In Old Amarillo

I have seen the majority of Roy Rogers' films and must say that I much, much prefer his earlier films. There are two main reasons for this. First, the sidekick in most of the films in the early to mid-portion of his career was Gabby Hayes...and you can't get a sidekick better than Gabby. In fact, in the later films, they tried several sidekicks other than Gabby...and a couple of them were downright annoying...such as the bumbling Gordon Jones or the lisping and super-annoying Pinky Lee. The other reason is that in the later films, Roy tended to play a fictionalized and highly idealized version of himself that is much nicer and less tough than his earlier characters...not that they were mean. It seems in the later ones, they wanted Roy to be the ultimate swell guy....and often at the expense of excitement in the script. He was already nice enough in the earlier films in my opinion! Because of my general feelings, it's not surprising that I wasn't looking forward to seeing "In Old Amarillo"...a later Rogers film with Pinky Lee. For the record, Lee is much like a lisping, nasal and less subtle version of Pee Wee Herman...which makes no sense at all in a western!

When the story begins, you learn that there's been a bad drought on the range. Now Roy's been made foreman on a ranch and he's out to make sure the men economize on the water in order to help them through this crisis. At the same time, someone is trying to make it much worse and they don't seem above murder to make these ranchers miserable and lose their homes, livestock and land. But their ultimate weapon in their efforts is the stupid and headstrong son of Roy's boss.

I didn't like this film...mostly because of Pinky. But Estelita Rodriquez is pretty tough to like. While she appeared in many Roy Rogers films, this is possibly her worst appearance because she's loud and almost like the reincarnation of Lupe Valez...which, like Lee, just doesn't fit into this picture well at all. I also hated the 'funny' sound effects that you hear whenever Pinky does something dopey. What did I like? Well, I really liked it when one of the baddies bashed Pinky over the head...at least that shut him up! But you know it's bad when THAT is the highlight of the movie for me!

In Old Amarillo finds Roy Rogers working for cattle baron Pierre Watkin as a range detective investigating a drought that is plaguing all the ranches in the Amarillo area. The foreman of the Watkin ranch, Roy Barcroft, has got a few schemes of his own to take advantage of the drought and clean up in a bad cattle market.

Why the film is called In Old Amarillo is beyond me because it is set in the modern day west. One of the schemes used in fact is an airplane trying to seed the clouds so they will rain.

Another problem Roy has is Watkin's spoiled son Kenneth Howell who is more at home in a nightclub than home on the range. Watkin's sends Howell to Roy to straighten out, but he falls under Barcroft's influence instead.

In the midst of all this Roy takes some time to woo Penny Edwards, granddaughter of another ranch owner, Elizabeth Risdon. Risdon usually played old battle axes in her films, she's probably best known at least in western films as Audrey Long's aunt who Gabby Hayes spanks in John Wayne's Tall in the Saddle. Here she's a nice old pioneer granny.

In his later films Roy's Christianity was creeping more and more into his work. When all else fails he calls a cowboy prayer meeting in which he sings the song Wasteland hoping the Good Lord will prevent such a thing happening in Texas and give up with some rain.

Of course you know what's going to happen, but you might want to check out the mysterious ways God moves In Old Amarillo.

There's been an eight-month drought in the valley and the cattle are dying. Pierre Watkins, whose business enterprises long outstripped its origins, sends Roy Rogers out to manage his ranch and fire his crooked foreman, Roy Barcroft. Barcroft promptly enlists Watkins' wastrel son Kenneth Howell, who has been thrown out on his own resources after getting engaged to Estelita Rodriguez, in a scheme to buy the cattle for practically nothing to sell for dog food and hides. Meanwhile, the rest of the ranchers try to get water, first by rail tanker, which Barcraft blows up, then by hiring a cloud-seeding company.

As with most of Rogers' western movies, there's an interesting story, and director William Witney runs an efficient shoot. However the numbers were clearly going down; this year, Republic ceased to shoot the series in color, and the stunt gags were managed by studio shooting and miniature work. In addition, it's Pinky Lee providing comedy relief for the first of three appearances in the series, and he is out of place and awful.

There would only be two more Roy Rogers movies, and then in December of the year, his TV series would begin. I don't think anyone is slacking, but Lee stinks up the joint.