It's also a Bruce Surtees double bill.
There's something about Honkytonk Man that seems personal to Clint, who was born in the Depression, and aged 16 would sneak down to this bar in LA to play piano in exchange for pizza and beer. And the fact he has his son Kyle playing his nephew (he's second billed) also makes it a most personal work.
After it had finished I concluded that John Ford would have liked it. It is still a criminally underrated film.
Verna Bloom said of the title character "If Clint were a failure, he'd be Red."
The part of the grandfather was offered to James Stewart, who though only a year shy of the character's age, declined.
And, the skill of Bruce Surtees , who must have inspired camera operator Jack Green and gaffer Tom Stern:
The next film was so strange that nobody could get their heads around it and it was a critical and commercial flop. Clint had been spellbound by Thomas Cullinan's novel, and he saw it was an opportunity where he could really do some acting - and as such, it's one of his best films. And regardless of that, one of his best films.
A weird film, a kind of Gothic horror film set in a girls's school in the American Civil War, with certain similarities to Misery. Lalo Schifrin's strange score and Carl Pingitore' s distinctive editing are major contributors to its style. You can also see it as a film about male chauvinism, and in that the man brings all the misery in on himself, a moral black comedy.
Great cast comprises Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris, Mae Mercer and little Pamelyn Ferdin. Indeed Clint's biographer Richard Schickel comments on how shocking it is that right at the beginning Clint kisses the 13 year old on the mouth. And talking of beginning, former montage king Don Siegel creates something special out of Civil War photos for that credits scene.
Lots of interesting stuff about it here.
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The 'Where's the rest of me?' moment |

And Siegel promoted camera operator Bruce Surtees (he'd worked on Coogan's Bluff and Two Mules for Sister Sarah) to DP and his work in the low light / candle lit scenes is Alison A. Amazing.