Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender

ELVIS IS DEAD! ELVIS IS DEAD! And buried six feet under. That was about where I came in on this movie - at the end. He was beating up a woman who lied to him, according to him, and had been lying all along over some stolen money or something. The men with him told her to get back home, but Elvis said we should follow her because she is going to lead them to the thief. And she leads them to a cave where some men are hiding out. But no, they are being followed by her supposed boyfriend (Richard Egan) who gives the money to one of his men and tells him to take it to town and bring back as many men as you can.

Egan starts up the hill where Elvis is waiting and when they see him coming, Elvis goes into a static shock, but finally shoots him in the shoulder. The men from town join the fray and ELVIS GETS SHOT and dies with the girl hanging over him (Debra Paget). They bury him in the local cemetery and HIS GHOST COMES TO LIFE and ends the movie singing "Love Me Tender."

Having missed most of it, I looked it up on Wikipedia and got the lowdown on the movie. The girl was his wife, part of the Reno family which included Richard Egan as Vance Reno,  Debra Paget as Cathy Reno, Elvis as Clint Reno, William Campbell as Brett Reno, James Drury as Ray Reno, and Mildred Dunnock as Martha Reno. Well no, that's partly wrong. Clint stays home being the youngest during the Civil War and the family is notified that Vance has been killed. So Clint marries Vance's girlfriend, Cathy, and when the war is over and the brothers return home, Cathy still loves Vance. In the last scenes (which I didn't see) The Reno brothers rob $12,000 from the Union Army. A conflict of interest ensues with some Rebs wanting to keep the money and others wanting to turn it in. It is Vance that shoots Clint because of the jealous rage of Clint over Cathy, but they both got their "plugs" in, one in the shoulder and one fatal.

So, anyway, Elvis (Clint) got killed over a woman who still loved his brother (Vance) who shot him

This was Elvis Presley's first movie role and it made money even if some of the critics panned it while others liked it. It was released in November 1956. He went on to make thirty more movies and all made money, even though some of them were not critically praised.

Something Different

Being a retired Navy swabbie I've run across a lot of erotic writing (remember Penthouse, Playboy, Swank, and all the other rags and slicks that were published back then), but I never had the pleasure of reading Miss Havens' blog. And that's because it is a start-up within the last couple of months. Miss Havens needs some manly, hairy-chested, males to read and make comments on her posts to aid her in her efforts to get her writing published.

Miss Havens and I have carried on an internet give and take for the last couple of years, which has been a normal and fun communication between friends on the internet. She launched this site after that she worked long and hard on her writing in the hopes it would lead to a better future in writing.  I don't make it a habit of recommending erotica to my readers, since my reading of it is all in the past, but I do check in occasionally on her site to see what is going on. If you enjoy this type and style of writing I encourage you to pay her a visit and comment on her posts. She will appreciate input from as many men as she can draw to her site and it will help her to get published. 

Visit her blog at www.houstonhavens.blogspot.com. And check out her books written as Houston A. W. Knight by clicking on my blog page under her name.

Old Movie Time

I wasn't very old when this movie was released, but these old cowboys sure was good entertainment for the folks in the country. This movie is The Riders of the Whistling Skull and is not a typical cowboy and Indian shoot-'em-up, although there are cowboys and Indians a-plenty in this 1937 black and white. It seems there is an expedition searching for the Lost City of Tu-ka-ta (?) in the Wild West Mountains near the ranch of the Three Mesquiteers, one of whom professes to be a detective because he reads The Detective pulp magazine. A member of the expedition is killed by someone in the party and the search is on to find the killer, It could be one of the Indians or one of the white men but at this point no one knows who did it and the expedition vows to continue because a female member's father is missing and she won't give up until he's found. An Indian "Cult" attacks the party to prevent it from finding the Lost City and the wagon with all the water is lost as it goes tumbling down the canyon. The party decides to search the Whistling Skull for water and the Lost City. The Skull is a series of caves that whistle when the wind blows through them.

The Indians attack again and have the party surrounded in the Skull and the only way to get help is to throw a rope over the cliff and scale down the mountain to the horses, which the Three Mesquiteers manage to do, but are attacked on the way down by an Indian who manages to cut the rope which finally gives away and the last Mesquiteer has quite a drop to a ledge where he has to fight off three Indians for a while until they capture him.

To the rescue comes the Sheriff and the posse who decided to follow the expedition and there is a royal shoot-out, freeing the Mesquiteer and the girl's father who had been found earlier tied up in one of the rooms in the cave.

Starring in it was Ray "Crash" Corrigan, Bob Livingston and Max Terhune. There weren't many close-ups in the movie, but there were flashes of bright light and a big zero appearing for a mini-second. I assume this happened at the change of reels. All in all, I enjoyed watching it, bringing back memories of my childhood in the church where movies were shown once a month on Saturday night.

The movie was one in a collection of Heroes of the Old West DVDs.     

Good Reading

I have on my PC-Kindle the following books and stories I haven't had a chance to get to due to other goings on:

Aesop's Fables
Escape to the Country by Patsy Collins (now Davis)
HALLAM (Lucas Hallam) by Livia J. and L. J. Washburn
Hangrope Law (Rancho Diablo) by Colby Jackson
The Long Black Train by Heath Lowrance
Nibbles of Nonsense Hilarious Comic Verse  by John Howard Reid
Outlaw by Matthew Pizzolato
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Shut Mouth Society by James D. Best
The Silver Canyon/A Tale of the Western Plains by George Manville Fenn
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

It seems like every time I get time set aside to read one of these, something happens to send me off on a different tack. One of these days I'm going to grab the bull by the horns and just dive right in. When I add these items to the books in my To-Be-Read box, though, I don't know where to begin. I like reading a physical book better than reading a technological device. There is something about the real thing that the machines don't have. My Nook Color sits idle by my chair with a dead battery. I could recharge it but I'm afraid it will run down without even a look on Facebook or at the reading I have on it. I guess I'll just try to finish up my current reading before I begin something else. There's always tomorrow.

Father's Day

Or is it Fathers' Day? Either one, I'm taking the day off. We set out for a new breakfast place since it was a special day and ended up in a classy place that we wouldn't ordinarily visit. Going in, the maitre'd or the worker who met us said that the buffet is over here where you can get potatoes, fruit, bacon, rolls, sweet rolls, scrambled eggs, etc., and over there is where you can get omelettes, bagels, toast, hot rolls, etc., help yourself.

We dug right in. I chose an omelette with ham, cheese, green peppers, jalapenos, onions and what not and the omelette maker whipped it right up. My wife had a bagel with cream cheese, fruit, bacon, and so on. We enjoyed it immensely with hot coffee and water and a nice atmosphere. There was a ball team of some sort and other people stuffing the food and enjoying themselves. After we had had our fill, we asked the waitress where we paid the bill and she said.....she said...."You're not guests?" We shook our heads in the negative and she said, "It's free, then. We don't have a cashier for breakfast."

"Ahh, Father's Day! What a great day!" I whispered as we left the hotel by a different entrance than we came in.

We hope yours was good, too!

Seth Godin, Author, Marketer, Blogger

I ran across Seth Godin by going back through my old notebook that I keep handy for such occasions. I once looked at a website www.squidoo.com with the idea that I would put my book info on this site for people to run across. I haven't yet added anything to the site, but Seth Godin is the original founder of it and her also writes a blog at sethgodin.typepad.com that contains tips on marketing, writing, and other comments on life in general.

I just read one of his blog posts entitled Ode: How to Tell a Great Story where he tells readers not only how to tell a great story but who to tell it to. I can see where items like this could be of good use to writers for use in their marketing and spreading the word about the products they produce.

So, I thought that I would post a blog about Mr. Godin for others too take a look at if they haven't before been aware of his site and also Squidoo. He has several other sites and blogs which are listed on his blog page

Oh, boy! A Gary Cooper Movie

I caught the nether end of a movie on TCM yesterday with Gary Cooper and I couldn't figure out what the name of it was. It's been a long time since I saw a Cooper movie. He was thrown in jail for murder and being a spy for the South by U. S. Army Colonel Hudson (I don't know the actor playing Hudson). But as the movie unfolded, Cooper, playing Major Kearney, was actually a spy for the North trying to find a Southern spy, who turned out to be Colonel Hudson. And Hudson and his rebel troops, one of whom was Fess Parker playing Sergeant Jim Randolph, were stealing a herd of horses to give to the Rebels,. A group of loyal Northern enlisted men got Cooper out of jail and they broke into a warehouse and took a cache of Springfield Rifles before Hudson could get his hands on them.

The name of the movie should have dawned on me right then, but it's been a long time. Anyway, Cooper and his troops were joined by the Lieutenant sent by Hudson to capture him and return him to jail, but finding out he was Major Lex Kearney the troops joined Kearney to prevent the horses from being driven to the South. After a skirmish in a valley, the Rebels were smoked out with fire and Cooper/Kearney caught the escaping Colonel Hudson alive after a horse and foot chase.

Of course Springfield Rifle was the name of the movie and in this skirmish the rifle proved itself and was to be adopted for service as the U. S. Army rifle of choice. It provided more fire-power with its quick ejection of the empty shell and easy reload.

Lon Chaney, Phyllis Thaxter (who didn't appear in what I saw, except for a short sequence at the end), and Philip Carey were also in the movie which was released in 1952..

My Next Novel

I've been working hard, but not long, on my next endeavor. My hard work has been shortened from four to six hours per day to one to two hours and its taken me longer than I had anticipated. I've changed the title two or three times, settling on O'Shaughnessy's New Deputy for now.

 After returning to the fictional town of Hillside from a two-year Mormon mission, Tom Anderson finds himself alone as his parents are killed by the Indians. He gets caught up in a bank robbery, budding love, the posse, a struggle for his new-found love, stolen horses, etc., and his new job as a Sheriff's Deputy by default. All he wanted to do is rebuild his parents' farm, which was burned to the ground by the attacking Paiutes, get some animals, find a wife, and settle down and raise kids and crops.

This book was drafted several years ago and I've learned quite a bit since. So, I am practically rewriting it, rearranging the sequence of events, adding more to it, and trying to finish it by the Fall. I'm partly satisfied with the way its coming along but won't be happy about it until I type "The End."

This 'n That

I put up a new header picture for June. This one shows some of my niece's Black Angus trying to find some shade on a hot day in August. However, the old bull doesn't seem to realize it's the sun shining and not the moon. Some good steaks on the hoof there.

Speaking of the weather, Oklahoma has sure had its tornadoes and rain the last couple of weeks along with Parts of Arkansas and Missouri. I don't know what I'd do if I woke up to see my house scattered over the territory for a couple of miles. I think I'd say "Enough of this, I'm heading somewhere else," as that one lady said on the TV as she looked over the mess.

I began pinning some items on the boards at www.pinterest.com and I'm not sure if I'm going to like it or not. Looking at my board, all I see is bunch of pictures and stuff that came up when the site said "pick at least five boards." My photos were buried among all the rest. Maybe I'll learn how the page works as I go along and I can clean it up to resemble something that relates to my books and writing, etc.........maybe.

"Dingbat" has been called to serve the Lord. I hope she doesn't break his eardrums when she starts singing the halleluja songs. We were sorry to learn of her passing. She was "an actress not a celebrity" she said and was never in the public eye after the TV show All in the Family. Jean Stapleton was 90 years old and died of natural causes the paper said.

"Wrangle." v.i. quarrel, bicker, squabble, dispute, altercate, argue, brawl. From Roget's Thesaurus. It leaves out the one about rounding up cattle, but we can't all be perfect. Maybe that's a v.t. or a plain ole adj. like intractable, which some of them dern animals are.