Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with westerns

How did saloons in the Old West get their liquor delivered?

Senor Cardgage — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:19:52 -0800

How did saloons in tiny towns in the Old West get liquor delivered? I'm watching Silverado (pretty good flick btw) and wondering how small town saloons in the old west managed to keep their liquor in stock.
If it's true (and it may not be) that getting goods from point A to point B without your wagon train getting robbed was such an issue, and if it's also true that there wasn't much for a man to do in these towns BUT drink then it seems to me like you'd run out of stuff like crazy.

Did they keep huge storehouses of the stuff?
Weekly wagon deliveries?
Were there regional liquor distributors running well-secured freight operations?

My curiosity has been piqued.

Btw you should check this movie out if you like westerns, Costner notwithstanding.

Singin' Cowboys...

black8 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:22:29 -0800

Anyone know anything about yodeling cowboy music? A collegue of mine's father passed away the other day, and he just posted this request:

Please help me find music and lyrics to or a recording of one of Dad's favorite songs. It's a cowboy or western song, and features yodeling. The lyrics are something like "riding on the trail of sunshine, spread a little happiness as you go/wile away the miles/smiles/yodelayeho, yodelay" We plan to use it for a sing along in the service. My musical cousin(s) will be the band.

The song was not sung by Sting in a recent movie. I've googled every possible combination of trail, sunshine, spread, happiness, lyric, cowboy, song, and western to no avail. The song was probably recorded by a singing cowboy of movie fame from the late 1930's or 1940's. It may have been in the sound track of a B-movie western from that era.

Best Westerns? (i.e. movies)

zaebiz — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:57:10 -0800

Moving out to the country and have a hunger to watch some good old (or recent) Westerns. What are your favorites and why?

What sites might you visit, books might you read, etc., to research writing a western?

kittens for breakfast — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:33:51 -0800

What sites might you visit, books might you read, etc., to research writing a western? I'm less interested in the broad strokes of history -- though that's appreciated, too! (if relatively easy to track down without assistance) -- than in the particulars of how people lived their day-to-day lives a century and a half or so ago. Thanks.

Who Whistles Morricone?

Holly — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:27:19 -0800

Whistlefilter: Who was the whistler on Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"? Was it Alessandro Alessandroni, or Kurt (Curro) Savoy? I've looked around the web for confirmation, but I'm not turning up anything definitive.

What Western was Bill Hicks talking about when he said "You all saw him, he had a gun."

unsupervised — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 15:31:09 -0800

What Western, if any, was Bill Hicks referencing when he thought he was talking about Shane? Here's the fairly famous Bill Hicks routine:

I'm so sick of arming the world and then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, you know.

We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheep herder's feet: "Pick it up."

"I don't wanna pick it up mister, you'll shoot me."

"Pick up the gun."

"Mister, I don't want no trouble, huh. I just came down town here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about 10 rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, mister."

"Pick up the gun."

Boom, boom.

"You all saw him. He had a gun."

I just got done watching Shane for the first time and none of this happens. The only similarity is that Jack Palance is in it and a homesteader is shot by him, but he's got his own gun and draws it on Palance intending to shoot him. He was, in fact, looking for trouble.

None of the dialogue, including the awesome "You all saw him, he had a gun" is uttered in any variation.

The oddest thing about all this is if you google the line, you find tons of people quoting the Hicks routine verbatim in Jack Palance remembrances and other, non-Hicks related places as if this exchange actually happened.

What gives? Was this all the result of Hicks' fertile imagination or was there an actual Western where this took place?

Yee-haw movie within movie?

Aknaton — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:06:11 -0800

YEEEEEE-HAW!! What movie did I see in the last ten years, in which our characters are watching a western in which people say the above approximately thirty times in succession? I want to know both: what was the ambient movie, and what was the clip from. I think the inner movie prompted the calls with the Duke saying something like "Okay boys! Let's move 'em on out to Montana!" Then "Yeee-haw!" "YEEE-haw!" "Yeeeeee-haw!" "YEEEE-haw!" for at least a minute. Also, if you know whether the western is any good, or have another yee-haw x 1000 movie to recommend, do tell.

Seeking name of famous Westerns character actor

bkdelong — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 08:28:24 -0800

Looking for the name of an actor who was typecast in many westers as a "crazy old coot". My best recollection of him is from The Muppet Movie but I don't see him in the credits. I think he was also in the Maverick movie as well.

He was always typecast as a "crazy old coot" often with gray bristles from an unshaved beard, squinty eyes, a raspy drawling cackle of a laugh and a squashed top hat or bowler instead of a cowboy hat.

Any ideas?