Square Dance Jubilee

In the scene where Don Barry and Wally Vernon come into town to look for performers for Spade Cooley's TV show, Barry makes a comment about how the town looks like something out of a Don "Red" Barry western. Vernon replies, "Yeah, I remember him (or some such comment)." Barry replies, "I never liked him." Don't know if this was an ad lib, or just something the scriptwriters threw in to get a laugh. Since Barry was listed as associate producer for the film, he probably added that to the script. While he was quoted as saying he did not like the association with Red Ryder, he had to admit that his nickname helped to get him jobs in later years.

This thinly plotted musical western was produced by star Barry for release by quickie movie mogul Lippert. The efforts of the cast(most notable are Spade Cooley,Cowboy Copas)are more musically inclined than towards dramatics. An "Oklahoma" it ain't!

With a plot not unlike that of KENTUCKY JUBILEE (also a Lippert release), ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK, HOOTENANNY HOOT, DON'T KNOCK THE TWIST, and many other "talent scout tries to put together a show" musical films, SQUARE DANCE JUBILEE finds leading man Don Barry teamed with rubber-faced funny-man Wally Vernon as television men looking in the rural west for talented country music performers to be featured on a network program (one in which we see Spade Cooley perform at the beginning of the film--in fact, Cooley addresses the audience and INTRODUCES the film!). The talent is fantastic, featuring Cowboy Copas doing a number of tunes, along with the lesser-known Claude Casey, who is also a fine country singer. Even west-coast country-music comic performer Herman the Hermit has a brief, strange appearance. If that's not enough, we get great performances from Max Terhune (without his dummy, Elmer, but doing some great vocal gymnastics!), Snub Pollard, Tom Kennedy, Tom Tyler as the "muscle" for the crooked town boss played with glee by John Eldredge (see my review of his great performance as the murderous blind date in LONELY HEART BANDITS, made the next year at Republic), and many regular b-movie faces. The film combines an exciting western-crime plot with entertaining music and dancing with well-played comedy sequences. Heck, even Don Barry himself sings a novelty song called "Girl in the Mink Blue Jeans" that isn't bad (although he was wise to keep his day job as an actor!). I don't see how someone could give this film a low rating because it completely achieves what it set out to do. It's basically a musical performance film strung together with a crime plot and comedy relief. The music is good, the western-crime plot is exciting and entertaining, and the comedy is well done. And it does all that in a little over an hour, and it probably was very cheap to make. If I were a small-town moviegoer in 1949 who enjoyed Spade Cooley's TV show, who had liked Don "Red" Barry in his earlier films, and who liked Wally Vernon's comedy shorts, I'd be pleased as punch to put down a dollar or so to get all of that in one entertaining package. This "Donald Barry production" for Lippert Pictures is an entertaining little gem of a b-movie, and I've watched it every year or two for a decade now. I look forward to watching it again soon...