Oh my goodness! Johnny Mack Brown as a Bad Guy? Unshaven, scruffy, and hangin' with a gang of outlaws? Stop the Western presses and say it ain't so! But that's exactly what's happening in "Cheyenne Roundup"(1943), where, as the disreputable "Gils Brandon", he's being run out of town with his buddies as the movie opens. Gils and the boys then ride to El Dorado, which is owned and run by "Cal Calkins" (Fuzzy Knight). Calkins is a one-man show, he's everything from Mayor to president of the Ladies Club. He's also the Sheriff and the local mine owner, which means he's got all the money and all the power. The problem for Calkins is that he's a doofus (a Fuzzy Knight specialty), and crooked Gils tricks him into selling 51% of the mine. Then - as majority owner - Gils takes over as the town's power broker. He gets a shave and starts dressing better, because his gal is coming to town to marry him, but his gang henchmen veto the marriage, saying a woman will distract him from business. So, he has to tell her no, but there's another problem : a citizens vigilante group is sick of the crime in town and has sent for lawman "Steve Rawlins" (Tex Ritter), who's made a name for himself by cleaning up the next town over. The citizens want Rawlins to replace Cal Calkins, who's become ineffective since Gils Brandon came to town (and is a doofus to begin with). Gils can't have a real Sheriff running things, because that will put him under scrutiny, so he rides to that town to cut a deal. He plans to bribe Rawlins, so that he can remain the town boss and Steve will be a paid-off Sheriff in name only. But while Gils is there, he gets shot in a gunfight with a U.S. Marshal who's been looking for him. He has to retreat before even talking to Steve Rawlins, and he hides, badly wounded, at the home of his former fiancee.
Now, who should come riding along at this time but the Johnny Mack Brown we all know and love, complete with his traditional western shirt and outfit. He's clean shaven (and clean overall), and we're wondering what in the wide, wide world of sports is-a goin' on? Well, he rides into town and asks for Gils Brandon. Wait a minute, isn't he Gils Brandon? But how could he be? Gils is wounded and dying at his girlfriend's house. Then Johnny goes there and we find out who he is : "Hello, ma'am. I'm Buck Brandon, and I'm lookin' for my brother Gils. He's my twin." Ahh, the old Dual-Role Routine, where Johnny Mack plays both the bad brother and the good brother. At the girlfriend's house, Gils dies in Buck's arms, and repents his ways with his final breath. Buck is then introduced to Steve Rawlins, the lawman Gils was going to bribe, and they hatch a plan. "You pretend you're Gils", says Rawlins. "That way, his men won't know he's dead. We'll infiltrate their gang and stop them".
No one knows about this plan except Buck, Steve Rawlins, Cal Calkins, and and old geezer named "Bonanza" (played by Budd Buster, whose name we love). Bonanza is Cal's original mining partner. He discovered the lode that made him and Calkins rich, until Gils Brandon came along. Now that Gils is dead, his twin brother Buck is trying to make things right for Calkins and Bonanza by impersonating Gils and undoing all the bad things he did, but then "Blackie Dawson" (classic bad guy Harry Woods) shoots Bonanza dead when he begins to suspect something about Buck Brandon isn't genuine. Cal Calkins is ready to shoot it out with the bad guys right there and then, to prove his worth as Sheriff (and that he's not as big a doofus as he seems), and of course because he's played by Fuzzy Knight, you get some excellent comic relief. You also get music this time around, because the famous singing cowboy Tex Ritter (father of John) plays Steve Rawlins, and there's a side group that performs at Fuzzy's saloon, called The Jimmy Wakely Trio, and boy are they great! Check out those Van Halen harmonies. :)
Harry Woods is one of the best bad guys in B-Westerns (tied with Charles King and Ted Adams), and he goes down to the wire with Johnny Mack in this one, in a major league shootout at the end. Fuzzy ends up doing most of the sharp shooting, however, and uses his marksmanship on pawn shop balls to knock three guys unconscious. All ends well, and Buck rides off into the sunset with Gils' fiancee, who's now his gal. Tex Ritter sings a song, and because the film was made by Universal, there's a little more attention to production values. Two Big Thumbs Up not only for the movie, but for Johnny Mack Brown's double performance, and for the complex plot. "Cheyenne Roundup" is highly recommended, and the picture is very good. ////
The previous night, we saw our first Boston Blackie film - "After Midnight with Boston Blackie"(1943) -which came about through the presence of Ann Savage, whom we thought we'd seen the last of (at least on Youtube). How lucky we were, then, to discover this movie in our recommendations. Ann's role turned out to be smaller than expected, but it's pivotal to the plot, and she's in top form in Sweet Daughter mode, the casting she should be most famous for in my opinion, instead of her memorable yet dangerous turn in "Detour", because she played (and excelled at playing) Sweet Daughters so often.
As the movie opens, "Diamond Ed Barnaby" is being released from prison. The warden wishes him well, and he goes home to see his daughter "Betty" (Savage). She's delighted he's free, but crushed when he can't stay. He doesn't tell her why, but we find out he has some diamonds stashed from the heist that sent him to the slammer. He wants Betty to have them, so he sets up a plan to put them in baggage locker. Later he will tell her where the key is hidden. But crooked nightclub owner "Joe Herschel" (Cy Kendall) knows about the diamonds because his henchmen were part of the heist. He shoots Ed Barnaby before Ed can tell daughter Bettty where they're hidden, then he takes the keys from Ed's coat to recover the diamonds himself. Before this happens, detective "Boston Blackie" (Chester Morris) is on a train. A porter brings him a telegram from Betty, asking if she can hire him because she's worried about her father, who is missing. We know he's been shot, which Blackie soon discovers after he takes the job. Because Blackie is an ex-con himself, "Inspector Farraday" (Richard Lane), at first thinks he killed Ed Barnaby. The crux of the plot is that Blackie has to keep Farraday off the trail, while trying to find the diamonds himself, so he can give them to Betty as her father wanted. The hunt leads him to Joe Herschel the club owner, but Blackie can't ask for Inspector Farraday's help because the Inspector thinks he's the murderer. Betty Barnaby gets kidnapped by Herschel and his thugs, and all kinds of hijinx take place as Blackie recovers the diamonds, then has to hide them from the Inspector, until he can free Betty from the kidnappers.
Meanwhile, a comical subplot involves an Amazonian dancer (Jane Buckingham) who's engaged to Blackie's partner "The Runt" (George E. Stone). She's a riot, and she's hiding out at the apartment of a noted crime photographer who's writing a book about the Mafia. There's antics and action setups galore in this flick, which is essentially a screwball caper set in the private detective genre. Chester Morris rules as Boston Blackie. The gags are very creative, some will go right by you if you aren't quick on the uptake (I wasn't, and had to rewind a few times). There's also a blackface scene involving Blackie that is funny no matter the extent of your Wokeness (and don't get me started). He has to "borrow" a bass fiddle from a jazz musician so he can sneak into a hotel, so he puts on the blackface, gets inside, then winds up in a black lady's hotel room, washing off his makeup. He says "Thank you, ma'am" on the way out, she gives him a smile and a salute, and it's hilarious, because it looks like he spent the night in her room. If this movie is any indication, the Boston Blackie series is great stuff, and we need to see the rest of it. It's all about the slapstick, but the story never stops moving forward and you never know what's coming next. Two Big Thumbs Up for "After Midnight with Boston Blackie". The picture is razor sharp, and it's colorized, which I'm not normally a fan of, but in this case it doesn't look too garish. Highly recommended. ////
That's all for this evening. I'm not loving the Carlos Santana-Anna Winds, so I'm holed up listening to Soundgarden's "King Animal", which - after giving it a decade to sink in - is one heck of a great album. Later tonight, Mahler's 9th. Have you checked out Mahler yet? Don't forget his Lieder, either, as sung by Janet Baker. It's as good as music gets.
I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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