The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 10)

br> Re: Paul Beston's King John : /p> p>The deaths of Johnny Cash and his uncle, Sheb Wooley, in Tennessee -- I think that was their relationship; for those of us from the south kinship used to get complicated and you might end up through fortuitous marriage being "your own grandpa" -- both of whom did a fair amount of film and television acting, has reminded me of Hollywood's casting blunders. They have marred classics like Shane , in which Alan Ladd should have been disqualified for the lead by his age and short stature; didn't director George Stevens notice that the perfect Shane was Ben Johnson, who was playing the ultimately decent cowboy whom Alan Ladd improbably beat up in the saloon fight? And in Fred Zinneman's High Noon (Sheb Wooley was one of the gunmen waiting at the railroad station for the sheriff's nemesis), Gary Cooper should have been Grace Kelly's grandfather rather than her husband. But what I especially remember was that a still boyishly slim Johnny Cash sang the theme over the beginning and credits of the "Rebel" television series -- "Johnny Yumaaaa road through the wwwwest" -- and he would have been the personification of Johnny Yuma, as Nick Adams, a smallish, bowlegged, little man with thinning hair, was not. br> -- J.R. Wheatley br> Harper Woods, MI /p>

Readers, over the decades, who contributed more to America -- to its very survival -- than Dr. Edward Teller?

From the fawning news accounts, it's evidently one of the Johns (Ritter or Cash).

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Foreign Policy, Television, Hollywood, Constitution, Law, Africa