Entertainment

/

ArcaMax

Television Q&A: Who held reins behind camera on '50s Western?

Rich Heldenfels, Tribune News Service on

Published in Entertainment News

You have questions. I have some answers.

Q: There are several Civil War Westerns where a stagecoach full of gold is robbed. I hope you can identify this film that I saw around 1956: the Confederacy freed several prisoners to rob a Union stagecoach but secretly planted a non-prisoner to keep a eye on the ex-prisoners.

A: It appears you remember “Five Guns West” from 1955. It starred John Lund, Dorothy Malone and Mike Connors (then billed as Touch Conners).

It also was the directing debut of Roger Corman, who would become a Hollywood legend. He was a director and producer of independent films, made “at frantic speed with skimpy resources,” as the critic David Thomson put it. Focusing on those resources on money-making ideas, he was especially adept at drive-in fare; Corman’s resume includes titles like “Attack of the Crab Monsters,” “Sorority Girl,” “Teenage Caveman,” the original “Little Shop of Horrors,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and other movies inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, biker epic “The Wild Angels,” drug movie “The Trip” and more – 40 movies in one 17-year stretch, Thomson notes. He is also credited with boosting the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and others — basically getting up-and-comers who would work cheap. Still, he received an honorary Oscar “for his unparalleled ability to nurture aspiring filmmakers by providing an environment that no film school could match.”

Q: I am looking for the name of a movie approximately from the 1960s. It is based in Africa; I don't know the actor's name. The movie centers on two characters, a native and a ranger with his Land Rover. The native is traveling a long distance carrying a spear and a glass Coke bottle, trying to find someone to explain where the bottle came from. He thinks the gods sent it. The narrator thinks a plane dropped it.

A: While some of the details differ from your memories, it’s likely you saw the comedy “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” from 1980. A huge international hit, the film inspired several sequels, as well as controversy. In an account of the movie’s history for Slate.com, Dan Kois said, “Made by a white director with funding from the apartheid government yet starring an unusually diverse cast, reverent of Indigenous traditions while deeply patronizing of its Indigenous main character, ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ delivered an idealized, false picture of South Africa into the international marketplace. It highlighted the centuries-old Khoisan culture while misrepresenting and seeming to exploit the Khoisan actor at its center.”

 

Q: Is that the voice of James Garner in the USAA commercial running now?

A: Garner did his share of commercial work before his death in 2014, most famously in Polaroid ads with Mariette Hartley. And it’s possible someone could try technological tricks to reuse his voice today. But that’s not him in the USAA ads. A company representative said an unidentified “USAA employee” does their commercial voice-overs.

Q: My wife and I watched the first four seasons of “C.B. Strike” on HBO Max and loved them. There is news now that there are two additional seasons released, but we have read there are different ways to stream like Netflix or Prime. But we cannot find exactly where to find the two seasons. Can you help us?

A: So far there are 19 episodes of “C.B. Strike,” based on a series of books, and they have been released in six seasons. But some seasons contained just two episodes, so HBO Max combined the first three seasons into one “season,” then labeled Seasons 4, 5 and 6 as Seasons 2, 3 and 4. It’s confusing, but it also means you have seen all the episodes to date.

———


©2025 Tribune News Service. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus