Dano, Royal (1922)
Dano was a support?ing player
who could make a small part the most memorable thing in a routine movie or an
essential factor in a fine one. Not that this hard, dogged character was in
many poor films - his first four Westerns were all masterpieces. In The
Red Badge of Courage (only marginally a Western) Dano, then relatively
new to cinema, created an extra?ordinary figure of the Tattered Man, lost,
haunted but surviving, and in that vein he would continue, with four films for
Anthony Mann and one for Nicholas Ray giving him a remarkable first decade. His
later parts, less striking, were still impress?ively done.
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