE on it and watching Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and some of my own movies there is just not enough time to read and enjoy the movies.  Arch was another failure and waste of 8 hours so back to Manjaro.

Seargent York (1941)

I just watched Seargent York (1941) tonight, really a great movie for something as dated and forced accents go.  It starred Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan and a young unrecognizable girl named June Lockhart.

Seargent York is a good movie for 78 years old, showcasing Gary Cooper who at the age of 40 when this movie was released played the part of a young man that you thought would be in his early twenties.  Born and raised in Daniel Boone country in Tennessee, Alvin goes through a time where he goes out to sow his wild oats by boozing and gambling while his poor old mother goes to church and prays for him.

Alvin meets his girl, Gracie, she looks like a teenager and immediately the two know they are going to marry.  Alvin's plans don't work out, so when he goes out to reap his revenge he is struck by lightning, blowing up his rifle.  Then while walking home he passes his mom's church where Walter Brennan is the preacher and gets that 'Old Time Religion'.

This movie is based on the life of Alvin York, WWI hero and was awarded the Medal of Honor and other numerous awards and medals from other countries for his life-saving work during the war to end all wars.  He also gets the girl in the end, but that was a done deal before he went to war.

Back to June Lockhart, movie and TV star and from my childhood, the TV show Lost in Space.

See if you can find it, for what we would call a flag-waving propaganda movie today, it was probably a top movie for its time.