A01=Brooks E. Hefner
Author_Brooks E. Hefner
Brokeback Mountain
camp westerns
Category=ATFA
Category=ATFN
Category=ATMB
Category=ATZ
cult westerns
Director Nicholas Ray
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Ernest Borgnine
forthcoming
Joan Crawford
LGBTQIA+ themes in film
Mercedes McCambridge
mid-century Hollywood
Republic Pictures
Scott Brady
Sterling Hayden
stranger comes to town
Product details
- ISBN 9780826369642
- Weight: 132g
- Dimensions: 127 x 178mm
- Publication Date: 16 Jun 2026
- Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The first book on the groundbreaking 1954 Western by director Nicholas Ray, controversial in its time, now celebrated as a groundbreaking example of high camp, LGBTQ themes, and the outer limits of the Hollywood system.
What to make of Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray’s high-drama psychological Western from 1954? The film met with a mixed reception on its release but over the years has assumed cult status in some circles, with some critics now citing it among the greatest examples of the genre. In this first-ever book on this divisive Western, Brooks Hefner disentangles the tortured production history of the film and explores the question of what makes Johnny Guitar not only an important film but an important Western in an era rife with classic examples of the genre. Made at the peak of director Nicholas Ray’s career, Johnny Guitar’s layered themes of gender, sexuality, psychology, and politics make it one of the richest examples of the “adult Western,” those increasingly sophisticated films like George Stevens’s Shane (1953), John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), and the Westerns of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher. At the same time, Johnny Guitar represented an effort by B studio Republic Pictures to produce a prestige picture with major Hollywood stars like Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden. Hefner shows how, with the studio system beginning to crumble, Johnny Guitar sits at a moment when stars and directors began to exert more control over their images and films.
What to make of Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray’s high-drama psychological Western from 1954? The film met with a mixed reception on its release but over the years has assumed cult status in some circles, with some critics now citing it among the greatest examples of the genre. In this first-ever book on this divisive Western, Brooks Hefner disentangles the tortured production history of the film and explores the question of what makes Johnny Guitar not only an important film but an important Western in an era rife with classic examples of the genre. Made at the peak of director Nicholas Ray’s career, Johnny Guitar’s layered themes of gender, sexuality, psychology, and politics make it one of the richest examples of the “adult Western,” those increasingly sophisticated films like George Stevens’s Shane (1953), John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), and the Westerns of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher. At the same time, Johnny Guitar represented an effort by B studio Republic Pictures to produce a prestige picture with major Hollywood stars like Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden. Hefner shows how, with the studio system beginning to crumble, Johnny Guitar sits at a moment when stars and directors began to exert more control over their images and films.
Brooks E. Hefner is a professor of English at James Madison University, where he teaches American genre fiction, film history, and popular film genres. He is the author of Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow and The Word on the Streets: The American Language of Vernacular Modernism. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
