ArizonaRealCountry.com 17 June 2019 3. Self-parodies occasionally come along that poke fun at the film industry like Callaway Went Thataway, Slim Carter, Rustler’s Rhapsody, and Hearts of the West. In a league all their own are entertaining lightweight fare with superstars like McLintock with John Wayne. Maureen O’ Hara, Yvonne DeCarlo, heading a fantastic ensemble including, Bruce Cabot, Chill Wills, and Strother Martin, and Cheyenne Social Club, with James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Shirley Jones plus support from the likes of, Sue Ane Langdon, Robert J. Wilke, and John Dehner. In 1974 a new western came out that was in a class all by itself. Taking all three types of sub- genre western comedy categories and stirring them together, a very talented team of film professionals, aided by another classic western theme song by iconic Frankie Laine, made a seminal film in the realm of western comedy… a film which forever after forced us to look at eating by campfire in a much different light. Comedy in our westerns is no laughing matter. There’s probably been a few disagreements concerning films like, The Hallelujah Trail, Advance to the Rear, or Waterhole Number 3, about what’s funny and what’s not. You may laugh with The Villain or you may laugh at it. The distinction being, if you’re laughing with it you probably find it funny, but if you’re laughing at it you may still find it funny but not in the way filmmakers intended. All major film comedians and comedy teams have at least one western to their credit. Watching Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, W. C. Fields, or Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello and Martin & Lewis, you know that the film may be set in the west, but it’s going to cater to the personalities of the comic(s) involved. Even Laugh-In stars Dan Rowan and Dick Martin’s first film (they only made two) was Once Upon a Horse. The mid-1970s, a time of few westerns on screen, brought a fine new team in the Apple Dumpling series with Tim Conway & Don Knotts. Knotts had already brought his popular cowardly hero brand to The Shakiest Gun in the West, a 1968 remake of The Paleface, the Bob Hope vehicle in which ole’ ski- nose brought his own brand of cowardly antagonist into play. Western Comedies are separated into three types: 1. Satirical comedy that’s written specifically for the major player(s) i.e. Ruggles of Red Gap, Bob Hope, Buck Benny Rides Again, Jack Benny, The Marx Brothers Go West, the title tells it all, or Gold Raiders, with The Three Stooges aiding George O’ Brien, 2. Farcical comedy requires a strong cast to bring it together i.e., Water Hole Number 3, with James Coburn, Carol O’Connor & Bruce Dern, The Rounders with Henry Fonda & Glenn Ford, Advance to the Rear, with Glenn Ford, Stella Stevens, Andrew Prine & Melvyn Douglas or Cat Ballou, with Jane Fonda, and Lee Marvin along with stalwarts like Arthur Hunnicutt, and Bruce Cabot. By Charlie LeSueur Charlie LeSueur, AZ’s Official Western Film Historian. Encore Fellow @ Western Spirit, Scottsdale’s Museum of the West. azfilmhistorian@gmail.com, silverscreencowboyz.com WESTERNS ARE NO Laughing Matter Clockwise from top: The Hallelujah Trail (1965) Burt Lancaster, Jim Hutton Gold Raiders (1951) Hearts of the West (1975) Jeff Bridges and Andy Griffith, in front of Classic Vasquez Rocks The Rounders (1965) Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968) Water Hole #3 (1967), James Coburn and Carol O' Connor