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The Hollywood West: Lives of Film Legends Who Shaped It

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While this book looks at many prominent personalities in Hollywood who helped shape the Western movie, many of the authors have not done their homework. A few chapters like the ones on John Ford and John Wayne are written by authors who understand their subjects, but others are poorly researched. The chapter on "Native American actors" by Gretchen M. Bataille includes the Italian-American actor Iron Eyes Cody (aka Oscar DiCorte). His identity was revealed in 1996 and later in major newspapers and magazines when he died in 1999. His Italian heritage from Louisiana is very well known by now. Bataille should keep up with the scholarship in her field. Chapters like hers give this book very little credibility.

In The Hollywood West: Lives Of Film Legends Who Shaped It, Richard Etulain and Blenda Riley have collaboratively assembled informative commentaries by eleven historians which dramatize the past century of "Hollywood Westerns" to reveal the real individuals behind the Western's greatest film heroes and heroines. Ranging from the Bronco Billy Anderson, William S. hart, and Tom Mix silent Westerns of heroic men on horseback with six-guns in their hands, to Gene Autry and Roy Rogers (the singing cowboys of the 1930s), to John Wayne and Gary Cooper style larger-than-life Western heroes of the 1940s, to female Western movie role models Barbara Stanwyck and Katy Jurado, and the Native American actors Jay Silverheels, Iron Eyes Cody, and Chief Dan George, The Hollywood West magnificently showcases some of the most influential characters and themes to have a lasting impact on American culture and popular imagination.