Lee Marvin opened his acceptance speech for Best Actor in the 1965 comedy western Cat Ballou with the words, "Half of this Oscar belongs to a horse someplace out in the valley." The horse he was talking about was called Amigo, and it's true - he did steal the show. This is a still from the famous scene:-
Amigo came to mind when my mother's dog Sammy came to the cabin - and wanted to go home:-
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As a footnote:
When we were designing the facades for the township of 'El Paso', which took three of us (Sean, Rab and I) four months to build and which formed the exterior of my Santa Fe furniture business in Edinburgh, we used stills from Cat Ballou, along with several other classic westerns, for inspiration. This is the only digital image I can dig up:
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When the photograph was taken the signage, which we were at pains to get right, was incomplete but most of the structure was in place. As well as the railroad, general store, jail house, cantina and livery stables which you can see, we built a saloon, sheriff's office and stagecoach depot which are out of shot to the left.
We were proud of the place but I don't like to go back now, as the closure of the business was a big part of an even bigger life reversal. As far as I know the structure is still in place, ten years on, in Springvalley Gardens, Morningside.
