Joan Crawford, once the queen of the MGM lot, had one of her very
best late-career roles in the film “Johnny Guitar” which was added to
the National Film Registry in 2008.
“Johnny” is a unique and one-of-a-kind Western which Michael Schlesinger attempts to get a handle on by saying:
“There are very few films—especially from Hollywood studios—that truly deserve to be called sui generis. But
‘Johnny Guitar’ is surely one of them. Even its log line—’a Joan
Crawford western’—sounds faintly ludicrous, like ‘an Ernest Borgnine
musical.’ But from its humble beginning as a critically-dismissed vanity
production, it has grown in stature over the decades, boosted by the
likes of Martin Scorsese and Francois Truffaut (who said anyone who
didn’t like it should never be permitted inside a cinema again, a severe
if well-intentioned endorsement), serving as an inspiration for other
films, and even being adapted into an award-winning off-Broadway musical
in 2004, until it now stands as a unique combination of disparate — and
none too friendly — talents managing to pull a golden egg out of a very
odd duck and creating a masterwork that can still leave first-time
viewers gobsmacked some six decades later. After all, name another
western that has a massive following among gay people.”
Read the rest of this “Johnny Guitar” (PDF) essay.
Title: “Johnny Guitar”
Year of Release: 1954
Year Added to the National Film Registry: 2008 (See all films added to the Registry in 2008.)
Trivia: “Guitar” co-star Mercedes McCambridge later provided the voice of the demon in another Film Registry title: “The Exorcist.”
via https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2018/12/reading-the-film-registry-johnny-guitar-1954/
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