Shane

This is another classic western. The single scene where Jack Palance's character "Wilson" shoots Elisha Cook's character "Stonewall" changed not only westerns but all action movies to follow. It was the first time a movie showed someone knocked off his feet buy a gunshot. It's true that a .45 has a lot of "knockdown" power but not enough to fling someone a foot through the air. If it did the recoil would have knocked Jack Palance's character back too. The movie was filmed in the Grand Teton National Park so you see the Grand Teton's in the background of almost every scene. The story is based on the historical Johnson County War between ranchers and homesteaders in Wyoming in the 1890's. The movie points out both sides of the argument but makes out the ranchers to be evil. Truth was both sides were wrong. Although the open range was an inefficient way to raise cattle, the high plains were too dry to raise crops. The plowing up of the prairie grass in the southern plains resulted in the dust bowls of the 1930's. The story is told through the eyes of a kid. The best part of the movie is the final gunfight. One of the best gunfights in western movie history. Old Ben Johnson from Shidler, Oklahoma is in the movie. He was a young man then. That's near Bartlesville. I had a friend in college from Bartlesville. He told me old Ben Johnson used to hang out at the stores in Bartlesville dressed in overalls with the other farmers and ranchers and no one knew who he was. Every once in a while he'd get bored and come in on a Saturday all dressed up and driving his Cadillac and would sign autographs. I first saw this movie on TV. When I was a kid my family drove through the Grand Teton National Park on our way to Yellowstone one summer. I didn't make the connection to this movie till years later. The novel was in my high school library. I read the first chapter. In the novel Shane was a urban character wearing city clothes. In the movie Shane wore a buckskin shirt.