Hollywood Had "Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit!" Long Before It Became A Novel

When Stephen Lodge, author of Behler Publications latest release, Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit!, and his screenwriting partner, Dave Cass, visited Happy Shahan's Alamo Village – located just outside Bracketteville, Texas – in the mid-1970s, they were introduced to the ranch owner's herd of 300 Texas Longhorn Cattle, the same herd used years earlier by John Wayne in his production of "The Alamo." So what do you think the two up and coming screenwriters did when they returned home to Hollywood? They sat down at their typewriters and knocked out a dynamite script built around that very same herd of longhorns.
Past 60 by then, James Stewart was still a hot item in those days, so the writers decided to create the main character of Charley Sunday for the lanky, slow-talking movie star.
The story, about a determined bunch of old Texans led by Sunday, who through chance, end up with a herd of longhorn cattle but still need to get them from Colorado to Texas even though they don't have the money for shipping costs, end up driving the herd instead – a journey of over 1,000 miles. An astounding feat never thought possible in modern times.
Amazingly, Stewart turned the script down. The reason given by his agents was that he didn't want to play a character that might appear too old to his fan base. The next actors’ agents who found the script interesting – for either one or the other of their two clients – passed on the script after several weeks for unknown reasons. Those two clients: none other than John Wayne and William Holden.
That incident was followed by a rumor the screenplay had been found on the desk of Sam Peckinpah after his untimely death; then after that, Al Ruddy, producer of The Godfather, was in discussions for quite a long time concerning the possibility of MGM’s purchasing the script for Dean Martin.
The screenplay landed on even more important desks over the years, sometimes for a while, sometimes for just a few days. Buddy Ebson, who had just finished a long run as the star of TVs "Barnaby Jones," had the script under option for close to a year while he tried to raise the money for filming.
During the few more years of those "almost theres," Dave Cass had gone on to directing and producing; while Steve Lodge began writing novels. It was only after his novel, Shadows of Eagles, was published and he was racking his brain for a follow-up book, that the idea of "adapting" the Charley Sunday Cattle Drive script popped into his mind. He put in a call to Cass, and received Dave's blessings, so he went to work on it. That's when certain elements of the story really began to change.
Instead of a bunch of hard-nosed, disgruntled and cantankerous old cowboys trying to bring back the good old days by attempting a modern-day cattle drive for the fun and near-danger of it all, Charley became the story of a caring grandfather and the old man's unconditional love for his only grandchild; plus his determination to pass on the cowboy legacy to the boy in the only way he knows how – by being the best damn role model he can.
Lodge submitted his manuscript for Charley to a brand new publishing company, Behler Publications, of Lake Forest, California, and became the very first author signed by the now burgeoning publishing house.
Now, with the release of Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit! as a book, it becomes one of the few novels ever to have begun its life as a movie script. Usually, it's the other way around.