Lee,
I know you're always looking for images of vintage movie marquees,
well here's something a little different. Several weeks ago I came across
on my satellite guide the 1972 movie The
Honkers on the Encore Westerns Channel. I'd never seen it
before but knew it was one of three "rodeo"
westerns that came out in '72, the others being J.W. Coop and Junior Bonner
-- must have been something in the air back then -- and since it starred
James Coburn, I had to check it out. I recorded it on my DVR. In
the movie, which was shot in late summer/early fall 1971 in Carlsbad, NM,
Coburn's character drives to the local Bijou to look for his girlfriend who
works there, arriving too late to pick her up. Anyway, they must have
simply shot at Carlsbad's local cinema, recording whatever was playing there at
the time, which you'll see from this screen capture was the 1971 Oliver
Reed/Candice Bergen bomb The Hunting
Party, but what's cool is check out the 1-sheet poster seen in front of
Coburn's windshield.
Rory Monteith
Retro Responds: Great catch, Rory. I hate to say it but this is one Coburn film I've never seen, so I'll have to track it down. You bring up a good point about the inexplicable abundance of films in 1972 about aging rodeo riders. They all received good reviews but died at the box-office probably because they flooded the market- and the leading men, who were known for their action films, were cast as somber, realistic characters. By the way, most Clint Eastwood fans realize that you can see the marquee with Play Misty For Me on it in the sequence in Dirty Harry in which Eastwood thwarts the bank robbers. -Lee Pfeiffer