God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State

by Lawrence Wright

Hollywood adored the Texas myth. On the silver screen, “Texas” was not a real place, it was a symbol for the unbridled West, a playground for the frontier legend, made over and over again in the epic westerns of John Ford, William Wyler, and Howard Hawks. “Texas” was an arena of the soul, where a man comes face-to-face with death and destiny. It occupies the same emotional territory as the wilderness of Judea, only without God. When we’re in “Texas,” the actual film may be shot in Monument Valley, Utah (Stagecoach, The Searchers), or in the rolling Canadian wheatfields (Days of Heaven). There’s a forgettable thriller called The Swarm, in which a train crosses a range of mountains to enter the coastal city of Houston. Even in The Alamo, the archetypal Texas movie, San Antonio is set on the banks of the Rio Grande, which in fact is two hundred miles south.