Chad Taylor

Cowboys


By way of civilised conversation with Paul Litterick, Stephen Stratford mentions that Wittgenstein was a fan of westerns. Who isn't? Simone de Beauvoir, writing in The Prime of Life:
I have mentioned elsewhere how Sartre steered me away from 'art films' and initiated me into the world of galloping cowboys and whodunits.
Sartre: always cool. She continues:
One day he took me to Studio 28 to see William Boyd in a classic Hollywood-type feature, the story of an honest, big-hearted cop who finds out that his brother in law is a crook. Big moral decision.
Simone de Beauvoir is probably being sarcastic here. Anyway:
It turned out that the curtain raiser to this effort was a film called Un Chien andalou, by two men whose names, Bunuel and Dali, meant nothing to us. The opening sequences took our breath away, and afterwards we were hard put to it to take any interest in William Boyd's problems.
The Prime of Life begins in September 1929. This is is early in the memoir and she is discussing films she saw over a two-year period. Although the synopses vary I think she's either talking about The Cop (1928) or Officer O'Brien (1930).

Boyd is most famous for playing Hopalong Cassidy, a character created in 1904 by author Clarence E. Mulford, a municipal clerk in New York. Originally written as a hard-drinking tough guy, Cassidy was cleaned up for later appearances in over sixty films and at least one TV series.
Boyd pic c/- Classic Images

Advice from a friend


Sent by a dramatist friend from London, on the occasion of the movie. From Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman (Macdonald & Co, 1984)