Audie L. Murphy Memorial Website Message Boards

I recently saw this posted on the Audie Murphy Cotton Museum website:

4.Do you sell any of the movies that Audie Murphy starred in?

Yes, some of them are available for purchase. The majority of the movies cost between $12-$25. We will not ship movies internationally. Currently, the museum has:

To Hell & Back

Night Passage

Apache Rifles

Whispering Smith

Tumbleweed

Gunsmoke

World in my Corner

Gunfight at Comanche Creek

Kansas Raiders

Arizona Raiders

Cimmaron Kid

Hell Bent for Leather

Posse From Hell

Six Black Horses

Bullet For a Badman

No Name on the Bullet

Kid From Texas

Duel at Silver Creek

Drums Across the River

Ride Clear of Diablo

Column South

The Texican

Movie titles available change frequently so call the museum at (903) 450-4502 to place an order. Some, but not all, of the movies have been re-mastered.

Has anyone purchased a movie from the museum? What is the quality like? A couple of the movies, "Tumbleweed" and "World in My Corner" are not available anywhere else but from out of country and some of those are very poor quality.

Gerry

Yeah, the main Amercian release titles are current and fine, but the dvd's that haven't had an official release aren't the best quality there, either, about like what you get anywhere else. Not sure who their supplier is, but I have gotten a few over the years just to check and they have been pretty poor quality.

Best copy of World in my Corner was the one we taped to dvd off TCM last year when they showed it.

Kinda what I was thinking but had to ask. I already have most of the U.S. released films but the out of country ones, even the DVD's from Australia, haven't gotten a good rap on this chat line. Thanks for the info, Dave. I will join the Cotton Museum to support their work but stay away from the Non U.S. DVD's.

Gerry, in my experience the British and German dvds tend to be pretty good: I've only owned a couple of the German ones (and one ended up becoming obsolete when Ride a Crooked Trail was released in the States) but they seemed to be very clear, good-looking dvds that showed up pretty well on an high definition tv, and all the German Audie Murphy western dvd are from Koch Media, who have a very good reputation in these things. My British dvd of Bullet for a Badman also plays well on a high definition tv.

Eva Dano was distrustful of the British Posse From Hell, because it was widescreen and lost information at the top and bottom of the screen, but comparing her screencaps of it versus the fullscreen versions, it didn't look that bad to me, and the British release isanother one that supposedly plays well on high definition tvs. The French Column South isn't great but isn't awful, IMO, basically looks like a grainier cousin to the TCM dvds, so maybe that's just what the surviving film prints look like. The French Seven Ways from Sundown is probably the best-looking of the French dvds I own, and even the Australian Battle at Bloody Beach and French Guns of Fort Petticoat are an improvement on what you see on ebay although they aren't great.

I try to support the foreign releases of his westerns because they are legit and because I do have a player that will handle PAL-video standard and foreign region dvds, but they are a somewhat varied lot in terms of quality. The Australian ones in my experience are OK if you have a regular tv, and tend to be very reasonably priced, but I found them kind of unsatisfying to watch after switching to a newer high definition tv.

Great info and thanks so much. I would love to see Tumbleweed and Seven Ways from Sundown again. It's been years so they would be brand new to me. I only saw "Bloody Beach" once and remember very little of it. I just bought Red Badge and Bad Boy from Amazon's streaming service but haven't watched them yet.

Wow, I didn't realize Bad Boy was on Amazon streaming...I guess I should see if it's on itunes as well.

As for Battle at Bloody Beach, to me it's one of his less-great movies, but he is good in it, and it's a different kind of role so I get the urge to watch it from time to time.

Nobody overseas has released "Tumbleweed" yet. I do have to put in a good word for the Australian Posse From Hell. It is full-screen, so it will "windowbox" on a widescreen tv, but the picture quality is good. I watched it recently, and kept going "Ooh, his eyes are gray in this scene! And now they're blue...And blue-green...And greenish-yellow...aw, what the heck, they're pretty whatever color is involved."

Christie, My sentiments exactly on Posse from Hell, no matter what color Audie's eyes come across, they
are always beautiful. I was pretty lucky with the Australian copies I purchased about 5 years ago. All
were in pretty good shape to watch on my JVC Television set with Panasonic Recorder. There was only
three that were not great quality, Column South, Trunk to Cairo, and Sierra. I have since gotten re mastered copies of Column South and Trunk to Cairo which were originally pretty dark, but the copies I have now
are fine. The only one I still have that is not the greatest is Sierra. Some day soon I will change it for a
better copy quality. Even my very early Bad Boy is pretty good copy for being black and white. My
Bloody Beach I dvd off my own television set when they showed it last year and the quality is fine. I am
wondering if they are going to do a mini marathon of Audie movies on his birthday of June 20th this year
like they did last year on TCM and or Encore ? Sure hope so, but have not seen anything advertised on
Encore yet. However, I have been away from my home and Tv for about three days in the hospital so I
am just now coming back to speed. Take care all. Just my thoughts, Shirley Jean.

First, welcome home Shirley Jean. Christie, I haven't yet watched the streaming versions of either Bad Boy or Red Badge from Amazon but am leaving for a one week vacation soon and checking out both movies on my lap top are on my To Do List. Amazon recently added the XBox to their lists of streaming devices and, although Badge is available, they are still working on Bad Boy. I went ahead and put both movies on my watch list so I could see them on the computer but much prefer the 50" plasma for viewing, of course. Can't take that baby in the car with me on vacation though, darn it.

I also agree on the eye color thing and we can add hair color since it seems to change from nearly black to light brown depending on the movie and technique for filming it. I watched Hell Bent for Leather again last night and in one scene filmed outside, his eyes are blue while the scene where he peeks around the saloon curtain to watch the bad guy, his eyes appear green. The amazing thing about them in that scene is their size, which is huge. Reminds me of most pictures you see of Skipper, with his huge, saucer eyes.

The physical thing I enjoy most about watching Audie is the way he moves. I teach tai chi and one of the pitfalls of doing that is that I can't resist observing the way people carry themselves. Audie can often be seen moving with what we term "mindfullness". He obviously is very much aware of each step he is placing, moving with a certain amount of feline grace. That takes incredible body awareness. I doubt he took many falls and, if he did, he probably was able to catch and right himself easily.

LOL, I know what you mean. I'm a pretty recent convert to the big screen tv thing myself, and it is awesome. Have a fun vacation!



I hadn't thought of that, but, yeah, it is a bit like the pics of Skipper. On the hair color, I think part of the problem is the 50s/early 60s fashion for very carefully styled men's hair-in a lot of scenes, he's got so much hair product (pomade?) on that one's net impression of the hair color is just "dark and shiny" and then you have scenes in Ride a Crooked Trail or whatever, where the net impression is "sandy reddish brown" or something.



That's a very good way of putting it-I don't have your expert eye, but to me he almost always seems very decisive and controlled in the way he moves onscreen. It's easy to see why he was good at doing his own stunts earlier in his career, and my feeling is that the American studios mostly moved away from letting him do that for insurance reasons, and he was cooperative because it meant more work for some of his friends, like the stuntman Jim Shepherd. Even in Texican and Trunk to Cairo (both filmed in 1965, by which point he was at least forty) he pulls off some fairly challenging stunts, like the "ninja style" crawl along an overhead wire in Trunk to Cairo.

Hi Christie and Gerry. I agree, Audie's hair color and or eye color would look totally different in one scene to the next even in the same film. Christie you may be right on the amount of hair gel used from scene to
scene. However, my take on it is sometimes the quality of color transmission in some of the older films.
Yes they definitely had color back then but sometimes the color quality that would come through on the
film would often vary from clip to clip. Also down through the years some of the colorization would
degenerate over the years and even fade some. Now when they re-master some of the older film and even
transfer it to a high quality DVD or even digitally apply it to a high density media, the quality of original
color filming can be affected. I mean it is great that we now have such technology that we can preserve
as much of the original quality, however, if the original media has degenerated some, then the remastered
copy will also be affected. At least that is my take on it. Also Gerry, you are right about Audie and his
graceful walk, or glide as you call it. I remember reading after his hip wound in the service he went through
a lot of physical therapy in order to walk as smoothly and graceful as possible. But I also remember reading
a quote from James Cagney when he first met Audie in LA after Audie took Cagney up on his offer, that
Audie moved like a " Hay Shucker" and was really skinny and had an almost green hue to him. Well you have to
know that Cagney was quite a dancer and one of the first things he did was to give Audie dancing
lessons, and fencing lessons and let him work out in the sun to get a healthier appearance to him.
Cagney also worked out in the boxing ring with Audie to help build his stamina up at the same time.
Apparently it must have done wonders for Audie because it is very evident even in his earliest films
Audie had a sense of purpose about him and was very smooth and almost graceful. Just my thoughts..
Shirley Jean.