From the earliest days of film, Texas and its colorful history offered 
promising story lines comprised of heroes, images, lore, and legend 
that filmmakers could return to again and again. And so they did in 
films about the Alamo, the Texas Rangers, the ubiquitous cowboy 
and the trail drives, big ranchers, and bigger wildcatters.

    With the advent of the Talkies, Texas movies continued to be a 
staple of Hollywood backlot productions, mainly in the form of B 
Westerns.

    In the golden age of Texas cinema—dating from the end of World 
War II to the assassination of JFK—the Western continued to be the 
predominant genre. A roll call of the most notable Texas movies 
would include Red River, Giant (probably the single most influential 
Texas movie of all), The Searchers, Hud, and The Last Picture Show.

    The reader is invited to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear 
as well as to consider the most recent cinematic efforts to capture one 
of the nation's most mythologized places. After a brief overview of 
Texas in the movies, the book offers detailed commentary on the 
most important, the most interesting, or, in a few cases, the most 
wretched films about the Lone Star State.

_________________________________________________________

DON GRAHAM is the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of 
American and English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. 
He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Cowboys 
and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas (1983); No Name on 
the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy (1989); Giant Country: 
Essays on Texas (1998); and Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga 
of an American Ranching Empire (2003). In 2003 Graham edited 
Lone Star Literature: From the Red River to the Rio Grande, and in 
2007, Literary Austin (TCU Press). Graham has lived in Austin 
since the late 1970s.


Texas Small Books