Buster Crabbe and Al St. John in "Billy the Kid: Wanted", and "Riding Wild" starring Tim McCoy (plus Mahler)

We needed more Buster Crabbe, so we watched him last night in "Billy the Kid: Wanted"(1941). Buster of course plays Billy, who's getting tired of being blamed for every robbery in town. It's gotten so bad that he's taken to hiding at the Iverson Movie Ranch with his pals "Jeff" (Dave O'Brien) and "Fuzzy" (the legendary Al St. John). While riding around the rocks, Fuzzy sees a poster advertising land for sale. He tells Billy he's had enough of the wild life. "I'm tired of the Sheriff always breathin' down our necks. I just wanna farm and sit under my fig tree at the end of the day". He says his goodbyes to Billy and Jeff, and leaves for the settlement, where he knocks on the door of a homesteader for information. The man isn't home, but his wife and little boy are. She invites Fuzzy in, which provides for a few minutes of comic relief, as her boy (played by director Sam Newfield's five year old son) instructs him on the fine points of cooking vegetable soup.

Later, the husband arrives, thanks Fuzzy for his help with supper, then tells him not to buy any land because it's all a big swindle. "Mr. Brawley (Glenn Strange) gave us a good price but then charged us so much for water that we couldn't make our payments". On top of that, the only store in town is also owned by Brawley, with jacked up prices. Fuzzy is duly warned, and is reconsidering his plans, when Billy and Jeff ride to town and find him in jail.

Brawley has the Sheriff in his pocket (of course), and has had Fuzzy arrested for shooting off his mouth in the saloon, talking about the ripped-off homesteaders. There's also a third party: "Jack Saunders" (Charles King), a gang leader with a lot of honchos who's running a protection racket. He wants his cut of the land profits from Brawley, otherwise he's gonna cause trouble. Billy and Jeff know that the only way to break up this power structure is to divide and conquer, so after Fuzzy is arrested, they arrange for a jailbreak. Then they stage a brutal but phony fight with one another, to get Brawley and Saunders to think they're enemies. Billy then sides with Brawley to get back at Jeff, and Jeff sides with Saunders, to retaliate against Billy. In reality, they're pitting both big shots against one another, but Brawley and Saunders don't realise it until it's too late.

Later they figure out the scheme, and capture both Billy and Jeff, and are about to string 'em up, but Fuzzy shows up just in time with all the homesteaders who've been ripped off by Brawley and are fightin' mad. The Sheriff is a total wimp and does nothing, leaving Brawley on his own, and the homesteaders outnumber Saunders' henchmen, so the good guys win. Buster Crabbe is great in the lead role, as athletic as ever and looking more like a young Marlon Brando than Brando himself. You get 63 minutes of action at Iverson Ranch and Corriganville, and for the record, I didn't know until I looked him up on IMDB that Al St. John was the newphew of Fatty Arbuckle. I called him legendary because his career goes back to 1914, and he appeared in many of Fatty's early shorts, which are freakin' hilarious and are available on the Buster Keaton Shorts Collection. Fatty of course had his career and life destroyed by a false rape claim from a woman named Virginia Rappe. That's a whole 'nuther Hollywood Story, but check out Al St. John (and Fatty) in those early short films. They're some seriously funny stuff that'll have you scratching your head and wondering "how dey do dat"? Two Big Thumbs Up for "Billy the Kid: Wanted". It's good to have Buster Crabbe back in the saddle, the picture is reasonably good, and the movie is highly recommended. ////   

The previous night we found a serious Western called "Riding Wild"(1935), with Tim McCoy in a no-nonsense role as "Tim Malloy", ranch foreman for "Matt McCabe" (Edward LeSaint, born 1870) of Sonora, California. A range war is brewing between the big and little ranchers of the town, and a cattleman's meeting has been called by the Sheriff to prevent violence. He suggests nominating a go-between to lead the coming round-up, a man who will be fair to both sides and make sure no one gets cheated or rustled.The only man everyone can agree on is Malloy, but as it turns out, rival ranch owner "Clay Stevens" (Niles Welch) only nominated him so he could later hang him out to dry, and blame him (or have him killed) for the range war that he - Stevens - is planning to ignite for certain with his henchmen. 

Stevens particularly has it in for the Mexican ranchers in Sonora, who bought the land he offered, because he only sold it to them to pay off mortgage debts. He was in danger of losing his ranch, and sold off small parcels to the honest Mexican ranchers, with a view toward driving them off the land later on, in a deliberate range war, so they'd lose their deeds over non- payment and the land would revert to him. In short, he's trying to screw them and the other small ranchers too, but Malloy is a close friend of "Joaquin Ortega" (Dick Botiller), the leader of the Mexican ranchers, and he sides with them when Stevens tries to frame Joaquin for rustling.

Malloy is trying to run an honest roundup, and when a big galoot named "Barker" (Richard Alexander) is caught re-branding a calf, Joaquin is proven innocent and the peace treaty is broken. Stevens retaliates by having the Sheriff murdered and framing Joaquin. Then he hires a Malloy lookalike (Tim McCoy plays both roles), who's a wanted killer, to pretend he's Malloy so they can kidnap the real Malloy and hold him hostage while they run all the remaining small ranchers into an ambush in a gulch called The Narrows. But Malloy gets the cowboy guarding him to reveal the plan, then he knocks him off his chair and takes his gun and escapes, and rides back to get Mr. McCabe and stop the ambush.

Man, this movie is a serious representation of how range wars must've started. Someone wrote a big league historical script and put it in a 54 minute Western. McCoy is great in a dual role. There aren't the usual punchouts; it's more a chess game between the big rancher Stevens and the straight arrow Malloy, with Mr. McCabe in the middle, and the Mexican ranchers as the loyal underdogs. A small romance is threaded through, with McCoy co-star Billie Seward once again playing the love interest as Mr. McCabe's daughter. Marriages always result at the end of these movies, usually in the last fifteen seconds of dialogue.

Tim McCoy goes to the top of the heap with this film, wearing the tallest cowboy hat you'll ever see. He's young here, and as noted several blogs ago, he was an actual quick draw in real life, a talent he honed for his movie roles, so when you see him facing off an outlaw and whipping out two pistols in the blink of an eye, it's the real thing. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Riding Wild". The picture is restored and looks as good as it did in the theater 87 years ago. ////  

I've been listening to Mahler symphonies for the last few days. I do that every so often, and I must say, they are among the greatest pieces of music ever written. Give a listen to Mahler's 8th (or #5 or 6), and tell me there's ever been anything better. It's just incredible stuff. For the 8th, there's a live version on Youtube, conducted by Ricardo Chailly at the Lucerne Festival, that's off the charts amazing. If you have never tried symphonic music, or only know the more familiar stuff like Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn (which is great also), I suggest giving Mahler a try. He's epic, and so is Bruckner, both of whom were influenced by the operas of Richard Wagner, which are unsurpassed in musical color and emotion. This is progressive rock, classical style, and it's every bit as great in it's own way. Give Mahler a shot and see.

That's all for tonight. I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Tom Tyler in "When a Man Rides Alone", and "Valley of the Lawless" starring Johnny Mack Brown (plus Will Smith)

This time, we're back with the Top Two of the early movie cowboys, beginning last night with Tom Tyler in "When a Man Rides Alone"(1933). A bandit is robbing the stage, every time it leaves the Wells Fargo depot with a delivery of gold from the Cottonwood mine. He's a Western version of Robin Hood: instead of keeping the gold for himself, he delivers it unseen to men he feels it is owed, who once had a stake in the mine but were ripped off by "Mr. Slade" (Al Bridge), the mine's owner. The bandit is returning to them what he feels is rightfully theirs, and, back in his shack, he keeps an accounting of it. He doesn't wear a mask, so we know he's Tom Tyler, but the stage driver never sees him because he approaches from behind. He remains unidentified to the Sheriff, who calls him the Llano Kid.

Mr. Slade is losing a lot of gold and wants to find out who the Llano Kid is, so he offers a reward, but in the meantime, old "Dad Davis" (Frank Ball) has had his side of the mine broken through by Slade, and he's furious, willing to go to town and shoot it out with the crook. His landlady begs him not to: "Your daughter is on her way. Don't get yourself killed before she gets here." Daughter "Ruth" (Adele Lacy) is a schoolteacher from the east coast. Dad ignores the kind-hearted landlady and has it out with Slade, but Slade shoots him and he's badly wounded. Meanwhile, the Llano Kid is waiting to rob the next Cottonwood gold delivery on the stage, and who should to be a passenger but Ruth Davis the teacher. She's excited and says, "I've heard about bandits, always wanted to meet one"! Tyler is handsome so she's thrilled. He finds her celebrity-worship offputting to say the least. He's a robber with a gun - why isn't she terrified of him? She threatens to turn him in (rather insouciantly), and he holds her hostage, in a "sorry ma'am, but you asked for it" kind of way. Of course, this is the usual romantic friction. When they get back to the Davis house, he hears about Dad's claim with Mr. Slade, and promises to get his gold back. For now, though, he has to leave because he can't be seen in town. Reward posters are all over the place with his picture on them. He has no idea how he got identified and photographed, and I can't tell you because it's a plot twist.

In the end, we discover Tyler's motivation for the gold robberies. By this time, he's been in a shootout with Slade. I can't reveal the outcome of that, either, but this is epic Tom Tyler, with all of his riding stunts and athletic moves turned up to 10. It's more about the action, ala Harry Carey, so you don't get the standard comic relief, and not as much romance as you might like, considering that Adele Lacy is an appealing love interest, but the direction is crisp, the photography excellent, and the location - while not noted on IMDB - appears to be in Placerita Canyon. There are also punchouts galore, and I have a question: why do they always speed up the footage in these old-timey Western fights? It gives them a slight Keystone Kops effect. I'm not complaining because it makes the punchouts more comical and removes the emotion, making them less violent. That's what's so great about the old Westerns (and what was ruined by the so-called "realism" of post-Peckinpah Westerns) - the violence (what there was) in the old ones was lightweight. It was all Good Guys and Bad Guys, and the Bad Guys were Evil Personified, and sometimes guys got killed but there was never any bloodshed, and in the punchouts, fists flew (and legs, and tables and chairs), but again it had a comical effect, not funny, but with a lack of angry emotion caused by the speeding-up of the film. Once Sam Peckinpah made a Bloodbath Ballet out of it, it ruined what was great about Westerns, in my opinion. I can't stand "The Wild Bunch", and to be honest, I don't like the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns, either, and looking back on it, "The Unforgiven" is a depressing, terrible movie, just dark and ultra-violent with no redeeming Western qualities. Well anyhow, just my two cents worth. Give me the old-time Westerns any day. I just wondered why they always speed up the fight scenes.  :)  Two Big Thumbs Up for "When a Man Rides Alone". You can't beat Tom Tyler; he's always highly recommended.

The only guy who supersedes Tyler, and just by a smidge, is of course the great Johnny Mack Brown, who starred in our previous night's movie "Valley of the Lawless"(1936).  JMB stars as "Bruce Reynolds", who as the movie opens is tracking down "Grandpaw Jenkins" (Gabby Hayes), an old geezer who stole the Reynolds' family gold years back during an Indian massacre. Bruce was just a child then, but he never forgot Jenkins's greed and ruthlessness, and after cornering him in a saloon, he demands the treasure map he knows Jenkins has, that shows where the gold is buried. The problem for Bruce is that a big bruiser named "Garlow" (Frank Hagney) overhears them. "Gold? buried treasure?" Garlow wants the map, too, and sends his henchmen out after Grandpaw Jenkins when he leaves the bar. They shoot him, but don't find any treasure map. Grandpaw staggers back to the house of his son and granddaughter, pulls open his shirt and reveals the map, which is drawn on his chest. Then he dies.

Meanwhile, Garlow - who's a gang leader but is able to fool the Sheriff - has framed Bruce Reynolds for the murder of Grandpaw Jenkins. The Sheriff takes Bruce away, but he swears he didn't do it. Finally, after much persuasion, the Sheriff lets him go. Then, Grandpaw's son and granddaughter go searching for the buried gold, and Garlow's henchmen shoot Dad dead. They blame this on Bruce Reynolds also. "After all, Sheriff, hasn't he been trying to claim the gold?" Dad's young son, who idolizes Bruce, now hates him. "You killed my pa!", he shouts. Bruce didn't, but Garlow has done everything in his power to make it look like he did.

Meanwhile, the sheriff's son Cliff knows who really killed Mr. Jenkins. He's a handsome-but-stiff chap who's in love with Granddaughter Jenkins, and would be happy to see Bruce Reynolds get framed for the murder, because the granddaughter likes Bruce, and it's mutual. Cliff allows the frame up to continue, and Bruce has to hide out in the Calabasas hills until he can catch the Garlow gang unaware and prove they're the real killers. Then he can help the granddaughter and her little brother find the buried gold, Cliff will stand down, and all will end well.

It's not as well directed as some of the other Johnny Mack movies, and while it has a layered plot, too much time is spent on the frame up. I think the director really liked Garlow as a bad guy. He's big, mean and ugly,  but he isn't likable as a heavy. Still, as with Tom Tyler, there's no such thing as a bad JMB movie. It's an automatic Two Big Thumbs Up. The picture is good and its highly recommended! ///  

That's all I know, but I'd like to add that I was as disgusted as everyone else at what happened at the Oscars, and something has got to be done to bring the class and decorum back that the ceremony was known for until recently, and which went out the window when Will Smith hit Chris Rock in an arrogant display of celebrity-culture chutzpah. I mean, what a complete jerk, and while I'm sure he has a modicum of acting talent (Best Actor winner or not, he's no Denzel Washington), Will Smith represents the kind of big salary hubris that has taken over in our bling-bling culture. "I bring in a lot of money, therefore I can do what I like". A hard punch in the face, for a joke Don Rickles would've rejected for being too mild? Can you imagine Sidney Poitier doing such a thing? How about Harry Belafonte? Yes, those are black male examples, but how about even an occasionally out-of-control white guy like Russell Crowe or Christian Bale? Can you imagine any of the names I just mentioned doing what Smith did? Yes, Chris Rock made (very light) fun of his wife's medical condition. But it's alopecia, not cancer, and you're supposed to be able to roll with the comedic punches at these affairs, not throw real punches in response. So, I hope there's some kind of adjustment to the Oscar telecast, because that was the last thing the world needed to see with a war going on, and with our own political leaders upping the ante with regime change comments that only inflame things (whether we agree with those comments or not, and I shant go on a Biden tirade, but I must say I'm not thrilled with his Presidency.)

I'll stop, and it's probably also true that Will Smith has emotional issues, stemming no doubt from all the press coverage about his open marriage. That's probably what the issue was really about, for him. And, he's apologized, but maybe he shouldn't be invited back for a year or two or five. Please AMPAS, bring back the class that the Oscars has always been known for, and while you're at it, let's shut down all the politics, too. Thanks. /////

That's all I know. Hey, I've got an idea! Will Smith's next movie should be a 60 minute Western......  ;)

I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo   :):)

William S. Hart in "Hell's Hinges" and "Hopalong Cassidy" starring William Boyd

Last night, in our trek through Western history, we went all the way back to the beginning (or close), with William S. Hart, the biggest cowboy star of the Silent era. In the classic "Hell's Hinges"(1916), he plays "Blaze Tracy", a two-fisted, hard drinking gunslinger who has an unlikely religious conversion. It's a simple story, about a preacher who goes West with his sister. "Parson Bob Henly" (Jack Standing) is a man of little faith. He's like an actor playing a role, rather than a true believer, and while some of the ladies in his congregation are devoted to him (because he's handsome), the church leaders think it would be best if he was sent out to a smaller parish in the country. The big city is beyond his capabilities. In short, he's a phony, given to preaching for the attention it gets him, rather than because he believes.

His sister "Faith" (Clara Williams) accompanies him out West, to a town called Placer Center but nicknamed Hell's Hinges because of it's lawless reputation. Two men run the show there: The saloon owner "Silk Miller" (Alfred Hollingsworth), and Blaze the top gunslinger (Hart). They don't get along, but they do agree on one thing: no lawman or religious leader will ever set foot in Hell's Hinges and live to see sundown. Blaze pounds shots at the bar and laughs about that promise. However, no sooner do the preacher and his sister disembark from the stage, than Blaze is transfixed by her beauty and piety. There's something in her eyes he can't resist, and he goes back into the saloon to tell the honchos to lay off. "Don't nobody bother that parson or his sister. As long as they mind their own business, we're gonna leave 'em alone".

Silk the saloon keeper is stunned by this change. He expected Blaze to kill 'em off straight away, or at least run 'em out of town. But the next thing you know, Blaze is attending the parson's first Sunday service, held in a barn. He goes home that day and pulls out an old bible. Soon, he's courting Faith, the parson's sister. The few religious folk in town (known derisively as "The Petticoat Brigade") are the ones who sent for a parson in the first place. They help build a church, and now the parson has a small congregation, but he's still a phony, susceptible to women and drink. Silk the saloon keeper can see this, so he asks the parson to give a private service for the local dance hall girls. "They really need saving, you know how it is." The most beautiful dancer stays over after the service and seduces the parson, gets him hammered and spends the night with him. He winds up missing church the next morning.  

He wakes up hung over and is discovered in bed with the dancer (Holy Pre-Code, Batman!) by the town's rowdy honchos, who are out to expose him anyway. They parade him around Main Street, still hung over, in front of the petticoat crowd, then they take him to the saloon and ply him with more drinks - hair of the dog donchaknow. By this time, the honchos have the townsfolk in a frenzy. They head en masse to the newly built church, and proceed to burn it down, hauling the besotted parson to the door with a lighted torch in his hand. In this way, he becomes a parody of the Christ figure, a mockery of his religion, and this scene is unforgettable in it's sheer humiliation.

Blaze Tracy, who was away during the persecution of the parson, comes riding out of the hills like greased lightning once he sees the smoke, and a gunfight erupts. The parson is shot and dies in his sister's arms, but Blaze corners the leaders of the mob and promises to send them back to hell, the namesake of their town. "You're all goin' back where you belong." 

This movie, which I had never heard of before tonight, was chosen for the National Film Registry, which is a big deal.

We in the Valley know William S. Hart from the Hart Ranch and Museum in Newhall, a place I've visited on my hikes in recent years. Dad took us there as kids, it's an enormous estate: a 22-room Spanish style mansion sitting on 260 acres of land. Hart, born in 1864, made a fortune in the movies but began his career on the stage. I didn't know until I read his bio that he was a Shakespearean actor; his talent is evident in this movie. So is that of the crew, the cinematography is simply incredible. The shots in the church fire scene are among the greatest ever filmed. You can tell that they were likely an influence on future fire scenes by Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick. This is a restored film that looks amazing considering it's 106 year age. I always find it interesting in very old films that the faces look modern, just like the people of today, and the action is worthy of a Cecil B. Demille production, with huge crowd scenes. There's only one possible rating for a film of this caliber, and that's Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. I know that Silent films are not everyone's cup of tea, but please don't miss this one. There are plenty of title cards to keep you up on the dialogue, and the plot moves constantly forward. Let's hear it for William S. Hart! We'll be looking for more of his movies. /////

The previous night, we watched another classic star for the first time: William Boyd aka "Hopalong Cassidy" in his first ever movie of the same name (1935). A range war is brewing out in Lone Pine, California. Big "Jim Meeker" (Robert Warwick) of the Meeker Ranch is grazing his cattle over the border of the land of the Bar-20. Or at least what the Bar-20's owner considers his land. Meeker maintains that the land is public and he can graze his cows any-doggone-where he likes. Bar-20 ranchhand "Johnny" (James Ellison) goes out to run Meeker's cattle off but is stopped by "Mary Meeker" (Paula Stone), the daughter of Big Jim. There's friction between the two (which means romance is also brewing), but Johnny ultimately leaves Meeker's cattle alone, until he can talk to "Bill Cassidy" (Boyd), an expert cowhand & gunman who's a longtime friend of the Bar-20's owner, "Buck Peters" (Charles Middleton).

Johnny, a pretty-boy hotshot, is jealous of Bill and sick of hearing about his exploits. When Bill shows up, with sidekick "Uncle Ben" (Gabby Hayes) in tow, he sees the potential in Johnny despite his attitude, and takes the kid under his wing. Now, the trouble is getting worse between the Meekers and the Bar-20. Someone has run 50 head of Meeker's cattle over a cliff. The Meeker foreman wants to go over and shoot the Bar-20 boys, and he organizes a group of henchmen to do just that. Johnny is attending a party that night at the Meeker ranch, by invitation from Mary, and the henchman arrive and take him away with plans to hang him. Bill Cassidy rides up just in time and stops the hanging, but is shot in his effort, which is how he acquires the nickname "Hopalong", because the shooting leaves him with a limp.

The Meekers and Buck Peters of the Bar-20 remain at odds and ready for war, until the foreman at the Bar-20 finds an old piece of buckskin out in the desert. It bears the brand HQQ, the same one that was found on a dead calf halfway between the two ranches. The Bar-20 foreman surmises that a third party is involved, a middleman who is stealing cattle from the Meekers and the Bar-20 and pitting them against each other, playing both sides against the middle. Hopalong, knowing of a shack in the desert that has a vantage point of the entire range, has Johnny situate himself there as an observer and potential sniper, to witness who might be behind the HQQ brand. The problem for Hopalong, is that at the same time, Mary Meeker is trying to persuade her father to stop the violence, by offering herself as bait to trick Johnny into leaving the watchman's shack. Her deception works, and in the middle of it, while the Meekers and Bar-20 are fighting one another yet again, the third party HQQ group makes another run to steal the Meeker cattle. But this time, Uncle Ben sees them out in the desert, and gets shot. I can't tell you by whom because it's a plot twist.

By now, Jim Meeker and Buck Peters have agreed to stop fighting and team up. They ride out to the Alabama Hills, where Hopalong has found the body of his dear friend Uncle Ben, and they spot the third party gang up in the rocks. It turns out they're being led by a man named "Pecos Jack" (Kenneth Thomson), a rustler/organizer we briefly saw at the beginning of the film with Ted Adams. This should've been a dead giveaway, as Ted is the Snidely Whiplash of old Westerns. A spectacular finale takes place, with shootouts, punchouts, and incredible photography. I can see why William Boyd is acclaimed as one of the greats of Western cinema, though he's more in the mold of Harry Carey than Johnny Mack or Tom Tyler. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Hopalong Cassidy". As with all the others, we'll be looking for more of his films.

That's all for tonight. I hope you're having a nice weekend. Very sad about Taylor Hawkins, I remember Grimsley calling up a couple years ago to say he had just delivered flowers to his house. His wife answered the door. Grim saw Taylor in the pool with his kids. Said what everyone else is now saying, that he was the nicest guy. It just seems like so many musicians, actors, people with a lot of talent and/or pressure, can't make it without a large combination of psychotropic drugs and opioids. It's just an observation on my part. Life is hard for showbiz people. It looks easy but it's not, and a lot of people with high talent are also very fragile psychologically. Look at Chris Cornell or Robin Williams. I think, in some musicians' cases, their bandmates know they are using, and taking too much of one thing or the other, but they figure "well, as long as so-and-so is maintaining, and not messing up on stage, who am I to say anything"?

The pharmaceutical drugs, the benzodiazapenes and such, are so toxic. A similar combination killed my friend Mr. D. They just stopped his heart. But again, life is hard, and some people have a difficult time getting by without drugs. I'm glad I was able to stop (25 years ago now, including pot), but I understand those who can't. God Bless Taylor Hawkins. From what I am reading, everybody loved him. It's easy to say, "how could he take drugs when he had a wife and kids?", but again, people are fragile, and love is what counts.

That's why I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)  

Ken Maynard in "Tombstone Canyon", and "The Last of the Clintons" starring Harry Carey

We found yet another new Western star last night: Ken Maynard, in "Tombstone Canyon"(1932). As the movie opens, he's being chased through the rocks in Cantil, California (north of Mojave) by the cowhands of the Lazy S Ranch, who accuse him of being The Phantom, a mysterious black-clad killer who's been stalking their men. Maynard only manages to survive after being bailed out by "Jenny Lee" (Cecelia Parker), a sweet young lady whose Dad - "Colonel Lee" (Lafe McKee) - has a rival ranch in the area. She's quite a shot, and she holds off the honchos while Maynard escapes on his well-trained horse "Tarzan", who can also do all kinds of tricks like play dead, and deliver messages like a carrier pigeon.

His character's name is also Ken, but he only only knows his first name and is trying to find out who he is. He's never known his parents, and was raised by various ranchers and citizens in the region, who took him in as they could afford to. Jenny offers to help him discover his true identity, but now that he's inquiring about it, some people aren't happy. "Alf Sykes" (Ken Brownlee), the foreman at the Lazy S, is particularly upset and plans to kill Ken. If he can't, he's going to frame him as The Phantom, a Bela Lugosi-type who clambers around the desert with his cape held across his face and howls like a banshee in the caves and canyons of Cantil. He performs this routine every time before he kills someone, and so far - like Ken - his identity is unknown. The henchmen are superstitious and scared of The Phantom, but Ken wants to uncover him, because he's being framed for The Phantom's crimes. Alf Sykes' frame job is temporarily successful, and the local Sheriff winds up putting Ken in jail, but someone slips him the key to his cell and he escapes. Who could've helped him? Was it the Sheriff himself? Ken ultimately tracks Sykes and his gang back to the caves of Tombstone Canyon, but The Phantom is already there and trying to pick them off one by one. Ken can't trust either side, so he sends Tarzan back to the Lee Ranch with a message that he needs help. Jenny and her Pa the Colonel ride out to assist him, and the finale is filled with amazing cliffside stunts and punchouts, while The Phantom is shooting at everyone from his vantage point in the rocks.

Will Ken discover his identity? Will we find out why The Phantom is seeking vengeance against the men of the Lazy S? As you might've guessed, these two things are related. And of course, Ken and Jenny Lee (a great Western girl's name), are going to fall in love, though it must be said that Ken Maynard is not a romantic hero on the level of Johnny Mack Brown or Tom Tyler. He's a top cowboy with a lot of charisma and a trick horse, but he's too much the tough guy to affect the gals. On a side note, I must say that I was aware of Ken Maynard for a while now, but have avoided him because some commentators at IMDB said he was a jerk in real life and mistreated his fellow actors and animals on the set. I don't know if this is true, but I'll research it, and in his favor a lot of other fans love him. He's good in this movie, no doubt, and he apparently made a shipload of money in his career, maybe more than most of the other movie cowboys, but he squandered it all on booze and fast living, and he died broke in a trailer park. Gene Autry sent him checks to keep him alive. But yeah, he is definitely great in this film and we'll look for more from him. There's a great overview of his career at a site called The Old Corral (www.b-westerns.com). I discovered it after Googling Ken Maynard, and found by reading his bio at the site that he was one of the most popular of all the Western stars. He's worth reading about, and seeing in "Tombstone Canyon", which gets Two Big Thumbs Up and has a razor sharp picture. On a final side note, Sheldon Lewis, who plays The Phantom, is one of our earliest actors, born in 1869. //// 

The previous night, we watched Harry Carey again, in "The Last of the Clintons"(1935). Yep, that's the title, and as you can imagine, the commentators at Youtube had a field day with it. As for the movie itself, its a good 'un. Carey plays "Trigger Carson", a government agent hired to stop cattle rustling at the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth. As the movie opens, he's being chased into the rocks by a bunch of rustlers from the Todd Ranch, who think he's spying on them as they re-brand the cattle they've stolen. They're right of course, Carson is spying, but he talks his way out of it by saying he's a cowhand looking for work. Old "Jed Clinton" (Victor Potel), i.e. The Last of the Clintons, vouches for him after helping him shoot it out with the rustlers during the chase. Jed Clinton knows Carson is a range detective, but he holds his tongue because big "Luke Todd" (Tom London), owner and head rustler of the Todd Ranch, believes Carson's story and hires both men: Carey as a rustler and Clinton as a cook. Old Jed is played for comic relief but he's also very handy with a gun.

Now, there's a vigilante group in town, headed up by "Jim Elkins (Slim Whitaker), a ranch owner who's appointed himself Sheriff in the absence of an actual lawman. Elkins is the foremost victim of the Todd's rustling efforts, and vows to stop them with the help of his fellow cattlemen. But he has a conflict because his daughter "Edith" (Betty Mack) is seeing Luke Todd's younger brother "Marty" (Del Gordon). Marty lives at the Todd Ranch but is clean cut; he's got nothing to do with the cattle rustling, though he is loyal to his crooked brother - to a point. He won't rat Luke out unless Luke forces him to rustle, or to stop seeing Edith, a result her dad Jim Elkins is also trying to achieve. Neither Jim Elkins, nor his nemesis Luke Todd want Marty and Edith seeing each other, because it's a mixing of the factions - one honest, one criminal. What they fail to take into account is that Marty and Edith are removed from the criminal activity. Marty wants nothing to do with rustling, and Edith wants nothing to do with vigilantism. They're in love, which puts them in the pivot as far as the plot goes.

Now, back at the Todd Ranch, old Jed Clinton has taken to his undercover role as the cook, and he asks for a rattlesnake to be caught so he can make rattlesnake stew. Ranchhand "Pete" (Earl Dwire) traps one, but doesn't turn it over to Jed because he doesn't trust him or Trigger Carson. He has a feeling they might be The Law, so he keeps the rattler himself and puts it in a box. Later on, after Luke Todd has arranged for Edith Elkins to be kidnapped, along with Trigger Carson after they find out he's a Fed, Pete the Henchman shows up with his rattler-in-the-box and releases it into the room where Trigger and Edith are being held. Except they aren't there anymore, because a punchout has ensued between Trigger and Luke Todd, and now Luke is the one who's tied up when the rattlesnake is released. Trigger Carson, being a good guy, knocks the door down just in time to shoot the rattlesnake. But in the end, it doesn't help. Luke has already been bitten, and ends up dying, but not before his gives his younger brother Marty a soliloquy about going straight. "You were right, Marty. Rustling is not the way. I'm sorry I disgraced the family name". This is great, great stuff with Harry Carey in the saddle, gruff as always, and dressed in black. There's very little romance and a minimum of comic relief. The Carey movies remind me of the "Durango Kid" series of Charles Starrett that we watched a couple years ago. They're all about action, whereas Johnny Mack Brown and Tom Tyler include many other elements in their plots. Carey just gives you the basics, he strips it down, but he does it to perfection so that there's not only no fat, but what story there is, is highly energized. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Last of the Clintons". Not only do you get a great movie, with a decent-but-not-razor-sharp picture, but you also get all the Youtube comments, which are funny even if you're a big Clinton fan like myself. It's a riot to see them all so exasperated, haha. Highly recommended, don't miss it. ////

That's all I know for tonight. I've finished the ELP book and am beginning Paul McCartney's "The Lyrics". I just listened to the first Gilgamesh album while I was writing this blog, and now I'm going for my walk.

I hope you had a nice day, and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)          

John Ireland in "The Glass Tomb", and "Ghost Patrol" starring Tim McCoy

Last night we saw a weird Noir from Lippert Pictures called "The Glass Tomb"(1955). John Ireland, in a rare non-sinister role, plays "Pel Pelham", an American promoter of freak shows who works and lives in England with his wife and little boy. As the movie opens, he's preparing to launch his latest spectacle: a vigil for "The Starving Man", a large Italian gent named "Sapolio" (Eric Pohlmann) who fasts for weeks at a time in front of spectators. His current record is 65 days; he promises Pelham he'll do 70 this time. He performs his starvations in a glass enclosure known as The Tomb, set up in a tent, where people buy tickets to come and watch (think of the feats of David Blaine for comparison). The problem for promoter Pelham is that he needs money to rent land for the show, so he goes to a bookie friend, a high roller he used to work for, and the guy loans him 300 bucks. The bookie asks a small favor in return. A gal is blackmailing him (it's not clear for what), and because she's a mutual friend of Pelham, the bookie asks him to go talk to her. "Ask her not to send me those letters anymore". Pelham goes to the gal's apartment, where she agrees to stop harassing the bookie. "I'm sorry, I don't know what got into me", she says. The issue, whatever it was, seems settled, and Pelham then goes downstairs in the same building to visit Sapolio the Starving Man, who lives with his wife in the apartment below. They're preparing for a party that night, to celebrate Sapolio's upcoming show, and a great feast is planned. All the fellow freaks from Pelham's sideshow circuit will be there. But Sapolio's wife discovers they are out of olives for her pasta, so he runs down to the store to grab a jar.

On the way out, he notices a man entering the upstairs apartment of the blackmailing gal, "Miss Maroni" (Tonia Bern) is her name. Sapolio doesn't get a good look at the man, but we do. He's "Harry Stanton", manager of the local circus (played by the evil-looking Geoffrey Keene, who always plays a bad guy and was in a million movies). Stanton corners and strangles Miss Maroni, then leaves her apartment and goes downstairs to the Sapolio pad and acts like nothing happened. The party commences, and everyone is having a blast. Earlier that day, Pel Pelham secured a show site for free, by talking the real estate agent into donating the land. The party is raging until the tiny piano player (Stan Little) steps out for a break. He goes upstairs to invite Miss Maroni to the party and finds her dead. The cops arrive soon after, and the plot becomes an investigation. It's not a whodunit, because we already know the culprit. It's more of a "will he get away with it", and does he have an accomplice? Well, he does not, but he does have an obnoxious man - a circus agent - who tries to blackmail him, because he knows that Sapolio saw someone entering the apartment, and he puts two and two together and figures it was Stanton, who arrived late to the party. This blackmailer keeps pushing his luck until he turns up dead later on.

But it isn't because of the blackmail. Stanton was prepared to pay him the money. It's because the blackmailer took things a step too far and kidnapped Pel Pelham's wife (Honor Blackman). He takes her for a joyride and tells her to tell her husband to lay off, because by now, Pelham is cooperating with the police, and if they catch Stanton, it will mean no more money for the blackmailer. This is all tightly wound around the carnival atmosphere of The Starving Man, who's later found dead in his Glass Tomb, the victim of a poisoned piece of ham, which somebody gave him through the mail slot. But who would sneak him a piece of poisoned food? Mr. Stanton, that's who. He can't have Sapolio talking to the police.

It's all stylishly done, with exceptional Noir photography, a great set for The Starving Man, and good 1950s English locations. The only problem is that the motivations of the killer and his blackmailers are not spelled out very clearly. John Ireland is great, as is Honor Blackman in a small role as his wife. There are characters galore, but the movie focuses on the colorful personalities of the circus people rather than on the intricacies of the plot. It is intricate, and there's a ton of stuff going on, but not enough is done to explain things, so at the end, when the killer is caught (after a ruse involving the alleged death of Sapolio), you are left wondering "why did he kill the girl in the first place? He's not the guy who was getting blackmailed." That would be the bookie at the beginning of the movie. I had to read an IMDB comment to find out that the killer was in cahoots with the blackmailing gal. He was her partner, and he killed her to prevent her from talking, after Pelham visited her and she agreed to stop blackmailing.

A script this complex needs more than an hour to be worked out, so we never get the exposition needed to fully understand what's going on. Still, the Joseph Losey atmosphere more than makes up for it (some say he directed, uncredited), along with John Ireland's performance and the wide variety of supporting players. Two Big Thumbs Up, then, for "The Glass Tomb". It's highly recommended, the picture is razor sharp and wide-screen and everything is excellent as long as you don't mind the confusion.  ////

As for the previous night's film, how about a Sci-Fi Western? In "Ghost Patrol"(1936), Tim McCoy plays a government agent who's trying to find out what's causing treasury planes to crash over Chatsworth Park. We in the audience know it's a Death Ray, an EMP pulse coming from a scientist's lab below his house. Shades of Bela Lugosi in "The Invisible Ray", which also came out in 1936. In this movie, the scientist invented it for the military to use against enemy aircraft in the event of war, but some crooks have taken him hostage and are forcing him to use the pulse to stop the engines of treasury planes. They do this to Tim McCoy and he bails out before his plane crashes near Rocky Peak. After he gathers his parachute, he sees the crooks riding over to examine the wreckage of his plane, in which they find some valuable gubment bonds.

Next we see McCoy driving a motorcar with his sidekick "Henry" (James P. Burtis) in tow. They come across a pretty lass (Claudia Dell) standing by the roadside on Devonshire Street (which was a dirt road in those days), and after she shows him her hitchhiking technique, he gives her a ride to the Brent house, where her father the scientist (Lloyd Ingraham) lives. At first, McCoy doesn't trust her or her Dad, because he figures Dad is shooting the planes down of his own accord.

But then in town he meets some henchmen, who tell him to get out of town by sundown or else. Now he figures something is up at the Brent house and doubles back. Though the direction is brisk, the writing is poor in this film and nothing is developed. There's no memorable villain. More should've been done with the scientist and his death ray, but too much time is spent riding around in the Chatsworth Hills, in cars and on horseback. It still gets Two Solid Thumbs up, because Tim McCoy is great as always (and he's becoming another of our favorites), and there's a good finale when he chases the crooks into a mine shaft. But yeah, a great premise needed some much better writing. It isn't one of Sam Newfield's better efforts, but if you're like me, it's still worth seeing, because it's Tim McCoy, it's Chatsworth, and it's Sam Newfield.

I'll take that over a modern movie any day.  ////

That's all I know for tonight. I hope your week is off to a good start. I'm listening to National Health and reading my ELP book. I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)  

Marshall Thompson in "Dial 1119", and "Ghost Town" starring Harry Carey

Last night we watched a psychological Noir called "Dial 1119"(1950), in which a murderer escapes from an institution for the criminally insane. Marshall Thompson stars as "Gunther Wyckoff", the nutjob in question. After busting out of the booby hatch, he takes the bus back to the greyhound terminal in L.A. and heads for the MGM back lot, where he attempts to see the psychiatrist (Sam Levene) whose testimony put him away for life. But the doc isn't home, so he walks over to the nearest bar, where "Chuckles" (William Conrad) is tending to a small group of regulars, including the soused "Freddy" (Virginia Field). It's only 1950, but Chuckles already has a futuristic flat screen wall TV, 36 by 48 inches. All he can get are wrestling matches though, and he hates the thing. He only turns it on for the customers, and he basically thinks humanity is scum; the curse of the bartender who's heard too many stories.

Suddenly, the wrestling match is interrupted by a police bulletin. Gunther Wyckoff is thought to be in the area and is armed and dangerous. He's already killed a bus driver. If you should see him, dial the title of the movie! Chuckles tries to do just that, and Wyckoff plugs him. Then he tells the patrons to sit down against the wall and shut up, and from here, the movie becomes one of those "lives converge" stories where everyone reacts to the crisis according to their life history and personal psychology. Fortunately, it's not an extreme example of that format (which is easily overdone), and the focus remains on Wyckoff, who is as quietly psycho as a psycho can get. I mean, he is just plain cuckoo, but completely withdrawn to the point of catatonia, until he starts talking about the war and what he went through when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. It's some spooky, gripping stuff, and he concludes his spiel by saying "I didn't care about the medal!", which leads you to assume he's a Purple Heart awardee who later had a nervous breakdown.

The police eventually find out where he is when a patrolman happens by and Wyckoff shoots him, but he escapes. The news then shows up with a big TV truck and it turns into a standoff. Wyckoff calls the pharmacy across the street to get the lead detective on the phone, and he tells him he's gonna start shooting his hostages if they don't get his shrink in there to talk to him. The cops wanna use the air duct system to get to Wyckoff (this is depicted in a very realistic way), but the shrink pleads for a chance to talk to him and it's finally granted.

Wyckoff then shoots him dead, after he exposes Wyckoff's big secret in an attempt at on-the-spot psychoanalysis. The secret is a humongous plot twist, and leads to the conclusion of the film, which is not developed beyond the hostage drama. The characters in the bar are thinly sketched : there's a young bartender whose wife is having a baby, an older man (Leon Ames) who is trying to hit on a woman who lives with her disabled mother. She's prim-and-proper and is only in the bar to try and live a little. There's a newspaperman, who was about to quit his job at the beginning of the movie and now has a potential scoop, if he can get out alive. And, there's the alcoholic Freddy, who must have downed a dozen drinks even before Gunther Wyckoff showed up (it would be fun to count how many she has in the whole movie. I'm betting at least twenty).

The main draw is Marshall Thompson's performance, which is truly spooky and reminds one of the sullen, angry character played by Tim Robbins (who Thompson resembles) in "Arlington Road". But it's the other way around, and I'll bet Robbins based his performance on Marshall Thompson. He's crazier than a hoot owl in this movie and mighty scary. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Dial 1119", it's highly recommended and the picture is razor sharp. ////

The previous night we found another legendary Western actor who's a new discovery for us: Harry Carey, one of the first and biggest cowboy stars in the Silent era. We talked about Tim McCoy being born a dozen years before Johnny Mack Brown and Tom Tyler, and figured that was a big deal. Well, Harry Carey was born in 1878, a bakers dozen before Tim McCoy! He started out making shorts for DW Griffith in 1910. I mean, we're talking early cinema here. By that time, he was already 32 years old, and by the time he made "Ghost Town"(1936), he was 58 and had 200 films under his belt. Though he has a craggy face and a smoker's baritone voice, he's still thin and in shape in this movie, agile on a horse and looking sharp in a tailored all-black outfit and black oversized hat. You can see why he was a huge star and he presaged the more laconic cowboys like John Wayne and (cue the choir) RANN-daw-holph Scott! - loners who were badass and didn't try to charm.

In "Ghost Town", the plot combines Westerns and Crime Films. It's Cowboys vs. Gangsters, as two elderly mine owners are being harassed by three hoodlums in a car, who want to steal their mine. The hoods also find out about 10 grand in cash that is being carried by the mine owner's partner across the country in an old jalopy. The cash is going to be used to finance the restart of their "Ghost Town", which they originally built with the profits of the mine. When the mine ran dry, the town died out. But now they've discovered a mother lode, with the help of their young assistant "Bud" (David Sharpe), and their fortunes are looking bright again. The hoodlums won't let up, though. They find a spot in the road at Brandeis Ranch where the old guy in the jalopy is sure to pass by, and they block it with a tree trunk. When he's forced to stop, they shoot it out and wound him. His car goes over a cliff as he tries to escape, and they think he's dead. Later, when they get down into the ravine, they search his car and can't find the ten thousand bucks. That's because Harry Carey got there first. He actually met the old guy on the road before the crooks ambushed him. When he finds him near death, he hides the guy in a mine tunnel and secures the 10 grand for him. The crooks - frustrated at not finding the money - decide to frame Carey for the murder of the old man. They get the Sheriff, who locks Carey up after discovering the 10K in his pocket. Now the crooks are trying to find the cash in the Sheriff's house, where he's hidden it in his bookcase. Bud the young mining assistant is guarding it with a rifle. He sends the Sheriff's daughter (who's also his girlfriend) over to the jail to bring Carey a meal, but Carey escapes and goes after the crooks who framed him. He also gets a doctor to go look after the old jalopy driver, who is still hidden, wounded, in the mine tunnel.

We've mentioned cowboy stars who are action heroes versus ones who are good actors but not as physical. Harry Carey is perhaps the original action hero, and maintains what I assume was his youthful vigor here, at 58. He can ride a horse and climb rocks like the younger stars, but he doesn't play nice like our other favorites (JMB, Tyler, Crabbe). Carey is taciturn but has a look and onscreen charisma that make up for his lack of charm. There's no romance or comic relief in "Ghost Town", no diversions to the saloon or plot twists. It's just the hoods in their car trying to rob the mine owners, but it's jam packed with gun-totin', fast riding action. We'll be watching a lot of Harry Carey movies (and man, we're on what seems like an endless Western kick!), but we'll have to slot 'em in between all the other greats we're discovering. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Ghost Town". It's highly recommended and the picture is very good. //// 

That's all for tonight. I'm gonna go for my walk. I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Mary Pickford and Johnny Mack Brown in "Coquette", and "Branded a Coward" starring Johnny Mack Brown

Last week I was looking over the filmography of Johnny Mack Brown, because after we saw him in the outstanding "Cross Streets", I wondered what else he had done as a traditional leading man. One of the films I found was an early talkie called "Coquette"(1929), in which JMB played the love interest to Mary Pickford, who won the second Best Actress Oscar ever awarded, for her role as "Norma Besant", a flirtatious young woman who finds her true love. I thought, "you know, of all the hundreds of movies we've watched, with thousands of actors, we've never seen Mary Pickford". She was the first superstar actress, known as "America's Sweetheart", and she also was one of the founders of United Artists studio. Simply put, there is no more legendary a figure in Hollywood history than Mary Pickford, and yet we had never seen her, mostly because we don't do a lot of Silent films here at the blog (although I watch several a year myself, and we may have to start reviewing them once in a while). I have to admit to being lame in my duties as a self-appointed film historian, because I wasn't aware that Pickford made any talkies, but when I saw the listing for "Coquette", I made a mental note to watch it, not only because of Mary and her Oscar winning performance, but also because of Johnny Mack, who was a talented leading man before becoming a Western star. I was distracted for a few days by my apartment repairs, but tonight I finally watched it, and it was tremendous.

Norma Besant is an upper class Southern belle, the daughter of a doctor (John St. Polis) who dotes on her. Her mother died 12 years earlier, her mother figure is her Black nanny "Julia" (the great Louise Beavers). Norma is a daddy's girl, she calls him "honey precious" (in the early 20th century tradition of young girls who address Dad as if he were a boyfriend), and she has a bevy of young men at her beck and call, one of whom is the nerdy, steady-but-boring "Stanley Wentworth" (Matt Moore), who loves her but it isn't reciprocal. Norma is really in love with "MIchael Jeffery" (Johnny Mack Brown), a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Dad considers him white trash and doesn't want Norma seeing him, especially after he gets into a fistfight with another man who insults her honor. Streetfighting is lowbrow to Dad, even though Michael was sticking up for Norma, who has a reputation for being loose. Michael wants to marry her. Nice boy Stanley understands that Michael and Norma are in love, so he steps aside and tries to mediate between the couple and Dad, who hates Michael's guts. Michael has his pride, even though he's poor, and he stands up to Dad's lectures and put downs. He tells Dad, "you can't stop me from marrying Norma. I'm going to work hard and save money. You may not think much of my people, but we have honor". Then he tells Norma he won't see her for six months, while he works to save the money to marry her.

But then the fall dance comes up at the rich folks' country club, and Michael can't resist making an appearance. He hides in the bushes, but Stanley spots him. Stanley is a genuinely good guy who was supposed to be Norma's fiancee (arranged by Dad of course), but he knows Norma loves Michael, so he tries to help them. He tells Norma that Michael is waiting for her outside the dance hall, on the lawn. Norma goes out there to see him, and he talks her into leaving the dance and going with him up to his family's cabin in the hills. "I know I said six months, but I just couldn't wait, I had to see you". He says he just wants to talk : "My mother will be home anyway". But when they get there, Mom isn't home, and in the aftermath, the insinuation is that Michael has gotten Norma pregnant. This is hard core stuff for 1929. When Norma and her brother don't come home from the dance until 4am, Dad is furious. He finds out the truth about where she went, then he leaves the house with his gun to find Michael Jeffery. A struggle ensues and he shoots Michael. I'm afraid that's all I can reveal about the plot, but there's a lot more left and it's heavy duty melodrama! I was surprised to hear the word "damned" in the dialogue, and also "damnable". I always thought that Clark Gable was the first one to use that word in a movie, but I'll be damned if I didn't hear it twice. Watch for yourself and see.

I was amazed at what a great actress Mary Pickford was. Her performance is a little histrionic and stagey, but remember that 1929 was the first year of sound; she was used to using exaggeration for her performances in the Silent era. But she's phenomenal here and deserves her Oscar. Watch her in a scene with Louise Beavers as "Julia" the nanny, when she curls up in Julia's lap and weeps like a child. It's real, naked emotion that the great actresses of today would have a hard time pulling off. Also fantastic is John St. Polis as her Dad. He was an early actor (born 1873) who came up on the stage, but here he shows the restraint of a tremendous film actor, playing inward for the camera in a performance of pure realism. Finally, Johnny Mack Brown once again shows why he could've - and should've - been bigger than Clark Gable, if MGM hadn't given up on him. He's got the looks and raw talent to go head-to-head with seasoned actors like Mary Pickford and John St. Polis, even though he was a football star just four years earlier.

This film should've cleaned up in all the acting categories, and the script is very frank in it's examination of an unplanned pregnancy, before marriage, which was a big no-no in 1929. Wow, what a shocker, and what an ending. Remember that I haven't told you about the last third of the movie. "Coquette" gets our highest rating, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. The print has been restored but it's still slightly damaged in places. Still, it's a must-see, and we'll be looking for more from the great Mary Pickford. ////  

The previous night, we saw Johnny Mack as "Johnny Hume", in "Branded a Coward"(1935), a Western directed by our pal Sam Newfield. The movie opens when he's a boy, traveling through the Arizony desert with his family. They stop to make camp and are ambushed by a gang of robbers. His Dad, Ma and older brother are all killed. Little Johnny only survives by hiding in some scrub brush, and he is traumatized. Fast forward twenty years, and he's now a sharpshooter cowboy in a rodeo act. Some of the macho locals hate him, though, because they think he's all flash. "He runs when there's a real gunfight", says one beer-bellied ranch hand. The criticism makes him wanna leave town, but one man stands up for him, a stutterer named "Oscar" (Syd Saylor) who becomes his champion. Johnny makes Oscar his sidekick, and the stuttering is played for comic relief, but they overdo it.

The local Wells Fargo office is suffering a string of stage robberies, and they need a new Marshal because the one they've got is drunk and elderly. After Johnny stands up to a bunch of tough guys in the saloon, the townsfolk wanna make him the Marshal. He declines at first because he's worried about being gun shy. He's still traumatized by the murder of his family as a child. But when Oscar talks up his bravery in stopping a stage robbery, he takes the offer and becomes Marshal. Now the town wants him to stop all the robberies, which are being carried out by someone who calls himself "The Cat". That's the film's big mystery: who is The Cat? I can guarantee that you'll never guess. There's a minor romance involving actress Billie Seward as the daughter of the drunken Sheriff. He doesn't want Johnny seeing her because he's embarrassed that Johnny took over his job. It would've been nice if they'd explored this thread a little more, but then the old man is killed in a showdown when he challenges Johnny. It's a classic Western frame job because Johnny was shooting at his gun hand, but the bullet hit the old man in the heart. Henchman Frank McCarroll, working for The Cat, made the kill shot from the windum of a nearby building, but yeah, the romance takes a back seat to the stuttering exploits of Oscar, and while Syd Saylor is good in the role, and likable, a little goes a long way with the stuttering gimmick. There are punchouts, shootouts, horse chases through the desert and stunts galore, including a great cliff jump into the river by Yakima Canutt, who also has a small role as a henchman.

This is one of those more serious Johnny Mack Brown roles, because he was traumatized by the murder of his family, so he has to show weakness as an adult gunslinger. But remember, JMB had big time acting chops, so he pulls it off with aplomb. There's an unspoken acknowledgement to the factor of the contemporary western. Billie Seward is shown wearing stylish 1930s clothes and a beret. There are no other indications we aren't in the Old West, no motorcars ala Tom Tyler, so I think in this case it was just a wink-and-a-nod gimmick, to bring women into the theater. Anyhow, Two Big Thumbs Up for "Branded a Coward. Filmed in the Arizony desert (that's how Syd Saylor says it), it's highly recommended and the picture is very good. 

That's all I know for tonight. After three days, I finally have my apartment put back together, with improved Feng Schway. But man, I wanna live in a house. At least I have CSUN for a backyard, so that's a blessing, but I need more space I tell ya. I'm gonna go for my walk now, on what feels like a Summer night. I hope you have a nice weekend and I send you Tons of Love, as always!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Tim McCoy in "Code of the Cactus" and "The Glory Trail" starring Tom Keene

I am back in my apartment tonight, and actually I've been back since yesterday afternoon. They finished the ceiling repair a day earlier than expected, so I only spent one night in the empty apartment, then yesterday I had to move all my stuff back to my unit, which is very tiny, so it was a job and a half to begin putting everything back in place, and I'm still not done. You know those companies like Closet World that say they will organize your closets and get your clutter all squared away? Well, I am the master of closet organisation, and have taken it to another level because I have a lifetime of stuff in a studio apartment, and it was as neat and squared away as I could possibly make it, considering how small my living space is. So, when I had to move everything out for the ceiling work, it was like undoing a Rubik's Cube's worth of well-organized stuff, and now I'm in the process of putting it all back together. There's been a lot of dust to deal with, too, because since 2014 I more or less lived at Pearl's, and only used my apartment on afternoon breaks and when I was off work. Anyway, my reason for saying all of this is because the movie reviews are a little short this time. I apologize, and will be back to the normal length reviews by the next blog.

Last night, we found another new Western star : Tim McCoy, who was born in 1891, over a dozen years earlier than Johnny Mack Brown and Tom Tyler. McCoy's career goes back to the Silent era, and he also fought in World War One! In "Code of the Cactus"(1939), he plays "Lighting Bill Carson", a noted gunman who is bidding for a ranch at auction. The ranch is being rustled - by men in trucks! This is another comtemporaneous Western, and at the beginning of the movie there's a wanted dead or alive offer from the ranch owner for the capture of the rustlers, who are led by Ted Adams (naurally). He's got a boss above him who calls the shots, the usual big shot land owner who stands behind the scenes. What happens is that Lightning Bill goes undercover as "Miguel", a Mexican Bandito who is a one-man rustling gang. He's so fast with a gun (as Tim McCoy apparently was in real life) that Ted Adam's gang doesn't stand a chance in a shootout. So, Adams agrees to let Miguel in on the rustling. It's a play act on Lighting Bill's part, because he's trying to find the head honcho of the rustlers, the guy above Ted Adams. McCoy is great, and has comedic talent, which he shows in his guise as Miguel. He's pushing 50 here, his hair is thinning, and though he's handsome, he doesn't quite have the chiseled matinee idol looks of Tom Tyler or Johnny Mack. What he does have is an engaging personality, which he uses to maximum advantage, whether as Miguel the Bandito or Lighting Bill Carson.

The movie is all about rustlers in trucks, and Carson's attempt to stop them. There's no romance in this one, but there is a fine cowboy song, sung by Art Davis. Needless to say, we'll be looking for more from Tim McCoy. "Code of the Cactus" gets Two Big Thumbs Up. It's great stuff, shot at Iverson Ranch and Burro Flats, which later became the Santa Susana Field Lab. The picture this time was razor sharp, so be sure to give it a view. ////

The previous night, we saw "The Glory Trail"(1936), a more traditional Western in the serious mode, starring Tom Keene (the Tom Brady of Westerns). The movie tells the story of the US Cavalry's attempts to deliver ammunition to outpost forts, across the territory of Chief Red Cloud and the Sioux Nation. The Army has an understanding with Red Cloud, that as long as their wagon train keeps moving and doesn't encroach on his land or try any funny business, they will have safe passage. But then, as they are making one such delivery of ammo, they come across a troop of Confederate Army rebels, led by Captain Morgan (Keene), who are still fighting even though the war is over. The Cavalry captain has to decide whether to chase after the Rebs or continue with the ammo supply run. If he fights the Rebels on Red Cloud's turf, he'll be risking a war with the Sioux also. It's a great story that features a lot of subthemes, such as one involving the emancipated slave "Mandy Johnson", who has chosen to remain with her "white family". Mandy is played by Ettie McDaniel, the sister of Oscar winner Hattie, with whom she she shares both acting talent and a strong resemblance. Then there is "Toby", a black man fighting for the Confederates out of loyalty to his master, Captain Morgan. It's a complex plot, which turns when Captain Morgan's Lieutenant (who's also his best friend), goes on an unauthorised raid against the Sioux. He's caught after his sword is found at the massacre site, and he's executed for war crimes. But, we later find out he didn't do it. His fiancee (Captain Morgan's sister) dies of a gunshot wound fired by an Indian at the end of the movie. In that way, she and the Lieutenant are reunited in death. This is good stuff, and although Tom Keene doesn't make for the same kind of action hero as Tom Tyler and Johnny Mack Brown, he's nonetheless very good in the leading role. "The Glory Trail" is a historical Western in the tradition of many of the A-List films of the genre, and as I watched I was thinking, "you know, I never noticed it before, but in the 60 minutes Westerns we've been watching, with JMB and TT and Buster Crabbe, et al, there haven't been any Indians in the stories. It's all been Cowboys & Crooks. I wonder what the reason for that is? Maybe to keep things light for the Saturday Afternoon Matinee crowd. You couldn't do comic relief in a Cowboys & Indians movie because of the serious subject matter. Well anyhow, Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Glory Trail". The picture is very good and it's highly recommended. ////

That's all for tonight. I hope you are having a good week. Can you believe that Spring is almost here? My goodness. 

I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

A Tom Tyler Twin Bill : "Brothers of the West", and "The Phantom of the Range"

Okay, I'm in the empty apartment and we have liftoff. The wi-fi is working, so the blog is on schedule (pron). Tonight''s movie (last night by the time you read this), was "Brothers of the West"(1937), starring Tom Tyler as "Tom Wade", a range detective whose brother "Ed" (Bob Terry) is accused of murdering a bank president. As the movie opens, we see the real killers in action, two crooks are following the bank president on the dusty trail up at Brandeis Ranch in Chatsworth. They shoot him and take his money, and it just so happens that Ed Wade, a local cowhand, is riding around and hears the shot. He rides over, and a third thugs hits him on the head with his rifle, and when he comes to, he's being framed for the murder of the banker.

Then the scene shifts to a law office in town, where Tom Wade (Tyler), Ed's detective brother, is sent out to investigate the murder. He's wearing a three piece suit, so once again Tyler is setting the pace for contemporary Westerns, with cars and city slickers. Tom visits the Sheriff to get some background on the case, and the Sheriff tells him it doesn't look good for brother Ed. "He's on the lam, I'm afraid. And they found his gun at the murder site". But Ed isn't on the lam, it just looks that way because the real killers kidnapped him and are holding him in a shack out in the boondocks. While Tom Wade is talking to the Sheriff, a hobo named "Jake" (Tiny Lipson) pipes up from one of the cells. He's complaining about not being able to serve his full sentence for vagrancy. The Sheriff is gonna let him out of jail early for good behavior, but Jake wants more time in jail, not less, because he's a hobo. "I like it here", he tells the Sheriff, who makes him a deal. "Okay Jake, I'll tell you what: you can stay as long as you want, if you'll help Detective Wade here investigate this murder. I'm going to deputize you, and you do whatever Mr. Wade says, is it a deal?" Jake is thrilled to be able to stay in jail, so he takes the offer, and his attempt at police work provides the comic relief. I will have to watch this film again in a week or two. I was distracted because I had to move a lot of my stuff into the empty apartment last night (see the previous blog for details), but suffice it to say that, if it's a Tom Tyler movie, it automatically rates Two Big Thumbs Up. Remind me to do a more thorough review when things settle down here.

The previous night we saw Tom Tyler in "The Phantom of the Range"(1936). As the movie opens, three men are trying to locate a buried treasure, the hidden fortune of miser "Hiram Moore" (John Elliott), who buried his gold on his ranch before he died. The crooks have a fourth man working with them. He rides around at night with a sheet over his head and is supposed to be the ghost of Hiram Moore. The thieves spread the legend of the ghost around town, and the people believe it. That keeps everyone away from the Moore Ranch, and their dig sites, which are out by the Tower Rocks at Alabama Hills. Well, the next thing you know, we see a gal in the desert yelling for water. She's stylishly dressed, in 1930s clothes, and it sounds like she dying of thirst, but when Tom Tyler rides up and offers her his canteen, the shot cuts to an overheated motorcar, and here we go again. It's yet another contemporary Tom Tyler Western (we need David Lynch to say, "and if yoooooooooooooou can believe it, it's a Friday once again!). The gal pours the entire contents of the canteen into the car's radiator, which Tyler doesn't find amusing. This is of course to set up the friction that always leads to romance in the movies.

Tom then rides off to talk to the local real estate agent. He wants to buy a ranch and he's loaded with dough, but then he hears about the auction of the Moore property. It seems that old Hiram didn't pay his property taxes and the Sheriff is trying to re-alicecoop his losses. Well, the gold diggers haven't found their buried treasure yet, so they go to the auction also, to see if old Hiram maybe hid the gold in his furniture, or on the back of a painting. They bid on an oil portrait of him, and Tyler -seeing their interest - outbids em for 500 dollars. 500 bucks was a lot of dough even now for an oil painting, and Hiram's granddaughter is there too. She's the gal with the overheated car. She wonders why Tom bid so much (she was bidding too), and he tells her : "I was just trying to outbid those other men. I wondered why they wanted the painting so badly".

He tries to give her the painting as a  present but she thinks it's a pickup attempt on Tyler's part and gets mad. This leads to more romantic friction, until they decide to team up to save the ranch. Tom buys the entire spread for 2500 semolians. He hires Moore's granddaughter to be his secretary. They find an English butler who turns out to be a closet thief. He also sings and plays the piano and provides the comic relief. They also hire a superstitious Mexican maid who's afraid of Hiram Moore's ghost. Or is she?

We hear the three bad guys talking in the saloon, and they talk about "having a friend" inside the ranch house. They mean the maid, who's part of a rival ranch owner's crooked empire. She's just pretending to be afraid of ghosts. Really, she's spying on Tom Tyler and the granddaughter when they aren't home. Now, the English butler can't control his kleptomania, and has pried apart the picture frame of the oil portrait, to look for a spindled map showing where the treasure is. In the saloon, the bad guy who's been playing "the ghost" with the sheet on, hears the other two bad guys talking about splitting up the gold without giving him his cut. He threatens to tell Tyler what they're up to, so ranch foreman "Graydo" (Charles King) shoots him dead. Tyler finds him, and of course he's leaning over the body when the Sheriff and Graydo ride up. Graydo says "He's the man who shot Tex"! Of course, it's a classic western frame up. Well, now Tom has to hide out in the rocks til the coast is clear, but by now the crooks are headed for the ranch house to steal the painting.

A lengthy punchout ensues when Tyler shows up, with him and the English butler on one side, and Graydo, the thugs and the Mexican maid on the other. It's another tremendous Tom Tyler Western, this time with a supernatural twist. Beth Marion is sweet as Hiram Moore's granddaughter. Charles King looks like Pat Buchanan, and was a great Western bad guy in the tradition of Harry Woods and Ted Adams. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Phantom of the Range". I apologize for the rushed nature of tonight's blog, but I literally had to move 60 percent of my belongings out of my apartment so they could make the required ceiling repairs. I'll be moving everything back on Wednesday afternoon, and it's gonna be a chore to get everything in place, but I'll make sure we have a blog, so stay tuned.

I hope your week is off to a good start, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)    

Johnny Mack Brown in "Undercover Man", and "The Laramie Kid" starring Tom Tyler

Last night, we saw Johnny Mack Brown in "Undercover Man"(1936), in which he shows a tougher, more cynical side to his character. JMB usually displays that Alabammy charm to everyone, even the criminals he's shooting it out with, but in this movie he's a little more blunt in his dealings. As the movie opens, he's riding the stage into town, sitting across from the beautiful "Linda Forbes"(Suzanne Kaaren, one of the original Rockettes). He tries making conversation but can't get a word out of her, so he pulls out his harmonica and starts playing. That makes her laugh and they get acquainted, but then there's an attempted robbery when four masked men ride up and demand the strongbox. As "Steve McLain", Johnny Mack shows himself to be handy with a shootin' iron and plugs two of the bandits. Then he stops off in Linda's town to alert the Sheriff to what happened.

When he he gets there, the stage driver exalts his courage. "If it wasn't for Mr. McLain here, we'd a lost the strongbox". He's lauded by "Ace Pringle" (Ted Adams) the owner of the saloon, but then the Sheriff looks in McLain's bag and finds a whole mess of badges. Steve's a lawman! And the Sheriff is a crook (of course). It turns out that he's in the pocket of Ace the saloon owner, and are you surprised that there would be a crooked Sheriff in a 60 minute western? The Sheriff and Ace are behind all the stage robberies, but every time they try to kill Steve McLain, something goes drastically wrong. They try to shoot him, hang him, drug his beer, you name it. There's a hilarious bit when the Sheriff is supposed to set him up for an ambush, but the gunman gets caught in a canvas tent. You have to see it to know why it's funny, but you can trust me that it is.

There isn't a developed plot, and Suzanne Kaaren's character doesn't seem to have a central conflict. There's no father figure to disapprove of Johnny Mack, or romantic rival to steal her away. The script focuses on the Sheriff and Ace against Steve McLain, and each side's attempts to get the strongbox, so in that sense it's a thin script, but the direction is top notch, making this one of the best JMBs we've seen so far (they're all the best). Many fans feel, and I agree, that he was the #1 cowboy star of the movies, even higher than John Wayne. Wayne was made for a later era. But as we have discovered, the best Westerns were the early ones, and Johnny Mack Brown is the king of the early Western era (with Tom Tyler a close second). For comic relief in "Undercover Man", there's "Dizzy" (Frank Darien), Steve's accordion playing sidekick. Ted Adams is his usual Snidely Whiplash self as Ace Pringle, evil personified. It's mentioned early on that Suzanne Kaaren is the judge's daughter, but there's almost no follow-up to that subtheme. She's always shown alone or with Steve. There's very little character development other than what I mentioned, but it's still one of the best of the JMB Westerns and I give it Two Big Thumbs Up. Give it a look and see why. With beautiful location footage from Kern River, it's very highly recommended and the picture is a little soft but not bad. ////

The previous night, we watched Tom Tyler again, in "The Laramie Kid"(1935), another 20th century Western with cars in it. Was Tyler the only one who made these? Here he plays "Tom Talbot", who goes to see his girl "Peggy Bland" (Alberta Vaughan) at the beginning of the movie. She's hoping they'll get married, but Tom has gambled away all of his savings. Peggy is broken hearted, though Tom's lack of fiscal responsibility isn't her only trouble. The bank is about to foreclose on her Dad's ranch, unless Peggy will play sweet with the banker, which Dad encourages her to do. Tom leaves the house before Dad (Murdock McQuarrie) gets home, because Dad doesn't like him anyway, but before he leaves, he vows to earn back the 2000 dollars he lost gambling, so he can marry Peggy like he promised. While he's outside hiding from Dad, he overhears that Dad and Peggy are gonna lose the ranch, which makes him vow to bail them out too. In addition, he told Peggy that he's gonna quit gambling.

Well, bad luck strikes when he rides into town, just as a bank robbery is happening. The robbers knock him down and he loses his hat. An old geezer I.D.'s it as belonging to Tom, so the Sheriff thinks he was in on the robbery. He's tried, convicted and sentenced to five years on a work gang. Here's where we know we're in the 20th century because they're constructing paved roads with tractors. Peggy visits him in jail and promises to find the real robbers. On the work gang, Tom meets an old pal named "Shorty" (Snub Pollard), who tells him that a guy up in Black Rock Canyon is bragging about committing the bank robbery. There's a shack up there owned by the banker, and it turns out that he's behind the robbery of his own bank! He set it up to cover the fact that his bank was in arrears. When it's robbed, he can blame the losses on the robbery. What a colossal crook! But now that Peggy is hot on the trail, riding up to Black Rock Canyon to find the robber, he's gotta shut her down, even though he tried to bargain for her as "collateral" for her Dad's ranch, earlier in the movie.

While Tom is working on the road gang, several escape attempts are made by other prisoners. In one of these attempts, Tom happens to be driving a truck, and the prisoners force him to be their getaway driver. Now it looks like he was trying to escape, too, and he's gonna get years added to his sentence, so he figures he might as well escape for real and help Peggy catch the bank robbers. Well, by this time, the guy in Black Rock Canyon at the shack is in bad shape from being shot during the bank robbery. Peggy finds him and he's coughing up blood. He doesn't have long to live so he confesses everything. He tells her about the crooked banker, he tells her that Tom had nothing to do with it. But just then the banker rides up with his henchmen and catches her talking to the robber. Even though he wanted her when the movie began, now he has to kill her so she wan't talk, but Tom and Dad and the Sheriff all ride to the rescue for what turns out to be a whale of a grand finale. This is great, great stuff folks. Filmed in Santa Clarita, I recognized Rice Canyon and Placerita, and maybe even Whitney Canyon too. Life should be one big 60 minute Western, doncha think, and how great would it have been if they made one starring both Johnny Mack Brown and Tom Tyler, and with a Zane Grey script! Man oh man, I tell ya. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Laramie Kid". The print is a tad soft but quite watchable. ////

That's all I have for tonight. The next blog might be one or two days late; here's why. In my building, they've been doing repair work on the ceilings of all the units. My turn has come up, so starting Monday, I have to temporarily stay in the vacant unit next door for three days. I'll be taking my essentials with me (food, books, my computer, etc), but the thing is, I don't know if my wi-fi will work in there. If it does, I'll write the blog as usual, and I'll also be able to watch movies. But if the wi-fi doesn't work, the blog will be delayed to Wednesday night, and the only time I'll be online is at FB for an hour at the library. Hopefully the wi-fi will work, so check back to look for a blog at the regularly scheduled time (pronounced shedge-yooled). If it's not there, it will definitely be up on Wednesday night.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend, and I send you Tons and Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)  

Douglas Dumbrille, Sidney Toler and Russell Hayden in "Mark of the Avenger", and "Orphan of the Pecos" starring Tom Tyler

Last night, we found another Zane Grey entitled "Mark of the Avenger"(1938), a complex Western with a layered plot. Let me see if I've got it all straight. As the movie opens, a stage is robbed in the Arizona desert by "Pecos Bill" (Douglas Dumbrille) and his partner "Frosty" (the great Sidney Toler, known for Charlie Chan). I guess Pecos Bill is an all purpose name for Zane Grey, because he uses it at random for different characters in various movies. Anyway, one of the guys Pecos robs is a passenger named "Jack Bellounds" (Weldon Heyburn), an ornery young man who tells Pecos "you'll be sorry you robbed me". Why? Because he's the son of the local ranch owner, "William Bellounds" (Stanley Andrews), a town big shot. Sonny Boy Jack is returning from a stint in prison. Dad Bellounds wants to keep it quiet, so he gives his boy a job at the ranch. The next thing you know, who should show up but Pecos Bill and Frosty, under assumed names and without their masks on (oh, the Covid horror!)

Pecos wants the ranch, but not in the way you'd think. He's not trying to steal it, but we find this out slowly. He and Frosty get jobs, through "Collie" (Charlotte Field) the adopted daughter of Mr. Bellounds. Pecos is attentive to Collie; Frosty says "why, you're old enough to be her father!" More on that later. Collie gives Frosty the job as ranch cook, which makes for much mirth at the hands of Sidney Toler, who's responsible for comic relief. Meanwhile, someone is rustling cattle at the ranch. Soon, we find out it's Jack Bellounds, under the direction of his Dad. But why would the ranch owner rustle his own cattle, you ask? Well, he's under the control of "Cap Folsom" (Monte Blue), the local hotelier, and if there's anyone in these movies who has more criminal power than the ranch owner, or the assayer, it's always the hotelier. In fact, let's do a quick Bad Guy Hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the top: henchman, ranch foreman, sheriff, assayer, ranch owner, land office agent, hotelier.

So yeah, the hotelier is really behind the rustling scheme. He's just using Mr. Bellounds as a front man. "Wils Moore" (Russell Hayden) steps in to try and stop the rustling, because he's the head cowpuncher at the ranch, but Jack Bellounds doesn't like him for two reasons: 1) Because Collie thinks he's handsome, and 2) Jack is doing all the rustling. Meanwhile, Pecos Bill gets closer to Collie, when he becomes the dog handler at the ranch. She admires how good he is with the dogs; previous handlers mistreated them and Pecos doesn't do that. The big reveal comes when we learn that Pecos is Collie's father. His real name is Ben Wade. He used to own the ranch until his business partner was murdered. Wade was framed for the murder by Mr. Bellounds, his foreman at the time, who took over the ranch but is really just a front man for Folsom the hotel owner. Folsom is the real killer of Ben Wade's partner. The frame job drove Wade underground, and he became "Pecos Bill". Ever since, he's been trying to get his ranch back so he could give it to Collie, who doesn't know he's her father.

Wils the cowpunch falls in love with Collie, and discovers Pecos Bill's secret. This aligns the men and they forge a pact to stop the rustling and expose Bellounds. They don't yet know that Folsom is controlling him. We've talked about the use of humor in these 60 minute Westerns;  Sidney Toler provides some of the best we've seen, due to his acting ability. He juggles several running jokes, having to do with his cooking skills and his many stints in jail, all hilarious, and his character is also good at throwing knives. Russell Hayden had the looks and the talent to be a major Western star, but he was more of the silent good guy type, maybe a little too inward in style to become as big as "Personality-Plus" actors such as Johnny Mack Brown or Tom Tyler. Still, his movies should be sought out, as theirs are. Well anyhow, I hope I sufficiently explained the plot. Finally, when Folsom is exposed, he shows his true colors by shooting Mr. Bellounds in the back. This forces son Jack to avenge his father, but Folsom's henchmen shoot him too, which leads to a final showdown in the desert between Pecos, Frosty and Wils on one side, and Folsom and his henchmen on the other. Here we see why Zane Grey's writing is a cut above. Not that we don't love our other Western scripts, which use hijinks in place of layering (because we love the heck out of those films) but with ZG, you get more of a major league plot. Anyway, nuff said. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Mark of the Avenger". It's highly recommended and the picture is very good. ////

The previous night, we saw Tom Tyler in "Orphan of the Pecos"(1937), a Western concurrent with it's release year. Now that's different! It's unusual to see any Western with automobiles driving around, but in this film, the car replaces the covered wagon for 20th Century snake oil salesman "Jeremiah Matthews" (Theodore Lorch), who sells bottles of something he calls "Kuro" (think "cure-all"), which is nothing more than bad corn whiskey. He happens to be driving along a dirt road when he runs into "Tom Rayburn" (Tom Tyler), who's headed into town to look for a job slingin' cattle. Rayburn buys a bottle of Kuro from Matthews, just to be a good sport, then he demonstrates his shootin' skills by throwing it in the air and pickin' it off, Kablammo! They both have a laugh and Rayburn rides into town and stops at the nearest ranch to ask about a job. Well, we already know he's gonna find a dead man there, because in the first scene, the ranch foreman came in and tried to rob the ranch owner. In their confrontation, we find out that the foreman wants to marry the owner's daughter, but the owner knows he's a crumbum who covets the ranch and also has a gambling problem. When the owner resists the robbery, the foreman shoots him dead, then flees with the money from the safe.

When Tom Rayburn shows up and finds the owner dead, his daughter arrives shortly thereafter with the foreman, who's doubled back so he can pin the murder on Rayburn. They find him hovering over the owner's body, and the foreman tries to make a citizens arrest. He even plants the stolen cash in Rayburn's pocket to frame him. But Rayburn gets the better of the foreman with a quick punch, then he rides off to try and find Jeremiah Matthews the snake oil salesman, the only man who can vouch for his alibi.

Meanwhile, the foreman is trying to convince the owner's daughter (who is now the "orphan" of the title) not to sell off the ranch, which she owns, now that her pa is dead. Tom Rayburn returns surreptitiously and tries to convince her he didn't commit the murder. It takes some doing, but when he explains everything, including the foreman's motivations, she sees the truth. In an aside, I noticed that in the years between "Deadwood Pass", the 1933 film that introduced us to Tom Tyler, and this movie, it appears that Tyler did some work on his voice, and maybe had some dialogue training. He speaks much more smoothly than he did in the earlier film, in the soft, modulated way of Johnny Mack Brown and Buster Crabbe.

This is a very, very low budget picture, and the script is not developed past what I've described. There's no comedy, or singing, or rom/com or henchman subplots. It's just Tom Tyler, and the foreman, and the daughter, and the Kuro salesman in his motorcar, with minor appearances from the town Sheriff and a few bit players. However, because everyone is so likable (except the foreman), the whole thing works. And, there's a huge twist that you'll never see coming. I mean, never in a million years will you see it coming. When it comes, you might - might - relate it to something that occurs much earlier in the film, when Tyler tricks the foreman in their original punchout. But that thought will vanish quickly when the twist is revealed. Then you'll think, "man that was some clever screenwriting". Tom Tyler gets to do a lot of his signature horse mounts, where he runs up behind his steed and pushes on its rear like a pommel horse, and launches himself into the saddle.

Jeanne Martel is sweet and savvy as the orphan "Ann Gelbart". She was Tom Tyler's real life wife for a while. I wish there was info on the location; part of it looks like Iverson Ranch, but then there are scenes with open range, boulders and pine trees, which could be San Berdoo. Well anyhow, Two Big Thumbs Up. The picture is soft, and slightly below what we consider par, but watch it because we love Tom Tyler. ////

And that's all I've got for tonight. I didn't buy a Porcupine Tree ticket after all, I'm sorry to say, because of prices and principle. The base price for the ticket was 70 dollars, which is fair for a decent seat these days, but Ticketmaster added 28 dollars in service fees, a 39% increase. Sorry, but No Can Do, for any band. Especially not with 6 dollar gasoline. No problem, though. I've been to a million concerts in my life, it won't kill me to miss one, or two, or three, or thirty. I hope you are having a good week, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Johnny Mack Brown in "Desperate Trails", and "The Prowler" starring Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes

Last night, we saw Johnny Mack Brown in "Desperate Trails"(1939), a Universal Studios effort with a bigger budget than we're used to for JMB. In the town of Denton, "Sheriff Big Bill Tanner" (Russell Simpson) is using banker "Malenkthy Culp" (another great Western movie character name!) to help him steal the profitable Lantry Ranch. They're also setting up stage robberies to help Tanner secure more land. What they do is send out the bank's cash deposits on the stage, ostensibly to be stored at the Wells Fargo headquarters, then they send out men to rob the stage, and they get the insurance money plus their original cash back. A U.S. Marshal named "Cort" (Ed Cassidy) is on to their scheme, but he can't pin the crimes on them without evidence. Meanwhile, in the desert, Johnny Mack sees a runaway wagon, chases it down, and of course there's a pretty woman at the reins. A Mexican Bandito is riding with her; he goes over the edge of a cliff and lands in the river with the horses (and they actually did this stunt, it looked like the horses were okay.)

Johnny is playing a special government agent named "Steve Hayden". After he rescues the wagon, he's sent by Marshal Cort to stop the ranch theft. He stays in Denton with a man named "Willie Strong" (Fuzzy Knight), posing as Willie's cousin, a cowhand. "Cousin" Willie works for "Judith Lantry" (Frances Robinson) the pretty girl on the wagon. She owns the Lantry Ranch. Well, Sheriff Tanner is trying to steal it, so he wants Hayden dead. He's also rustling the Lantry horses with the help of the ranch foreman "Lon" (Ralph Dunn), and the Mexican Bandito "Ortega" (Charles Stevens). The plot takes a rom/com turn when JMB goes to a bar and is captivated by the dancing of Anita Camargo as "Rosita" (who we just saw in "Lawless Land"). Ortega is offended, he thinks Rosita is his gal. This leads to another "pompous Bandito" showdown in which Johnny Mack dunks him in the horse trough. Water is a big motif in this movie. The horses fall into the river, Ortega and (later) Sheriff Tanner get dunked in the trough. Johnny Mack would rather humiliate (and therefore humble) the criminals than shoot them, but with Lon the foreman he has no choice. There's always one character on the bad guy side who won't go easily into the sunset.

Singing cowboy Bob Baker has a number during the bar scene that steals the show, it's classic Western ballad material that soars above the hijinx. Baker, who also plays a cowhand, repeats this song as the credits roll. If he had any albums out, I'd buy 'em. He's that good. 

The characters of Sheriff Tanner and Malenkthy Culp (Clarence Wilson) are paired as a comedy team when they aren't planning dastardly deeds. The true western tough guy conflicts are supplied by Lon and his henchmen. They're the stage robbers, working for Culp and the Sheriff, but they aren't any match for Johnny Mack Brown. He's all decked out in a button up black gunfighter outfit. As noted, the budget is higher, so the clothes give him the aura of a superhero. The violence is low key, no one gets killed, it's all about the pizzaz of Steve Hayden and his skills with a horse, rope and rifle. Early on, when he's being chased by the stage robbers, he rides away and does some fancy trick rifle movements, shifting the gun's direction with one hand, and moving his hand from trigger to grip and back.  

Once again, it adds up to a tremendous night at the movies. Frances Robinson is stunning as "Judith Lantry", owner of the Lantry Ranch, and Fuzzy Knight reminds one of a cross between Slim Pickins and Chill Wills. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Desperate Trails", verging on Two Huge. It's highly recommended and the picture is almost brand new.  //// 

The previous night, we found a highly unusual Noir, high-concept in nature, packed with symbolism and two fine lead performances and weird characterizations from the supporting cast - almost like an Orson Welles movie. Van Heflin is 'The Prowler"(1951), a cop who hates his job. From the get go, he's coveting "Susan Gilvray" (Evelyn Keyes), whose house he set up for a police visit by prowling it earlier in the evening. He's like the fireman who sets fires. Susan lives in Hollywood in a nice house. She's the trophy wife to an older man, a well-to-do radio host.

It isn't stated in the dialogue, but Heflin must've looked Susan up before he prowled her. When he makes a return visit, "to check that everything's okay", it turns out that they're both from Terre Haute, Indiana and went to the same high school. Susan remembers him from the basketball team and even had a crush on him. So you can either suspend disbelief at the improbability of all that, or there's a chance that Heflin's been stalking her for quite a while, maybe after he found out she was living in Los Angeles, but again, no info is given.

Boy oh boy, he is one creepy cop, especially in the early going, the way he installs himself into Susan's life. He comes over whenever he feels like it, in uniform or off-the-job. Eventually he makes a move on her and she slaps him hard, three times. Three is a key number in the film, symbolically, because when you were a cop in the old days, you had to yell halt three times before shooting a guy. Heflin convinces Susan that she doesn't love her husband. Eventually, she forgives him for getting fresh, and keeps seeing him on the sly. Heflin commiserates with his nerdy older police partner about how much he hates being a cop. The partner (John Maxwell) is a geology nut who takes trips to the desert on his days off, to collect rocks. This will figure big in the late going.

Eventually, Heflin wants Susan so bad that he sets up another fake prowler call to lure her husband outside. Then, responding to the call himself, he kills the husband in a shootout, and at his police hearing he claims he thought the husband was the prowler! Holy switcheroo, Batman! This is what I mean by high concept. Heflin has the whole thing set up, and is cleared on a charge of accidental homicide. At first, Susan hates him for killing her husband, she thinks he did it deliberately, and he did. But because she's so wishy-washy and gullible, Heflin is able to play to her sympathies once again. I'm telling you, this is one of the most nuanced, strange and great performances by a lead actor in the history of Noir. Too many people only remember Van Heflin when he was older and playing grumpy introverts. Having seen his range over the years, I always point out that he could do song and dance, he could do screwball comedy, he could do Westerns, he could basically do it all and then some. The guy was a phenomenal talent, and here, he turns on the leading man charm, again and again, to keep pulling Susan back to him, even when she hates his guts.

Then, in a Wellesian twist that you really have to suspend disbelief to believe, they end up out in the desert in Calico, California, a ghost town, after Susan divulges she's pregnant. They can't have the baby in public because of the timing. Everyone will know she got pregnant while her husband was still alive. This is as "Joseph Losey" as it gets (he directed), with all kinds of symbolism  and social commentary. Losey, who was blacklisted for allegedly being a Commie, can be great - as he was with the exceptional "Mr. Klein" - but he can also sometimes be too self-indulgent, as he is here with some of the stranger plot shifts.

As far as Heflin's character goes, at first he's super creepy, but as he wins Susan over, you can't help but root for him because suddenly he's not creepy anymore. He's gotten what he wanted, which was her, and now they're married (after he kills the husband), but the thing is, for a while he seems to truly love her. This is some great, great acting by Heflin because he's not faking either the creepiness or the love. But in the end, when she's gonna have a baby and the whole world will know it was conceived while her husband was still alive, Susan has a difficult delivery and Heflin has to drive away to get a doctor. He finds an old guy in the boondocks, and is gonna shoot him after he delivers the baby (so he won't talk), but by this time Susan has finally had enough, and rats Heflin out to the doctor, who drives away and calls the cops. Heflin's final climb, up a steep dirt hill, is way too symbolically obvious (he's climbing the mountain of greed/capitalism/envy/call it whatever you want, and then he's shot dead at the top and slides down).

What a weird, but really good movie. Not great, because 90 minutes felt like almost twice that (we're too used to getting the job done in 60 minutes, and I don't think I like longer movies anymore), but again, it's one of the most original Noirs we've seen. Joseph Losey is a bit of an acquired taste, because he always "Joseph Loseys" his movies to be different from what they should've been. I think he was trying to be like Orson Welles, and he was good, but.......here he goes on too long. Still, Two Big Thumbs Up. The fans at IMDB would give it Two Huge, and you can't beat Evelyn Keyes as an actress. See it for Heflin's performance and hers, and for it's sheer originality. It's highly recommended but be prepared to do some time checking, the picture is razor sharp. ////

Well, that's all for tonight. I'm excited that Porcupine Tree have reformed for an album and a tour, and will be playing the Greek Theater in September. I'm reading the official biography of Emerson Lake and Palmer, which was overseen and edited by Carl Palmer himself. It's great and has loads of photos and history. I hope you are enjoying your week, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)