B-Western Wednesdays: Stagecoach to Denver (1946)/Vigilantes of Boomtown (1947)

After starring in sixteen Westerns (released from 1944 to 1946) as comic strip hero Red Ryder, “Wild” Bill Elliott gravitated to bigger and better things at Republic, just like another actor who had portrayed Ryder onscreen for the studio—Don “Red” Barry in the 1940 serial The Adventures of Red Ryder.  Replacing Elliott was Allan “Rocky” Lane, an actor who had become a big name at the studio on the strength of starring in four of their serials: King of the Royal Mounted (1940), its sequel King of the Mounties (1942), Daredevils of the West (1943), and The Tiger Woman (1944).  Lane had also headlined six Republic oaters between 1944 and 1945, so his western-action bona fides were never in question when he was tabbed to continue the Red Ryder franchise.

At the same time I purchased the VCI DVD containing the Red Ryder features Vigilantes of Dodge City (1944) and Sheriff of Las Vegas (1944), I bought a second Ryder disc that showcases three films from the franchise: two with Elliott (Lone Texas Ranger [1945] and California Gold Rush [1946]) and one from Lane (Homesteaders of Paradise Valley [1947Homesteaders of Paradise Valley [194x])greement between Republic and  abbed to continue the Red Ryder]), who appeared in seven Ryder films from 1946 to 1947 until a small clerical error on the option-renewal date led to a disagreement between Republic and Steven Slesinger (Slesinger wanted more money on the strength of the franchise’s success…Republic said talk to the hand) and ended the series.  (There would be four more Red Ryder features, produced at Eagle-Lion between 1949 and 1950, with Jim Bannon as Red.)  I had planned to have a look-see at this “triple feature” so that I could sample Lane’s work as Red (admittedly, my exposure to the actor has been mostly from the chapter plays mentioned in the first paragraph…well, that and reruns of Mister Ed) but thanks to Epix (Vault) on Demand I didn’t have to.  There were two Red Ryder movies available for download, beginning with Stagecoach to Denver (1946).

In Denver, Red Ryder’s aunt The Duchess (portrayed by OTR’s Martha Wentworth, who inherited the role from Alice Fleming from the Elliott Ryders) is operating a stage line out of the tiny hamlet of Elkhorn…but she’s asked by competitor Big Bill Lambert (Roy Lambert) to smash a bottle of bubbly across the bow of his newest stagecoach, making its maiden trip to Denver.  Two of the passengers on that trip, young Dickie Ray (Bobby Hyatt) and a land commissioner (Ed Cassidy) answering to “Felton,” are waylaid by outlaws while on that journey—Felton is killed (along with the driver) while Dickie is seriously injured.  Town medico Doc Kimball (Tom Chatterton) can perform an operation on Dickie to ensure he won’t be paralyzed the rest of his life…but he insists on getting an okay from the kid’s remaining relative, his aunt May (Marin Sais).  Aunt May is going to be on the next stage from Denver, along with Taylor (Frank O’Connor), a replacement land commissioner.

Emmett Lynn, Allan "Rocky" Lane, Martha Wentworth, Roy Barcroft

But May and Taylor never make it to Elkhorn…or the real May and Taylor, that is.  The stage ferrying Felton was sabotaged because unbeknownst to the good people of Elkhorn, Lambert is up to his eyeballs in a fraudulent land scheme…and the last thing he needs is someone honest exposing his nefarious doings to the antiseptic light of day.  A henchman in Big Bill’s employ, Wally (Stanley Price), impersonates Taylor…and in the role of “Aunt May” is Lambert’s lady friend, Beautiful (Peggy Stewart)—the real May and Taylor are being held hostage in an isolated hideout.  Beautiful starts to have second thoughts about her masquerade as Dickie starts his recovery; she becomes quite attached to the little nipper.

Lane, Barcroft

Stagecoach to Denver is a crackerjack entry among the Red Ryder westerns.  Lane seamlessly assumes the role from Elliott (the only difference I noticed between the two is that Lane is a little more “cowboy” in his speech patterns) and while I prefer Fleming’s Duchess to Wentworth’s interpretation (and I say this as a big Martha Wentworth fan) the franchise continued going (pardon the pun) great guns with the replacement performers.  What makes Denver so much fun is that The Baddest Serial Villain of Them All, Roy Barcroft, shines as the despicable Lambert.  Roy remains one of my favorite character actors, and as excellent as he was playing bad guys he was also exceptional when it came to representing the right side of the law (I’m always coming across Barcroft in TV reruns—he was great in a Tales of Wells Fargo I watched a while back—and old movies; I yelped with delight when I saw him execute a nice turn as a settlement shopkeeper in 1966’s Texas Across the River).  “The poor man’s Gabby Hayes,” Emmett Lynn, is also most welcome as Ryder’s adult sidekick Coonskin (a reference perhaps to Buckskin, Red’s partner in the comic strips), as are familiar faces like Ted Adams (as the sheriff in cahoots with Barcroft), Edmund Cobb, and George Chesebro.

Peggy Stewart and Allan Lane in Denver

It's Peggy Stewart who wins the acting honors in Denver, however—her Beautiful earns more exposure than many a female ingenue in a lot of these B-westerns (many of them simply stand around and wring their hands waiting for the hero to return), and in many respects, it’s more her movie than anyone else’s.  The same can be said for her turn in Vigilantes of Boomtown (1947); Peggy portrays Molly McVey, daughter of a Nevada senator and an anti-gambling advocate who’s vehemently opposed to a boxing match that will take place between the legendary “Gentleman” Jim Corbett (George Turner) and challenger Bob Fitzsimmons (Mister John Dehner).  Corbett’s manager, Billy Delaney (Roscoe Karns), has rented out The Duchess’ ranch for Corbett to train…but the real trouble comes in the form of outside bandits (headed up by Barcroft as a no-goodnik named “McKean”) determined to steal the receipts from the match.

Lane and Wentworth with Robert Blake (as Little Beaver) in Vigilantes of Boomtown

Boomtown’s plot (screenplay by Earle Snell) is loosely based on a real-life Nevada event from 1897 that was also dramatized in the 1953 20th Century-Fox oater City of Badmen (with Wells Fargo star Dale Robertson, Lloyd Bridges, and Richard Boone): a boxing event that took place in Carson City shortly after the Nevada legislature legalized prizefighting.  Again, Stewart is first-rate in her role (Barcroft is good, but not the memorable menace he was in Denver); Chuck Anderson at The Old Corral observes “Two of Peggy Stewart's most memorable performances are in this movie and Stagecoach to Denver, perhaps because in both she didn't have to pretend to like Lane.” (Allan had a reputation of being a real dink to work with.)  Having TDOY fave Dehner around is always a plus, of course, and Denver’s George Chesebro and Ted Adams (an honest lawman in Boomtown) are also along for the ride, with comic relief supplied by both Karns and Abbott & Costello “court jester” Bobby Barber (as Corbett’s “second”).  Both Denver and Boomtown were directed by R.G. Springsteen, a journeyman whose name appears on a lot of TV reruns including Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Rawhide…and Tales of Wells Fargo.

“You’re durn tootin’, Hoppy!”

Of the numerous movies to which I helped myself from Vault on Demand during our recent Epix freeview, a little over a dozen of these features were B-westerns starring William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy.  Cassidy was a cowpoke created by Clarence Mulford in a series of popular short stories—a whiskey drinkin’, tobacco-chawin’, rough-talkin’ hombre whose wooden leg caused him to walk with a noticeable limp, earning him the nickname “Hop-A-Long.”  Movie producer Harry Sherman negotiated a deal with Mulford to bring his literary creation to the silver screen (beginning in 1935 with Hop-A-Long Cassidy) but a few cosmetic changes were made to the movie Hoppy: his beverage of choice was now sarsaparilla, the wooden leg was downgraded to an injury from a bullet wound, and he was so squeaky clean (honest, forthright, kind to kids and animals, etc.) he threatened to make Gene Autry look like one of the Dead End Kids.  There would be a total of sixty-six Hopalong Cassidy oaters produced between 1935 and 1948, and Boyd’s Cassidy would become not only one of the motion picture industry’s highly bankable box office mainstays but a real hero to the Saturday matinee crowd (despite that Hoppy was often clad in black…white was the sartorial choice of the good guys in westerns as a rule).

Russell 'Lucky' Hayden and William Boyd

Law of the Pampas (1939) and Riders of the Deadline (1943) are the only two programmers of the fourteen I downloaded that I’ve yet to watch—the remaining movies are nevertheless remarkably entertaining, and I can see why the Hopalong Cassidy series was so popular.  The plots may not be original (there’s only so much you can do with westerns) but the strength of the Cassidy films lie in the characters; Hoppy himself, as played by the prematurely graying Boyd, comes across as a father figure—he didn’t engage much in the arena of romance (though more than I had been led to believe), preferring to leave “the wimmin stuff” to the youngest member of his “trio,” Johnny Nelson (played by James Ellison).  Ellison portrayed Johnny up until the ninth of the Hoppys, Borderland (1937), and was then replaced by Russell Hayden as ‘Lucky’ Jenkins.  (Hayden became so identified with Jenkins that he was often billed as “Russell ‘Lucky’ Hayden” in his later films…and many of the characters he played, particularly alongside Charles Starrett [like in Riders of the Badlands], were named ‘Lucky’ as well.)

Hayden, Boyd, and George 'Gabby' Hayes

Flanking Hopalong Cassidy on the opposite side was an older, cantankerous sidekick in ‘Windy’ Halliday (though he also went by other surnames, depending on the movie)—portrayed by the Patron Saint of Garrulous Cinema Codgers, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes.  Hayes was in the first two Hopalong Cassidy pictures, but didn’t begin playing Windy until the third, Bar 20 Rides Again (1935).  Throughout the series, Windy and Johnny (and later Lucky) quarreled with and cussed at one another (Windy thought both “whippersnappers” despite the mutual affection), often requiring Cassidy to play mediator.  Hayes was with the Hoppy features until Renegade Trail (1939) and then, unable to come to terms with producer Sherman over his salary, switched to riding alongside Roy Rogers in a successful series of films at Republic (this is where he acquired the “Gabby” nickname).

Since the earliest of the Hopalong Cassidy films on Epix’s On Demand was Partners of the Plains (1938), I haven’t been afforded the opportunity yet to see any of the James Ellison films.  Plains is a very good introduction to the Hoppy features…even though ‘Gabby’ Hayes is absent from this one (he’s replaced by Harvey Clark as ‘Baldy’ Morton) it’s still business as usual: Hoppy and his friends work on a ranch where Britisher Lorna Drake (Gwen Gaze) has acquired a controlling interest, and Lorna—described by her Aunt Martha (Hilda Plowright) as being “a little willful and spoiled”—clashes almost immediately with foreman Cassidy.  But she’s carrying a torch for our hero (despite bristling at being told what to do); when Hoppy quits as foreman, she has the sheriff (Earle Hodgins) arrest him for “stealing” his beloved horse Topper!  (Hoppy doesn’t have a bill of sale…so in the eyes of the law, he’s a hoss thief.)

Lorna’s romantic designs on Hoppy do not go unnoticed by her fiancé, Ronald Harwood (John Warburton) …who accepts that Cassidy is the better man by taking bad advice from ex-convict Scar Lewis (character great Al Bridge)—great name, by the way—to remove Hoppy as his competition…permanently.  Everything comes out in the wash eventually, with a suspenseful forest fire climax and Lorna’s transformation from spirited filly to meek and docile submissive.

The young ingenue in Doomed Caravan (1941) is billed as “Georgia Hawkins” …but old-time radio fans know her as Georgia Ellis, whose best-remembered role is that of “Kitty Russell” on Gunsmoke.

Female characterizations don’t often fare well in the Hopalong Cassidy films…but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the portrayals, since many of the women are not content to just stand around looking helpless (in Doomed Caravan [1941], one of the top Hoppys, Minna Gombell’s freight owner is locked, loaded, and ready to tangle with the bad guys).  This is occasionally played for laughs; in Range War (1939), Ellen Marlow (Betty Moran) chafes at the thought of having to stay behind while the menfolk go after the outlaws.  She decides to avail herself of the only mode of transportation accessible to her: a broken-down mule who, alas, does not share Ellen’s zeal for her law and order mission.

Russell Hopton, Charlotte Wynters

A good example of a positive female character can be found in the last of the ‘Gabby’ Hayes Hoppys: in Renegade Trail, widow Mary Joyce (Charlotte Wynters) has had her hands full running one of the most prosperous ranches in Cactus Springs—the Circle J.  She accomplished this after the death of her husband, whom she’s told her son Joey (Sonny Bupp) over the years died a hero.  Surprise!  Hubby Bob ‘Smoky’ Joslin (Russell Hopton) has actually been serving a lengthy prison sentence…and now that he’s escaped, he’s threatening to reveal the truth to young Joseph—necessitating the need for many years of therapy in the young lad’s future, no doubt.  Mary agrees to provide cover for Smoky’s illegal activities in exchange for his silence (she tells everyone he’s her brother) …but she’s not particularly wild about the notion of his rustling her cattle, and neither are Hoppy and Lucky—who are in Cactus Springs to visit their old pal Windy (now the town marshal).

Roy Barcroft tangles with Hoppy in a lobby card for Renegade Trail (1939) as John Merton looks on (dis)approvingly.

The material has been done to death, I know…but the reason why I got such a kick out of Trail is that The Baddest Serial Villain of Them All, Roy Barcroft, is the wicked hombre in cahoots with Joslin (Roy’s character is called ‘Stiff Hat’ Bailey…and he not only gives Joey a smack in the kisser but kicks a dog for good measure) …and “Everyhench” John Merton is the chief goon.  It’s solidly paced, and well-directed by Lesley Selander…who directed a metric ton of the entries in the Hopalong Cassidy franchise.

The ‘Gabby’ Hayes deficit was made up in a few Hopalong Cassidy films by a character named ‘Speedy’ McGinnis (comically played by Britt Wood); I’ve only seen Wood in Range War, so I can’t really give you a full appraisal of what his character added to the series (a lot of Hoppy fans feel mostly “meh” about Speedy).  With Three Men in Texas (1940), the Hoppy franchise introduced my favorite of the elderly sidekicks in ‘California’ Jack Carson, played by veteran comedian Andy Clyde.  The fact that I’m such a huge fan of Andy’s admittedly colors my assessment of his contribution to the movie series…but Texas is a first-rate oater, and a beloved favorite among Cassidy fans.

TDOY fave Andy Clyde joins Boyd and Hayden.

The best of the Hoppy features that I’ve watched (so far, of course) is Pirates on Horseback (1941), which finds Hoppy, Lucky, and California on the hunt for a gold mine discovered by Carson’s distant cousin (very distant—like 42nd), Ben Pendleton (played by Britt Wood!).  Upon arriving at Pendleton’s shack, the trio meet his niece Trudy (Eleanor Stewart) …and agree to help her locate the mine, the location of which is gradually revealed via cryptic clues throughout Horseback’s running time.  Trudy is convinced by Ace Gibson (Morris Ankrum) that Hoppy and Company are working against her best interests…unaware that Gibson wants to get his grimy mitts on the mine himself!  Character veteran Ankrum was in a buttload of Hoppy westerns (the [always] reliable IMDb credits him with a baker’s dozen), and I got so used to seeing him play the villain that when he portrayed a good guy in Wide Open Town (1941) I kept suspecting it would eventually be revealed he was up to something criminal.

Years before starring opposite Richard Denning on TV/radio's Mr. and Mrs. North, Barbara Britton was paying her sagebrush dues.  In Secret of the Wastelands (1941), she plays an archaeologist who literally has to remove her glasses and let down her hair before Hayden's 'Lucky' realizes she's beautiful.

Wide Open Town was Russell Hayden’s swan song (after 27 films) with the Hopalong Cassidy franchise; his ‘Lucky’ Jenkins would be replaced by Brad King as “Johnny Nelson.”  (When the Hoppy films resumed in 1946—after star Boyd purchased both his old films and the rights to make more—the ‘Lucky’ character returned to the fold, portrayed by Rand Brooks.)  After King, the Cassidy series then showcased several rotating young sidekicks including Jay Kirby and Jimmy Rogers—in Bar 20 (1943), the sidekick is played by future TV Superman George Reeves!  The presence of the bland Kirby (as “Johnny Travers”) in Border Patrol (1943) didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this film; Hoppy and his crew match wits against an autocratic judge in Orestes Krebs (Russell Simpson), who’s been using kidnapped Mexicans as forced labor in his silver mine.  Judge Krebs puts the three comrades on trial that brings new meaning to the term “kangaroo court”—with Robert Mitchum (billed as Bob) as the foreman!  (Big Bad Bob appeared in several Hoppy westerns, notably 1943’s Hoppy Serves a Writ [which I haven’t seen] and Leather Burners [which I have].)  Patrol was my second favorite among the Epix Hoppys, with fine support from familiar faces like Claudia Drake, Duncan Renaldo, and Pierce Lyden.

The only gripe—and I’ll be honest, it’s a major one—is that the Epix prints of these movies have, to use the horse parlance, been rode hard and put up wet.  Two of the titles, Doomed Caravan and Wide Open Town, have running times of fifty-four minutes (most disappointing, since these are two of the best movies in the series) …leading me to suspect that these versions were the ones that were cut-up for television by NBC when Hoppy’s adventures came to small screens in 1949.  (Bar 20 Justice [1938] was missing its opening credits.)  A complete collection of the Hopalong Cassidy films was released to DVD by Echo Bridge in 2009 with restored prints, and that set, Hopalong Cassidy Ultimate Collector's Edition, was reissued in 2015 (sans collective lunchbox) …so I’m entertaining thoughts of grabbing one of these once the financial picture is a bit rosier here at Rancho Yesteryear.

B-Western Wednesdays: Vigilantes of Dodge City (1944)/Sheriff of Las Vegas (1944)

Fans of the Sunday morning newspaper “funnies” might remember that Red Ryder rode the comic strip range in those pages from 1938 to 1964.  The strip was illustrated for most of its run by artist Fred Harman, who drew upon inspiration from an earlier strip he did from 1933 to 1938 entitled Bronc Peeler.  Ryder was a “peaceable” cowpoke who lived on the Painted Valley Ranch owned by his aunt—known as “The Duchess” (not my best friend from high school, of course)—in the Bianco Basin of the San Juan Mountain Range out Colorady way, and engaged in two-fisted western heroics assisted by Little Beaver, his young Native American sidekick…who unfortunately spoke in the same pidgin English that plagued the Lone Ranger’s Tonto.  (Little Beaver’s phrase “You betchum, Red Ryder” eventually made its way into the pop culture vernacular—I will sheepishly admit that I use it myself from time to time though I probably shouldn’t.)

Red Ryder was not only a popular newspaper strip, it was also a mainstay in the comic book racks from 1940 to 1957 under various titles (Red Ryder Ranch Magazine, Red Ryder Ranch Comics)—though for a brief period during its lengthy run those books were comprised of reprints from the comic strip.  Red Ryder was a merchandising fool: clothing, sporting goods, books, toys, etc.  The strip’s longest-lasting contribution to pop culture was the “Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time”—featured, of course, in the Yuletide movie perennial A Christmas Story (1983).  (A friend of mine was completely unaware of Red’s history, once remarking: “I thought that was just something they created for the film.”)  Red Ryder also appeared on radio, airing on the Blue Network and Mutual (mostly on the West Coast) from 1942 to 1951, and featuring at various times the likes of professional narrator Reed Hadley, Carlton KaDell, and Brooke Temple as “America’s favorite fighting cowboy.”

Red Ryder came to the silver screen in 1940 in a twelve-chapter Republic serial entitled (what else?) The Adventures of Red Ryder, with Don Barry playing the titular hero…and making such an indelible impression that he spent the remainder of his movie career frequently billed as “Don ‘Red’ Barry.”  By the time Republic committed to a B-western series based on the property in 1944 (the first entry being Tucson Raiders), however, the studio cast “Wild” Bill Elliott in the part…and after making a total of 16 Red Ryder features Elliott was replaced by Allan “Rocky” Lane for seven more outings (the studio wanted to move “Wild” Bill into bigger and better things).  Republic’s Red Ryder series ended in 1947…but only because of a clerical error on the option-renewal date; the owner took advantage of this loophole to hold out for more money.  (Republic decided “Nuh-uh” and continued to make thirty-eight non-Red Ryder films with Lane until 1953.)  There was one last gasp at resurrecting the Ryder franchise at Eagle-Lion between 1949-50 with Jim Bannon as Red; these four films were made in Cinecolor and two of the features that survive in this process were released as a “double feature” from VCI in 2004.

VCI is the reason why I’m doing a “B-Western Wednesdays” post today, by the way.  I received an e-mail flier from the company back in the latter part of December, and though I know better not to do this I clicked on the link for their “Clearance Sale” just for a browse.  (I’m an idiot, I know.)  Ostensibly, I had planned to just buy a copy of Chariots of the Gods (1974) for my fadduh (it was on sale for $3.00) because…well, in addition to his obsession with reality TV shows and MSLSD, he also watches a lot of those UFO-themed programs—you know, the ones where the narrator refers to people as “ancient astronaut theorists” because he’s too polite to say “wacko birds.”  Anyhoo, while browsing the stacks I also found copies of two of their Red Ryder volumes (11 and 12) for sale at $6 each and before you could say “Classic movies never go out of style” all three were nestled snugly in the online shopping cart and on their way to the House of Yesteryear.

Volume 11 kicks off with Vigilantes of Dodge City (1944), an excellent example of how the Red Ryder series represents Republic at the apex of their B-western powers.  Red does not reside in his usual Painted Valley environs (I think they only used that locale in the first film in the franchise), but rather in the hamlet that required a U.S. marshal with “a chancy job” that “makes a man watchful…and a little lonely”: Dodge City.  Red is breeding horses for a U.S. Cavalry contract, and while inspecting his stock with Little Beaver (Robert “Bobby” Blake) and cowpoke Denver Thompson (Tom London), hears gunshots not far from where his horses are situated.  The trio rides hard towards the source of the shooting, but arrive too late to stop the robbery of $40,000 from a freight wagon (and the murder of two men, including the driver).

The wagon belongs to The Duchess (Alice Fleming), who operates a freight line in addition to her ranch; she and Red are unaware that the robberies are being staged by Luther Jennings (LeRoy Mason), a local banker (what else?) who very much wants to buy out “Auntie” Duchess but she refuses to sell.  (Jennings hopes that the robberies will result in the freight line’s inability to continue obtaining insurance…and fortunately, he’s enlisted the help of Walter Bishop [Hal Taliaferro], the man who’s collecting the policy premiums.)  With the help of his chief goon Ross Benteen (Bud Geary), Jennings concocts an eevill scheme to rustle Red Ryder’s horses…and then pin the theft of those equines on Red himself!  Our hero is in a sticky situation…but it all comes out in the wash, as he rounds up the bad guys and brings them to justice.

Boyd Magers at Western Clippings gives Vigilantes of Dodge City four stars and calls it “high energy, non-stop action.”  He’s not exaggerating, either; the highlight of the movie is a climactic chase where bad guys Jennings and Bishop have kidnapped Little Beaver and are making a run for it in a wagon while Red and Denver give chase with a stagecoach.  The wagon is carrying a shipment of dynamite, and at one point in the action the vehicle is set ablaze as Red and Jennings fight to the finish.  The stunts in this little programmer are incredible; it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the second unit director on the movie was one of the motion picture industry’s finest stuntmen, Yakima Canutt.  It’s got a great cast of oater veterans: Mason, Taliaferro (he played a good guy in the Red Ryder serial), London, Geary, Kenne Duncan, Stanley “The Old Ranger” Andrews, and The Man with the Perpetual Sneer—Bob Wilke.  (TDOY fave/Republic serial queen Linda Stirling plays the ingénue in this one—she was in quite a few of the Ryder films—but she doesn’t get much to do, sadly.)

Paired with Vigilantes is Sheriff of Las Vegas (1944); Magers isn’t quite as enthusiastic about this one (two stars) but it’s not all that terrible.  In this entry, Red is appointed sheriff of that titular berg (this was before the casinos, of course) and has his hands full trying to solve the murder of prominent jurist Homer T. Blackwell (John “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” Hamilton), who gets croaked shortly after announcing to The Duchess and schoolteacher Ann Carter (Peggy Stewart) that he’s having banker-lawyer Arthur Stanton (Selmer Jackson) write his no-account son Tom (Jay Kirby) out of his will.  Suspicion in Blackwell’s demise falls upon Tom, of course—though it was really Tom’s disreputable buddy (and saloon owner) Dan Sedley (William Haade) what done the dirty deed.

I was entertained by Sheriff even though I’m convinced the movie’s major flaw is that you never really understand the motivation behind Sedley’s killing of Judge Blackwell (it’s sort of explained at the end, and even that clarification is weak).  (Then again, the only reason why Shakespeare had Don John in Much Ado About Nothing is that he needed a bad guy.)  Geary, Duncan, and Wilke are on hand for this one (playing different characters, natch), and the movie also benefits from the presence of old pros like Hamilton and Jackson.  There’s a bit more emphasis on comic relief in Sheriff (much of it at the expense of Little Beaver) …but I wouldn’t be telling you the truth if I didn’t say I smiled at some of the lighter moments from time to time.

The Red Ryder westerns run a little less than an hour (slightly longer than a TV episode from that 50s era) but when they’re en fuego with the action and stunts they’re entertaining as all get out.  Robert Blake, fresh off being an obnoxious kid (sorry, Baretta fans—but it’s true) with the Our Gang comedies at MGM, would play Little Beaver throughout the Bill Elliott and Allan Lane incarnations of the franchise—Don Kay “Little Brown Jug” Reynolds replaced him in the Bannon Eagle-Lion Ryders.  (Alice Fleming portrayed The Duchess in the Elliott films, Martha Wentworth in the Lane entries, and Marin Sais in the Bannon vehicles.)  I highly recommend these unpretentious little oaters for the dedicated B-western fan, and will hopefully return to some more of them on the blog in the future.

B-Western Wednesdays: Partners of the Sunset (1948)

Rancher Bill Thompson (Steve Darrell) returns from a business trip to Tucson…and boy, does he have some swell news for his son Dan (Jay Kirby)!  Janice (Christine Larson), the pretty little gal at his side, is now his new mom…and no one should be surprised that Dan takes this bulletin with all the enthusiasm of a proctology exam.  It’s mostly due to Janice being old enough to be his younger sister, but that don’t make no never mind to Bill: they’re married, and if Dan doesn’t like it he can lump it.

Dan doesn’t like it, and so he vamooses from the ranch—bitter about the fact that his pop has reneged on his promise to bequeath him some of the horses they raise on their spread.  Ranch foreman Jimmy Wakely (himself) and chief-cook-and-bottle-washer “Cannonball” (Dub Taylor) ride into town in an attempt to patch things up between father and son.  Actively working against this reunion is stepmother Janice, who’s really a conniving little rhymes-with-witch out to take Bill’s fortune.  She’s assisted in this endeavor by her brother Les (Leonard Penn) …who isn’t her brother at all!  (Quel plot twist!)  The scheming pair cleverly frame Dan for his father’s murder, and it’s Jimmy (once again) to the rescue.

The fifty-three-minute length of Partners of the Sunset (1948)—and if you can figure out how that title connects with the plot of this movie, the phone lines are open—makes it just slightly longer than your run-of-the-mill episode of a typical TV western.  This doesn’t make it a terrible movie, you understand—it’s just that the overall presentation covers a lot of all-too-familiar territory.  Boyd Magers at Western Clippings gives this Jimmy Wakely programmer two stars, which seems about right…maybe I would bump it up half-a-star.  It’s painless to take, and Jimmy sings a couple of nice up-tempo ditties in It’s a Beautiful Day (Wakely sings and curries his horse as his bandmates accompany him on fiddle, guitar, and steel guitar—the way country music should be) and Press Along to the Big Corral.

The pluses in Sunset include a very good performance from Christine Larson, who’s a cut-above your usual B-Western ingénue—particularly when she’s fluctuating back-and-forth between sweet-as-apple-pie wifey and wicked stepmother.  She’s joined in her villainy by Leonard Penn (as Les, the “brother” who has difficulty keeping his hands off his sis), and between the two of them they are ruthless in their intentions to make sure Dan swings for fratricide (Les is really responsible for the vile deed, hitting Bill with one of those figurines that folks used to keep around the house for just such occasions).

You also can’t go wrong with having Dub Taylor as your sidekick if you find yourself in the occupation of singing cowboy; there’s a running gag throughout Sunset where “Cannonball” is desperately trying to catch an elusive fish (“Ol’ Smokey”) that will produce a stray chuckle or two, and Cannonball also gets some funny lines. (Jimmy: “What’s with the funny look?” Cannonball: “I always look this way!”)  The rest of the cast is dependable if not remarkable; the only name I recognized other than Wakely’s and Taylor’s was Marshall Reed, who was a regular on TV’s The Lineup (a.k.a. San Francisco Beat).  Marsh plays a bad hombre who agrees to help young Dan swipe those horses from his pa’s ranch, and winds up in a well-shot saloon donnybrook with Jimmy (well…more like Jimmy’s stuntman, Bob Woodward).  (Reed’s character connects right on Wakely’s button in one scene, which made me laugh out loud.)

Directed by master journeyman Lambert Hillyer (who helmed a previous Wakely vehicle covered in this space, 1949’s Gun Law Justice) and scripted by B-Western veteran J. Benton Cheney (I see Cheney’s credit on a lot of episodes of The Cisco Kid before I watch those Trackdown episodes I DVR off of Heroes & Icons), Partners of the Sunset is little more than a passable time-killer from one of the silver screen’s most engaging sagebrush presences...but that don’t make it all bad, as a cowpoke once explained to me.  It’s on DVD, available for purchase or rent on the Warner Archive MOD set Monogram Cowboy Collection: Volume 1.

B-Western Wednesdays: Hollywood Round-Up (1937)

In the world of the B-Western, there are only so many plots to go around.  You can only have a certain number of times when unscrupulous wealthy people want to rape the people’s land for precious minerals (or just take their ranches regardless of whether there’s gold, copper, silver, etc. present) or fighting Indians on the warpath or thwarting stagecoach hold-ups.  Occasionally, filmmakers who churned out oaters would get a little creative…and a popular diversion would be building the movie plot around the making of a B-Western.

The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ recently aired Scarlet River (1933) as part of their month-long tribute to Myrna Loy; this Tom Keene programmer features our hero as a cowboy actor who comes to the aid of real-life ranchers, and there are very brief cameos from RKO stars like Myrna, Bruce Cabot, Rochelle Hudson, and Joel McCrea.  A better example is a fun little Roy Rogers vehicle, Under California Stars (1948), in which Roy not only plays himself (he returns to his ranch after wrapping up shooting on his latest feature) but is joined by the likes of fellow Republic co-workers Monte Hale, Allan “Rocky” Lane, and Don “Red” Barry.

One of the Gene Autry features I managed to snag during our Starz/Encore/Movieplex “freeview” was The Big Show (1936); this western casts “America’s favorite singing cowboy” as both himself and a silver screen star named Tom Ford.  Gene doubles for Ford’s stunts in his pictures, and is pressed upon to keep impersonating the actor at the 1936 Texas Centennial celebration when Tom takes a fishing vacation.  Show is an entertaining little romp—one of the best early Autrys—though it does suffer from that irritating quality present in Gene’s films when the narrative must come to a screeching halt so that our hero (or someone else in the cast) can warble a song.

Mack V. Wright is credited as the director of The Big Show, and interestingly enough served as the production manager of a movie that’s quite similar to Show: 1937’s Hollywood Round-Up.  Round-Up features Grant Withers as Grant Drexel, the box office champ of Crown Pictures, a studio that specializes in cranking out oaters.  Though Drexel is the idol of many a kid who enjoys a Saturday matinee, in real life he could use some coaching in the social skills department…because he’s a bit of a prick.  When Carol Stephens (Helen Twelvetrees), an on-the-wane star is loaned out to Crown because she’s “box office poison” at her home studio, Drexel starts taking a few liberties during one of their love scenes.

Grant is soon set straight on this matter by Buck Kennedy (Buck Jones), the genuine article when it comes to cowboys…and a man who’s forced to demean himself as Drexel’s double to keep groceries on the table and oats in his horse Silver’s feedbag.  Kennedy has a thing for Carol himself, particularly after befriending her younger brother Dickie (Dickie Jones), and the romantic rivalry between Buck and Grant for Carol’s attentions eventually comes to a boil, prompting “the star” to have his stunt man fired.  Buck is only temporarily in the unemployment line, however; he’s hired by a rival studio to appear in their production…which includes filming a hold-up on the town bank.  The only problem is: the hold-up is real—the company are really a gang of outlaws, and they’ve left Buck holding the bag!

I like Dickie Jones, so I was kind of sorry to see him in The Grey Bar Hotel. (Why don't these things ever happen to She Who Must Not Be Named?)

I really believe Hollywood Round-Up to be a superior picture to The Big Show…primarily because there’s no musical numbers to slow down the action, and primarily because star Buck Jones is one of the most likable individuals to ever sit tall in the saddle.  Buck was one of the major assets in our Serial Saturdays presentation of Riders of Death Valley (1941), a chapter play that paved the way (along with the 1941 Columbia serial White Eagle) for the former silent movie hero to appear in a series of Monogram oaters known as The Rough Riders franchise.  (Jones was one of the many victims—close to 500 in all—who perished in the infamous Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston on November 28, 1942.)  Jones has been described as the middle point between Tom Mix and William S. Hart, and I find myself becoming more and more of a fan with each movie I see him in.  He has a wonderful sense of self-deprecating humor, and makes for a first-rate sagebrush hero without resorting to the moralizing of many of his peers.

TCM ran Hollywood Round-Up as part of a day-long feting of Helen Twelvetrees, who is also one of the movie’s pluses.  The scene where Helen’s Carol Stephens is told by Federal studio boss Lew Wallace (Eddie Kane) that he’s loaning her out to Crown is very well-done (Carol is visibly upset, and Twelvetrees nails it without being mawkish), and though despondent at first, Carol demonstrates she’s a trouper by showing her professionalism and making lemonade out of her situation.  (I’ll take a moment here to remind folks that if you’re interested in learning more about Ms. Twelvetrees you should check out fellow CMBA member Cliff Aliperti’s biography Helen Twelvetrees: Perfect Ingénue—available as an actual book or e-book at an Amazon near you.  Yes, I could use a check this month.)  Twelvetrees also has a solid chemistry with her leading man.

Hollywood Round-Up was comedian Shemp Howard’s first film for Columbia.  (Shemp plays Oscar Bush, the assistant director, and generates much mirth despite Scott Clevenger’s dissenting opinion.)  Howard was so well-received in Round-Up that he appeared in an additional Buck Jones vehicle, Headin’ East (1937) …and that started him on his long association with the studio—appearing in Andy Clyde shorts (often as Andy’s obnoxious brother-in-law) and The Glove Slingers comedies before starring in his own series of two-reelers and then replacing brother Curly in The Three Stooges.  I am not going to lie to you: I DVR’d this film solely on Shemp’s participation, and I’ll freely admit that I’m fond of it because he’s always welcome ‘round Rancho Yesteryear.  But Round-Up turned out to be a pleasant surprise, and it features familiar Columbia players in Kane and Monte Collins (perfect as Withers’ fast-talking agent).