Last night we were back with Ken Maynard, as "Ranger Ken Neville", in "Alias the Bad Man" (1931). While taking part in a rodeo, Ranger Ken gets a letter from his Dad (Lafe McKee), a cattle rancher. Dad is asking for Ken's help in foiling a cattle rustling scheme. He and "Rancher Warner" (Robert Homans) have been fooled into thinking that each has been rustling the other's cattle. The two men have been at one another's throats, but now Neville has figured out that a man named "Rance Collins" (Frank Mayo) has been playing them against each another, and that Collins is the real rustler.
Ranger Ken heads for town, but by the time he gets there, both Dad and Mr. Warner are dead. it appears they shot each other in a confrontation at Warner's house. That's what Warner's daughter Mary thinks, and when Ken gets there, she voices her hate for old Mr, Neville. Given her feelings, Ken decides against identifying himself as Neville's son, so he just says "I'm with the Rangers" and asks her for info on how she found the bodies. "Did anyone know you father was going to meet with Mr. Neville"? Mary says, "Yes, Rance Collins knew". The audience already knows that Collins shot both men. He was hiding in Warner's parlor, and pulled the old Pistol from the Closet trick. Collins is the local saloon owner who's behind all the cattle rustling in town (and we're gonna have to elevate saloon owner in the Villain Rankings), but he's made a point of befriending Mary Warner (Virginia Brown Faire), to portray himself as a sympathetic figure. He even showed up right after Mary found the bodies, in the old "Climb Out the Windum After You Shoot 'Em, Then Return" trick, to feign shock. "Oh Mary, who would do such a thing?" But now, Ranger Ken is onto him, and when Ken shows up at the saloon, he infiltrates Collins's gang, because he needs evidence. In Dad's letter, he said that no one has ever been able to convict Collins because he's so good at covering his tracks.
Ken introduces himself as an outlaw, and proves it by shooting "dead" a supposed Ranger played by his stuttering sidekick "Repeater" (Irving Bacon). But the whole thing's a farce; he doesn't really kill Repeater, but Rance Collins thinks he did, so he hires Ken as a honcho on his rustling team.
But then, Ken meets Collins' henchman "Black". Black isn't so easily fooled by Ken's act, because he's Charles King, King and his hoodlums have just been in a punchout with Ken and Repeater, in which the duo had the advantage, because Tarzan, Ken's trick horse, knocked out the lights with his snout before the fight started, so only Ken and Repeater knew who they were hitting. Charles King wound up with a black eye, and he next time he sees Ken, as a supposed outlaw, he recognizes him and tells Rance Collins, who sets up an ambush plan on the next cattle rustling job. But Tarzan comes to Ken's rescue again, by leading the bad guys into a barn and locking them in. He is one amazing horse. This is yet another very early Charles King movie, he's as thin as you're gonna see him, and he has an uncanny quality, where he's always one step ahead of getting caught. He has a criminal's intuition, and is always more savvy than the boss man. But the way he plays it, with his eyes and physicality, is what makes Charles King such a great actor. You'd swear he was a real Western bad guy, a conniver who always seems to have something he's hiding, and is convinced he'll get away with it. That's Charles King in a nutshell, and it would be nice if his career was examined by Hollywood historians. To us, he's one of the greatest motion picture stars ever, as are many of the Western actors we've followed. Westerns, more than any other genre, established the movie business and made it what it is. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Alias the Bad Man". The picture is damaged but good. ////
The previous night, we had Tim McCoy, without guns this time, as a card sharp in "Aces and Eights"(1936). He goes from town to town with his sidekick "Lucky" (Jimmy Aubrey), cleaning out marks in high stakes poker games. He likes to expose chiselers, and in Rough Gulch, California, he exposes a guy (John Merton) who ends up challenging him. Tim doesn't wear a six-shooter in this role, but he's known to have the strongest hands of any man alive and can tear a deck of cards into quarters. Merton sees him do this, then gets scared and runs off. Later, at Walker Ranch, he's approached by another player in the card game, a young Mexican man by the name of "Jose Hernandez" (Rex Lease). Jose wants his money back, because he knows Merton is a cheater. When Merton tells him to get lost, Jose draws his gun and fires. Merton falls dead, but it wasn't Jose who killed him. We saw the old "Derringer Appearing From the Tree Trunk" trick. Whoever was holding it is the guy who killed John Merton. But because the Marshal finds Tim's torn up cards on the scene, he assumes Tim did it, even though he knows Tim doesn't carry a gun.
On the trail at Walker Ranch, Jose Hernandez - thinking it was he who killed Merton - runs into Tim McCoy, who's seen the wanted posters for himself, and tells Tim to hide out at the Rancho of Don Julio Hernandez. "He will not refuse you". Jose knows this because he is the Don's estranged son.
At the rancho, Senor Hernandez does accommodate Tim, though has his own problem, because "Ace Morgan" (Wheeler Oakman), the owner of the local casino, is about to foreclose on his property. Morgan uses stacked decks to clean out his customers. Tim challenges Ace to a single hand of poker, using a clean deck. "Your casino or Don Hernandez' ranch". Ace loses, and agrees to pay up, but then frames Tim for the murder of John Merton at the beginning of the movie. To repay Tim for saving his rancho, Don Hernandez asks the local Mexican police chief to re-investigate the crime scene. I didn't fully understand that angle, unless the time period is supposed to be pre-1848, when California still belonged to Mexico, but again, in these short Westerns, sometimes a plot point is explained in a single line of dialogue. Maybe the Mexican Captain is merely a friend of Don Hernandez, but at any rate, he proves Tim's innocence. In addition to Ace Morgan, there are two other mustachioed Snidely Whiplash characters. We could've used a Charles King, though, because the film is a little short on action. It is a nice departure for McCoy, however, who has the best acting eyes of any of our movie cowboys. I've only recently noticed this, but McCoy rarely uses the puchout scenes that all the other cowboy stars use. That's because his authoritarian presence is usually enough to deter the bad guys, and if it isn't, his lighting fast draw does the trick. This time, its all in the cards.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Aces and Eights". The picture is very good. ////
That's all for this evening. I'm listening to a Youtube compilation of The Wilde Flowers, the band that gave birth to the Canterbury scene. They formed in the mid-60s, and featured Kevin Ayers, Hugh Hopper and his brother Brian, Richard Sinclair, and at different points also Pye Hastings, Dave Sinclair, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt, among others. The Wilde Flowers eventually split into two groups that became legends: Soft Machine and Caravan. The music is somewhat haphazard, bluesy and poppy by turns, and it doesn't really give any hints of what's to come from these musicians, but it's interesting in a historical context. I also listened to a live "best of" from Uriah Heep (search "Classic Heep, Live from the Byron Era"), and have become a huge fan of Gary Thain's bass playing. The guy was an unsung monster. Check out the vid and listen to the power in his basslines. He should be ranked with the best of 'em in my opinion.
Listening also to recordings by the pianist Clara Haskil. She was one of my Dad's favorites, and her Scarlatti sonatas are sublime. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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