The Fighting Kentuckian, 1949, Movie Glass Slide, John Wayne, Oliver Hardy

You are bidding on an ORIGINAL "coming attraction" Movie Glass/Lantern Slide that was designed to promote the theatrical release of the 1949, western feature, "The Fighting Kentuckian".

This hand colored glass slide is an ORIGINAL and it is NOT a reproduction. It was created to be projected onto the movie theatre screen before the film was released to promote the "coming attraction". Some people in the movie collectible world have said, that, glass slides are much rarer than the paper poster memorabilia from the same film and are very rare pieces of film history.

Format: Glass Slide: 3 1/4" x 4"

Plot Summary:

Following Napoleon's Waterloo defeat and the exile of his officers and their families from France, the U.S.Congress, in 1817, granted four townships in the Alabama territory to the exiles. Led by Colonel Georges Geraud (Philip Dorn) and General Paul DeMarchand (Hugo Haas), the struggling settlers have made a thriving community, called Demopolis, by the summer of 1819. On a shopping trip to Mobile, Fleurette DeMarchand (Vera Ralston), the General's daughter, meets John Breen (John Wayne), a Kentucky rifleman, who detours his regiment through Demopolis to court her. He discovers a plot to steal the land that Fleurette's exiles plan to settle on. Breen is mistaken for a land surveyor and is presented with a theodolite and sets out with Willie (Oliver Hardy) to look as if they are surveying (they do not actually know what to do). But Fleurette, despite her wish to marry for love, must bow to the needs of her fellow exiles, who are at the mercy of the rich and wealthy Blake Randolph (John Howard), and who wants her as his bride. But John Breen has no intention of allowing that to happen, resigns from his regiment, and takes up the fight against Randolph and his hirelings.

Trivia:
John Wayne was so pleased with the chemistry between him and Oliver Hardy that he offered Hardy the role of "permanent comic sidekick" in subsequent movies. By the time this picture was released, Stan Laurel had recovered from his illness and was able to return to the Laurel & Hardy team so Hardy declined Wayne's offer.

Although Oliver Hardy was a good friend of John Wayne's, he initially balked at acting in this movie, for fear that it would make people think that he and Stan Laurel had broken up as a team. When Laurel insisted that Hardy take the role, he acquiesced.

During the 23-year period where Oliver Hardy made comedies with Stan Laurel, this was one of only two movies in which he acted without his famous comedy partner.

John Wayne had worked with Oliver Hardy on a charity tour of the play 'What Price Glory? and thought he would be perfect as the food loving Kentuckian but Ollie refused as he didn't want people to think that he and Stan Laurel were splitting up. When he mentioned it to Stan, who was struggling with diabetes, Stan said just because he couldn't work there was no reason why Ollie shouldn't. John thought Ollie more than made up for the handicap of having Vera Ralston in the cast. and said to Paul Fix 'Nobody's going to remember Vera in our film because all they're gonna remember is Oliver Hardy and me doing our comedy scenes'

At approximately seventeen minutes, as the troop is marching, John Wayne motions to Oliver Hardy to get into step with the rest. Ollie does a little two-step and hop and all is well. This echoes Stanley's repeated efforts to march in step in L&O's film "Bonnie Scotland."

The film was the second one produced by John Wayne for Republic Pictures. It was stuntman Chuck Roberson's first work with John Wayne with Roberson doubling Wayne throughout his career. Wayne desired a French actress for the lead role and considered Danielle Darrieux, Simone Simon and Corinne Calvet but was forced to use Republic Studio's Vera Ralston causing other Czech and Austrian actors to be cast to match Ralston's accent.

Studio: Republic Pictures

Date: 1949

Genre: Adventure Western, War, Romance

Director(s): George Waggner

Producer(s): John Wayne

Cast:

John Wayne as John Breen
Vera Ralston as Fleurette de Marchand
Philip Dorn as Col. Georges Géraud
Oliver Hardy as Willie Paine
Marie Windsor as Ann Logan
John Howard as Blake Randolph
Hugo Haas as Gen. Paul de Marchand
Grant Withers as George Hayden
Odette Myrtil as Madame de Marchand
Paul Fix as Beau Merritt
Mae Marsh as Sister Hattie
Jack Pennick as Capt. Dan Carroll
Mickey Simpson as Jacques (wrestler/Marie's father)
Fred Graham as Carter Ward
Mabelle Koenig as Marie
Hank Worden as Abner Todd (uncredited)
Fred Aldrich as Militiaman (uncredited)
Richard Alexander as Militiaman (uncredited)
Hank Bell as Militiaman at Festival (uncredited)

More Info on John Wayne:
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, but his parents soon decided they wanted Robert for their next son's name, and changed his middle name to Mitchell (one wonders if he would have been as big a star as "Marion Mitchell Morrison"!). His family moved to Glendale, California in 1911, and there he had a huge dog named Duke, and people started calling him that as well (and the nickname stuck, and he would later name his movie horse that, and eventually everyone would refer to him that way). He went to the University of Southern California (USC), and played on the football team, but he got injured and that ended football for him, and he lost his scholarship and left school.

Starting in 1926, he got bit parts in many movies, including in ones for director John Ford. In 1930. after just one tiny credited role he was given the lead in The Big Trail, a major Fox western, and his name was changed at that time. But the movie was filmed in a new 70mm process, and as the Great Depression was kicking in, few theaters ordered the new equipment, so it was mostly shown in a regular version, and the movie did poorly, and that looked like the end of Wayne's career. But Wayne refused to give up, and he made ten minor appearances the next year and a half before he got the lead in a low budget serial, The Hurricane Express, and Warner Bros signed him to appear in a series of B-westerns (he had made an impression in some supporting roles in Tim McCoy movies). In 1933 he starred in a modern serial version of The Three Musketeers, and after his Warners westerns he moved to Poverty Row filmmakers, Monogram, Mascot and Republic, appearing in over 50 movies (mostly B-westerns) between 1932 and 1939. In 1939 he got his second giant break when John Ford gambled his major production Stagecoach on Wayne (but only after Gary Cooper turned down the part) and the movie was a big hit, and Wayne was finally a major star.

He would go on to make over 20 films with director John Ford, including some of his very best, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In 1959 he made one of his very best non-John Ford movies, Rio Bravo, for Howard Hawks. In 1969, he was sentimentally awarded the Best Actor Oscar for True Grit, and this was perhaps the greatest "robbery" in the history of the Oscars, for he won over Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, who were both nominated for Midnight Cowboy! He passed away in 1979 at the age of 72. John Wayne is a true American icon, and along with Marilyn Monroe, among the absolute most recognizable actors there is, even in the present day, decades after his passing.

He made 170 movie appearances, and while many are very forgettable, some of them rank with the finest movies ever made, and if you have never seen his movies, I urge you to seek out those listed above, especially The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Rio Bravo, because both quickly show you just how much "larger than life" John Wayne really was! Some of his other movies include: The Sands Of Iwo Jima (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Big Jake, and The Comancheros.

More Info on Vera Ralston:
Vera was a Czechoslovakian ice skater who started in movies performing her ice skating routines, and her English was so limited she was forced to learn her lines phonetically! After her early ice skating movies, she became the protege of Republic Pictures studio head Herbert Yates, and they married in 1952. He starred her in a series of movies, and gave her an added a last name, "Ralston", making her "Vera Hruba Ralston", and later dropped the "Hruba", just becoming "Vera Ralston", and I guess the idea was to make her sound less "foreign". Her movies were expensive flops (even with John Wayne in some!), partially because she had a VERY thick accent, and Yates was fired from Republic in 1958 (partially because he insisted on starring his wife in movies that lost money), at which point Ralston wisely retired. Yates passed away in 1966 and Ralston inherited $10 million, and she lived until 2003, passing away at the age of 79. Some of her movies include: Timberjack, The Fighting Kentuckian, and Ice-Capades.

More Info on Philip Dorn:
Philip Dorn (born Hein van der Niet) was a Dutch actor from the 1930s to the 1950s. He had some minor roles in German movies starting in 1934 (using the stage name "Frits van Dongen"), but then he had a star making role in "The Tiger of Eschnapur" in 1938, and its same year sequel, "The Indian Tomb" (both based on the book by Thea von Harbou, after her husband Fritz Lang had fled the country). He appeared in a handful of other German movies in 1938 and 1939, but then he fled Germany because of the Nazis, and went to the U.S., where he became "Philip Dorn", and he appeared in many anti-Nazi movies. After the war, he remained in Hollywood and was the first Dutch actor to have success there. His most memorable Hollywood role was in "I Remember Mama" in 1948. In 1955, he was appearing in a play in Holland when he was injured, and he retired and lived in seclusion until 1975, when he passed away at the age of 73.

More Info on Oliver Hardy:
Oliver Hardy was an actor from the 1910s to the 1950s. He, along with his partner Stan Laurel, is best remembered as part of the great comedy team "Laurel and Hardy". Some of his movies include: Big Business, Helpmates, Way Out West, A-Haunting We Will Go, and The Music Box. Hardy passed away in 1957 at the age of 65. In 2019, a film biography, "Stan & Ollie", starring John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan, was released, and while it did what most film biographies did, which is to play fast and loose with the truth, it was generally very well received and one can only hope it will cause new generations to seek out this classic duo's wonderful movies (both features and shorts)!

More Info on Marie Windsor:
Marie Windsor was an actress from the 1940s to the 1990s. Some of her movies include: The Killing, The Narrow Margin, Force of Evil, as well as scores of "bad girls" in 1940s and 1950s films. She passed away in 2000 at the age of 80.

More Info on John Howard:
John Howard was an actor from the 1930s to the 1970s. Some of his movies include: The Philadelphia Story, Lost Horizon, and The High and Mighty, My Three Sons, and Valiant is the Word for Carrie. He passed away in 1995 at the age of 81.

More Info on Hugo Haas:
Hugo Haas was an actor, director, and writer from the 1920s to the 1960s. He was a native of Czechoslovakia, and in 1937, he wrote the screenplay for a movie, "Skeleton on Horseback", based on a play by Karel Capek (best remembered as the author of "R.U.R.", the first literary mention of robots), and that movie was obviously intended as an allegory against Hitler and fascism. When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia right after the movie was made, Haas fled to the United States, but he never achieved major prominence in movies, although he is well remembered for directing a series of movies about an old man in love with a young beautiful woman (starring Haas himself, with a series of "bad girls", including Cleo Moore)! Some of his works include King Solomon's Mines, Edge of Hell, and Born to Be Loved. He passed away in 1968 at the age of 67.

More Info on Grant Withers:
Grant Withers was an actor from the 1920s to the 1950s. Some of his movies include: Tillie's Punctured Romance, Other Men's Women, Phantom of Chinatown, My Darling Clementine, and Rio Grande. He passed away in 1959 at the age of 54.

More Info on Paul Fix:
Paul Fix was an actor from the 1920s to the 1970s. He is best remembered for playing Marshal Micah Torrance on TV's "The Rifleman", opposite Chuck Connors. Some of his movies include: Lucky Star, South of the Rido Grande, The Crooked Road, Red River, Johnny Guitar, and Shenandoah. He passed away in 1983 at the age of 82.

More Info on Mae Marsh:
Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh) was an actress from the 1910s to the 1960s. She was born in 1894, and at 18, she had her first leading role working for Mack Sennett, and she was similar to Mary Pickford, and it was hoped that her career could go in the same direction. She started making movies for both Sennett and D.W. Griffith, including "The Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance". She was being paid $35 per week from Griffith, and Samuel Goldwyn hired her away for an astronomical $2,500 per week, and he gave her the title "The Whim Girl", but her films for Goldwyn were disappointing, and she married in 1918 and retired. In the 1920s, she remained retired, but she appeared in around ten movies. In 1929, she was wiped out financially by the Stock Market crash and made a number of movies in the 1930s. Her financial situation improved, but she continued playing bit parts in lots of movies in the 1940s and 1950s, mostly for old friends like John Ford. She passed away in 1968 at the age of 73.

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Slide Condition: EX-NM. Please see the scans for actual condition.

This Movie Glass Slide would make a great addition to your collection or as a Gift (great for Framing in a Shadow Box). 

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This glass slide will be wrapped in bubble wrap and shipped securely inside a sturdy box. I will combine lots to save on the shipping costs and I use USPS Priority shipping (it gives both of us tracking of the package).

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