I’m sure I’m not the first in the sphere to note this, but I watched the old 1953 John Wayne movie on Amazon Prime the other day and was impressed with how thoroughly unchivalrous Hondo was.
Like the handful of other Louis L’Amour stories I’ve come across, the story is a blend of Romance and Western. Early in the movie Hondo calls his leading lady out for lying to him, and delivers a serious neg in the process:
Hondo Lane: I’m not talkin’ about rights, I’m talkin’ about lies. Why’d you lie to me, Mrs Lowe? Were you afraid that maybe you wouldn’t be safe here with me with your husband away? That it?
Angie Lowe: That’s partly it.
Hondo Lane: Women always figure every man comes along wants ’em.
Later on, after Hondo goes on at great length about how beautiful his now deceased wife was, and after he tells Angie she reminds him of her, Angie invites him to tell her she is pretty by saying she knows she is homely. He declines to do so, but then goes on to explain that her good character is far more important than looks.
Angie: l am fully aware that l am a homely woman, Mr. Lane.
Hondo: l didn’t mean that.
l have a bad habit of telling the truth.
But being pretty isn’t much.
At the end of the scene he pulls her into him and kisses her.
Later in the movie Hondo finds out her 6 year old son doesn’t know how to swim. Hondo doesn’t bat an eye, and picks the boy up and tosses him into the pond, urging him to grab handfuls of water and pull them towards himself. Angie runs over, furious that Hondo did this. Hondo matter of factly explains that everyone needs to know how to swim. Angie lets it slip that she doesn’t know how to swim, and from Hondo’s body language it is obvious that he is about to do the same to her. She quickly runs off before he can do so.
Update: I found the swimming scene on Youtube:
Allow me to transliterate the 21st century sequel, Hondo 2: How Angie Got Her Groove Back, with their planned resurrection of John Wayne using his DNA but digital deep-fake technology to offset anything he might say that’s ‘out-of-bounds’
“Angie Lowe: That’s partly it.
Hondo Lane: Women always figure every man comes along wants ’em.”
Cut scene to Angie and Hondo having sex while her sons listens through the floorboards trying to sleep. Director’s note: direct child to show confusion and mystery on their face.
Swimming scene: “But I don’t know how to swim Hondo!”
Hondo throws child in the pond
“Angie: I am calling Child services.”
Director’s note: ask John Wayne Golem to appear as if he’ll throw Angie in pond as well.
“Angie: Rape.”
“Angie: You cultural dinosaur. Didn’t you know? Alpha swagger and charm are no match for the power of the state.”
Fast forward a year later to Angie writing op-eds in the NY Daily News about how she can’t find a good man after her husband divorced her and that none of the men she sees give her tingles and that her son has come out as gay (but she is ok with that). She has since left the ‘West’ for Springfield, IL so she can be closer to Hondo who’s currently being held at Joliet (closest she can get) on sexual assault and child endangerment charges.
The end.
“Angie lets it slip that she doesn’t know how to swim, and from Hondo’s body language it is obvious that he is about to do the same to her. She quickly runs off before he can do so.”
Hilarious and brilliant clip.
I keep telling my son to watch the old movies from that era, how real men used to be.
I just found a “Thug Life” take on the swimming scene. Hilarious!
Yeah. This kind of ‘game’ will land you in jail in this day and age. No thank you.
From IMDB:
“Geraldine Page, a Broadway actress with very liberal political views, was horrified by the right-wing views of John Wayne, Ward Bond, James Arness, and John Farrow”.
and
After viewing the finished film at a private screening, John Wayne jokingly said, “I’ll be damned if I’m not the stuff men are made of!”
“I just found a “Thug Life”” – 😀
I tend to find these days watching older movies like Airplane, Naked Gun etc even more funny due to the fact they are so “un-pc” and could never be made today.
They really amplify the contrast between our 2 differing cultures.
She is kind of homely.
McClintock!
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I saw a chunk of Hondo as a kid, but it was hard to look at since the station had decided to do a “3D” showing and I didn’t have the red/blue stereochrome glasses. But the Swimming Lesson was unforgettable.
While we’re on the topic of the Duke, can you write up The Cowboys and The Sons of Katie Elder?
If someone tried to teach me something by thrusting me straight into mortal danger I’d rightly hate them forever.
Putting a kid in water is not putting them in mortal danger. Get a grip!
I think the majority of my family for many generations learned to swim that way.
sure it is, and it will be perceived that way by the victim of the assault, thereby traumatizing them.
Wayne was right there giving the kid instructions, watching the whole situation closely. There was no real danger there.
@Dylan S.
Your so-called “victim” was grateful and proud. HE knew Hondo was there to save him if things got out of hand. But they didn’t.
“I did it!” he says. After he got over being scared, he achieved a major life milestone, which built his self-esteem in a most healthy way. Maybe you object to him not getting a participation trophy?
I can’t understand how anyone would have a problem with that.
some people don’t get over being forced into being scared. i don’t. you wouldn’t like it if someone forced you into a dangerous situation either.
@Dylan
I was in the armed forces for a decade. I wound up in plenty of scary situations.
Real men call it, “character building.”
Ah, the Duke.
He was Alpha in the movies: ”McClintock!” – where he spanked Maureen O’Hara, the ”Quiet Man”, Ethan Edwards in “The Searchers”, and as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. he really should have won the Oscar for his role in “The Searchers”.
In real life, he had his woman problems: 3 sequential wives. All Latino.Why?
actually real men call it what i called it if you want to play the no true scotsman game. otherwise state a refutation
@Dylan
People can get scarred. Yes, it happens. If Hondo had been screaming abuse at the kid while he was struggling, maybe. Or if he’d been holding the kid down. Or if the creek had been fast-flowing.
But none of that was true. Moreover, this was a tough frontier kid. (Yes, there were sensitive kids back then. This one wasn’t one of them.)
Your arguments are based on modern, fraidy-cat kids who have everything done for them, not the tough frontier kids who played very rough and very dangerously, often with their parents’ approval.
Man up, OK?
Actors are actors.
>Your arguments are based on modern, fraidy-cat kids
therefore they should not be thrown into the water.
I think there’s one very important thing missing from this post: Wikipedia tells us that Hondo is a U. S. Cavalryman. On the frontier. Hard to imagine a more dick-swingable position than that.
The moral of the story is not to chuck kids in the river and neg women. The moral of the story is to be in a position where you can do those things.
Dylan Sexton @ 7:13 pm:
“some people don’t get over being forced into being scared. i don’t. you wouldn’t like it if someone forced you into a dangerous situation either.”
You’re reading too much into a scene that was meant as a joke. In cinema, people fall in love and marry in two hours, tops. You shouldn’t do that in real life, either.
She might b kinda homely for pre any overweight women. But honestly today shes a 8 among women of the same age.
An 1800s single mother probably had the submissive spirit of a nawalt unicorn of today. Had she been 2019s single harlot this whole show would b gold. You wanted to cash me outside?
Unfaithful is doing the film festival circuit. A Christian short film (under 7 minutes), a modern retelling of the Hosea and Gomer story:
UH short promo from Jennifer Taylor on Vimeo.
Oops. Looks like the film is called Unfaithfully His. From the trailer, it doesn’t look like the man is being blame for his wife’s unfaithfulness.
The film is written by Jennifer Taylor, a woman. She discusses her film:
Unfaithfully His Interview from Jennifer Taylor on Vimeo.
Interesting, RPL. I had no idea that the actress who played Chelsea (and several other parts) on Two and a Half Men was a Christian.
This is all true. In fact, this is a way fathers teach boys. By placing them in a difficult situation but being there to guide, caution and keep them out of real harm’s way. The issue isn’t the action but the reaction by the current, modern day feminist crowd to anything that could be ‘deemed’ assault or abuse. It’s madness, we all know that.
When I was out at work back in the seventies one of the shorthand-typists covered the wall behind her desk with photos of John Wayne. This struck me as odd at a time when there were many younger, more handsome, even British actors to whom one might be partial.
The Searchers is, though for reasons I can never quite put into words, an amazing movie.
Hondo was a fictional character, inspired by a Louis L’amour novel, but created by screen writer James Edward Grant.
So, Grant had Game and understood women and men, which you can see in his collaborations with John Wayne. His breakout novel was Whipsaw, which was made into a film, this starting his screen writing career. The subject of that novel was a man and a woman and the lies they tell one another.
The only times I ever learned to do something hard/risky was when I pushed myself past the fear or someone did it for/to me. Usually within view or earshot of my dad or other male archetype (my older brothers or older/cooler dudes).
A few of those times I actually got hurt pretty bad. That’s the deal.
I couple of days ago I was teaching my middle boy to catch a baseball. He did not lift the glove enough a couple of times and got beaned pretty hard in the face.
I could see the look on his face of wanting to quit, but it was overridden by his desire to not let me down. You can actually watch this process play out on their face.
My words of encouragement were not empathic, “let me make it feel better, lets go inside, etc.”
It was more like “that happened because you got scared of it and turned away. Get that glove up and watch the ball go right into the pocket. Her it comes again.”
@Dylan
Unlike the Traveler, I have never served. Had I served, I would rather take my chances with a typical woman off the street watching my six than you.
Dylan Sexton says: June 10, 2019 at 6:21 pm
sure it is, and it will be perceived that way
transsexuals “perceive” themselves to have the wrong genitalia … in spite of the fact that it was their own genes and hormones which caused them to have that genitalia.
so, who is wrong? Nature? or a delusional and idiotic lunatic?
Dylan Sexton says: June 10, 2019 at 7:13 pm
some people don’t get over being forced into being scared. i don’t. you wouldn’t like it if someone forced you into a dangerous situation either.
it used to be a rite of passage amongst the Masai that every boy had to hunt and kill an adult lion before he could be considered a man.
armed with nothing but a shield and assegai ( spear ).
alone.
they don’t do this anymore. because they are such effective lion hunters that THERE AREN’T ENOUGH LIONS FOR THE BOYS TO KILL. thus, the Masai now participate in group hunts in which every member of the party accrues glory for the kill of the single lion they bring to ground.
it is hilarious listening to the mewling whining of the soft and cowardly Westerner who deals with difficulties in his life by demanding that OTHERS remove his problem from his life and ensure that YOU don’t ever have to actually deal with your own problem yourself.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6044018112001/#sp=show-clips
what are you going to do in this situation? scream at the life guard that he’s not protecting your daughter?
*1st World Problems*
*flops down on the beach*
*beats sand with my tiny little hands and tiny little feet*
*holds breath until i turn blue*
after the shark goes away
…
and my daughter is dead
…
i get up from the sand, dust myself off and go home. proud of myself with how i didn’t allow that mean old shark to “force me into a dangerous situation”.
because i’m a short person.
Don’t watch any movie made after 2011 –
However, every man should watch –
Dylan:
Every man has to face fear. He must either face fear and master it, or fear will master him. He will either subdue his fear, or he will become a slave to fear.
The way men face fear is to… well, face it. Head on. Look it in the eye and press on, and let the chips fall where they may.
OT: But here is a very poorly written article by Cosmo suggesting that the millennial sex drought isn’t real. You just have to count sex toys and porn, and people are having more sex than ever!
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a27816619/millennial-sex-recession-false/
Best quotes- “Even before the Harvey Weinstein story broke, a 2015 study found that the idea of “owing” a man sex just because he paid for a date was already antique. Only 22 percent of women ages 18 to 25 said that helping pay the tab made them feel less pressure to have sex; that number jumped to 46 percent among women ages 56 to 65 (yikes). “I’m a Gen Xer, and back then, you didn’t feel as empowered to say no,” says Kristie Overstreet, PhD, a psychotherapist and clinical sexologist who works with millennials in Huntington Beach, California.”
…
“Instantly iconic albums by Ariana Grande (Thank U, Next) and Lizzo (Cuz I Love You) celebrate single-girl-dom, self-love, and the idea that no one should settle for a dude (or partner of any gender) who’s not lighting them on fire.”
Dennis Prager says that one cause for the rise in mass shootings is that men are not marrying: https://www.dennisprager.com/why-so-many-mass-shootings-ask-the-right-questions-and-you-might-find-out/
Given the same ubiquity of guns, wouldn’t the most productive question be what, if anything, has changed since the 1960s and ’70s? Of course it would. And a great deal has changed. America is much more ethnically diverse, much less religious. Boys have far fewer male role models in their lives. Fewer men marry, and normal boy behavior is largely held in contempt by their feminist teachers, principals and therapists. …
Regarding boys’ need for fathers, in 2008, then-Sen. Obama told an audience: “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools; and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
Yet, the Times has published columns and “studies” showing how relatively unimportant fathers are, and more and more educated women believe this dangerous nonsense.
Then there is marriage: Nearly all men who murder are single. And their number is increasing.
So MGTOW breeds mass murderers.
If you want to stop mass murders, don’t go MGTOW — wife up some single mother. Both you and her bastard will be less likely to murder innocents.
@Dylan
It’s clear you grew up with helicopter parents. I pity you.
I was a free range kid. I got into things that scared the crap out of me. Some of the time I had adults, mostly men, who helped me. Some of the time I did it on my own. I would not trade that upbringing for what passes now, hence I grieve for our younger generations who are mentally locked into that fraidy-cat sandbox. Life can be tough, life is often not fair; truths can be hard to hear; the male burden of performance (as Rollo puts it) can be difficult to bear. The sooner we learn all that, the better off we are.
@Red Pill Latecomer
I was on holiday in Spain with my girlfriend and noticed the headline in the English paper which told of a massacre of a number of people in a small town in England named Hungerford. I predicted to my girlfriend that the murderer was a young man who lived alone with his Mother. So it transpired.
Regarding modern movies worth watching, my youngest daughter pleaded that I go see Godzilla King of the Monsters 2019 with her; not because she likes Godzilla but because she knows I do. You should watch it. The idiot evil person is the ex wife/ecologist whose actions wreck massive destruction and nearly cause humanity to go extinct. At one point her daughter calls her mother a monster. The best heroes are men, one is even shown crossing himself and kissing the cross around his neck. Not one scene of a physically kick ass woman shown, though there is an effective woman commander, all she does is give orders and she does not “save the day”. Even the “queen of the monsters”, Mothra, is shown as weaker and a supportive to her king, Godzilla.
The entire movie seemed to be aimed directly against the eco terrorist, gender bending misandric ideologues running Hollywood these days. I think that maybe, MAYBE, the feminist crap has become so ludicrous that a market for more realistic portrayals is open. That a Godzilla movie has the most realistic portrayal I have seen of female “logic” recently is fascinating.
there’s no need to throw a person in water when they could simply walk into it and see how far they could swim, gradually pushing themselves to go further. your anachronistic boomer shibboleths about putting one’s self in danger equaling masculinity are rightly contradicted by christ’s refusal to put his god to the test by putting himself in danger.
as far as it being played for comedy? fair enough, but don’t also speak out the other side of your mouth as though it’s a real-world practical lesson in how to teach boys things, when in fact it’s at least a non-zero possibility to scar them and cause them to resent and fear you.
i’ve been thrown into water before by my uncle and father when I was little, and had I the cognitive ability to formulate this at the time, I would have called it what it was: bullying. and i’m not wrong for feeling that way.
Random Angeleno says:
June 11, 2019 at 12:55 pm
>It’s clear you grew up with helicopter parents. I pity you.
Scott says:
June 11, 2019 at 6:45 am
>It was more like “that happened because you got scared of it and turned away. Get that glove up and watch the ball go right into the pocket. Her it comes again.”
that’s fine for your boy. I hope it worked out. but when MY dad took us on miserable wet camping trips, or made us go outside to throw a ball around, or bought us $800 dirt bikes and we hardly used them, it made me want to watch tv and play videogames more, not less.
as an adult i’m different. I enjoy sports and getting hurt. i’ve cut myself thousands of times with my butterfly knives learning to handle them. i’m ready now, wasn’t then. why? maybe because I was being forced, rather than shouldering the burden voluntarily.
that’s my larger point. if it works for your sons, good, and may continued good fortune bless your household. but it’s not an ideal if it doesn’t work. and thinking the same thing will work for everyone, and if it doesn’t they’re just a miscreant pussy so who cares how they feel, just creates dysfunctional arguers like me.
Good grief, so many walls of text about a humorous movie scene.
If you know you’re dysfunctional, take responsibility for yourself and quit acting like a woman.
@Dylan
The movie portrays several archetypes: the tough but caring manly-man, and the silly-goose overprotective woman. The latter is being mocked, not-so-subtly. And that’s whose side you’re taking.
“Thrown in at the deep end,” and “Sink or swim,” are cliches about learning hard and fast. Their origins are not merely metaphorical.
Finally, in my experience, even the most worthless weaklings understand which side their bread is buttered on. People encouraged by wimpy higher-ups to “share their feelings” ALWAYS do so to the detriment of tough (even if manifestly fair) superiors. But when s**t gets real, who do you suppose the whiners go to for help? Hint: it ain’t the SJW brass hats leading bash-fests against the tough guys.
@Dylan
As one Millennial to another: stop living up to Boomer stereotypes of us.
Dylan, you don’t seem to be aware that you’re a caricature of momma’s-boy millennials. I’d feel sorry for you if you weren’t so proud of yourself.
You are a weeny Dylan. I play far too many games and have for many years, but I would not be a whiner like you are.
I seem to remember having read somewhere that
Hondo was John Wayne’s favorite among all the films he starred in.
Moreoever, if I’m not mistaken, it was
the only film of his that was filmed in 3-D