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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

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Dean Martin & Rick Nelson – Rio Bravo

An evening pause: This medley of songs were performed as part of the Howard Hawks’ 1959 western Rio Bravo. The first song, “My rifle, pony, and me,” was actually adapted from the main theme by Dimitri Tiomkin from Hawks’ earlier classic, Red River (1948). When Diane and I were watching this recently, I recognized the music, but it took a while to figure out where I’d heard it before.

Both movies are examples of the kind of entertaining and rich films Hollywood used to produce, routinely.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • wayne

    Mr. Z.,
    (Serendipitously, I have “The Big Chill” cued up in the dvd player, as part of my Bogart marathon for July.)

    Question–
    Do you know any of the backstory on why Hawks did not take credit for directing “The Thing From Another World?”

    Great Obscure Cultural Factoid–
    -Actress Mary Astor was Hawks sister-in-law, she was married to his brother Kenneth, who was killed in 1930 while filming the aerial scenes for “Such Men Are Dangerous.”

  • wayne

    “Howard Hawks: A Hell of a Good Life”
    (1978)
    https://youtu.be/GIU3ZZ7gsqc
    56:36

  • sippin_bourbon

    This is my #2 in the Howard Hawks trio of films. James Dean did better in Son’s of Katie Elder.
    I prefer El Dorado. James Caan and Robert Mitchum do a better job rounding the cast with Wayne.
    At #3 Rio Lobo is only fun to watch because of Jack Elam.

  • Andrew M Winter

    That was a great scene!
    Another great moment is when Dean Martin’s character, who is suffering severe alcohol withdrawal, hears what is called “The Degüello”. The film has it that this was the bugle piece played by Santa Anna’s buglers for three days and nights prior to the last assault on The Alamo. Here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-KbvXvBd8.

    It is a gorgeous piece, unfortunately it is NOT the piece played at the Alamo. It is a highly romanticized piece composed for the film. A much more accurate rendition of “El toque a degüello” is in the film from 2004 “The Alamo” with Billy Bob Thornton as Davey Crockett.

    Crockett gets on the battlement and plays the harmony to the buglers tune on his fiddle in a very moving scene.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvhryySXbJ8. That’s the real Dequello playing in the background. You can find it out of movie context in other places on YouTube. Oh here is the lead in from the film:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKD5TgHWyxM

  • Andrew M Winter

    OH MY. I let that Youtube page go on and this is what I got! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEBLbWLldR0
    That is the actual bugle call. And like any bugle call it is the communications of orders on the battle field and in actuality very very short.

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