Columbia's Suggestive Selling for 1958

Cowboy's Trailer Puts a Pox On Lousy Old Westerns

Twilight Time recently got out a Blu-ray of 1958's Cowboy. Directed by Delmer Daves, Cowboy came of that period when studios drew thick line of demarcation between theatre (read, better) westerns and long-in-tooth ancients playing round-clock on TV. Columbia did a Cowboy trailer to point up then-now of sagebrushing, central gag played at the expense of oldies (and at You Tube here). "Adult in every sense of the word" brags on-camera Jack Lemmon over this freshest of product not to be confused with kid stuff on the home box. Ignored is glaring fact that Columbia produced much of that kid stuff once upon a long past, and had glutted tubes with same since early in the fifties. Cowboy's preview starts with a disgruntled viewer clicking his remote control from identical action of one western to another. As with Gregory Peck's 1956 household in The Man With The Gray Flannel Suit, there seems no relief from saddle sores inflicted by television. "I'm plumb sick of childish westerns," he says, to which Jack Lemmon replies, "Me too," both fed up, as are we, or at least we should be, right? But wait, didn't this anonymous viewer, Jack Lemmon, and in fact, a whole of their generation, grow up with the very westerns they now disdain?

50's adults cared less to recapture youth. Maybe because growing up for them (a Great Depression, with war on both ends) was no rose garden like for offspring that thrived in a postwar boom, and have sought since to relive it. One trip back they did have, and cherish, was to action Saturdays of small-town Bijou setting, memories that fueled lifetime love for "childish" westerns Columbia asked them now to renounce. In fact, it was largely adults, and predominately male, sitting day-night for Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, Hoot Gibson, on broadcast loop, heroes that Cowboy proposed to replace with Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon, and Technicolor on a wide screen. There was room for the latter, and a ready enough audience, but nothing would erase sentiment for front rows from which senior class of cowboys were seen, and revered. Men who renewed contact with old favorites on 50's television would tighten embrace of their past as the 60/70's ushered in nostalgia publishing, western fan conventions, and gather of 16mm westerns re-printed for TV use (film collecting, at least in the South, revolved largely around cowboys). These were really the pioneers of old movie love that expresses itself today through TCM, Blu-Ray sales, and festival/cruises to feed nostalgia's appetite.