Some retired Texas Rangers take an epic journey driving a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. You know what we’re talking about, right?
A couple of hints: 1989, TV miniseries – it was a book first.
Commentator WF Strong says there’s something all Texans really should know about Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove.” Actually – make that a dozen things
1. Lonesome Dove was originally a much shorter screenplay. It was written 15 years earlier by Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdonavich. It was called ‘Streets of Laredo’ and was supposed to star John Wayne as Call, Jimmy Stewart as Gus, and Henry Fonda as Jake Spoon. Wayne dropped out, and that killed the project.
2. For about 15 years, Streets of Laredo was untouched until one day, when McMurtry spotted an old bus with the words “Lonesome Dove Baptist Church” painted on the side. The story, which was based on the lives of Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, was finished as a novel after he returned home. The book was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
3 The movie rights to the novel were bought by Motown, which made everyone stop and say “What’s going on?” Seems an odd fit, but not so. Suzanne de Passe, of Mo town, along with Bill Wittliff, produced a masterpiece.
4. Robert Duvall turned down the role of Woodrow Call so he could play Gus.
5. Duvall said as they were making the film, he knew it would be a classic. He told his fellow actors, “We’re making the “Godfather of Westerns.”
6. Charles Bronson was supposed to play Blue Duck, but had to back out due to contractual obligations.
7. Lonesome Dove was not awarded the 1989 Best Miniseries Emmy. ‘War and Remembrance,’ which nobody remembers, received that distinction. The Golden Globes, where Duval won Best Actor and Lonesome Dove took home Best Miniseries, put things right.
8. Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall were made honorary Texas Rangersfor their heroic depictions of W.F. Call and Gus McCrae.
9 Gus’s body, the mannequin Call brought back from Montana to bury in Texas, is available for viewing at Texas State University, which owns the Lonesome Dove collection. The curator Steve Davis, told me that some people weep when they see Gus’s body. You can also see Gus’s hat, and the blacksmith’s poker that Call used to viciously beat the army scout to within an inch of his life.
10. Lonesome Dove was written by Larry McMurtry to help readers shed their romantic preconceptions of the life of a cowboy and cattle drives. He intended to portray the harsh conditions and challenging times that cowboys encountered on the frontier. He failed at it. Almost no one in Texas would refuse to give up their suit and desk job in exchange for riding a horse and driving cattle to Montana with Woodrow and Gus.
11. Lonesome Dove has sold more DVD’s than any Western in Cinema History.
12. There is a longer version of Lonesome Dove – about thirty minutes longer, but we can’t see it. It is locked away somewhere and there are no plans ever to release it.