Enamored of such cutting-edge programs as Game of Thrones and Orange Is the New Black, abounding critics and TV admirers affirmation we are active in the aureate age of television. While this may be true, one of the best, best binge-worthy TV contest of all time, Lonesome Dove, occurred added than two-and-a-half decades ago.
The ballsy Western miniseries, which debuted on CBS over four nights in February 1989, is the accountable of two new exhibits in Fort Worth — “Bullets and Bustles: Apparel of Lonesome Dove” at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, and “Photographs From Lonesome Dove” by Bill Wittliff at the Beasts Raisers Museum.
Both exhibits run through April 17, and anniversary is allotment of a six-month “Lonesome Dove Trail” anniversary (seven contest in Fort Worth, one in Albany), which includes art exhibitions, screenings at Sundance Square, console discussions with the casting and crew, and a bright sold-out bright abutting month.
Lonesome Dove’s artifice revolves about aloft Texas Rangers Capt. Augustus “Gus” McCrae (Robert Duvall) and Capt. Woodrow F. Call (Tommy Lee Jones), who, accompanied by townsfolk, go on a dangerous, adventure-filled beasts drive from the Rio Grande to Montana territory.
“It’s a band archetypal that has a accurate Western storyline,” said Tara Trask, accessible affairs administrator for the National Cowgirl Museum. “It appeals to audiences because it speaks to absolute life. I had never apparent my dad cry until I watched it with him.”
The alarmingly acclaimed adjustment of Larry McMurtry’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning atypical was filmed over 16 weeks at three locations, including baking hot Alamo Village abreast Brackettville, and freezing rain- and snow-drenched Angel Fire, N.M.
Shooting Lonesome Dove was a arduous acquaintance for best anybody involved, including Emmy-winning apparel artist Van Ramsey, whose assignment is featured in the “Bullets and Bustles” exhibit. On affectation are apparel beat by Duvall and Jones, as able-bodied as co-stars Anjelica Huston and Danny Glover.
“Lonesome Dove is one of the hardest things I’ve anytime done,” said Ramsey. “I aloof capital it to end. Nothing about it was fun or funny. I would go home anniversary night afterwards the shoot and aloof appetite to cry.”
Prior to Lonesome Dove, Ramsey had never done a Western, nor had he anytime formed in the fast-paced apple of television — he had alone done plays and films, he said.
“The actors formed 12 to 13 hours per day,” Ramsey said. “We costumers formed 19- to 20-hour days. The apparel abounding bristles semi-truck trailers.”
Ramsey’s aggregation consisted of 12 bodies authoritative the costumes, two dyeing them and two crumbling them to accord them a faculty of verisimilitude. Ramsey was accustomed alone bristles canicule to account the outfits, and he and his aggregation shopped for the bolt themselves. The women’s costumes, which were beefy and warm, were calmly the best activity intensive, he said.
“It took 22 yards of bolt to accomplish aloof one dress,” Ramsey said. “We had to accomplish the corset and underwear afore we could fit the absolute garment. The women had to angle there for hours while we did the fitting. ”
Anjelica Huston, the best acclaimed of the changeable casting members, formed aloof the aftermost three weeks of the four-month shoot. She accustomed on the set beginning and chipper, which affronted Ramsey to no end, he recalled.
“I capital to bang her,” Ramsey said, laughing. “She was in such a abundant mood. Meanwhile, we had been through storms and calefaction after-effects and aggregate else.”
Yet he charcoal accompany with Huston to this day, as he is with all the casting members, he said. He admired the asperous and able Jones, who told producers, “I’m a fifth-generation Texan; I can do my own stunts,” as able-bodied as the abundant Duvall, whom Ramsey alleged “the best ablaze amateur I anytime formed with.”
“We couldn’t accept done it after the affection of Robert Duvall,” Ramsey said. “Or after Bill Wittliff.”
Born in Taft, in South Texas, Lonesome Dove biographer Wittliff advised journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He was additionally a business and assembly administrator for the Southern Methodist University Press in Dallas.
In accession to alive on Lonesome Dove, Wittliff co-wrote the screenplays for such films as Honeysuckle Rose (1980) and Legends of the Fall (1994).
During the filming of Lonesome Dove, Wittliff was a accoutrement on the set, activity far aloft and above the role of a archetypal screenwriter. In accession to penning an Emmy-nominated script, he took bags of photos during the cutting of the film, documenting the assembly action in all-embracing fashion.
He appear abounding of them in a album alleged A Book of Photographs From Lonesome Dove (2007, The University of Texas Press), which appearance a exordium by McMurtry.
Sixteen of Wittliff’s photos, including stark, beautifully composed sepia-toned shots of Duvall, Jones and Huston, accomplish up the abundantly blue-blooded “Photographs From Lonesome Dove by Bill Wittliff” affectation at the Beasts Raisers Museum, which is central the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
“Each photograph Bill Wittliff took is a assignment of art,” said Beasts Raisers Museum Executive Administrator Pat Riley. “As a accomplished exhibition, the photos accommodate a admirable arbitrary of the absolute miniseries. Lonesome Dove admirers won’t appetite to absence this befalling to see these photos as a allotment of Fort Worth’s anniversary of the Lonesome Dove Trail.”
Bullets and Bustles: Apparel of Lonesome Dove
Photographs From Lonesome Dove by Bill Wittliff
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