#strothermartin

Strother Martin Wednesday #13

This was only his third film and as far as I can tell, it is the first one that he has any lines. In “The Damned Don’t Die” he is an uncredited springboard diver (Noe there’s a surprise) and in “The Asphalt Jungle”, he appears in a lineup at the police station at the start of the film. Like those two earlier films, he is not given a screen credit for this movie, but I cannot understand why. His…

Strother Martin Wednesday #11 The Shaggy Dog

This film came out when I was just a year old, so I know I did not see it at that time. I am pretty sure I did see it in a theater at some point but the real reason I remembered it, and that Strother was in it, was that I had a paperback novelization of the movie when I was in Middle School and it had a picture of Jay in it. I’m sorry to say I have no idea if I still own that book, maybe out in…

Strother Martin Wednesday #10 Cowboy

This is only the third film on the summer project that I’d not seen before. It is also a film where Strother does not receive a screen credit, despite having a great death scene and being the focus of attention for everyone on screen for a couple of minutes. Of course the cast was pretty full of what were bigger names at the time, including: Brian Donlevy, Richard Jaeckel, Dick York and James…

Strother Martin Wednesday #9 True Grit

I’m proud to say that Strother Martin was a part of the film that finally won John Wayne a long overdue Academy Award. There are some who believe this was simply a sentimental make good for years of great work and that the performance itself was not particularly deserving. That hypothesis should disappear as you watch the movie and see the range of Wayne’s work in this story and the sincerity…

Strother Martin Wednesday #8 The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance

There are other versions of the song above that are available on YouTube, but they include clips that give away key information about the film, so I took the one that follows the song best but does not identify what happens. The song will give you enough of the story that you can follow along with these comments without having had to see the film. “The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance”, as far as I…

Strother Martin Wednesday #6 Pocket Money

So we are halfway through the 12 entries I committed to for the Summer with this post, and we have our first repeat co-star with Strother, Paul Newman. Most of you know that Jay was in at least six films that starred Newman, he was in a like number with John Wayne. Strother also worked with Lee Marvin several times and this is an entry that put the three of them together. Newman plays an amiable…

Strother Martin Wednesday #4 The Deadly Companions

Let me start with an apology for the images on todays edition. I watched this on Amazon Prime and the edit they have is simply awful. I saw some other images on-line that looked better, but none of them featured Strother, and I’m not sure I want to buy a copy of the film on DVD. “The Deadly Companions” is the first of the three films that Strother did with Director Sam Peckinpah, and it was…