Last night, Tim McCoy was back in "The Texas Marshal". A businessman named "Moore" (Karl Hackett) has formed a civic group in Cactus Creek. Called "The League of Patriots", it claims to support law and order. Joining is encouraged, and is especially promoted to the local ranchers. But one rancher accuses Moore of being a phony. "You're just hiding behind the flag so you can steal our land"! Moore has found out about a large deposit if tin ore in the soil in Cactus Creek. He started The League of Patriots to create an infallible reputation as a Real 'Murican, because as anyone knows, no American Patriot would ever break the law, wink nudge (and as a side note, it must be mentioned that it's interesting to see phony flag-waving exposed in a Western movie, especially in 1941. Having said that, I am not against flag-waving or patriotism. Only the phony kind.) Back to the plot, Moore is buying up ranches on the side, for the usual cut-rate prices. Ranchers that won't sell turn up dead, and Moore then buys their estates. If they do sell, they find out that Moore knew there was tin on their land. This one rancher threatens to expose him. Moore has Charles King shoot him dead.
Moore is using a local country singer to promote The League of Patriots. Art Davis has a radio show and is also a member of The League. When the citizens rebel against the rancher being shot, Marshal " 'Trigger' Tim Rand" (Tim McCoy) is sent in to restore order and solve the case. He starts by searching the dead rancher's house. There, he finds rocks containing tin ore. Right away, he goes to the assayer's office and asks to look in the safe, but Moore and his gang have found out about the house search, and they've already removed all the tin out of the assayer's office. Marshal Tim takes fingerprints, which lead him to Charles King. But there's another set of unidentified prints. Tim believes King must be working for someone, because he's too much of a thug to be behind a mining scheme all by himself. Art Davis knows that King works for Moore, so Tim uses a radio broadcast - at which Moore be the MC - to try and get his prints off the mic stand. When Moore finds out he's suspected, he and Charles King kidnap Art Davis. This leads to a chase and the final showdown out in Placerita Canyon. As always, you can't beat Tim McCoy. You also get music, though -while Art Davis has a pleasant voice - I prefer the Western swing of groups like The Jimmy Wakely Trio. Still, with McCoy you can't go wrong, and this is also another big role for our buddy Charlie King. He gets lots of dialogue and screentime, and he's even cleaned up this time around, with a trim moustache instead of his usual walrus. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Texas Marshal". The picture is slightly soft. ////
The previous night, we watched a pre-Code Western with Harry Carey called "Without Honor"(1932). This one is dead serious. Carey plays "Pete Marlan", a "bad man" accused of stealing 1000 dollars in a crooked card came. It isn't true. Pete may be fast with a gun, but he's honest. He just likes to gamble, and that puts him at the table with criminals. His brother Jack is a white hat, a straight arrow Texas Ranger. They meet at a river as the movie opens. After some "long-time-no-see" small talk, Pete crosses over into Mexico, for some easy money card playin'. Jack heads back to the Ranger outpost, where "Captain Frank Henderson" (Lafe McKee) sends him out to investigate a smuggling ring. Jack is killed in an ambush. Pete gets word in Mexico, and heads back immediately to find out what happened. Captain Henderson tells him "Sorry, Pete, but it looks like your brother was part of the smuggling gang". He gives Pete a note that was in Jack's pocket, implicating him in a payoff. But it's easy to see it's a framejob, and the Captain ends up agreeing. Pete joins the Rangers on the spot, to avenge his brother's murder.
Right away, the head of the Mexican bandito gang tries to kill him. They are the other half of the smuggling ring. Pete escapes by hiding out at the ranch of old flame "Mary Ryan" (Mae Busch). Then, the Captain's brother "Steve" finds him there. Steve is a Ranger also. He tells Pete that Jack is to be buried the next day, and that he'd better come out of hiding if he's gonna attend the service. Steve promises to have every Ranger available at the service, to protect Pete from the Mexican bandits. But when Pete goes to the funeral, he's told that Jack is being buried "without honor" (hence the title) because he is believed to have been a criminal. Pete is infuriated at the accusation, and the disrespect Jack is shown by the Rangers, and he sets out on his own to find the truth behind Jack's death, and who is behind the smuggling ring. On his way through the desert, he find a girl who has fallen in a creek. She's "Bernice Donovan" (Mary Jane Irving), and though she's injured from her fall, she begs Pete not to take her home, because her father is a monster who beats her.
This is where the movie takes a turn and the plot becomes even more dead serious. Pete does take Bernice back to the shack she lives in, with her big Irish brute of a Dad (Gibson Gowland). This leads to a long but incredible acting scene in which Irving, Carey and Gowland pull off, in a single extended take, a depiction of domestic violence that's terrifying yet gripping for it's pre-Code realism. I looked up Mary Jane Irving when the movie was over. She was a popular child actress in the Silent era. She's about 18 here, and super talented. Cute and funny, too, in other scenes. We'll be looking for more from her, and from Gibson Gowland, even though he's a terrible person in this movie. It turns out that he has a trained dog that takes messages back and forth across the border, along with cash payments, that are placed in the pockets of a waterproof vest that the dog wears when crossing the river. The dog is the key to the entire smuggling plot, and unfortunately I can't tell you who's behind it. Hint: it isn't the mean Irish Dad. But man, the emotion is raw in this film. The long scene between the aforementioned trio is worth the watch alone.
One small problem I had is that I wasn't exactly sure what they were smuggling. Sometimes in these movies, when they're trying to pack a lot of story into a one hour framework, they'll have a character toss off, say, one or two lines about - in this case - a smuggling job. Then they'll mention the generic "smuggling", in general, for the rest of the movie, but if you aren't right on top of the dialogue for that brief moment when they specify the commodity, you won't remember what is being smuggled. In major A-list releases (and in novels and any kind of popular writing) the details of major plot points are repeated in different ways, at intervals, so that the readers (or viewers) never lose track of the important details. But in 60 minute Westerns, that's one drawback that you have to be ready for. If you miss a single line of dialogue, you might not know, in this case, what exactly is being smuggled. But anyhow, it's not about the smuggling per se, (although the swimming messenger dog steals the show). It's about, first, Pete's determination to prove that his Ranger brother Jack was not a crook. Secondly, it's about the theft of Mae Bush's ranch by the ring leader, and the fact that her daughter has been taken from her in infancy, and raised as the daughter of the big Irish madman. This is hard core pre-Code filmmaking, and everyone involved knocks it out of the park.
We're gonna give "Without Honor" Two Huge Thumbs Up instead of the usual Two Big. It's very highly recommended and the picture is quite good for it's age. Don't miss it!
That's all for this evening. Tomorrow night I am going to see Alice Cooper at the Greek Theater. This will be the fifth time I've seen The Coop, though I never got to see the original band, one of the great miss-outs of my concert going career. I always am amazed by the time factor, though, and this will be 47 years since the first time I saw him, in the summer of 1975 when he first went solo with Welcome To My Nightmare. I should be home before midnight, and that means we'll watch a movie!
I hope you're enjoying your weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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