Shane

I have just finished reading "Shane". The main character is not much like the film's version of him played by Alan Ladd; he is tall and dark and mean whereas Ladd is short and blonde and pleasant. Both versions of the story are fine: the novel is short, the film is long and more fully develops some of the people in the book who are just mentioned by name, barely described. Wilson, the gunfighter brought in by Fletcher to stir things up, speaks much more in the book than he does in the film (played by Jack Palance who, with only about ten lines to speak, won an oscar). The boy, Bob, is not so prominent as in the film and the closeness of Shane to the boy is not so strong, not so sentimental, though at the end when Shane leaves it's still very moving. There's a sort of epilogue in the book which, you feel after seeing the film, should not be required but surprisingly it works well, it explains a lot about the family and where they go from here and how the love they all felt for the mysterious stranger will be felt for ever.
Elisha Cook Junior is a great presence in the film (in the book he is a bigger man, a tougher guy) as he was in all the films he appeared in: he was stupendous in "The Killing" and great in "The Big Sleep". Any part he was given, never of course star roles, he invested with a quality that was his own, often nervous, sometimes mean, needy, pathetic.... What an actor!