off the top of my head, Brad Pitt was a really awful best supporting actor nominee in Twelve Monkeys, and I love most of that movie.

For another pick from a western, Richard Dix is Cimarron has aged like milk from 1930. I think de Wilde is okay. He’s no Roddy McDowall in How Green Was My Valley, but little boy performances tend to age worse than any other acting from classic Hollywood, IMHO.
I haven’t seen the Palance Dracula. I’d be up for watching it though.

Women not having shaved armpits probably shouldn’t be called a “goof” in classic Hollywood. If anyone was aware of it they would have had no interest in that particular point of authenticity.
It’s funny that the dapper killer for hire is the one in baseball pants.

No, there is not really a stream (that I know of) where anyone says “climate change is a hoax.” Pale Rider is seen as having environmental themes though. I guess Eastwood is closet woke.

FWIW, regarding Shane’s aspect ratio, most people saw it in widescreen in the theater. But it was definitely composed for full screen. If you’re interested, you can see people discussing it here:

https://fiftieswesterns.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/50s-westerns-blu-ray-news-118-shane-1953/

Relevant posts:

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While Loyal Griggs’ Oscar-winning cinematography is stunning in 1.37, which is how he composed it — and how we see it on DVD today — I’m really curious about the widescreen version. While it isn’t what Stevens (seen above with Alan Ladd and Van Heflin) intended, that’s how audiences saw it back in ’53. Either way, I bet those incredible vistas will be stunning on Blu-ray (even if we’re missing a bit of that blue Montana sky).

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UPDATE (3/29/13): This morning I received an email from David Raynor, who’s come through with some terrific information for this blog, usually about aspect ratios and exhibition. As you’ll see, prints were full frame and theaters would’ve been able to run it as they saw fit.

Hi, Toby,
I ran Shane at the cinema where I was a projectionist over 50 years ago and still have a couple of 35mm clippings from the print that I ran that I have scanned with my film scanner and here send to you as jpeg images. As the film was in Technicolor, the colour hasn’t faded and, as you can see, the film had a variable density optical soundtrack. By the time that I ran it, my cinema had adopted the 1.66:1 aspect ratio for non anamorphic films and this was later upgraded to 1.85:1, while CinemaScope was 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The idea was to get the biggest image possible on both systems, so that there was only a few feet difference on the sides of the screen between a ‘Scope and non ‘Scope picture. Shane was run at 1.66:1 at the cinema where I worked and, to avoid the actors’ heads being cropped off in some scenes due to it being composed for and shot in 1.37:1, the image was kept racked down in the projector gate… although this, of course, meant that a considerable amount of image was cropped off at the bottom of the frame.
Best Wishes from
David

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Toby
I’d also love to have both. However, like Vera Cruz (which also had its aspect ration “revised” by its studio), I consider Shane a widescreen film. Paramount and history made it that way.

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Paula
Toby, for probably the first and hopefully the last and only time, I have to disagree with you. Shane is not a widescreen film. It was shot in 1951 and composed for 1:37. The fact that for a while in 1953 it was matted to 1:66 to make the Paramount suits happy does not alter the fact that it was composed for 1:37.

This is also the first and probably the last time Jeffrey Wells is going to be right on the subject of aspect ratios because all his other battles in favor of 1:37 (or sometimes 1:66) were for films that definitely were composed for 1:85. The weirdest battle of all was his proclamation that he knew better than Roman Polanski* what aspect ratio Rosemary’s Baby should be in! Polanski even heard about his statements and WROTE HIM to tell him Rosemary’s Baby was shot for 1:85 and Wells kept on insisting the Blu-ray should be 1:66 — because he, Wells, knew better than Polanski and the film belonged to the audience now rather than Polanski. Or something like that. Fortunately the Blu-ray is in the proper 1:85.

But on the subject of Shane Wells is right.

I am really rather shocked and surprised that Paramount/WHV is releasing the Blu-ray only in 1:66. I don’t think I will be able to bring myself to buy it, partly because my only interest in the 1:66 is as a historical curiosity (though this 1:66 version won’t really be the same as the 1953 1:66 version) and partly because I don’t want to encourage Paramount/WHV in these (IMHO) wrong-headed decisions.

Besides, that Shane artwork is the darndest boringest Blu-ray cover EVER. It looks like a bootleg cover.

(The situation was the reverse with the Johnny Guitar Blu-ray which I also didn’t buy, because it was released in 1:37 — open matte — when it should have been 1:66.)

*Actually Wells was right one other time, on the aspect ratio for Barry Lyndon which should have been 1:66 but was released 1:85.

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Blake Lucas
It’s bizarre it won a cinematography award for 1953 (even if the cinematography was definitely deserving) since most Academy voters probably saw it in that wide screen version.

Toby, I agree with Paula here and disagree with your statement “history made it that way.” It’s not only that it was composed for 1.37–I’m guessing that in summer of 1953, though I live in L.A. and saw at a big Hollywood theatre (the Chinese) in wide screen, plenty of screens all over the country were still not able to project in anything but the old Academy ratio, so those lucky people who weren’t seeing the first engagements in the big cities did see it the way it was meant to be seen.

Take a look at the second screen capture in the article. Shane’s gunbelt is knocked out of the frame in 1.66, though readily there in 1.37–yet the fact that he enters the film in that costume and with his gun is important to the whole film.
He loses both soon and tries to leave them behind for good, but when he reappears in the costume for the climax with the gunbelt, we know that his hope of starting his life another way is over and will never happen. Reduced to its simplest this IS half the story of the film, Joey’s perception of the whole thing being the other half. So in a given frame seeing him with gunbelt in an image like that one seems vital to the whole film.

My first experience of this movie–one that means a lot to me, partly because it’s a great film and partly because I was Joey’s age–was with that wide screen version, but it was pointed out to me what had been done, and one could see that the compositions had become cramped enough that it was hard to see how beautiful they really were. I believe that the story, staging, performances, dramatic construction and ideas behind it carried it in spite of what was done. I know that it did for me. But I would only watch it 1.37 now.

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Toby
All your points are well taken, and I agree with them. And just because I think of it as a widescreen film doesn’t mean that’s the way it ought to be. It’s similar to the colorization thing — what did these guys want this thing to look like?

That said, I find the widescreen issue with this film really interesting, and I’ve always wondered what it looked like. It’s an important part of its history, and to the history of film exhibition in general — along with the SuperScope Vera Cruz, the widescreen/ stereo GWTW, the various versions of Fantasia and others — stuff often worse than cropping Shane to 1.66. Studios have never been known to be respectful of creative decisions.

It’s also interesting to note that if Shane played full-frame in some theaters, then it’s a rare instance when the better place to see it was in, say, Breckenridge, Texas than Manhattan.

If a dual-ratio Blu-ray comes out — and let’s hope it does, I can see people watching it 1.66 once, just to see how it works. Then it’s 1.37 from there on out. That’s probably how it’d be with me.

Oh, and since Paula brought it up, I’m pretty cheesed off about that full-frame Johnny Guitar.