Friday 8 May 2009

Wild West round -up

Present day Salt Lake City, Utah - Lee Redmond, 67, had not cut his fingernails since 1979 and was listed in the Guinness book of records as having the world's longest fingernails. Their combined length was 28 feet, with the longest single nail being on her right thumb and measured 35 inches. However the nails were snapped when Ms. Reed suffered a serious car accident in Feb 2009.

Get this - two thieves were arrested with a large bag of frozen food after a robbery at a meat plant in Kansas. The arresting officer was named Clayton Frost.

The Oklahoma based Cherokee Nation now have their own cultural tourism website. CherokeeTourismok.com
Is now online and has been since Jan 2009. It's a great site with some nice history features of famous member of the tribe.


Sopranos creator is working on a new series called Hollywood for HBO. The series is to be set in 1913 and it is strongly expected to feature many plots involving early western film making. Expect characters based on John Wayne, John Ford and Raoul Walsh

The fight over Geronimo's remains put forward by the Indian chief's great grandson who wants the warrior remains reburied back in New Mexico has taken a bizarre turn. It seems that a 1918 letter which was discovered three years ago claims that Geronimo's skull was stolen by the Skulls and Crossbones Society. Members of the society which is still active include George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush and Senator John Kerry.

Dorchester publishing continue their Zane Grey reprint line by this month publishing Dorn of the Mountains. This is actually the first time the book has been available in paperback. Something to get classic western fans excited.

Rumours are that Mel Gibson, Kurt Russel and Robert Duvall are in the running to play the Rooster character in the Coen brothers re-make of True Grit. Russel did create his own one eyed icon in John Carpenter's Escape to New York and starred in the western classic, Tombstone so he may be a good choice. Gibson's western credits are the Maverick re-make. Duvall though appeared in the original True Grit and has many western credits including the brilliant Lonesome Dove. The Archive thinks both Russel and Duvall could do it fine with possibly a slight bias towards Duvall because of his age. But the dream casting would be Clint Eastwood.

6 comments:

Coffee Messiah said...

Interesting story about the Geronimo skull.

Paul D Brazill said...

very good stuff about geronimo.

Jeff Smith said...

Hi, Gary.

Interesting group of stories to say the least.

From what I understand, the new version of True Grit is not a remake, but rather the adaption from the original book, in which the girl, not Rooster, was the main character. Time will tell.

Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin said...

Jeff - yeah I think they are concentrating on the film from Mattie's point of view as in the original book. But Rooster will still be a major character and one that the casting will draw the most interest. No matter how they tell the story the Rooster they used will be put up alongside John Wayne - I think Eastwood and Duvall could pull it off and the fact that he is to be a secondary character could interest these veterans.

Laurie Powers said...

The problem with David Chase (Sopranos) doing that movie is that we will never know how it REALLY ends.....:)

David Cranmer said...

Looking forward to the David Chase series. This is the first I've heard of it. And very intriguing info on Geronimo. I just began reading Through Indian Eyes on the history of Native Americans. Fascinating doesn't even begin to describe it.

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