Last night we saw Ken Maynard again, in a dual role in "Trailin' Trouble"(1937). His main character is "Friendly Fields", a gunslinger who lives with his Ma. Now that's an original take on the stereotype! Friendly isn't your typical gunman. Mom wants him to stop fighting and get himself a job. Her pal the Sheriff (Fred Burns) suggests he try the Bar-X Ranch, run by "Patty Blair" (Lona Andre). Patty's a no nonsense dame, but very young and inexperienced (she took over the ranch from her Dad). She tells Friendly she could use a foreman, but to qualify for the job, he's gotta prove himself by bringing back the cattle that have been rustled. To do so, he'll have to confront "Tom Crocker" (Roger Williams), a fellow rancher and head of the gang who are trying to force Patty off her land. The issue is water rights. Crocker figures if he steals all her cattle, Patty will have no reason to stay, and he figures again that since she's a woman, there is nothing she can do about it.
That's true, until Friendly Fields shows up. He walks into Crocker's ranch house, wearing a two-gun belt, and "politely suggests" (cause his Mom doesn't want him fighting) that Crocker give back the cattle he stole from Patty's ranch. Crocker says he already sold them, and that it was a case of mistaken cattle identity anyhow: "The brands got mixed up," he says, but what he means is that he was trying to re-brand them. Friendly knows this, and "politely" asks Crocker for three and a half gees to pay for the 70-odd head of cattle.
He brings the cash back to Patty at the Bar-X, who is impressed and hires him as her foreman. But at the beginning of the movie, while he was riding across the range, Friendly was robbed of his hat by a killer named "Blackie Burke" (also played by Ken Maynard). Because we're doing the old Dual Role Routine, when Patty's neighbor "Mrs. Dunn" (Grace Wood) finds a wanted poster in town with Blackie's picture on it, she naturally assumes it's Friendly, hiding under an alias. She comes over to the Bar-X to tell Patty the news, and by now, Tom Crocker and his gang think Friendly is really Blackie, too, so they are also scared of him because he's supposed to have killed "one man for every year of his age". Friendly tries 'splainin to Patty that he's Friendly, not Blackie, and we can't tell if she buys his explanation or not because there's a jump cut to the two of them riding to Crocker's ranch, and when they get there, he's still Blackie to Crocker. It's only later, after a stooge arrives, that Friendly's ruse is revealed. The stooge knows Blackie personally, and he's certain that Friendly's an impostor.
By now, two things happen. Ma shows up at Crocker's ranch. She's been looking for Friendly, and when she sees him fighting again (for by now, a punchout has ensued) she's furious. She's about to drag Friendly away by his earlobe, back to the family home, when the real Blackie Burke arrives, and the stooge henchman tells him that some wimp named Friendly has been impersonating him.
But as we know, Friendly is no wimp. Crocker has already found that out, and Blackie will discover the same. Amazingly, though Maynard's horse Tarzan is seen throughout the film, there are no heroic rescue scenes for him. I hope he got a new agent after this film, but it still gets Two Big Thumbs Up. Filmed entirely at Chatsworth Park, it's highly recommended and the picture is very good. As a bonus, there are two musical numbers by an unnamed group, one on which Ken Maynard plays fiddle and sings. Betcha didn't know he could do that. ////
The previous night, Tim McCoy was back in "Trigger Fingers"(1939), in which he gets to do his own comic relief. Betcha didn't know he could do that. He plays "Lighting Bill Carson", a Federal Secret Service agent, sent to Arizona to stop a gang of cattle rustlers who use trucks to steal their quarry. Local ranchers are complaining, and when "Dad Bolton" and his sweet daughter "Jessie" (Harley Wood) get robbed by bandits on the trail, everyone in town has had enough. Jessie's boyfriend (Bud McTaggart) is the local deputy, but he's just a kid and Dad thinks he's ineffective, so Dad calls the Feds and they send out Lightning Bill, along with a female agent named "Margaret" (Joyce Bryant), and "Magpie" (Ben Corbett), a gruff s.o.b who calls Margaret "Maggie" just to get her goat and keep a running gag through the movie. The trio pose as a band of wandering gypsies so the rustlers won't see them coming.
This is where McCoy gets to show his comic chops, complete with Gypsy accent, clothing and Twirly Moustachio. Add to that the famous McCoy eyeballs and some Silent film makeup, and you have a character tailor made for yuks that would not be PC nowdays but are hilarious nevertheless. Of course, Tim is always a card sharp in any guise, so a part of the deception is for the agents to pass through the ranch lands, offering "card readings" to suspected rustlers, in which McCoy performs a standard card trick in order to james garner the finger prints off the card deck. He has modern CSI skills, as far as dusting fingerprints in the field, but it takes him a while to nail the leader of the gang, whose prints have already been lifted from a a saddle at the beginning of the movie. His name is "Bert Lee" (Carleton Young), and he's attempting to rustle all the cattle in the Valley, using the efficient method of trucking. There's a five gee reward out for his arrest, but as usual, he's got Dad and Jessie Bolton bamboozled into thinking he's a good guy. He gets the townsfolk riled up to blame the rustling and robberies on the Gypsies. The agents are vastly outnumbered as a hanging posse is formed.
In looking at the credits on IMDB, it was interesting to read that Harley Wood, who plays Jessie and is only 26 here, went on to become a songwriter. In 1967 she wrote the famous Christian anthem "Let There Be Peace On Earth (And Let It Begin With Me), which I have sung in choir on numerous occasions. Amazing! You never know where our 60 minute Westerns will lead you. She's also great in this movie, which gets Two Big Thumbs Up and is a must-see for Tim McCoy's Gypsy impersonation. The picture is very good.
That's all I know for tonight. I'm listening to "Gotterdammerung" by Wagner, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. I also listened to "Free Hand" and "Power and the Glory" by Gentle Giant. I'm almost done reading Paul McCartney's "The Lyrics, which I highly recommend. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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