the virginian - the wind of outrage (1968)

[miscellanium]

the way that shirt drapes over his torso..............

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 2.5/5

he has a pleasantly meaty role as the secondary guest star. top-billed guest is ricardo montalbán (!) and they play off each other quite well; it's believable that they're childhood friends. he gets to sing a little, play with guns, have a ponytail thing and unleash his curly hair, be charming but also menacing... that fake facial hair looks so bad tho, it's tragic. (i know i said i was gonna do him in the littlest hobo next but it was the 56th anniversary recently of this episode's air date so. there we go)

the plot: the episode opens with dane and his group of métis fur trappers intercepting the main characters; the cowboys are looking for an inn and the fur trappers are not welcoming. it turns out they're all looking for the same inn - one that happens to be owned by a character clearly modeled off the real-life louis riel, played by montalbán. dane's group has come to try and persuade him to return to canada after the british government reneged on promises made to the métis and first nations in exchange for montalbán's exile. meanwhile, there's a subplot between one of the main characters and montalbán's wife where apparently she used to be a desperate scammer trying to support her son and scammed the guy out of money he was carrying. (what is it with this show and people getting butthurt about their boss's money? same thing in scathelock lol.) instead of letting her get away with the money so she could feed herself and her son, he ratted her out to the cops and she lost custody of her son. and he's supposed to be the good guy?? at least he respects her wishes not to reveal her past to montalbán. they both have no idea who the other person was before they met.

there's a lot in this episode about past lives and social perceptions, but it doesn't really go anywhere because the majority of the episode is dedicated to the political intrigue around montalbán's character and figuring out the motives of dane's character. i couldn't bring myself to care about anything involving the main characters tbh but montalbán and his wife, played by lois nettleton (who i know best from the "midnight sun" episode of the twilight zone) work well together. i think montalbán just works well with a lot of people haha he had a commanding screen presence! dane does a pretty good job holding his own in their shared scenes, though.

since he features relatively prominently, i haven't done a dane cut. at the moment the episode is available via amazon for free if you can tolerate the ads, or elsewhere if you know where to look (season 7 episode 5, tho it might be mislabeled in some s7 torrents).


highlight: i really enjoy seeing him with the facial hair! such a shame it's so obviously fake that it only looks good in low light :pensive:






when he first arrives at montalbán's inn, he starts singing and it is SUPER cute. kinda wish i knew what tune he was working with but it's ok.
can't get the video embed to work at the moment but here's a link.




the ponytail... it's kind of a rattail? i'm not sure what the difference is but i can dig it tbh




as always, he really likes putting his hands on people whenever possible lol




now kiss





and by popular demand, you can view part of the above scene here. love the part where dane's character is like "everything? you mean a woman? who tf cares". maybe they're ex-lovers in addition to being childhood friends.... that would explain a lot actually








absolutely cannot resist whenever they show off his neck like this. baying like a bloodhound


let me warm your hands for you sir








when we find out he's a double agent.... tragic but always sexy to see him play evil. he would've made a great lead but tbh i can understand how he got typecast as heavies. just too smexy




ough this camera angle.... salivating






should've killed that white boy tbh







he straight up almost kills a woman because she's getting in the way of their homoerotic tension and then he gets wrestled to the ground and has his shirt torn open?? bodices ripping, men turning gay



this is not gonna make it on the website so enjoy this exclusive screenshot of the face he makes when he's got a guy's arm in his face and is struggling to protect his virtue


another dreamwidth exclusive. tummy





bonus: there was no reason to touch his butt here since that's not how you stop a man running away but i can't blame him

and then he gets shot and dies lol. the standard dane experience, alas, but he had plenty of screentime to make up for it! out of the three virginian episodes he was in i think this is the best bang for the buck, both in terms of his role and the plot. i've been lowkey interested in riel since reading chester brown's comic-strip biography, and when i realized that's who was being represented here i was hooked. interesting to see an american take on such a controversial figure from america-lite (i kid, i kid) during a time of a slightly different sort of racial upheaval. and then when you factor in the idea of him being betrayed by "his own kind".... there's a lot to unpack here, and i'll always wonder what larry thought about it given his own background as the son of immigrants. episode is entertaining enough on its own tho, so even if you don't care about the history context you'll likely enjoy it regardless of whether you're watching it for dane, montalbán, or nettleton.

Comments

[pendulumscale]

lol thank you for the dreamwidth exclusives. i always love seeing which stills in particular made you go insane hehe. i am so unfamiliar with this history that i had no idea what exactly this was supposed to be based on. how is Riel thought of by modern historians?

i also always wondered what Larry thought when he got roles like this. maybe he was the kind of actor that just embodied the role and didn't ask questions. how many times was he cast as a native/indigenous character? this feels like one of the more complicated roles though, all things considered

you should do a clip of when he's having that strangely intimate conversation with Montalbán. people need to see the sexual tension between friends!

[miscellanium]

ask and ye shall receive (i also added it to the post, so if you check it out pls lmk whether there's any issues with the editing since i did this without my hearing aids lol)

he actually didn't play indigenous characters that often afaik, but there's two things happening: those are the roles/performances that tended to be highlighted by reviewers early in his career, and several of the british productions he was in have been lost. that means the ratio of what's available doesn't accurately represent the actual ratio he experienced, though there is that early interview where he says he wanted to try his luck in england because he was unhappy about the roles he kept being offered in canada. the one canadian director who gave him a lot of his early roles made it sound like he wasn't the type to argue or complain on set so if he was uncomfortable with the casting he never made it explicit. that said, it seems as though the indigenous roles stop after this episode of the virginian, though i currently have no way of knowing why.

as for louis riel...it depends on who you ask, really. some see him as a dangerous rebel and threat to the canadian confederation, others see him as a hero fighting for the rights of indigenous people. that dynamic probably sounds familiar to you. the french-speaking population was/is more likely to view him as a martyr since the conflict was british vs french in addition to the racial and religious elements. it was a hot mess basically lol. i'd like to think the recent increase in recognition of the ways first nations people were wronged has led to a more nuanced understanding of his role in canadian history, but....