Saturday Man Movie

Today's Saturday Man Movie revolves around several real men, the likes of which are unknown in Hollywood today. In The Killers, produced in 1964 and adopted from a short story written by Ernest Hemmingway, we see Jack Browning, played by Ronald Reagan--a real man on and off the screen--teaching Angie Dickinson's Sheila Farr to do what she's told.

Obviously that didn't set well with Johnny North, played by John Cassavette (another real man), who, after belting the future best President ever in the mouth, steals away with Dickinson, trying to save her from Browning.



OK, maybe Johnny North should have thought that one through a little better. That Sheila was pure evil and not at all ready to walk away from her meal ticket Jack.

But the movie ends in a way that we could expect from Hemmingway--when confronted by hired killer Charlie Strom, played by Lee Marvin (yet another real man), Sheila throws Jack under the bus too in order to save herself.

So much for that. And lest you think that Johnny North got away clean, his death at the hands of Strom a year ago was the opening scene to this excellent movie.

This suspense-filled masterpiece was Ronald Reagan's last movie before he went into politics, and it was the only one in which he played a villain. For years afterwards, he always expressed regret over that role because he hadn't liked slapping a woman, particularly Angie Dickinson, who was a good friend of his.

Lee Marvin, on the other hand, said that it was one of the movies that he enjoyed the most.

Claude Akins and Norman Fell had roles in this one, too. Definitely worth seeing even after I untwisted most of the plot for you, if only for the star power. This one was vintage Hollywood--not a girly-man like Woody Harrelson or Brad Pitt even allowed near the set.