In the category of "All I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned from Cowboy Movies," I respectfully submit the following:—

My all-time favorite Western movie is The Big Country (1958), starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Chuck Connors, and Charles Bickford. It's a sweeping, panoramic Western that contains every cliché you've ever seen in any Western movie—two ranchers, one rich and one poor; a range-war over water rights; a stranger who is a misfit in this background (in this case, a former sea-captain); the spoiled daughter of the rich rancher; the foreman who loves her but is jealous of the sea-captain who has come to marry the rancher's daughter; the beautiful single schoolmarm who owns a plot of land both rangers want; the boorish son of the poor rancher; a battle of wills with a horse that can't be ridden, and a couple of obligatory shoot-outs—but all done with verve and panache (e.g. one of the shoot-outs is not with six-guns, but with single-shot dueling pistols). And a moral lesson in the last look you get at the two warring ranchers. Burl Ives got a well-deserved Oscar for his role as Rufus Hannassey, the poor ranch owner. For any Western fan, this is a "must see."

But be that as it may, one of my favorite scenes in the movie follows after Charlton Heston, the ranch foreman, challenges Gregory Peck, the former sea-captain, to a fist-fight in front of a whole bunch of people. Peck refuses. Everybody assumes that he backed down, afraid to fight the foreman. Then—that night, Peck comes to the bunkhouse, wakes Heston up, and calls him out. They go out, alone, into the corral, and for what seems like hours, they beat the crap out of each other. At last, both of them, bruised, bleeding, and exhausted, lay in the dirt, unable to continue. Then as Peck and Heston struggle to their feet to head back to the bunkhouse, Peck asks, "Now—just what, exactly, did we prove?"

Worth thinkin' about. . . .

Don Firth