Lonesome Dove

Name: Lonesome Dove
Genre: Drama, Western
Rating: 8.6
Cast: Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Diane Lane, Robert Urich, D.B. Sweeney

The epic film as big as the west.

Lonesome Dove (1989)

Seasons: 1, episodes: 4

Episode runtime: 90 min

Drama, Western

United States

CBS

Average rating: 8.6/10 31 964

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All about the series

Video 0

Photo 24

Actors and characters

Photo 24

Production

Motown Productions, Wittliff - Pangaea, Taurus Film

Premiere

5 February 1989

Last episode

8 February 1989

Status

Completed

Scenario

Larry McMurtry

Author

Producer

Robert Halmi Jr.

All team (8)

Actors

Robert Duvall

Augustus "Gus" McCrae

Woodrow F. Call

Lorena Wood Parker

Jake Spoon

Dish Boggett

Joshua Deets

Newt Dobbs

Elmira Boot Johnson

All actors and roles (10)

Short description

A pair of longtime friends and former Texas Rangers crave one last adventure before hanging-up their spurs. After stealing over a thousand head of cattle from rustlers south of the border, they recruit an unlikely crew of hands to drive the herd 3,000 miles north to the grasslands of Montana.

Seasons

Season	Episodes	Release date	Rating
Miniseries	4	1989-02-05	9

What's left behind the scenes

Tommy Lee Jones owns a ranch in Texas where he breeds horses and cattle. He categorically refused to use a stunt double for the riding scenes.
For greater authenticity, the producers decided to use real horses. When bullets whistled past Gus's horse, the animal's fright was genuine, and the horse nearly threw Robert Duvall. This take was used in the final cut of the film.
Producer Suzanne De Passe bought the rights to Larry McMurtry's novel for $50,000 with the intention of making a miniseries to coincide with the book's release. All major US television networks rejected the idea of a miniseries based on McMurtry's novel. However, once the book was published and gained widespread popularity—along with a Pulitzer Prize—all the networks that had previously rejected De Passe's idea immediately contacted her, offering to begin work on the miniseries.
Initially, it was intended that Tommy Lee Jones would play Gus and Robert Duvall would play Call, but after reading the original novel, Duvall stated that he would prefer to play the role of Gus, and he and Jones swapped roles.
Filming lasted for 16 weeks, six days a week with one day off. The miniseries featured 89 actors with speaking roles, 1,000 extras, 100 horses, and 1,400 head of cattle. Some scenes were so complex that they had to be shot with six cameras simultaneously.
Larry McMurtry wrote the screenplay in 1971, hoping that John Wayne would play Woodrow Call (the role was played by Tommy Lee Jones), James Stewart would play Gus (portrayed on screen by Robert Duvall), Henry Fonda would appear as Jack Spoon (played by Robert Urich), and Peter Bogdanovich would direct the film. Wayne rejected the offer, and the script was shelved. Only 10 years later did McMurtry return to the screenplay and rework it into the book that became the literary source for this miniseries.
The Latin phrase on the plaque that Woodrow Call nailed to the grave contains a mistake; the correct spelling is 'Uva Uvam Videndo Maturat,' which means 'One grape ripens by seeing another.'