Fuzzy westerns on my mind

Usually at some point after Halloween I shift none too gracefully into watching genres other than horror as my staple viewing diet. I always come back to the horror but I also love westerns so typically I start exploring the unwatched pile for the odder horse operas. Tonight I started a spaghetti western and during a break a bit of serendipity occurred as I was alerted via email to a slew of new books about film that are coming out soon. The one that caught my eye was FUZZY ST. JOHN: OUR FUZZY Q. JONES by western expert Bobby J. Copeland.

I've never been a very big fan of the various B-western sidekick character actors but Fuzzy has stuck in my memory for years. I first had him and his amusing onscreen persona brought to my attention by my old buddy Jack Daves as he worked his way studiously through every low budget western he could find. I swear that for the last ten years of his life Jack saw more westerns than any one human really should. Lost to the mists of time are a series of hysterical emails he sent out regarding the various merits of famous western sidekicks and Fuzzy saw one he lauded. The man starred in Hopalong Cassidy movies, Lash LaRue movies, The Lone Rider movies- Hell! I guess he appeared in nearly every series western being made from the silent era to the 1950s.

Looking over the other titles offered by Empire Publishing I see several books of interest and not all of them focus on the old west onscreen. I might have to read this book about Fuzzy one day just to get a better idea of what it was like to work on these types of movies for so long. And I think it'll be something Jack would have loved to read. I know what I would have been giving him for Christmas 2010 if he were still around.