Leone Exhibit [Story in The New York Times]

[cigar joe]

check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/movies/MoviesFeatures/30leon.html?ex=1123387200&en=433ac6a4f7882642&ei=5070&emc=eta1

[KC]

Thanks, Cigar Joe! I had meant to post that story yesterday, but I got distracted. Here are a couple of key excerpts ...

It was while watching Episode 91 of "Rawhide" ("Incident of the Black Sheep") that Leone found his leading man: "His laziness, his laid-back quality, is what came over so clearly. When we were working together, he was like a snake, forever taking a nap 500 feet away, wrapped in his coils, asleep in the back of the car or on the set. Then he'd open his coils out, unfold and stretch. ..."

Mr. Eastwood signed up with Leone and took the gun grip and boots he wore on "Rawhide" to Italy with him. These items are among the material artifacts that Sir Christopher and Estella Chung, an associate curator at the museum, gathered for the show, which they believe to be the largest such exhibition devoted to the work of a single director.

Sir Christopher walked his appreciative audience through the exhibition, past the monitor playing Episode 91 of "Rawhide" and the large-screen videos with the minidocumentaries produced for the exhibit on continuous loop. Sir Christopher then ushered the group into a room where he paused before a large vitrine. Here, he said with a flourish, is "the poncho!"

Mr. Eastwood lent the exhibition the poncho, the iconic garment that defined his character, the Man With No Name, as much as the slim cigar, the flat-crowned hat and the squint. (The same poncho, which tends to look green when reproduced but is more of a dun brown, was used in all three Eastwood-Leone films.)

The actor also lent the gun grip and boots that he had borrowed from "Rawhide," which are exhibited alongside the poncho. Almost three decades later, Mr. Eastwood wore these same boots in one of his contributions as a director to the revisionist western, "Unforgiven." Mr. Eastwood wears very large boots.

So now we know where the poncho is ... at least for the duration of this exhibition. And we also know it is BROWN, not green. 

P.S., I hope Cigar Joe doesn't mind that I changed the title of this thread to make it more descriptive.

[vik]

wow thats nice has anybody been? or going

big foot - thats where he's been all this time making movies

[cigar joe]

no don't mind, was late when i remembered about it and saw it was not posted here.

[Concorde]

I was there on the first of the preview nights!

I really should start a whole separate thread for the story of that evening, though.

WOW!   

The exhibit will be on display through late January, so there's plenty of time to get over to Glendale and see it.

[Concorde]

BTW, I think a few details are askew in the NYT article. According to the label on the glass case, the display includes the boots from UNFORGIVEN with the spurs from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS attached to them.

I'm pretty sure the UNFORGIVEN boots are part of The Autry's permanent collection, as I saw Clint's entire outfit from that movie on display when I visited several years ago. My impression is that Frayling coordinated the loan of the FISTFUL spurs, and that somebody hit on the idea of borrowing the boots from elsewhere in the museum.

It's highly unlikely that Clint would be wearing the same boots in FISTFUL and UNFORGIVEN, as those flat-bottomed cowboy boots tend to wear out, and the leather certainly goes bad over time, especially if left untreated. (Boot leather can dry out and develop cracks in the creases. It's happened to mine when they went unused for just a year or so.)

Also, the display includes "the gun grips from RAWHIDE" and what is supposed to be the pistol Clint used in FISTFUL, complete with grips. (This means there are two sets of silver-inlaid "snake grips" in the case, one fitted onto the gun and one unattached.) The pistol is a Colt single action chambered in .357 Magnum, and the card says it was loaded with .38 caliber blanks for the movie.

(FYI: Because a .357 cartridge is simply a longer version of the .38, the .38 round will load and fire just fine in the longer chambers of a .357 revolver. Note, however, a .357 round is too long to fit into a .38 cylinder -- so the two calibers are not fully interchangeable.)

If this is all true, it's pretty funny that Clint, on-screen in movie, boasts pridefully about "My .45...."