Tonight we were back with The Durango Kid again, in a film called "Laramie" (1949). This one was directed by a guy named Ray Nazarro, a veteran of many B-Westerns, and it was actually very well done for what it was. Now, stop me if you've heard this plot before : The Colonel at an Army outpost in Wyoming territory is set to host a local Indian chief and his delegation to discuss a peace treaty that has been proposed by the United States government. Army-Indian relations are shaky at best, but the Chief considers the Colonel his friend. There is a frontier scout who operates from the outpost who will play the "Iago" role here, pretending to be a confidante and adviser to each side, while ramping up the divisive rhetoric between them. The Scout tells the Colonel he is a fool to trust the Indian Chief, and then he rides to the Chief's camp to tell him the same about the Colonel.
The Scout is an arms merchant, in league with the town assayer. Peace is bad for their business. They want to continue the Indian Wars against the US Army in order to sell the Indians a large supply of rifles. They are trying to provoke a conflict to ignite tensions, and the Scout hits a bullseye when he manages to gun down the Indian Chief at the Peace Treaty meeting, from his sniper position outside the Army headquarters.
The Scout escapes to safety, then shits into Iago mode, riding to tell the Indians it was the Colonel who killed their chief, then riding back to tell the Colonel that the Indians are preparing for war. It is just at this time that good guy Steve Holden shows up in camp. "Steve" is Charles Starrett's "Clark Kent" persona in all of the Durango Kid movies. He always plays a guy named Steve (the last name varies), who is either the town marshal as in last night's movie or in this case an ex-Army officer who is a friend of the Colonel's. As the proverbial "Steve", he is always known as a fast gun and a straight arrow. But what no one knows - not even his sidekick Smiley Burnette - is that Steve is also The Durango Kid.
I explained that situation to you last night. You remember - Durango Kid, secret identity, wears all black including black bandanna mask, goes after bad guys ala The Lone Ranger.
So the deal is that, basically, once The black-clad Durango Kid shows up, the Bad Guys are Toast, although they don't go down without a battle. I mentioned that you may have seen this exact plot before, as you watch or imagine these movies with me, and I am sure of it. I can't name the exact Western, but we saw and reviewed it last Fall, and it featured the same story of a buckskin-clad Army scout who sabotages a peace treaty.
In "Laramie", we get an entire movie's worth of great Chatsworth location shots, and also a few from Corriganville in Simi Valley. In some places I am wondering, "have I walked on that trail"?
It must have been great to make movies in Chatsworth in that era, in the 1940s when the development of the Valley had not yet begun. It was still half-empty (undeveloped) when I was a kid in the early 1960s....
They had a different Singing Cowboy in this movie. This time he was an Army Sergeant and a Hillbilly Yodeler named Elton Britt. Check him out on Youtube. He was really good, as were The Georgia Crackers last night. And you always get a lot of Smiley Burnette songs and schtick in every "Kid" movie, so you definitely get your hour's worth, and every "Kid" movie gets two automatic thumbs up, as mentioned last night, just because of the Saturday Afternoon factor. ////
Tomorrow we are supposed to begin a major rainstorm, lasting until Thursday evening. This Winter we have had almost as much rain as in an El Nino year, which (cue the cliche) is "good, cause we need the water".
And I do love to see it flowing in the creeks on my hikes and such. And I love the green hills.
But man.......enough already. Bring on the Sun. ;)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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