UKReb
Command Sergeant Major
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2007
- Messages
- 2,436
Ed is correct I do have a very keen interest in the Alamo but I know very few Brit TS collectors who share my interest. Point of fact is I had to rely on Ed's expertise for all kinds of advice whilst constructing my Alamo dio as such "Alamonians" are pretty scarce on the ground this side of the pond.
Whether you can link the failure of Wayne's directorial opus as another sign of the apparent unpopularity of Alamo figures I am not so sure. Let's be honest his movie The Alamo was a three hour butt numbing "bomb" and the critics were supported by the paying public-nobody went.
Wayne obviously felt he had to expand the story as he just couldn't have his actors mill around the palisade for thirteen days firing off the odd cannon. So he went back to his episodic Western days and staged a series of vignettes in an attempt to make it an action story.
Sending forays out of the mission to destroy a large Mexican seige gun (Mexicans didn't yet have a large seige gun) and capturing a herd of beef.
He staged two mass assaults on the mission and drove one back -Didn't happen there was only the final one which he filmed in full daylight instead of night.
Three hours is a long time to have to entertain an audience armed only with a static script and he needed a bit more than Chill Wills sitting around a campfire singing "Here's To The Ladies" or Frankie Avalon sing "Tennessee Baby". So to keep waking up the cinemagoers Wayne reverted to what he had been weaned on in all of his Monogram Westerns-episodic violence with shots and explosions. Unfortunately today that is still very evident whenever you watch it-I always cut to the final assault and forget about the previous two and a half hours of filler.
Wayne did indeed lose a packet on this one and had to sell the rights to Universal to pay off his debts. However, Universal eventually got their money back ten fold with future TV & Video sales.
Reb
