Dead Man's Walk | |
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![]() 1998 VHS Cover | |
Genre | Western |
Based on | novel by Larry McMurtry |
Teleplay by | Diana Ossana |
Directed by | Yves Simoneau |
Starring | |
Composer | David Bell |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 3 |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Producer | Frank Q. Dobbs |
Production locations |
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Cinematography | Edward J. Pei |
Editor | Michael Ornstein |
Running time | 283 minutes |
Production companies |
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Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | May 12 – May 13, 1996 |
Related | |
Dead Man's Walk is an American epic Western adventure television miniseries starring David Arquette as Augustus McCrae and Jonny Lee Miller as Woodrow F. Call. It was directed by Yves Simoneau. It is a two-part adaptation of the 1995 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry and is chronologically the third book of the Lonesome Dove series, but regarded as the first events in the Lonesome Dove franchise. In this prequel to Lonesome Dove , it is 1840s Texas, and two young men join the Texas Rangers unit that's on a mission to annex Santa Fe. [1] While the miniseries has been broken up into 3 parts for the DVD release, the series was originally broadcast by ABC over two nights in May 1996, and was later nominated for several awards.
The series begins in the Republic of Texas in 1842, as Comanche warriors led by Buffalo Hump use the full moon to conduct slave-raids on settlements in northern Mexico. Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae are junior Texas Rangers of a larger party heading west to scout a road from San Antonio to El Paso. Tasked with night watching the camp, a drunk McCrae wanders off exploring and is chased and wounded by Buffalo Hump. The next morning, the group is ambushed and two of the party are killed and one wounded.
Three months later in Austin, a large group is being assembled in order to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans as the Texan Santa Fe Expedition. McCrae encounters Clara Forsythe at the local store and Call meets Maggie at the local whorehouse. News of a Comanche raid takes the Rangers group west over the Brazos River, where they are ambushed while resting. Call manages the only kill of the punishment squad's raid and is promoted to corporal as a result, whereas McCrae proposes to Clara. Rejoining the expedition, they encounter Buffalo Hump again and learn (after inviting him to parley at their camp) that it was his son who died at the hands of Call.
The expedition begins to break up as it is slowed by heavy rains and many of the civilians opt to return to Austin. The increasingly rocky terrain of Comancheria also proves troublesome for the wagons. After meeting the ranger Charlie Goodnight, who explains that they're heading into country with no water, their native guides desert, stealing horses as they go. They again encounter the natives who harry them by shooting Call, stealing more horses and setting fire to the grasslands. Now on foot, with no horses and limited supplies, the party splits over gathering food and which way to travel to find water. McCrae, weakened by hunger and thirst, is haunted by a dream of Buffalo Hump riding a buffalo.
Wallace, Call, and McCrae are arrested by Mexican militia after stumbling into a remote Mexican village. En route to San Lazaro to be tried, the camp is attacked at night by a grizzly, allowing them to escape with rifles. In the darkness they re-find their companions, and the morning reveals a large Mexican army camp nearby. Now around 30, weakened by hunger, and with limited ammunition, Colonel Cobb enters the camp and surrenders to the Mexicans - but not without resistance from Call who attacks Cobb and receives 100 lashes as punishment.
The army breaks camp and moves with their prisoners through Apache lands. As they travel, the nights become increasingly cold, increasing the suffering of the travellers. They soon find the corpses of the Mexican general and his retinue, killed by the region's rogue natives, led by an Apache named Gomez - including Cobb who survived blinded and crippled. Many of the group are unfit for the "dead man's walk" through the wastelands and across "the big dry", more so after Cobb decides to die in a blaze of glory, killing Shadrach and injuring several others in the process. Finally they begin the desert crossing.
Continuing to cross the desert, their horses are soon stolen by the Apache. Their numbers dwindle as they are picked off one by one, until they finally reach the Rio Grande having survived the Jornada del Muerto.
Here the prisoners are transferred to a French Major in charge of a troop of lancers, and the disgraced Mexican Captain is told to return across the desert to his post despite the dangers. Told to bathe in a river, the prisoners panic when the army begins a practice military maneuver, and several more are killed by accident. They soon arrive at San Lazaro, a leper colony, and the seven surviving men are forced to select lots to decide who among them will be executed for treason. Bigfoot Wallace is among those executed. Also in the colony is an English prisoner, The Lady Carrie, who along with her son Willie, and Lady-in-Waiting Emerald, having been ransomed and released, asks to travel back to Austin with them and offers to provision the journey.
On the way back they again travel back through Comancheria but are able to spook the Comanche with an aria, a snake, and a sword. Back in Austin, McCrae calls again on Clara, and Call turns to see Maggie leave the store. Clara and McCrae kiss while Call looks on awkwardly. Call looks out the window to see Maggie and the two share a meaningful look with each other.
The series teleplay was co-written by author Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who had also worked on other parts of the Lonesome Dove series, and later went on to write the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain.
The budget was $20 million. [2]
A review by Don Heckman in the May 11, 1996 edition of the L.A. Times [3] stated that "Director Yves Simoneau did the best he could with a script--by McMurtry and producer Diana Ossana--that provided little in the way of workable character development."
The series and its actors was nominated for several awards:
Videos of the series were first released in August 1998 (see cover art). It was released in Region 1 on DVD on October 23, 2001.
Lonesome Dove is a 1985 Western novel by American writer Larry McMurtry. It is the first published book of the Lonesome Dove series and the third installment in the series chronologically. It was a bestseller and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1989, it was adapted as a TV miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall, which won both critical and popular acclaim. McMurtry went on to write a sequel, Streets of Laredo (1993), and two prequels, Dead Man's Walk (1995) and Comanche Moon (1997), all of which were also adapted as TV series.
The Lonesome Dove series is a series of four Western fiction novels written by Larry McMurtry and the five television miniseries and television series based upon them.
Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations. He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
Charles Goodnight, also known as Charlie Goodnight, was a rancher in the American West. In 1955, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Comanche Moon (1997) is a Western novel by American writer Larry McMurtry. It is the fourth and final book he published in the Lonesome Dove series. In terms of chronology, it is the second installment of the narrative. A Comanche Moon in Texas history was a full moon in autumn which permitted Comanche warriors to ride by night journeying southward to raid Mexico for livestock and captives.
The Comanche Wars were a series of armed conflicts fought between Comanche peoples and Spanish, Mexican, and American militaries and civilians in the United States and Mexico from as early as 1706 until at least the mid-1870s. The Comanche were the Native American inhabitants of a large area known as Comancheria, which stretched across much of the southern Great Plains from Colorado and Kansas in the north through Oklahoma, Texas, and eastern New Mexico and into the Mexican state of Chihuahua in the south. For more than 150 years, the Comanche were the dominant native tribe in the region, known as “the Lords of the Southern Plains”, though they also shared parts of Comancheria with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache and, after 1840, the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.
The Comancheria or Comanchería was a region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s. Historian Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that the Comancheria formed an empire at its peak, and this view has been echoed by other non-Comanche historians.
Streets of Laredo is a 1993 Western novel by American writer Larry McMurtry. It is the second book published in the Lonesome Dove series, but the fourth and final book chronologically. It was adapted into a television miniseries in 1995.
Dead Man's Walk is a 1995 Western novel by American writer Larry McMurtry. It is the third book published in the Lonesome Dove series but the first installment in terms of chronology. McMurtry wrote a fourth segment to the Lonesome Dove chronicle, Comanche Moon, which describes the events of the central characters' lives between Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove. The second novel in the Lonesome Dove series was the 1993 sequel to the original, called Streets of Laredo. Dead Man’s Walk was later adapted into a three-part miniseries of the same name, which aired in May 1996.
Comanche history – in the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins.
William Alexander Anderson "Bigfoot" Wallace was a Texas Ranger who took part in many of the military conflicts of the Republic of Texas and the United States in the 1840s, including the Mexican–American War.
The Antelope Hills expedition was a campaign from January to May 1858 by the Texas Rangers and members of other allied Native American tribes against Comanche and Kiowa villages in the Comancheria. It began in western Texas and ended in a series of fights with the Comanche tribe on May 12, 1858, at a place called Antelope Hills by Little Robe Creek, a tributary of the Canadian River in what is now Oklahoma. The hills are also called the "South Canadians", as they surround the Canadian River. The fighting on May 12, 1858, is often called the Battle of Little Robe Creek.
Buffalo Hump was a War Chief of the Penateka band of the Comanches. He came to prominence after the Council House Fight when he led the Comanches on the Great Raid of 1840.
Comanche Moon is a 2008 American Western television miniseries, an adaptation of the 1997 novel of the same name. Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are in their middle years, serving as Texas Rangers. In terms of the Lonesome Dove series' storyline, this account serves as a prequel to the Lonesome Dove miniseries, and a sequel to Dead Man's Walk. It first aired on CBS beginning Sunday, January 13, and continuing Tuesday, January 15, and Wednesday, January 16, 2008.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
Return to Lonesome Dove is a 1993 American four part television miniseries, written by John Wilder involving characters created in Larry McMurtry's Western novel Lonesome Dove which was broadcast by CBS and first aired on November 14–17, 1993. The story focuses on a retired Texas Ranger and his adventures driving mustangs from Texas to Montana. It was nominated for an Emmy Award, and followed by Lonesome Dove: The Series.
The Neighbors Expedition, led by Robert Neighbors was one of several expeditions sent by the military to explore the area between San Antonio and El Paso with the purpose of opening a practical road to the west, which could be used by settlers and stages. The Neighbors Expedition, along with that led by Col. John C. Hays of the Texas Rangers in 1848, and that of Lieutenants William Henry Chase Whiting and William F. Smith of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1849, were the most important of these expeditions.
Lonesome Dove is a 1989 American epic Western adventure television miniseries directed by Simon Wincer. It is a four-part adaptation of the 1985 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry and is the first installment in the Lonesome Dove series. The novel was based upon a screenplay by Peter Bogdanovich and McMurtry. The miniseries stars an ensemble cast headed by Robert Duvall as Augustus McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow Call. The series was originally broadcast by CBS from February 5 to 8, 1989, drawing a huge viewing audience, earning numerous awards, and reviving both the television Western and the miniseries.
Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo is a 1995 American Western television miniseries directed by Joseph Sargent. It is a three-part adaptation of the 1993 novel of the same name by author Larry McMurtry and is the third installment in the Lonesome Dove series serving as a direct sequel to Lonesome Dove (1989), ignoring the events of Return to Lonesome Dove (1993). The series is set in the 1890s.
Yellow Wolf, Spirit Talker 's nephew and Buffalo Hump 's cousin and best support, was a War Chief of the Penateka division of the Comanche Indians. He came to prominence after the Council House Fight, when Buffalo Hump called the Comanches and, along with Yellow Wolf and Santa Anna, led them in the Great Raid of 1840.