OUTLAW WEST OF THE PECOS
An H.H. Lomax Western, Book 7
by
PRESTON LEWIS
Genre: Western / Humor / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Series: An H.H. Lomax Western, Book 7
Date of Publication: January 4, 2022
Number of Pages: 228 pages
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Accused of cheating at cards on a Southern Pacific passenger train in far West Texas, H.H. Lomax is kicked off the train and finds himself at the mercy of the unpredictable justice of Judge Roy Bean, who calls himself “Law West of the Pecos.” After being fined of all his money, married, and divorced by the judge in a matter of minutes, Lomax discovers an unlikely connection to him.
Against a backdrop of a pending world heavyweight championship bout, Lomax heads to El Paso to interest someone in writing and publishing Bean’s biography. He winds up in an El Paso boarding house across the hall from Texas killer John Wesley Hardin. They despise each other, but Hardin fears Lomax’s straight-arrow Texas Ranger brother and treads lightly around Lomax. Because of Hardin’s crooked connections in El Paso, Lomax gets caught between him and corrupt constable John Selman.
El Paso is becoming the focal point of efforts to host a championship prizefight that everyone from the Presidents of the United States and Mexico to the governors of Texas, New Mexico Territory and Chihuahua have vowed to stop. Calling on his connections to his Ranger brother, El Paso officials and the promoter of the boxing match, Lomax uses his Judge Roy Bean friendship to pull off the oddest prizefight in heavyweight history.
Outlaw West of the Pecos stands as an entertaining mix of historical and hysterical fiction.
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Preston Lewis’s Top 8
Comic Western Movies Worth Watching
As an author of comic westerns, I’ve also spent a lot of time viewing comic movies set in the Old West. The test of a successful comic western for the silver screen comes in tweaking the genre without mocking it; polishing the genre’s traditions without subverting them, and amending the Code of the West without repealing it. Therein resides the friction in melding the traditional western and Hollywood comedy genres.
This list shows my preferences: westerns set before the rise of the automobile; westerns that generally avoid profanity and scatological humor; and westerns that make me laugh or at least smile at the celluloid outcome. So, here goes my list in chronological order:
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935): While a western, Ruggles of Red Gap opens in Paris, France, when the services of prim and proper English manservant Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton) are lost in a poker game to gauche American millionaire Egbert Floud. Floud’s noveau riche wife Effie is anxious to take the butler back to Red Gap, a remote Western community, to flaunt the family’s new wealth. Her plans, however, collapse when Red Gap townsfolk mistake Marmaduke for an English colonel instead. The movie’s drama comes not from gunfights and chicanery, but from Marmaduke’s reluctant transition from a lowly manservant to his own man in democratic America. One of the most poignant moments in all of movie history comes when Marmaduke quiets a rowdy saloon with his sincere recitation of The Gettysburg Address. Nominated for a best picture Oscar, Ruggles of Red Gap lost to Mutiny on the Bounty, another Charles Laughton movie.
Destry Rides Again (1939): Jimmy Stewart’s first western, Destry Rides Again took the title from a 1930 Max Brand western novel, but little of the plot. Stewart as Tom Destry Jr., the son of a legendary lawman, is called upon to clean up the crooked town of Bottleneck. As a western nerd who drinks milk and refuses to carry a gun, Stewart seems ill-fitted for the task but ultimately triumphs over the wickedness, even winning over “Frenchy,” the crime boss’s saloon singer girlfriend played by Marlene Dietrich. This was the second of three films carrying the same title, which was also used on a Broadway musical, a radio production, and a short-lived ABC television series in 1964. The 1939 movie was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996 as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
Along Came Jones (1945): As Melody Jones, Gary Cooper plays a hapless and naïve cowboy who is the victim of mistaken identity when the citizens of Payneville take him for notorious outlaw Monte Jarrad. Torn between the advice of his irascible partner George Furry (William Demarest) and his growing affection for Loretta Young’s Cherry de Longpre, who just happens to be desperado Jarrad’s girlfriend, Jones manages to survive all calamities except love. Based on Alan LeMay’s western Useless Cowboy, the film is considered an early feminist western due to Cherry’s gun skills in saving the guileless Jones. Along Came Jones gently parodies Cooper’s long established western persona.
The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958): Directed by Raoul Walsh, The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw was the first spaghetti western with the outdoor scenes shot in the Spanish province of Aragon. With dozens of television westerns lighting up the black-and-white screens of American television, Walsh thought it was time for a cowboy spoof. Kenneth More portrays Jonathan Tibbs, a British inventor and gun aficionado who comes to America to enhance the family fortune with gun sales. After some fancy gun handling, he’s appointed the sheriff of Fractured Jaw and is soon caught in the middle of a feud of between two cattle outfits battling over water rights. His only allies are hotel owner Kate (Jayne Mansfield) and the local Indian tribe, which reverses the cliché and rides to Tibbs’s rescue instead of the cavalry.
North to Alaska (1960): No compilation of Westerns is complete without John Wayne so the first of the Duke’s two movies to make the list is North to Alaska. As Sam McCord, Wayne transports soiled dove Angel (Capucine) from Seattle to Nome, Alaska, to substitute for his partner’s former fiancé who married another man. Partner George Pratt (Stewart Granger) is not nearly as enamored with Angel as is McCord, who is finally forced to admit his love after a roll in the mud. Played out against the backdrop of claim jumping masterminded by con man Frankie Canon (Ernie Kovacs), love, justice, and Wayne ultimately triumph. I liked the movie so much that I borrowed the title for my sixth book in the H.H. Lomax series.
McLintock! (1963): This western transfers William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew from Europe to the American West where George Washington “G.W.” McLintock (John Wayne) declines to give his estranged wife Katherine (Maureen O’Hara) a divorce. Much of the charm of the movie is the interaction between Wayne and the fiery redhead O’Hara. Before reconciling with Katherine, cattle and mining baron McLintock resolves Indian difficulties, fights political corruption, plays matchmaker, survives a mud fight, and ultimately makes everything right with the world.
Cat Ballou (1965): Lee Marvin won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his dual role as the evil gunslinger Tim Strawn and inebriated dime novel hero Kid Shelleen, a character well-suited to Marvin’s off-screen reputation. (By one biographer’s account, Marvin was so drunk early one Hollywood morning that he bought a map of the stars to find his way home.) Hired by Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda) to fight off Wolf City Development Corp. from stealing her father’s ranch, Shelleen arrives drunk and disheveled. One of the funniest scenes in all of western movies occurs when a drunken Shelleen sees candles over the coffin of Ballou’s murdered father and starts singing Happy Birthday. Shelleen sobers up in time to save the day before reverting to his old ways. Cat Ballou was ranked No. 10 on the American Film Institute’s 2008 list of greatest westerns.
Paint Your Wagon (1969): Granted Pardner (Clint Eastwood) singing “I Talk to the Trees” was not one of the finest moments in western cinema, but the humor and other songs such as the haunting “They Call the Wind Maria” and the plaintive “Wand’rin’ Star” by Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) redeemed Paint Your Wagon. The movie chronicles the rise and literal fall of “No Name City” after gold is discovered. The initial foibles of a womanless community beset by get-rich-quick schemes are gradually supplanted by the civilizing influence of women’s presence. This film will always rank high on my list as it was the first movie date I shared with the young lady who would become my wife.
What is your favorite Comic Western that is worth watching?
Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of 40 westerns, historical novels, juvenile books, and memoirs. He has received national awards for his novels, articles, short stories, and humor.
In 2021 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary accomplishments. Lewis is past president of Western Writers of America and the West Texas Historical Association.
His historical novel Blood of Texas on the Texas Revolution earned a Spur Award as did his True West article on the Battle of Yellow House Canyon. He developed the Memoirs of H.H. Lomax series, which includes two Spur finalists and a Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award for western humor for his novel Bluster’s Last Stand on the battle of Little Big Horn. His comic western The Fleecing of Fort Griffin and two of his YA novels have won Elmer Kelton Awards for best creative work on West Texas from the West Texas Historical Association.
He began his writing career working for Texas daily newspapers in Abilene, Waco, Orange, and Lubbock before going into university administration. During his 35-year career in higher education, he directed communications and marketing offices at Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, and Angelo State University.
Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Baylor University and master’s degrees from Ohio State in journalism and Angelo State in history. He lives in San Angelo with his wife, Harriet.
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What a fun list of movies!!