"Most filmgoers under the age of sixty are puzzled by the scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles in which Black Bart attempts to persuade the craven townspeople of Rock Ridge..."

"... to stand up to the evil Hedley Lamarr by telling them, 'You’d do it for Randolph Scott.' To this they respond in unison, 'Randolph Scott!' then doff their hats reverently—an accurate indication of how closely identified Scott was with the Western genre. He always played the same character, a lanky, dryly amusing cowboy with a Virginia accent who spoke only when spoken to and shot only when shot at, and you could take it for granted that he’d do the right thing in any given situation. If he’d been younger and prettier, he would have been too good to be true, but Scott was no dresser’s dummy: he had a thin-lipped mouth and a hawk-like profile, and wasn’t afraid to act his age on screen. Nobody in Hollywood, not even John Wayne, looked more believable in a Stetson."

I'm reading "What Randolph Scott Knew/It was in a string of westerns late in his career that the actor came to embody an ethic that was the essence of the genre" — a Terry Teachout essay published in American Cowboy in 2005. 

 

I'm reading the old Teachout essay because — as I mentioned a couple days ago — Meade and I are watching that "string of westerns" — the "Ranown Westerns" at my favorite streaming service, The Criterion Channel. These are all directed by Budd Boetticher and written — or in the case of "Decision at Sundown," doctored — by Burt Kennedy.

These are low-budget films that are short — about 70 minutes — and — except for "Decision at Sundown" — shot almost entirely — or in the case of "Ride Lonesome," entirely — outdoors amongst the rock formations of Lone Pine, California. The plots are alike. As Teachout puts it:

More often than not, Scott plays the part of a solitary, vengeful drifter who is searching for a man has wronged him, usually by murdering his wife. In the course of his travels, he meets an unhappily married woman, to whom he is powerfully and illicitly attracted, and a villain who is charming and courageous—a hero gone bad, in other words. The villain proves to be looking for the same man as Scott, but their interests are in conflict, forcing them into a climactic showdown.

The bad guys get the best lines, as Scott is endlessly, entertainingly laconic. There's...

... Lee Marvin in Seven Men from Now, Richard Boone in The Tall T, Pernell Roberts in Ride Lonesome, Claude Akins in Comanche Station—and it is Roberts, not Scott, who gets the line that could stand as the motto of all six films, “There are some things a man just can’t ride around.”