Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas by Don Graham (review)

188 Western American Literature debunks the myth that Jones was a Texas playwright by pointing out his New Mexican background, and the myth that he was destroyed by the negative reaction from the New York critics by presenting proof of Jones’sdevelopment after he returned to Texas. Most important, he destroys the myth that Preston Jones was a limited playwright. What one learns first from Richard Hugo is that Donna Gerstenberger knows Hugo’s poetry, almost “forward and backward” as the old saying goes. Readers are thus treated to some fine explications of individual poems and a more or less chronological development of Hugo as a poet. After studying under Roethke at the University of Washington soon after World War II, Hugo worked as a technical writer at Boeing. His first book of poetry, A Run of Jacks, was not published until 1961, when he was 38 years old. Gersten­ berger comments not only on the regional character of the poem but also on Hugo’s attempt to come to terms with his childhood and with the world around him. She sees his deepening humanity as his poetry progresses, his awareness of human problems, the maturation of his understanding. In the penultimate section, she comments on Hugo’s one novel, finding it, perhaps, more significant than it deserves, and then concludes with a discussion of “regional” as it applies to Hugo. She finds that “By his work the word regional is purified and made strong.” Amen to that. Finally, Barbara Howard Meldrum’sSophus K. Winther isboth a tribute to the novelist and a well-controlled scholarly introduction to his life and works. Meldrum presents enough material from Winther’s childhood (his Danish background, his rural upbringing) and his adolescence (his love affairs and his temporary bouts with religious enthusiasm) to provide a sense of early influences, then concentrates on his education, his friendships, his teaching career, and finally a full account, as space allows, of his philosophical develop­ ment and his writing career that led to honors bestowed upon him by Dana College and the Nebraska Library Association, both in 1976, and by the Western Literature Association in 1980. A short obituary records his death in May, 1983. These five pamphlets, on fivevery different types of writers, are an impor­ tant addition to the growing Boise State University Western Writers Series. DELBERT E. WYLDER Murray State University Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas. By Don Graham. (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1983. 192 pages, $10.95.) Back in 1971 a young English teacher named Don Graham put on a pin-striped suit, said goodbye to his hometown of Buda, Texas, and headed for a big-city teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania. He quickly discovered that everyone expected him to guzzle beer, wear cowboy boots, sport a stetson, and punch dogies. Graham realized that everyone he met in Reviews 189 the East had a preconceived notion of what a Texan was that mostly came from Hollywood films. To understand how this mythic Texan, whose image he was expected to live up to, came into being, Graham began to study com­ mercial films concerning Texas. From classics such as Red River, The Searchers, and The Last Picture Show, through potboilers like Giant, The Alamo, and The Wheeler Dealers, to “Texploitive” films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Debbie Does Dallas, Graham presents a wide range of larger-than-life Texans. With true Texas wit (all Texans are clever aren’t they, or is that just in the movies?) he traces these celluloid Texans from 1908 (Texas Tex), when the Alamo was still the most famous place in Texas, to 1982 (Wild Dallas Honey), by which time Southfork Ranch had become the quintessentially Texan symbol. Graham’s irreverence is born of regional fidelity. He loves both the real and mythic Texas, and knows the difference between the two. This book, published by the mildly iconoclastic Texas Monthly magazine, isclearly meant for a broad, popular audience. It isprofusely illustrated and smoothly written. An appendix contains an annotated “movie log” of every Texas film from 1908 to 1982. This isa book to relax with. It willbring back a flood ofmovie memories: from...