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 :):)
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