Easy Pickens Actor the Battle of Cable Hogue Cast
— Courtesy Warner Bros. —
"Ol' Tony Hillerman told me in one case, 'Max, you know, if y'all option a novel, you've got to hope they don't make the pic. Considering so y'all tin't option it again.' He was giving me advice long later on the horses had entered the corral." Legendary Texas-born cowboy, artist and author Max Evans—who is 93 and even so writing—recalls, "I lived off options for a long time."
His first novel, The Rounders, was published in 1960, and became a hit movie in 1965. His 2d novel, The Howdy-Lo Country, was published in 1962, and despite being optioned repeatedly, didn't reach the screen for 37 years—information technology was a contemporary story when he wrote it, merely a period picture when they filmed it. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of the moving picture version of The How-do-you-do-Lo Country, Evans talked with Truthful Westward well-nigh his Hollywood adventures.
"I'd read everything from Shakespeare and Balzac to dozens of shoot-'em-up Westerns. Enjoyed 'em all. But I wanted to write near what I really knew. So, I decided to write post-World War II. When I left for that war, ranchers were working cattle mostly from horseback. After I got back, the West was changed forever by pickup trucks replacing the horse."
— Courtesy MGM —
The Rounders, the comical adventures of two downwards-at-the-boot-heels cowboys, reinvigorated the careers of stars Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford, and established Burt Kennedy every bit a top Western writer-director. But Fess Parker, fresh from his success starring for Disney as Davy Crockett, was the beginning to option The Rounders. He'd even convinced an Oscar-winning writer-director to pen a script. Evans recalls, "William Wellman came out of retirement because of The Rounders. We all had a meeting, and Wellman is talking well-nigh who Fess was going to play. And he looked at me and said, 'Well, Max is just right for the other part.' Ol' Fess simply threw a damn fit. He made a real error: Ol' Wellman just dropped the projection. Fess killed the whole affair."
Kennedy optioned the book three times before he got it set up at MGM. "Sam (Peckinpah) lost The Rounders to Burt Kennedy, and it really pissed him off. I had just published The Hi-Lo State, and my agent sent information technology out to him. Sam optioned that at least v times. He was obsessed with that thing, and he never did get to make information technology." They became close friends to the end. Although there could be friction.
— Courtesy Poylgram —
"Nosotros'd been in some joint in Malibu with Lee Marvin, drinking. On the way out, in that location was a swimming puddle. Sam knew I couldn't swim and the 'sonuvabitch' pushed me in! I went to the bottom, (came up), defenseless the edge of the puddle, and Sam started boot my fingers! Ol' Lee jerked him back to relieve my life! (Back at Peckinpah'due south house) I had an impulse, picked him up and whammed him on the floor. He said, 'Oh, y'all s.o.b., you lot've broken my leg!' I just patted him on top of the caput. 'I'm sorry Sam. I meant to interruption your goddamn neck.' That's how nosotros got to exist real deep friends."
Although Peckinpah would never motion picture an Evans story, he would direct him, every bit the stagecoach shotgun rider, in The Ballad of Cable Hogue.
The Rounders became a TV series, with Chill Wills returning equally rancher Jim Ed Honey, Patrick Wayne in the Fonda role and Ron Hayes in the Ford role. But it didn't final a full season. Max remembers meeting Wills, who was holding court in a Beverly Hills bar. "He punched me in the chest, and says to everybody at the bar, 'I cost this boy $2 meg, I ruined his TV evidence. I took it over and ruined it.' Damn good actor, but that'due south exactly what he did."
And so Gene Kelly, planning to direct, optioned Evans' sequel to The Rounders, The Swell Wedding, which would again star Henry Fonda. Just the option ran out, and a couple of years later Kelly and Fonda were joined by James Stewart in the rather similar The Cheyenne Social Club. "Well, they did sort of plagiarize information technology," Evans notes, but had no hard feelings. "They had wanted to brand The Great Wedding, and this was a substitute for information technology. They were good guys."
Indirectly, Peckinpah's involvement in The Hi-Lo Country helped get information technology made. Evans explains, "Martin Scorsese read it simply because of Peckinpah's interest. He produced information technology, but he hired ol' Steven Frears to direct it." As dark as The Rounders is carefree, The Hi-Lo Land was inspired by the murder of one of Evans' closest friends. The Western noir stars Woody Harrelson and Baton Crudup as cowboy friends drawn to the aforementioned dangerous woman, played by Patricia Arquette, and features Sam Elliot every bit the same character Chill Wills played in Rounders. "Frears did his research and made a legitimate post-Globe State of war Two Western. There's very few of them made, you know."
Henry C. Parke is a screenwriter based in Los Angeles, California, who blogs nigh Western movies, Boob tube, radio and print news:HenrysWesternRoundup.Blogspot.com
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Source: https://truewestmagazine.com/article/max-evans-in-hollywood/
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