4/26/10

WAGON TRAIN san


This is me. No kidding. Okay, kidding a bit because actually this was who I occasionally imagined myself to be when my best friend and I played samurai and geisha when we were 9.


Click on image to see it larger.

Living in Hawaii you couldn't help but be influenced by Pacific Rim cultures. I'd moved from just outside D.C. to Hawaii. From cowboys to samurais. I still watched Wagon Train, Rawhide, and Have Gun Will Travel, but outside playing it was all kimonos and broom sticks. And tea parties as geishas.

Every Sunday morning one of the tv stations played samurai films with the white haired and dark haired shi-shi always battling it out. Good times. Good times. When I couldn't get my fix of samurai movie on Sunday and instead had to go to church I was an unpleasant little child.

This is the back cover of a Japanese movie magazine from the early 60s. Sorry to say I can't remember the name of the actor, but I'm sure my friend will eventually come along and post it. If she does, perhaps I can find an actual clip from one of his films.
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UPDATE: Okawa Hashizo with Misora Hibari

3 comments:

  1. LOL. Jackie Chan ain't it???

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  2. I loved Wagon Train, especially Robert Horton! I never got into Japanese "westerns", but I always had to watch The Virginian...ahhh, Clu Gulager and Doug McClure. And Robert Fuller on Laramie!

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  3. My friend and I used to also play Wagon Train. Her bunk beds were the wagon and we both have vivid images of a fire on the floor in the middle of her room. None of it happened but we both still feel all our imaginings happened.

    Susan, you know many of these old shows are on the Encore Western channel. I've gotten back into The Virginian and I'm loving it. Some of the episodes are bad, but the early ones sort of stun me that they were turning out a nearly 90 minute western each week.

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