Runtime: 54 minutes
Directed by: Joseph Kane
Starring: Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Kay Hughes, Monte Blue, Max Terhune
From: Republic Pictures
This was a movie I watched for several reasons. I should check out more from the ancient past no matter how obscure it is. As kids both my parents watched Gene Autry on his television show (along with MANY other Westerns that were on at the time). Most importantly, I had only seen one film from him before, and it was the bizarrely bad Round-Up Time in Texas; that had Gene and his buddy deliver horses to South Africa (!) and that is not only portrayed as the “jungles of deepest, darkest Africa”, there are Black “natives” which are as offensively portrayed as you’d expect for something from ’37. Checking out a more traditional Western from Autry only seemed fair, and I finally was able to do so after almost 7 (!!) years.
Regrettably, this featured racism against Native Americans; it was common to the time period yet that doesn’t excuse such things. I do have to laugh that Gene’s common film sidekick Smiley Burnette often portrayed a dude named FROG MILLHOUSE on screen before his characters were always called Smiley Burnette, as why the hell not? Actually, Gene has two sidekicks here: Frog and another guy with a funny name: Rufe Jones. Anyhow, this played on TCM last night and was DVR’ed by myself. Even I was surprised that the print looked quite blurry and was not the most joyous experience for my eyes. The story as it is: Gene joins the United States Cavalry, sings various songs, he and the Colonel’s daughter fall in love-much to the consternation of a rival-& a double-cross happens & there’s trouble w/ the “Injuns”.
B Westerns rarely had extraordinary plots and that’s fine but this was average in every way and there’s no real reason to seek this out unless you want an example of what a Republic Pictures B Western from the 30’s was like. It featuring two barroom brawls in the span of about 5 minutes was at least unexpected. It was interesting that this featured both Chief Thundercloud (an actor who often portrayed Indians even though his heritage has been called into question) and Iron Eyes Cody, who definitely wasn’t Native American yet at least advocated for Native American causes for decades. But yeah there isn’t anything else to say about this random picture most likely have never heard of before.
No comments:
Post a Comment