Author Topic: Book Club: Discuss/find out about a Classic Tale Set in Wyoming: The Virginian  (Read 50373 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Tonight Turner Classics is showing a 1946 movie version of The Virginian. Handsome, stalwart Joel McCrea is the Virginian, Sonny Tufts is Steve, Barabara Britton is the schoolmarm, and Brian Donlevy is Trampas.

I saw a preview on TV last night. You know Trampas is the Bad Guy because he's dressed all in black!  :laugh:

I wasn't especially impressed with this movie version. McCrea was too old for the part (41 the year the movie was released), and it seems a little obvious and old-fashioned, even for 1946, to have Brian Donlevy dressed all in black.  ::) Everybody seemed to take the hanging scene way too casually, even the characters who were about to be hanged.  :-\
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Everybody seemed to take the hanging scene way too casually, even the characters who were about to be hanged.  :-\

Yes, but that's the way the book handled it too...they all sat down together at breakfast and talked and laughed about the chase...and then they went out and some of them hanged the others. That's what made it so poignant. Did the movie have the part about the newspaper with the message on it from Steve later on?
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Yes, but that's the way the book handled it too...they all sat down together at breakfast and talked and laughed about the chase...and then they went out and some of them hanged the others. That's what made it so poignant.

Maybe it plays better in the book. Nobody got a last meal/breakfast in the movie.  :-\

Quote
Did the movie have the part about the newspaper with the message on it from Steve later on?

There was a note, but it wasn't on a piece of newspaper. If that's where, in the book, we learn that the Virginian's given name is Jeff, that wasn't there, either. We never learn his name in the movie. Even the schoolmarm doesn't address him by his name on their wedding day.

Movie Spoiler Alert:

The Virginian uses Steve's gun to kill Trampas.

I also can't resist mentioning a movie detail that would only be noticed by a train lover like me, or only annoy a train lover: The train on which the schoolmarm arrives in the town of Medicine Bow bears the markings of the Northern Pacific Railroad--yet Medicine Bow was and is on the Union Pacific; probably the Union Pacific was responsible for the creation of the town.  >:(

I had time to do only a little research on Medicine Bow earlier today. The town has its own web site, and so forth. According to the last U.S. census, only about 300 people live there. Our friend CDestry would love it there because the population is way, way lower than the elevation, which is higher even than Denver.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Movies are never as good as the book, except in one notable instance!!
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Offline Front-Ranger

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I'm coming back to this thread three years later to report a small epiphany. I was reading A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (his first novel about Sherlock Holmes). The main character (aside from Holmes and Watson) is named Jefferson Hope. The novel was written in 1886, and may be the first instance of a character named Jefferson in a novel. The main character in The Virginian is named Jeff, probably short for Jefferson, and I just realized that it was probably after Thomas Jefferson, the most famous resident of Virginia. I wonder about other characters named Jefferson. Apparently there is one in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and in A Lesson Before Dying and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
"chewing gum and duct tape"