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Show doctor, but he was too slick When he went in there to deliver that baby there was no doubt in anyone s mind that the operation was going to be a success With Mitchell it could have gone either way, and when he came out he looked like hed gone through hell But Mitchell made that character and there was nothing any body could have done with it Cros by, who proved he was a good actor in The Country Girl, did what he could with a role that had to suffer Stagecoach screen classic , but see it anyway no ; The remade Stagecoach and out rage was heard throughout the land They took a classic of the silver screen and fixed it up with color and bigscreen and made mockeries of i f roles made unforgettable by Thomas Mitchell John Wayne, Claire Trevor, et al Just another example of greedy Hollywood trying to double their money off the same idea Actually it s not nearly so bad as all that For one thing Stagecoach wasn t that good and for another Stagecoach II isn t that bad In fact it's a pretty good movie There are a lot of people who think the first Stagecoach was one the best movies ever made Per think it s overrated It was onally a great movie, but John Ford made a lot that were better The 1939 Stagecoach was a simple straightforward western made memorable by a fan tastic performance by Thomas Mit- v I f I chell This year's Stagecoach is about the same, without the benefit of memorable j i a performance by any body Nobody steals the show and nobody has to the movie gets along just fine all by itself This is not to say the movie wouldn t have been helped by a per formance like Thomas Mitchell s. He was the one who was really missed in the new version Bing Crosby was all right as the drunk by comparison The others didn t have so much to fight and some did even better Slim Pick than their predecessors ens for example, made a much bet ter stage driver (I never was too crazy about Andy Devine anyway ) And Van Heflin gave one of his best performances as the marshal Ann Margret Bob Cummings, Red But tons, Michael Connors and Stephanie Powers were all right but didn't con tribute a whole lot They pretty much fell into the established characters, vhich can Alex t be said for Kid Ringo Cord seems to have inher ited the same shirt worn by John Wayne in the old one after that the similarity ends John Wayne was just a simple minded kid who want ed to get the ones who done him wrong Cord wants to get them too but he s also aware of the scars inside ' But that doesn t matter, John Wayne didn get really good until fifteen years later when he started playing himself with a ven geance Cord s Ringo Kid is a good character and Cord is no doubt on his way Only Hollywood could come up with the idea of making something over a second time for a little addi tional cash It s a pretty sorry trend and most of the remakes show it The second Stagecoach will never be a screen classic but you won t be sorry if you see it |