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DON MILLER
THE BIG SCREEN: I was quite anxious to see The Shootist when it opened here. After all, Variety's man in the movies deemed it “one of the great films of our time," and coming from a tough sheet like Variety that ain't mere feed and grain,
It opened on a Wednesday in the neighborhood and I was there for the first showing. Since the film's now history, there's not much point in a review, However, just to keep matters tidy, it wasn't exactly one of the great films of our time, or this year, or even the past few months, Pretty good, about files it, John Wayne is fine, and there are fairly decent jobs by Lauren Bacall and Hugh O'Brian, There are also a couple of fairly awful performances from Harry Morgan and Richard Boone, both of whom should know better, Generally, the novel was superior-the downbeat ending has been altered and softened for the screen, reportedly at Wayne's suggestion, and this changes the whole idea of the story, not for the better, Anyway, Wayne's way above the content, so they'd do well to polish up another Oscar at the Academy, End of critique,
What's on my mind, for purposes of this corner, is that The Shootist didn't seem to do too well int c way of business, at least not around here, When you have John Wayne in a flick that’s hailed in advance as one of the great ones, you'd expect the resulting stampede to flatten the doors to the auditorium, especially at a time when theatres are shuttering regularly from creeping paralysis of product, True, I neglected to check the national grosses on the film, so it might be a local malady. But something tells me that the returns have been disappointing overall,
Maybe this situation opening day might hold some clues as to why. The Shootist opened in one side of a twin-cinema setup, Theatre #2 was in its second week of Ode To Billy Joe, inspired by the Bobbie Gentry song, a rustic drama about a teenage lad unable to fulfill his love because he had been groped in a previous reel by one of his own gender, the trauma eventually causing him to do a Brodie off that bridge. No names to speak of, coupled with unpromising newspaper and television reviews when it opened. In its second week, Ode To Billy Joe was packed to the exit signs that day, On the other side of the wall, The Shootist opened to a house about one-quarter full, Interestingly, the audience contained few patrons under 40-there was one kid sitting in the second row, but his mother came and got him before the film ended.
Remember how we used to go see John Wayne, lining up for one of his Three Mesquiteers Westerns, or The Fighting Seabees, or Sands Of Iwo Jima? Or Red River, or Rio Bravo? Doesn't work that way anymore, now that he's playing a cancer-ridden old gunfighter, Today, they pass up ol' Duke and flock to see something about a kid who suicides on acount of he'd been buggared. O tempora, O mores!
CAPTAIN GEORGE'S PENNY DREADFUL, a weekly review established in 1968, is published by the Vast Whizzbang Organization, 594 Markham Street, Toronto, Ontario.