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How The West Was Fun: When Britain loved cowboys

2013-04-03T15:59:43+00:00

Listen to Archive on 4: Riding into Town from Saturday 6 April at 8.00pm.

John Wayne

I was probably of the last generation to grow up with the Western (Quentin Tarantino is another) and I was aided by a brother a few years older. He once spent an entire week on holiday in Italy in the mid 70s, walking around with his eyes screwed up trying to look like Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. But where he loved the spaghetti Western spawned in the 60s, I preferred the old Hollywood westerns of the 50s. Only people who've never watched proper Westerns really think they're all about celebrating macho men brutalizing native Americans. Many are doing the opposite; tackling racism, injustice and lynch mobs, sometimes covertly, but often openly.

Above: Samira Ahmed's brother Salim (left) and a neighbour in their back garden in Wimbledon in 1968.

For my Archive on Four: Riding Into Town I explore the decades from the 30s to the 70s when Westerns ruled in Britain and why they were such a loved form of escapism. Look carefully at pop culture of the 60s and you'll notice The Shadows playing Apache and The Beatles dressing up in stetsons and cowboy boots. I talked to fans of all kinds. Christopher Frayling, a world authority on the spaghetti western, outlined the history of the British gentleman in westerns – The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, A Man Called Horse, Shalako and also Savage Guns, a Hammer Film, which he thinks was the first spaghetti western. He explained how the violent nihilism of the European spaghetti Western grew out of the counterculture of the 60s.

Samira Ahmed's brother Salim, photographed at Bush House, peeping round a door, dressed in his Native American outfit, at a recording for the Hindi Service circa 1968.

I found myself singing the Marilyn Monroe theme tune to River of No Return with Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, who grew up obsessed with the cowboy films and serials, which he watched in the Saturday morning cinema clubs of the 1940s. His favourite, Shane (1953) features a Messianic hero, and inspired Holloway to become a priest. In the original Jack Schaefer novella, Shane is described as a "good man with a good tool", embodying the modern difficulty we have in watching the Western, especially as we see the ongoing battle for gun control in the US.

I found that it was often women, like Holloway's mother, who chose the family's cinema outings and they chose westerns. Women often had leading roles in the 40s and early fifties – Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich feature in some of the greatest.

The Unforgiven, featuring Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn

In the documentary you can also hear film historian Stephen McVeigh at Swansea University and me deconstructing the delights of gender and sexuality in some cult Westerns that feature in the list below. He told me his students usually claim to hate the genre, but often change their mind after watching one of his recommendations. He also thinks the Western successfully endures in different forms, such as Star Wars and the cartoon film Rango. In many ways science fiction and fantasy have replaced the Western landscape as the dreamworld where anything is possible.

Some of the most serious Western enthusiasts now are re-enactors too, such as The Lawmen who I met in Bristol. Priding themselves on authenticity, they research and "inhabit" real Western characters such as Annie Oakley and Doc Holliday and love the more recent Westerns such as Tombstone and Unforgiven, which get the details of clothing and equipment right.

Caroline Lawrence, the bestselling children's author of the Roman Mysteries grew up obsessed with Westerns. I talked to her about the challenge of writing Westerns for children – the first of her PK Pinkerton Western Mysteries begins quite uncompromisingly with a scalping. It is strange to think that modern children know more about ancient Egypt or Rome than the Wild West. Of course it's in our hands to change that.

Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, discusses watching Westerns in the 1940s

Here's my personal top ten of subversive or cult Westerns to try out for yourself:

Rancho Notorious (1952) Fritz Lang (best known for Metropolis) creates the Expressionist western. The hero seeks out the man who murdered his fiancée and finds his way to Marlene Dietrich's strange ranch where she is Queen of a motley brood of outlaws. Hate, murder, revenge are all the more powerful in the artifice of its sets.

Johnny Guitar (1954) Weird wonderful, and very camp. Two powerful women, often dressed in male garb, battle it out over land and love. Joan Crawford's showdowns with Mercedes McCambridge leaves the men as mere onlookers. Don't be fooled by the title. The eponymous Johnny knows better than to interfere. Director Nicolas Ray lights it with the dreamlike intensity of Rebel Without A Cause.

The Searchers (1958) Often rated the greatest Western ever but it's far more than it seems. John Wayne's Ethan is on a quest to find his niece kidnapped by Comanches, but he is no loveable hero. There is darkness at his core and an unsettling racism in his motivation. The moral heart of the film is his companion, the part-Indian Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who pulls Ethan back from the final kill. Susan Faludi's excellent book about 9/11 "The Terror Dream" takes its title from a line in the original Alan LeMay novel and explains how the Western still powers a delusional American male identity today.

Saddle The Wind (1958) written by Rod "The Twilight Zone" Serling this tale of rival brothers is a fascinating clash of acting eras and cultures. Robert Taylor is the old, Romantic Hollywood confronted by the Method acting frenzy of his trigger-happy younger brother John Cassavetes. Singer Julie London (a great Western actress) is always mesmerizing.

Flaming Star (1960) Originally written for Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley is the brooding half-Kiowa son enraged by the cruel racism inflicted on his mixed race family. Dolores Del Rio is his mother, in a fine and inspiring female role. This was directed by Don Siegel (future collaborator with Clint Eastwood) who focuses on the inescapable momentum of violence.

The Unforgiven (1960) This is like a mirror image of The Searchers and based on a novel by the same writer, Alan LeMay. In this case Audrey Hepburn is the allegedly kidnapped Indian girl the Kiowa want back. While one brother stays loyal (Burt Lancaster) another Audie Murphy (in true life America's most famous and decorated WWII soldier) turns against her in an act of horrifying racism. Silent age star Lillian Gish is a noble and brave matriarch. A wonderful film.

The Singer Not The Song (1961) British and unintentionally gay, but then what did you expect with Dirk Bogarde as a Mexican bandit wearing his own custom-made black leather trousers, gloves and hat? There is, in theory, a female love interest, but it's all about Bogarde's obsession with John Mills's Catholic priest. The orgasmic end in which they fall into eachother's arms in a hail of bullets has to be seen to be believed.

The Beguiled (1971) Don Siegel again with a truly Gothic Western. Clint Eastwood – a wounded Union soldier finds himself the cockerel in the henhouse when he takes refuge in a Southern finishing school for young ladies, but things take a sinister turn. A Stephen King-like macho nightmare in the age of women's lib, apparently this is one of Eastwood's favourite films.

Back To the Future III (1990) A perfect introduction to the Western for children. Full of affection for the genre, with a genuine villain, jokes about the prissy tassled cowboy costumes of the 50s, a strong female (Mary Steenburgen's schoolteacher) and an early burst of steampunk in Doc's re-booted time machine.

The Quick and The Dead (1995) Sam Raimi's film has virtually the same plot as the sombre Unforgiven (1992) and even the same villain – Gene Hackman - but is a lot more fun and self-aware. Sharon Stone is the mysterious stranger who comes to town to take part in a gunfighting contest. Leonardo Di Caprio and a very young Russell Crowe provide the sex appeal. Film historian Stephen McVeigh pointed out that Stone is only ever vulnerable and makes mistakes when dressed as a woman.

Listen to Archive on 4: Riding into Town from Saturday 6 April at 8.00pm.

Visit Samira Ahmed's site or follow her on Twitter

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Severed Threads: From Downtown Manhattan to Suburban Minneapolis

2010-10-27T12:55:00+00:00

This external content is available at its source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PZfpIHI7CI

Editor's note: radio drama rivals all other media as a source of innovation and adventurous story-telling technique. Fred Greenhalgh worked on a particularly adventurous example for the Afternoon Play slot at 1415 today. The video shows the recording of one scene on location in New York - SB

John Dryden's three-part serial Severed Threads is all about the random connections between people who have never met each other and how chance events can ripple across cultures and change the lives of people we have never met. It's a mixture of the concept of six degrees of separation and the 'butterfly effect' transposed to globalism in modern India, America, and the U.K.

So it seems natural that I would be brought into the production by my own series of somewhat random connections - knowing a college flatmate of John, who introduced me to him just at the time that my own work in field recorded radio drama could be most improved by working with him.

John records his actors in the real world, in changing, uncontrollable environments like bars, city streets, churches, and apartment complexes. Not only does he record in the real world, but he travels - in the case of Severed Threads to three countries - to get the sound he's after.

In this case, his destination was New York City. What better place to tell a story of lives connected by seemingly unrelated events?

Recording in the Real World

In America we don't have the benefit of an intact cultural memory of radio drama. It seems TV effectively assassinated the public consciousness of the form in the 1960s and today, the aspiring dramatist has to tell the life story of the medium to anyone who wants to listen.

Being that most people raise an eyebrow when they see me with headphones on and recorder in tow, it was freeing to work with a director like John who has the same passion for location recording - of capturing the unique sound of the outside world rather than the artificial deadness of the studio.

Actors march through rooms, pull up next to one another at a crowded lunch table, sit at a bar to yak about sports or watch their family fall apart in the middle of dinner. When it's time for someone to die, well, forget the foley - someone's going to wind up on the ground!

Of course, verisimilitude is stretched - a bedroom serves as the lobby for the church, a basement entryway as a gunshop - but the overall effect is a raw, energized sound. Actors get a chance to stand up, move around, interact. The world is the studio.

Losing Control

Of course, this bold artistic choice brings its challenges to the director. Such as how to remove the Big-ness of the Big Apple so that is sounds like a sleepier town in America's heartland.

Recording on location requires nerves of steel - keeping your cool when cars drive by, airplanes take off overhead, dogs bark incessantly or a foghorn goes off. Or, as in the case of our trip to suburban New Jersey, when an army of gardeners with high decibel equipment shows up in the middle of the session. Juggling an uncontrollable, noisy world with the needs of a large cast and production crew seems a way to drive yourself insane.

And maybe it does. But for John Dryden - who kept a good attitude and smiled through the most stressful parts of recording - maybe it's also the knowledge that all the trouble is worth it.

A Man Walks into a Studio...

The scene in the video above is is a good example. Jim, the American story's protagonist who finds his life as a church leader and businessman crumbling around him, walks up with a newspaper reporter for a live interview which catches him off guard. Combine that raw, energetic performance with a sound environment and you get this finished scene:

The globe-trotting nature and guerrilla recording style makes Severed Threads a very different kind of production. The story has a lot to say about our real world, which itself is chaotic, shifting, noisy and fast-paced. Our nightly news is filled with the kind of story at the heart of Severed Threads - of wrongs that just are, with no special meaning, and more questions than answers.

But, as Dryden's play points out, there's a lot to learn by going beneath the surface of tragedies, and looking for the threads that bind.

Fred Greenhalgh is Sound Recordist for Severed Threads

Listen to episode one of John Dryden's Severed Threads on BBC Radio 4 at 1415 today.
John Dryden has written about his free range approach to radio drama - for a production recorded on location in Mumbai - here on the Radio 4 blog before.
More about Fred Greenhalgh on his web site.

America, Empire of Liberty

2009-07-10T12:43:54+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/america/

Editor's note: Radio 4's 90-part history series America, Empire of Liberty, ends today at 1545. Writer and presenter Professor David Reynolds reflects on the experience.

"I hear you're doing some programmes about US history. How many?"
"Ninety", I would say, a little sheepishly.
Pause. Frown. "Nineteen?"
"No. Nine Zero".
Longer pause. Then we chat about the weather.

That sort of exchange occurred many times while writing America, Empire of Liberty. So much so that I stopped talking to friends and colleagues about the project. It was, indeed, a marathon. Listened to continuously (if you could bear to do so), it amounts to nearly a day of radio - twenty-two and a half hours.

But I never had any doubt that this was a wonderful opportunity to share my own accumulated experience of teaching American history. Ideally I'd have liked another year for research and writing, particularly when doing a book of the series as well, but scholars always want more time. Anyway I couldn't disagree that a presidential election year was the ideal moment to 'do' American history - and that was before Obama came on the scene.

Having written and presented some history films for television, I enjoyed the different discipline of radio. Very austere: no images, just words. Or, more exactly, I had to find the words to trigger the listener's imagination. That was the greatest challenge and the most fun. Hours spent in the University Library or on the internet (amazing how much historical source material is now available in electronic form) looking for the quotations and the stories that would bring my big themes to life.

The acid test was whether I could see the event in my mind's eye. Even better, if it made me smile, like Abigail Adams in 1776 enjoining husband John to 'remember the ladies' when writing America's Declaration of Independence (episode 17). Or if it brought tears to my eyes: President Lincoln's Christmas letter of condolence during the Civil War to young Fanny McCullough about her soldier father (episode 36). Discovering that was a moment I shan't forget.

Other pleasures? The steady flow of e-mails from listeners from Britain and, thanks to the website, from many parts of the world (America, Africa and India). Messages from people who'd arranged their tea breaks in order to tune in at 3.45. And from listeners who offered their own interesting takes on subjects as diverse as the Indians and the personal computer. Best of all, from many who said they'd hated history at school or had given it up at O-level/GCSE but had really enjoyed the series. Winning the Voice of the Listener and Viewer Award for the Best New Radio Programme of 2008 and receiving a Sony Radio Academy Award Nomination were the icing on the cake.

Regrets? Much, of course, had to be left out, even in ninety programmes. Economic history is hard to convey in popular form. Stories of tycoons such as Andrew Carnegie or labour unrest such as the Pullman Strike work well on radio; statistics usually got squeezed out. Fortunately, I was able to get some of that deeper background into the book.

Also thanks. To some wonderful BBC professionals, particularly editors Maria Balinska and Sue Ellis and producer, Rosamund Jones. To Mark Damazer, Controller of Radio 4, for his commitment to history on the air. And to the much-criticised Beeb: what other broadcasting institution in the world would be crazy enough to commission a project of this magnitude?

As a teacher, I believe that history is too important to be left in an academic ghetto: it should be part of the public culture of a civilized society. The invitation to offer a very long view of Obama's America and where it has come from was a great chance to practise what I preach.

David Reynolds is Professor of International History and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge

The final episode, To Shape an Uncertain Destiny, is transmitted at 1545 today. You can listen again for the next seven days.
A selection of America, Empire of Liberty Audiobooks is available to buy from BBC suggested online retailers.
The creative people at BBC News Interactive have made six beautiful audio slideshows, narrated by Professor Reynolds, each covering one of the large themes of the series: Houses and Highways, The Jazz Age hits Main Street, The road to Hooverville, America's early skyscrapers, LBJ's Vietnam nightmares and The Information Revolution. The picture is the opening frame from the skyscrapers slideshow.
Justin Webb's America blog.
Matt Frei's new series about American Life, Americana, on Radio 4 at 1915 on Sunday evenings, and Mark Damazer's blog post introducing the programme.