For Episode One plus background information click HERE
William Smith would have made a good Kid Russell in the 60s.
KID RUSSELL
EPISODE TWO
Title: LUCKY BOY
The Year: 1882
Synopsis: We move on to the period in which future artist Kid Russell was working for the famed Jake “Lucky Boy” Hoover. Lucky Boy was a former prospector turned trapper, guide and professional big game hunter. After having been fired by his previous employer in 1881 (see Episode One), Russell struck up a friendship with Hoover.
During the two years that Kid Russell worked for Lucky Boy, he learned all about trapping and hunting, though he never fully warmed up to either trade, however, since he preferred painting wildlife to blood-sports. He took much more enthusiastically to learning the survival lore that went hand-in-hand with them.
Charley’s favorite of all the businesses he and Lucky Boy pursued was serving as guides for wealthy Easterners as well as European and Russian Nobility and tycoons, many of whom flocked to the Montana area in the 1880s. These magnates and blue-bloods loved vacationing in the already romantic Wild West and enjoyed the scenery plus the big-game hunting. (See the Euro-Western Shalako as well as The Hunting Party for the kind of dangers such expeditions could encounter.) Continue reading
KID RUSSELL (Cable Series) – “Before he made the art, he LIVED it!” would be the kind of eye-rolling advertising tagline that one could picture being used for a show like this. I’m not implying any disrespect to Kid Russell or his artistic legacy. Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with my regard for the man. (FOR MY LOOK AT THE KID RUSSELL LEGEND CLICK 
COMIN’ AT YA! (1981) – Directed by Ferdinando Baldi, Comin’ At Ya! is often credited with starting the pointless and bizarre 1980s revival of 1950s-style 3D movies. The film stars Tony Anthony, famous to us Spaghetti Western fans for the movie series in which he played a gunslinger called the Stranger. He appeared in others, as well, some reasonably good and others, like Blindman, so bad as to be virtually unwatchable. 
Our main character, Triple H, ain’t havin’ it and sets out to recover his new bride and set free the other unfortunate women seized by the Thompson Gang. Needless to say he’ll also kill every member of the gang as well as some of the snobbish, upper-class Mexican aristos – male and female – who buy the ladies at an elegantly-appointed mansion/ former convent now used for slave auctions. 
YELLOWHAIR AND THE FORTRESS OF GOLD (1984) – Reviewers need to lighten up about this movie. Especially over at IMDb. If those reviewers actually think this film deserves a low rating of 4.2 they’re being silly. I eat, sleep and breathe bad movies and I settled in to finally watch this supposed bomb fully expecting something hilariously awful. Nope. It’s no masterpiece but it’s a fairly good movie with a butt-kicking female lead. 
In my opinion the admittedly dopey opening seems to prejudice too many reviewers, who harden into hatred before the movie properly gets underway. The success of the first Indiana Jones movie a few years earlier prompted many studios to try touting all their new action releases as being “like Raiders of the Lost Ark.” 
NOTE: Yes, that makes for a cringingly lame opening sequence but let’s face it, it’s only slightly more awkward than if Cimber had relied on setting the scene with an opening scroll like Star Wars and its sequels had revived years earlier and which other movies had been copying ever since. Anyway, you can tell some reviewers don’t bother watching beyond that opening sequence since their reviews bash the whole movie as if it’s like that. Actually, the voiceover disappears and the story proceeds like in any other film after that ill-advised opening dose of nostalgia. 
BOONE MAY: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER – The three-day Frontierado Holiday Weekend kicked off with this look at the underrated gunslinger Daniel Boone May, better known as just Boone May. 
SJW’s: LOSERS OR JUST FOOLS – SJW’s are the modern-day equivalent of those primly disapproving religious nuts who spent their lives trying to impose their own uptight notions of right and wrong on other people. Except SJW’s are even more annoying. 
LOST MOONA LISA FOOTAGE SURFACED – Balladeer’s Blog’s love of the old Movie Host Shows of the past has been well-established. Moona Lisa (Lisa Clark) has been featured here since 2011. 
#WALKAWAY MOVEMENT CONTINUES – This item examined the continuing #WALKAWAY Movement, the exodus of so many of us former Democrats from the party because of Democrats’ increasing fascism, intolerance and snobbery toward the working class. To read this item CLICK 
NEIL BREEN’S LATEST FILM: TWISTED PAIR (2018) – The Breenius behind movies like Double Down, I Am Here …. (sic) Now, Fateful Findings and Pass Thru struck again with this sci-fi/ social commentary oddity title Twisted Pair. 
DYSTOPIA NATION: THE NEW COLONIALISM – This controversial blog post was another in my Dystopia Nation series. 
SHARK GOD OF FIJI: NDAKUWANG-GA – Balladeer’s Blog’s look at the Gods of Fiji was incredibly popular. 
JOHN BRENNAN: CIA FILTH … PLUS MORE – John Brennan, The Man From S.C.U.M. himself, headlined this look at the ongoing offenses of America’s forever-slimy CIA and NSA. 
THE PRISONER: LIVING IN HARMONY – Balladeer’s Blog’s episode by episode look at this 1967 Patrick McGoohan sci-fi/ existential drama raised a lot of interest. 
ROBERT MUELLER: GANGSTER BOSS – Accused rapist and accused suborner of perjury Robert Mueller, the modern-day Martin Dies and Joe McCarthy, was the topic of this blog post. 
FLASHMAN ITEM: SO HOW WOULD I HAVE HANDLED HIS CIVIL WAR ADVENTURES? – The love for George MacDonald Fraser’s antihero Harry Paget Flashman kept pouring in all summer long. 
ANTIFA IS REALLY KLAN-TIFA – A look at the cowardly masked fascists of Antifa, who are really KLAN-tifa, no matter what they pretend their name is short for. 
DEMOCRATS LOVE CORPORATE FASCISM – The new motto of the Democrats seems to be “Vote all you want – we’ll use our corporate fascist allies to force you to comply with our every bizarre notion.” 
BOONE MAY – We ring down the curtain on another Frontierado holiday with this look at neglected gunslinger Daniel Boone May, better known as just Boone May. 
IT’S THE FIRST FRIDAY OF AUGUST, MEANING IT’S FRONTIERADO! NOW CELEBRATED ON SIX CONTINENTS!
BOOT HILL: The name has survived in much western lore as THE name for graveyards filled with gunslingers, outlaws and other stock figures of the Wild West. Today it serves as a blog post in which I focus on the causes of death for many of the men and women who have shown up in my Frontierado items over the years. 
TEXAS BEN THOMPSON – Shot to death by multiple gunmen at Jack Harris’ Vaudeville Theater in San Antonio, TX on March 11th, 1884. It was a revenge killing that also claimed Thompson’s friend and fellow gunslinger John “King” Fisher. 
The Frontierado holiday is Friday, August 3rd!
Frontierado will be here this Friday and who DOESN’T love a 3-day weekend with Friday off instead of Monday! Two days to recover from all your Frontierado parties and cook-outs and late-night movie marathons! 
Frontierado is coming up this Friday, August 3rd. The holiday celebrates the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality. With just a few days remaining until the big day I’ll be squeezing in some last seasonal posts. 
CASH HOLLISTER – Cassius M “Cash” Hollister was born in Cleveland, OH on December 7th of 1845. Cash was a two-fisted and fiery man who felt too constrained living in the citified East. In 1877 he traveled to Kansas, where he did hotel work in Wichita before moving on to Caldwell. 
