The Woman Who Stabbed Marion Crane

BTW, I *love* the idea suggested by the title of ecarle's OP: retitling movies (misleadingly or leadingly as the case may be) in the mode of some other notable movies and their titles. Psycho becomes 'The Woman Who Stabbed Marion Crane'.

I had one recently for Jaws in the mode of The Post (i.e., imagined redirected by a later Spielberg to focus on the Mayor's anguished decision whether to fund Quint to kill the shark): The Mayor.

All are warmly encouraged to add their retitling suggestions to this thread!

At the time of its theatrical release there was a song TMWSLV recorded by Gene Pitney which we all assumed was from the movie but actually wasn't. And it had the lyric "The man who shot Liberty Valence, he was the bravest of them all", which sure isn't the Stewart character.

I always knew the twists in advance too....Maybe because of that I always heard the title TMWSLV as having a hidden/silent question-mark, TM?WSLV, i.e., as essentially equivalent to 'Who Shot Liberty Valance?',

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Ha. Like every week's title on "Burkes Law": "Who Killed the Fat Cat?" "Who Killed the Lady in Red?" etc.

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flagging that appearances could be/probably are deceiving, with Wayne as prime suspect for the real shooter.

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Stewart is built "down" as so incapable of besting Valance that I doubt people much believed he really did it. Though the shooting is well timed; Stewart DOES fire on Valance and Valance is hit(by Wayne) at the same time. (Of course, in a flashback at the end, we get the showdown restaged from Wayne's vantage point -- and Wayne uses a RIFLE to do it!)

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Growing up as a film buff too, The Searchers loomed large in my image of both Ford and Wayne (larger than it did for most audiences in 1962 I'd wager), and Miles was in The Searchers too, so it just made sense that in TMWSLV Wayne would be playing another version of or extension of Ethan Edwards who can't come into the house at the end, who's a brutal, racist killer estranged from family life, and from the coming civilized west more generally. And TMWSLV didn't disappoint: even more than EE in The Searchers Wayne's character in TMWSLV is explicitly a walking moral proposition.

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A walking moral proposition. Great line! Yes, the ties to The Searchers are there, to be sure, though I think Wayne's Tom Doniphon is a slightly "softer" version of EE. Wayne is clearly a tougher guy and better shot than Stewart, but there 's a scene where Wayne disrupts Stewart's school class and callously tells his black helper Pompey(Woody Strode) to leave the schoolroom and get back to work, where we realize Wayne isn't THAT nice a guy.

He may be the hero the Post-Frontier West deserves, but he's not the one it needs right now,

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Another analogy to The Searchers and Wayne walking out on family at the end.

Like -- Psycho! -- TMWSLV is astonishing in how short and sweet and simple it is on the one hand, yet how profound on the other.

A thematic point clearly made by TMWSLV is that without a tough sharpshooter like John Wayne to ENFORCE the law, Stewart's naive dependence ON the law is...powerless. Liberty Valance knows that, telling Stewart "You've been hiding behind (Wayne's) gun for too long!" This is why society has police forces, and raises an army. Somebody has to be strong and able to use lethal force against evil.

A side thought I've always had about TMWSLV: What if Valance simply shot Wayne in the back one night? In other words, what if John Wayne and his enforcement powers were removed from that town? Without Wayne to protect them, the townspeople looked like a pretty weak and frail bunch, easily overpowered. (The town sheriff was a literal, worthless joke: cowardly Andy Devine. Doniphon wouldn't take the job, anymore that he would run for office like Stewart does. A loner.) I suppose Valance and his corrupt backers knew that if he killed Wayne, "outside law enforcers" would be brought in to make things worse for Valance. Just a supposition on my part.

He may be the hero the Post-Frontier West deserves, but he's not the one it needs right now, Stewart/Harvey Dent is (Print the Legend). He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.

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Now that's a nifty analogy. The Bruce Wayne/Harvey Dent split in The Dark Knight always had some of that same frustration to it. With Harvey being hailed as a hero and yet having to be driven around like a powerless patsy in a police wagon to avoid being killed by the Joker, while policemen died trying to protect him and Batman had to save him. And the really excruciating ending of Batman voluntarily being willing to be cast as a "vigilante villain" to keep order. (Not to mention, Bruce Wayne willing to act like a spoiled rich kid putz to keep HIS identity secret.)

Time to pull out a saucer of milk for the catty me, here: I never bought, in The Dark Knight, how two handsome, powerful and/or rich men like Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent could be competing for a woman who was as unattractive as Maggie Gyllenhaal. Mean thing to say but - these actors get paid the big bucks. I thought her casting was rather perverse. She's a good actress, but the role called for a real beauty. Not that that got in the way of a billion dollar box office.

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