Whatever Happened To Randolph Scott?

On my birthday in 2011 (which would have been Roy Rogers' 100th birthday), I went to the Mall of America hoping to find a DVD of The Cowboy and the Senorita, the first movie he and Dale Evans made together. I thought it would be fun to watch it that night. I looked in every store that sold DVDs. No luck. The stores could order it for me, but I didn't want to wait.

While browsing at fye again (which is no longer at the Mall of America), I found a DVD collection called America's Greatest Westerns, Volume Four. Disc Nine of the ten-DVD collection included The Cowboy and the Senorita. The DVD collection went home with me that day. More than a year and half later, I still haven't watched all of it.

I think the DVD collection was mis-named, though. While the movies I've watched so far have been fun, calling the collection America's Greatest Westerns is a huge exaggeration. I love what I've seen so far. The stories are from an era where the good guys always won. It might not happen until the last few minutes of the movie, but good always triumphed over evil. Always.

The heroes were heroes. They were kind to children and animals and respectful of women. They stood for truth and justice. They were the kind of men a girl wouldn't need to clean up before taking them home to meet her folks. They were from an era when men wanted be to like them and women wanted to marry them.

The women generally weren't damsels in distress. They might need to rescued once in a while, but often they were fighting right alongside the men. Sometimes they remind me of a TV commercial I saw more years ago than I care to think about: "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man, 'cause I'm a woman."

The title of this entry is the title of a song recorded by the Statler Brothers, lamenting the state of the movie industry after the decline of the westerns. (None of the movies on the DVD collection I have feature Randolph Scott, though.) One line from the song - "True Grit's the only movie I've really understood in years"  - has inspired me to request a copy True Grit to be held for me at the Hennepin County Central Library. I've requested the John Wayne version.

Looking for men and women to admire and look up to? You don't need to look any further than these old black and white westerns.