Ben Johnson

[pvitari]

Tector, Tector, why are you so bad? :D

I dunno but maybe someone can do a movie called Tector and Lyle: The Early Years so we can see how Darth -- I mean Tector and Lyle became the adorable scumbags that they are. Er, were.

And why do you have such a silly name?

I've always wondered that. It would make a great name for a cat or dog, though. ;) Especially a mean junkyard dog. :)

Do you have any photos of Tector at the end of the table in the hacienda or whatever it was? I just love his expressions in those scenes.

I don't think so but I will look just to make sure.

[JackFavell]

Thanks!

It would make a good name for a pit bull or Rottweiler! But I don't think I would want to be yelling out "Here, TECTOOOR!" every morning. It doesn't seem right that he should come when called that way.

Poor Lyle. He'd be long dead and buried without Tector to keep him on the straight and narrow. Sort of.

[pvitari]

Junkyard dogs don't come when you call them. :)

JackFavell, sorry, no pics from that particular scene but if you want I can make a few screencaps.

By the way, a very interesting discussion of Warren Oates' reverence for Ben -- whom he idolized and was the one man Oates didn't want to know about his drug use -- in Susan Compo's Warren Oates: A Wild Life. Despite their very different personal lives, they were actually good friends and Ben was quite understanding of Oates' demons (as he was of Peckinpah's).

Today's pic is an autographed pic from The Wild Bunch. This is the last WB pic for now. Coming up next, several Major Dundee pics.

[JackFavell]

That's very interesting about Oates, Paula. I've always liked him. It also tells a lot about Ben as a tolerant person. One thing I've never understood though is how Ben would go on and on about how dirty Lat Picture Show was, and yet never makes one comment about The Wild Bunch.

[pvitari]

Doug O'Neal (a cousin of Ben's wife Carol) has this on his Ben page:

"I last talked to Ben shortly before his death on the phone, we were talking about the re-release of the Wild Bunch. He couldn't get over the continued popularity of the movie."

LOL. ;)

http://dougoneal.com/ben_johnson.html

Ben probably got asked a lot more about The Last Picture Show since that's the one he won his Oscar for.

Ben didn't like phonies. Oates and Peckinpah, whatever their problems were -- they weren't phonies. Compo says that both told Ben about their tough childhoods and he could understand where they were coming from. I imagine that he was one of the few people two hardcases like that felt they could trust and confide in.

[pvitari]

A brief interruption of Sam Peckinpah publicity photo week with screencaps from "Widow in White," Ben's third and final Laramie episode. It also was the last episode of season 2. Ben plays another bad guy, this one named Tarp. I really like his jacket and the natty way he ties his kerchief in this episode. :)

All the screencaps (total 974) are now on the webpage.

By the way, there is a really funny continuity error involving Ben's character, but it doesn't happen until near the end of the episode and to reveal it would give away a great big spoiler. I do discuss it (with pics) in the TV Shows section of the webpage, so if you want to see what it is, go there. :) But I won't spoil it for you here. :)

OK, in two batches...here's the first one.

Who's that guy sitting on the bench with everyone walking by? ;)
















Slim (John Smith) has roped Tarp and his two buddies, although you really can't see the third one in this picture. The three actors got pulled through the doorway, onto the porch, down the steps and into the dirt.

[pvitari]

Second and last batch.

[JackFavell]

Gosh he looks devilish in that last batch when he pulls the gun.

[pvitari]

Ben's villains usually have a devilish smile on their lips. Sometimes I think he got a real kick out of playing those bad boys.

In the very few interviews in which he talked about what some people might call an actor's "process," he said he based his characters on people he knew. So I'm wondering who he knew that inspired his bad guy performances? I bet there were a lot of interesting characters not always on the right side of the law in 1920s and 30s Pawhuska and Osage County when Ben was growing up there.

P.S. Next set of screencaps is The Shadow Riders. Should take about two weeks or so. Here's a preview. ;)

[JackFavell]

Oh golly! Those are soooooo much better than the ones i got!

[pvitari]

The Shadow Riders screencaps are from the Sony DVD which has a very nice picture. I can't imagine it looking better unless they did a Blu-ray. The earlier Louis L'Amour story Ben did with the same cast (The Sacketts) has an equally fine transfer but it's a much bigger project as it was a four-hour mini-series. But I'll get around to it some day.

[JackFavell]

It probably has more to do with my computer than the dvd. I can't even do caps anymore, somehow the thingy that reads dvds doesn't work anymore.

[pvitari]

That's weird/sad about your computer. Hope you can get it fixed!

Back to Peckinpah movies. Now some publicity stills from Major Dundee. :) Here's the first one.

[pvitari]

Kind of a gloomy Dundee picture today, but you'll like the next two after this a lot. ;)

Ben on the left, Richard Harris in the middle and Warren Oates on the right. Wonder at what point Peckinpah started thinking about casting them as brothers. ;)

Did you all know that the Gorch brothers survived the massacre and became vampires? It's true, it was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

http://angelicvampire.bravehost.com/Gorch.html


Here's the Dundee photo. :)

[JackFavell]

I love that picture! It's grainy and has a lot of texture, and I love their serious expressions... Richard Harris has never looked better. I think I like him better with a 'stache.

I think that's funny about Buffy. I never got into it much, but a friend of mine knows the whole series practically by heart. I like it's humor, but for years it was on here at 6 or 7 in the morning, and that's just too early for this vampire.