“Hick Corporal” On Late Night T.V.

Twitters from Monument Valley are talking about living conditions among the Navajos, allegedly ripping off tourists, and predicting that the Western genre is disappearing. But the Wild West can’t die.

Recently on late-night T.V., I watched a western featuring Richard Widmark and some women with flowing tresses. It might have been Cheyenne from the 1960s, one of those early landmark films in which the whites were the bad guys, although Widmark was a good guy in this one.

The film was shown often on television back in those happy days when the only two channels we had were ARD and ZDF. In addition, ZDF ran a cowboy series very popular with people called High Chaparral. It was less soap opera-like than Bonanza and was full of impressive cactuses taller than a man with outstretched arms. My grandmother in the Oberpfalz region always called it “Hick Corporal.” Those westerns, the American occupation troops –- later our NATO allies –- and Elvis shaped at least one entire generation of West Germans.

When people later traveled to America, the memory of those television images led them straight to Tucson, Tombstone and finally to Monument Valley where “Hick Corporal” was filmed, surrounded by those cactus arms. They looked just like they did on television. And people even sought out Rio Pecos where the Apache chief Winnetou never lived. It’s more of a Texas rivulet where there were never any pueblos, Karl May never visited, but where Old Shatterhand hid out among the reed beds during his battles with Intshu Tshuna. (Anyone who still pictures Lex Barker in the water is no spring chicken anymore).

At any rate, there are hardly any western movies being shown these days, not even on late-night TV. Sure, the Coen brothers still make an occasional western as does Tommy Lee Jones, and if Clint Eastwood lives long enough maybe he’ll gallop across the screen again.

But the western movie genre really seems to be getting ready to take leave of us. The kids hardly play cowboys and Indians any longer, the criminals in Grand Theft Auto have taken Wyatt Earp’s place and from Monument Valley we only get Tweets about those tourist-swindling Navajos.

Of course, there are still a few pockets of resistance to the Old West’s disappearance, especially in Germany. But most of the ladies and gentlemen that frequent the cowboy cafes these days are already as old as the average Harley rider who still sees himself as the reincarnation of Peter Fonda. Bernhard Grzimek once produced a film entitled The Serengeti Shall Not Die. Well, the Wild West shouldn’t be allowed to die, either. At least, not the one in Germany.