I enjoy the the themes of morality and civilization. They are presented without irony or cynicism. Good and evil are more complicated than the film portrays them, however this film is refreshing and uplifting because it reminds us that there are practical, real-world differences between the two.
shareI thought it wasn't too bad. Olivia and Errol have great chemistry.
share<Olivia and Errol have great chemistry.>
Having the hotties for each other helped, too.
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Yes, they did. You never heard Olivia talk about it? She had a big crush on him, but kept it a secret (he was married). There's an adorable video on You Tube with her talking about her feelings for him from the Dinah Shore show.
And Flynn said in his autobio that he was in love with her by the time they did Charge of the Light Brigade, but admitted he made a mistake putting a dead snake in her pantellets as a way of showing his affection for her. He said in finally occurred to his obtuse mind that such juvenile pranks weren't the way to a girl's heart.
In the documentary The Adventures of Errol Flynn, she said when they did Robin Hood, he told her he was getting a divorce from his first wife, & hoped Olivia would marry him.
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Yes, everything I, too, have read from them or about them tells of their ongoing love for each other. She was quoted in an article in the late 1990s as often dreaming about him. He is quoted in the 1950s as still in love with her. Too bad he didn't know how to truly love and be faithful to a woman. Perhaps he was unable to because he didn't seem to be able to love himself. (What pain was he trying to end with those drugs?). Olivia is also quoted as knowing, "He would have ruined my life." (see Turner Classic Movies site).
I continue to be amazed that at such a young age she was able to resist Errol (and others) who would have detoured her from the career she had set as her goal - the goal she reached and was celebrated by the Motion Picture Academy in its 2006 Tribute to her work.
They were gorgeous on screen together, and as Robert Osborne notes, obviously "adored each other."
I love all of the films and am waiting for the dvd of "Four's a Crowd."
I'll bet she had dreams about him! Her & millions of other women.
I didn't know he said he still loved her as far as the 1950's. Judging by everything I've read, his interest in her started to wane, like with other women in his life. Especially if she resisted him, as she has maintained. Playboys are like that, they always move on to someone else. There are more interesting details from Olivia about him in "Inherited Risk: Errol & Sean Flynn in Hollywood & Vietnam".
I've been waiting for several weeks for a VHS of Four's a Crowd.
<They were gorgeous on screen together, and as Robert Osborne notes, obviously "adored each other.">
Oh yeah, they looked at each other like .
He was a hunk of male divinity in Captain Blood.
I'll have to read that book.
It's my favorite western. Clips from the movie was used as stock footage for other westerns for the next 20 years, especially the bar fight. Plenty of action, humor and romance. Even inspired the country rock group Pure Prairie League to take it's name from the temperance league that Alan Hale wanders into before the bar fight. Erroll was never more handsome, Olivia never more beautiful, Bruce more evil, Ann more tawdry, Victor more despicable, Frank more earnest, and Alan and Big Boy more entertainable.
shareI think this western gem got lost in the other releases of 1939...Gone. withe the Wind, Wizard of OZ...
shareIt didn't get "lost in other releases o 1939". "Dodge City" was a major hit of 1939 and as popular as any of the other films of that year that we now regard as classic. What's different is that the American Film Institute has taken upon itself to classify older films to suit it's faculty and self-appointed status as arbiter/interpreter of Studio Era films. Because someone published a book proclaiming 1939 as producing the most classic films of all time and these films were named and "Dodge City" was not named, popular perception TODAY regards any film not named on that list as unimportant or unpopular in 1939. That's a misguided and erroneous assumption. We, as a society, look back at 1939 with the lens of today, filtered through the AFI and authors of books on Studio Era films. "Dodge City" is a classic and representative of Westerns, in particular, and American cinema, in general, of it's period. "Dodge City" needs no author to trumpet it's merits. It is a film that did all who worked on it proud.
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A REAL Western,almost everything else.....second place.
America,the way it should be...no Civil War,No WW2 ...no wars after that..
because it killed so many young Caucasian Boys and others as well.
Great film1
America the way it should be? Including the shuffling, bug-eyed black porter in the train?
shareGreat film. I am surprised it took me so long to see it. I love Flynn's work, and can't say I've ever seen him in a bad film, from Captain Blood to That Forsyte Woman.
He of course had a nervousness about doing this since he did not see himself as suitable for a western, but in fact (using the notion to cover his accent that he was an Irishman, even if he still sounded like an Englishman and I know he was from Tasmania) it was a great role for him.
America the way it should be? Including the shuffling, bug-eyed black porter in the train?
A real Western with Flynn and hundreds of extras.......casting I mean.
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