A bigger mystery to me than the origin of the phrase “The real McCoy,” is the "plot’ of the TV series “The Real McCoys.” Don’t recall a single plot line. And the only thing I do remember is the opening them song singing about “Grandpappy-A.” I didn’t know the line was actually “Grandpappy Amos,” just thought he was called “Grandpappy-A” to rhyme with “Ca-Li-For-Ni-A.”
Brennan was great as Pa Danby in “Support Your Local Sheriff”, the James Garner cowboy spoof.
Pa Danby: There’s always some tramp that’s good with a gun that can be hired.
Luke Danby: Yeah, but you always said that the Danbys fight their own battles.
Pa Danby: Well, maybe I was talkin’ 'bout another branch of the family.
Pa Danby: Now I’m gonna take a little trip tomorrow and I want you two to behave yourselves while I’m gone. I don’t want nobody to make no martyr out of this here sheriff.
Tom Danby: What’s a martyr?
Pa Danby: Oh, I’m sorry. They didn’t use words like that in the third grade, did they?
Tom Danby: Well, how would I know? I didn’t get that far.
All this talk of Brennan and no love for the immortal Stumpy in Rio Bravo? 
Most of my other faves (To Have, Sheriff, Clementine, Westerner, River) have already been named, but had to stick up for my fave role of his.
In HTWWW it’s the opposite: he’s bald with a long white mane and the soul of joy and hospitality, even smiling and laughing as he robs and kills his guests. I love the scene where his daughter tells him she’s not sure if she mortally wounded Jimmy Stewart (which of course she hasn’t) because she didn’t feel the knife go in far: “You just need more practice darlin’, that’s all… pity you ain’t got the knack for it your ma did, God rest her soul”.
In addition to Sergeant York and The Westerner, Brennan made a couple of other splendid films with Gary Cooper: Pride of the Yankees and Meet John Doe. I think Brennan and Cooper were good friends in real life.
That has to be one of, if not THE funniest western comedy ever made. (Yes, I’ve seen Blazing saddles).
From the film:
Pa Danby had his son hold Pa’s dentures in son’s pocket for the big gun battle.
Son: Look, Pa, (the bullet hit his son in the pocket, hitting the dentures) your teeth saved my life!
Pa: Always thinking of your own self! Now, what am I gonna chew with!!
hh
Not to mention his reaction when Garner plugs up his gun with his finger.
That’s Mr. Drysdale!
(shrug) I have lived immersed in a local culture that is overwhelmingly conservative. I long ago learned to ignore any other person’s politics and redirect the conversation. Brennan was a white person born in 1894. At the turn of the century you pretty much had cranky anarchists and cranky right-wingers. I didn’t have the highest expectations of them when they were alive, and I’ve mellowed since then.
Yeah, the “Well now” clinched it.
I dunno, would you call his drunk warf rat character in** To Have and Have Not **wise?
Also, does it make much sense at this point to care about the off-screen political opinions of a long-deceased performer? Why should it affect what you think of his performance in an old movie?
(I know this is a potential threadjack of this topic.)
It seems a little late to call someone who died in 1974 “late.”
Walter Brennan, 41 or 42, in Come and Get It (1936), his first Oscar-winning role. With Edward Arnold and Frances Farmer.
Your attitude is probably more valid than mine.
Yeah, born in 1894, so as a little boy he experienced the President McKinley’s assasinationby an anarchist; grew up in a much more polarized era of Opportunism (“Social Darwinism”) vs radical reform; served in the First World War, during which the government exercised a level of authortarian power of which Lincoln and Bush could only dream (what Bush did to dangerous al qaeda in Gitmo, Wilson did to harmless Mennonites in Leavenworth); had been a child during the Depression of the 1890’s and was ruined by the next one in 1929, but perservered on his own and thereby made more money than he could live to spend. It would be amazing if he’d been anything but a conservative.
Thread drift: wasn’t Frances Farmer a knock out in that movie?
“Eddie was a pretty good man on a boat, before he became a rummy.”
“Why do you take care of him?”
“He thinks he’s taking care of me.”
It’s one of my favorite movies.
