What's going on?
There was a discussion on this board about the quality of the acting. Admittedly not a massively active thread but nothing inappropriate about it. Why was it deleted?
shareThat's what I want to know. Why?
You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.
Thought I'd reply to your post, lol. Sorry if it is a year later, maybe we could get this board started again. I mean it's a JOHN FORD western, it deserves a good discussion, I was amazed and didn't expect Jimmy Stewart's role at all to be so great and funny.
shareJimmy Stewart was great in this - playing against type in many ways.
shareTrue. And Widmark also got to play against type. Good show for both!
shareI agree. In some ways, each one got the other's part - but it worked all the better for it!
shareMany good movies are that way. "Just Cause" was another example of actors being effectively cast against type, though in that show it was a matter of initially playing to your expectations and then confounding them.
shareIt might have worked on "The Fugitive", with Tommy Lee Jones in the good doctor's part.
Not that the movie was poor - but I think it could have been better.
Ford had slipped pretty badly: this wasn't remotely as good as "The Searchers."
While the leads in the cast are impressive the overacting --to put it mildly-- by the John Ford stock company of regulars was really bad.
Kisskiss, Bangbang
I just watched this on my local cable channel, I agree that the "overacting" of Ford's stock company is pretty laughable, Andy Devine is especially over the top. From the Wikipedia entry on the movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Rode_Together#Production
The shoot was far from a happy one. This was not a personal project for Ford but something he did only for the money ($225,000 plus 25% of the net profits) and as a favor to Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, who died in 1958. Ford said he admired Cohn like "a large, brilliant serpent." The director hated the material, believing he had done a far better treatment of the theme in The Searchers. Even after he brought in his most trusted screenwriter Frank Nugent—the man responsible for The Searchers and nine other Ford classics—to fix the script, the director said it was "still crap."
$225,000 in 1961 = $1.76 million in todays dollars. Not a bad payday for doing something that was "still crap"!
I'm a little surprised you have issue with Andy Devine. He's always a goofball, that's his character. Not much different from Liberty Valance.
I'm not a woman much less Deanna Durbin, but the old-time glam-shot appeals to me.