Audie L. Murphy Memorial Website Message Boards

WATCHED THE TEXICAN LAST NIGHT AND FINISHED IT THIS MORNING. ITS ONE OF THOSE THAT THE MORE I WATCH IT THE BETTER IT GETS. I NOTICED THAT THE TOWN WAS NAMED 'RIM ROCK'. ON THE BACK OF THE DVD CASE IT SAID 'RUM ROCK'. THOUGHT THAT WAS FUNNY. MUST HAVE BEEN SOEMONE WHO LIKES TO PARTAKE IN THE SPIRITS FIXED UP THE ARTWORK SUMMARY.

I hadn't noticed that about the box art-as you say, kind of funny.

This was one of the movies that helped transform me from "vaguely in favor of Audie Murphy without knowing much about him" into full-blown fan. My favorite moments are probably the riding scenes, the fist fight, and the bit just after that, where Jess Carlin meets a former employee of his dead brother the newspaper editor, and talks about the time he and his brother cleaned up a town-the brother with his newspaper, and Jess with his gun and badge-and how it all fell apart inspite of their efforts. I wonder how many of the WWII veterans really felt like that, as if they'd helped to fix a large set of problems in the world, but things refused to stay "fixed."

THERE WAS A PART I HAD TO REWIND AND WATCH AGAIN: WHEN AUDIE AND THE GIRL CAME DOWNSTAIRS AT THE HOTEL, AUDIE CHUNKED THE ROOM KEY HALF-WAY ACROSS THE ROOM TO THE KEY BOX BEHIND THE CLERKS COUNTER AND IT LOOKED LIKE IT WENT IN A BOX LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO! THE LOOK ON THE CLERKS FACE WAS PRICELESS. NOT SURE IF THAT WAS SCRIPTED OR AUDIE JUST ADD-LIBBED IT AND IT WAS SO COOL IT WAS LEFT IN. SEVERAL OTHER PLACES HUMOR CAME THROUGH WHERE I DIDN'T REMEMBER IT BEING. VERY ENJOYABLE.

Not sure when Clint Eastwood started doing "spaghetti westerns", but Texican was done in "66 and it has the same feel to it. I think he really started the trend and did very well in it. He seemed very comfortable in his skin as the character and also did really good stunts(he did them all I believe). Loved the bareback ride down the side of the canyon.

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Ruxy

NOT SURE WHERE I READ IT, MAYBE DON GRAHAM'S BOOK, THAT AUDIE WAS SUPPOSEDLY OFFERED THE SPAGHETTI WESTERN ROLE THAT CLINT EASTWOOD EVENTUALLY TOOK, BUT AUDIE'S AGENT TURNED IT DOWN. CAN ANYBODY ELSE REMEMBER THAT OR WHERE THAT STORY CAME FROM? DON'T THINK I DREAMED THAT UP.

David: I'll have to watch for the key toss next time, that sounds neat!

Iluvaudie: they do list a stunt double for him in the credits on this site, so Murph must have passed on doing some of the action scenes, but it really does look like it's him in the major riding scenes and the fight in the bar.

The bareback riding is a favorite of mine too. All the more impressive when you remember that this is a forty-year-old guy with a badly damaged hip who doing this!

As far as Murph turning down Fistful of Dollars (which was made in 1964), there's a couple of versions floating around, one where he turned it down for being too much like Yojimbo, and maybe one where his agent thought it was a bad idea. Ann, Shirleyjean and I discussed it some in the thread about the Posse from Hell UK dvd.

Interestingly, Murph did get to work with a couple of Fistful of Dollars cast members. Aldo Sambrell, who plays Broderick Crawford's main henchman in the Texican, is a minor baddie in Fistful, and the peasant woman who Eastwood rescues in Fistful and sends away with her husband is Marianne Koch, the love interest in Trunk to Cairo.