John Agar - Rumorstore search

Studio: St Clair Ent Grp Inc Release Date: 10/03/2006 Run time: 753 minutes Rating: Pg13

For over 20 years, the name John Agar on a marquee meant action to moviegoers - from World War II land, sea and air battles, to the frontier west, to the new frontier of 1950s science fiction, where he stood fast against some of the era's most memorable movie monsters. Agar's rise to fame was meteoric: During World War II, the $83-a-month buck sergeant met and later married "America's Sweetheart" Shirley Temple, and was soon offered a screen test and dramatic instruction by Hollywood mega-mogul David O. Selznick. He co-starred in his very first film, director John Ford's magnificent Fort Apache (1948), and parlayed that impressive debut role into a two-decade string of heroic leads. Steady work was the important thing to Agar, who easily alternated between A-pictures (Ford classics, Sands of Iwo Jima, more), drive-in favorites (Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula) and low-low-budget exploitation items. A gracious, gentle man, Agar tells the bittersweet tale of his journey through life in this tribute volume, which also includes additional interview material and photos not only from his films but also his private life.

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Raoul Walsh directed one knockout movie after another in the 1940s, then mostly knockoff movies in the '50s. This trim journey Western typifies his '50s high-average. Kirk Douglas plays a U.S. marshal who interrupts rancher Morris Ankrum's lynching of Walter Brennan. Brennan was rustling some of Ankrum's cattle, no question; what's less certain is whether he also shot the rancher's son in the back. Douglas and deputies John Agar and Ray Teal break up the hanging party and prepare to transport Brennan to jail and trial--with Ankrum's hired guns right behind them, a burning desert ahead, and Brennan's feisty daughter Virginia Mayo coming along to distract Douglas. There's one more distraction: the hint that Brennan may also be Douglas's father--which certainly lends a peculiar coloration to the romantic pull between Douglas and Mayo.

Walsh was the oldest of old pros when it came to action pictures, and he and cameraman Sid Hickox give most of Along the Great Divide a fine, spare look. Unfortunately, the production habits of the era mandated that crisp action footage shot on location would periodically crash up against studio "exteriors" (e.g., campfire scenes) of blatant artificiality. In addition, Walsh and Hickox were playing around with optical zooms in this period, and although the ones in White Heat (1949) and Colorado Territory (1949) work beautifully, their counterparts here tend to be badly timed--and mostly just result in the image going suddenly coarse grained and fuzzy. --Richard T. Jameson

John Ford's brilliant direction makes this another great John Wayne classic about a Cavalry Captain who must choose between his retirement and remaining to risk his own life to defend his people in a hopeless situation. An inspiring saga of duty, country, and honor, perfect for the entire family.

A texas cattle man swings into action when outlaws kidnap his grandson and wound his son. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/23/2005 Starring: John Wayne Maureen Ohara Run time: 109 minutes Rating: Pg13

Big Jake is not one of the Duke's classics, but a diverting attempt nonetheless. Everyone seems to think that Jacob McCandles is six-feet under ("I thought you was dead" is a running line throughout), so some bad men kidnap his grandson. They want a piece of the family fortune and will kill to get it. Patrick Wayne, the Duke's own son, plays one of Big Jake's kids, and together they start out after the boy's abductors. Richard Boone makes a worthy adversary to Jake's larger than life figure, and the final confrontation between the two contains some great gritted-teeth dialogue. Maureen O'Hara is barely in the feature, sharing the same fate as Bobby Vinton as the boy's father. He seems to be onscreen just to get shot. --Keith Simanton

In the late 1950s, crowds massed to see a new spectacular and expensive instrument for British science. The Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope built on the Cheshire plains could be seen for miles around, but was equally visible displayed in documentary film, newspaper reports, and public lectures.
Science and Spectacle relates the construction of the telescope to the politics and culture of postwar Britain. From radar and atomic weapons, to the Festival of Britain and, later, Harold Wilson's rhetoric of scientific revolution, science formed a cultural resource from which postwar careers and a national identity could be built. The Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope was at once a symbol of British science and a much needed prestigious project for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but it also raised questions regarding the proper role of universities as sites for scientific research.