HOW CAN I NOT HAVE SEEN THIS ACTOR AGAIN?
HOW CAN I NOT HAVE SEEN THIS ACTOR AGAIN?
In Howard Hawks’s mostly unoriginal (it’s almost a remix of Rio Bravo) but very fine 1967 western El Dorado, a teenaged girl shoots John Wayne early on, because she believes he is a hired gun who has killed her brother. He is badly hurt, and when it comes to the climactic shoot-out with the real bad guys, he collapses in pain, almost paralysed, as an after-effect of that first shooting. As he is about to be killed, down the street strides this teenage girl, shooting the bad guys and saving the hero!
Obviously seeing such a straightforwardly old-fashioned male hero, as good a symbol of the old macho man as any, being saved by a cute young girl is pretty wonderful in itself, and I think very fresh and rare back then, but really I wanted to mention this as my biggest HOW CAN I NOT HAVE SEEN THIS ACTOR AGAIN? moment. She was Michelle Carey, and while cursory research reveals a few other roles, I can’t recall any of them. Maybe it was just this one smallish but great part, and maybe she didn’t have so much, but I’ll never forget that moment.
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