Last night we saw a good one from Tom Tyler, "Santa Fe Bound"(1936). At it opens, Tom is riding through Chatsworth Park when he sees a man being bushwhacked. Tom shoots the bushwhacker, but not before he gets off a shot of his own, mortally wounding his target, "Dad Bates" (Murdock McQuarrie). When Tom rides up to check on him, Dad gives him an envelope containing five gees and asks him to take it to Molly in Santa Fe. He dies before he can say her last name, but Tom goes there and tracks her down, and it turns out she's Dad's daughter Molly Bates, mistress of the Circle J Ranch. Tom introduces himself and says he met Dad out on the trail, but when Molly (Jeanne Martel) asks how Dad is doing, Tom doesn't have the heart to tell her he's dead. Therefore, he also can't give her the money.
He's got himself in a jam now, because in town, he's introduced himself at Tex French, the name of the bushwhacker who killed Dad. He even has a letter he took off of Tex after he shot him in the Chatsworth Park ambush. Therefore, the honcho in town, a "Mr. Stanton" (Richard Cramer), thinks he's Tex French, a gunman who does made-to-order killings. But Stanton's henchman Slim Whitaker doesn't trust "Tex", even though he's given Stanton the five grand that was meant for Molly. It turns out that Whitaker's hunch was right, because Tom (as "French") steals the money back while pretending to be a Mexican. Confusing, I know, but not while you're watching the movie. After he pretends to be a middle-of-the-night Mexican robber, and he steals the 5K back from Stanton, Tom rides back to the Circle J and gives the money to Molly, telling her to trust him and not to ask any questions. Molly's "Aunt Bridget" (Dorothy Wood) tells her that Tom is a good guy ("I have an intuition about men," she says), so even though he's acting like a criminal, and Stanton tells her he is one (and Stanton asks Molly to marry him), she trusts Tom and he finds out that Stanton is behind the cattle rustling that has almost put her out of business.
When Stanton goes after the "Mexican" who stole his money, he hires a hitman named "Denton" (Charles King), who, when he gets a look at Tom pretending to be "Tex French", says "that's not Tex, I know him." Now Tom is in an even bigger jam, but he gets out of it by knocking Charles King and Stanton cold, with one punch apiece. But he has to run now, and they know he's not Tex French. But, he gets the Sheriff (Earl Dwire) on his side, and after the Sheriff foils an attempt by Stanton to have Tom lynched (because he initially claimed to be the bushwhacker Tex French), they team up to expose Stanton as the plotter of the Dad Bates murder. "Santa Fe Bound" is top notch Tom Tyler and gets Two Big Thumbs Up for it's layered script and great Charles King action. The picture is very good and hey, get ready because you get two Charles King movies in this blog, plus Johnny Mack Brown coming up! ////
As promised, just a mere sentence down, here's a good one from Johnny Mack called "A Lawman is Born"(1937), which we saw the previous night. In an unusual script, that uses exposition to launch the story and then again at the end to fill in the gaps, we meet Johnny as he's riding through Walker Ranch. He observes a shootout between rival gangs on horseback, and when it's over, he runs into Charles King and sweet "Beth Graham" (Iris Meredith), daughter of a local rancher (Frank LaRue). Now, running into Charles King after a crime has gone down is always indicative of something, but this time, he's with a gal (his gal, he says) and sweet Beth is going to the dance with him that night, so there isn't much Johnny Mack can say, though he likes Beth too. We know little about Johnny except that he works at the general store as a clerk for Al St. John (who, with his false teeth out, is extra goofy). Here's where the early exposition comes in handy: the characters who come into the store hint that there's something amiss about Johnny Mack's past, that he'd rather settle disputes with his gun than by talking. But we're supposed to guess at what the context is for their remarks. It's a weird script - well developed for a 60 minute Western, with several subthemes (normally unheard of given the time limits), but the entirety of the story has gaps galore, filled in with expository dialogue.
So, we have to guess at Johnny's past, and in town there's a cattle war going on between the two main ranchers. They seem to be rustling each other, but the Sheriff suspects there's a middleman involved who is playing both sides against each other. This isn't exactly true; it's actually one of the ranchers having his henchman work for the other guy and doing a triple cross by hiring some crumb bums to rustle his cattle and make it look like.....oh well, forget it. The plot got too confusing at that point (meaning underwritten), but then, because Charles King is the middle man, you can always blame the whole thing on him.
When the Sheriff is killed, trying to settle the ranchers' dispute, his sister wants JMB to become the new Sheriff, knowing of his reputation from his former town, which we don't know the whole of, because it's only been alluded to (and in fact we don't know squat). Apparently, though he acts like a mild mannered store clerk, Johnny's supposed to be a bad-ass gunslinger who will bend the rules as Sheriff, if necessary. This means he won't hesitate to take "offensive action" against suspected criminals, meaning he'll shoot 'em without a trial. Holy schnikey, Batman! That's doesn't sound very Johnny Mack Brown to me! He gets the job as Sheriff, but the top rancher doesn't like it and sends out his henchman to ambush Johnny.
When that doesn't work, Charles King calls upon the deputy Sheriff from Hornito, Texas to come out and work with Johnny. King thinks that because Johnny is supposed to be a wanted killer, the deputy will come and arrest him, but his plan fails - as all Charles King plans do - because he fails to take into account that he may be wrong. Warner Richmond, he of the jaw and teeth, plays the arch villain "Briscoe" the land office manager, but we don't see him until halfway through the movie. Again, it's a strange but well developed schcript.They mention all these names of the various bad guys in the dialogue, but don't bother showing them until the plot is well underway. It's like you're a fly on the wall, and the characters know what they're talking about, but you don't. Still, because there's so much going on, you can't help but be involved, and now that Johnny is Sheriff, sweet Beth makes him promise that he'll never use his gun except in self defense. JMB actually has more screen time with "Martha" (Mary McLaren), the dead Sheriff's sister. Their relationship is not romantic, but she implores him to step between the warring ranchers and clean up the town. The hoodlums (led by Dick Curtis) laugh at him : "Look at the store clerk Sheriff, what a sissy." Then they find out about his past, which again we don't know anything about, and they stop talkin' smack. The bad guys think he's wanted for murder in his former county, but it turns out that's a ruse concocted by the Hornito deputy and JMB.
It's all kind of vague, but really good! This is what small budgets will do ya, and I've read that they sometimes wrote the schcripts on the schpot. Still, when you've got Johnny Mack you get an automatic Two Big Thumbs Up, and in fact it's an excellent movie, and highly recommended. The picture is soft but watchable. ////
That's all I've got for tonight. I hope your week is going well. I'm listening to "Headless Cross" by Black Sabbath, and "Tristan und Isolde" by Richard Wagner, and I send you Tons of Love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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